There’s going to be another historical post. It cannot be helped. There is only one way this works and that is if I get to write about what I’m thinking about beavers every day. Even if I’m thinking about something that happened 175 years ago that affected beavers. Trust me, this is going to be fascinating.
I had suspected that reading through Zenas Leonard’s account of the passage through the Sierras would be like reading the Odyssey – dry with details and slumber-inducing. Instead it was like taking a kayak through the rapids. Zip! Zip! Zoom! So much amazing distance covered in such a little time and very hard to climb out of.
One of the first things I noticed is that mountain men didn’t ask for directions, either.
While they’re starving on the mountain skree, struggling to find a pass, and eating their starving horses at a considerable rate, a scouting party comes across an indian hiking purposefully through the snow. Do they ask him how the heck to get over the mountain? Or where he is going? Or maybe just follow him and see for themselves?
No, they shoot him and creep back to camp.
Another pair of Indians they meet later are so startled they drop the basket of acorns they were carrying and run away. They don’t follow these either. But they do take the basket and eat roasted acorns that night, which made a nice change from horse. They had very little regard for or interest in the native peoples, describing them as ‘slothful’ ‘ignorant’ and ‘filthy’. This is even though they marveled at the pumpkin, corn and squash they saw being grown once they made it over. Zenas was especially suspicious of the tribe he meets later in SF because even when the troop rode closer the natives continued with their fishing and didn’t pay attention to the white men at all. (Imagine!) At one point Leonard observes that they ‘all seemed to be from the same tribe‘ since they were the same shade and spoke the same language.
(Sure. I’m pretty sure that common native tongue was later identified by the scholars as ‘Notenglish‘).
But back to the Sierras, eventually they crawl through enough snowy terrifying spaces that they find themselves on the other side and Zenas notes tellingly,
Ahh this is what made folks think they were in Yosemite. But there are four other stands of Giant Sequoia and historians have argued over whether they might have ended up at Calaveras instead. They quickly started thinking about trapping again to pay for their trip, and hunted about for beaver sign. Leonard describes beaver as ‘scarce’ in the area. But never mind, I got more interested in what they saw as they headed down that mountain. The night of November 12 the sky seemed to explode with falling lights and the men and horses were terrified of certain death.
Apparently, coming out of the trees they had the bizarre fortune to witness the largest meteor shower the country has ever known. Starting a little before midnight on the November 12th, 1833 and continuing until dawn that morning, a meteor shower occurred that was visible across the entire United States. Typical Leonid showers have a rate of something like 5 meteors an hour. This had more like 100,000. Famous poets, abolitionists and pastors all described it in horror and awe. Fathers woke their wives and children to pray because they were sure it was the end of days. Even Abraham Lincoln wrote about it years later.
And even though you didn’t think you knew about this amazing moment in history it is captured in a famous song you did know, with a title from the book of the same name published shortly after the event.
The odds of them surviving the Sierra pass at all are pretty incredible. The odds of them living on cricket and starving horseflesh and acorns aren’t good. But the odds of them arriving out of the dense redwoods in time for this extravaganza were stunning. Consider that for a moment. The very next day the men were terrified to hear a great crashing all around them, and were sure some huge animal was bursting through the trees to chase them. It seemed to get louder the faster they rode away from the treeline.
But we know what it really was, right?
The crash of ocean waves was proof of the success of their journey and divine assurance that America really did have a “manifest destiny” after all. They rushed down to the shore in time to see a very rare three mast ship far out to sea. Again the odds of such a meeting were stacked against them. There weren’t many ships sailing around the Pacific coast at the time. This was a whaling ship named the Lagoda from Boston. When they hailed it by fashioning a large flag the captain sent out longboats and invited them aboard for dinner.
Most of the 57 men went aboard and had a grand feast drinking cognac from Captain Baggshaw’s private reserve. Later Zenas commented that it was the first bread, butter and cheese that any of their company had eaten in two years.
So they made buddies with the crew and captain and agreed to meet up again in Monterey. They got all the gossip on the natives and the Spaniards they were likely to meet along the way. Leonard doesn’t say whether they talked about the Meteor shower but they must have. It had to be at least as terrifying at sea as it was coming out of the forest. Maybe even more so.
Afterwards they slept off the cognac and started their way down the peninsula through what is now the Bay Area. And the craziest coincidence of all? When they were leaving San Francisco and picking their way over the marshlands they came across the skeleton of a narwhale.
No, really.
