The present volume and the three which succeed it are devoted to a reprint of Edwin James's Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, performed in the Years 1819, 1820,... under the Command of Maj. S. H. Long. This exploration was the outcome, and almost the only valuable result, of the ill-starred project popularly known at the time as the Yellowstone expedition, which had been designed to establish military posts on the upper Missouri for the several purposes of protecting the growing fur-trade, controlling the Indian tribes, and lessening the influence which British trading companies were believed to exert upon them. As originally planned, the scientific observations of the expedition were to be conducted by a company of specialists under the command of Major Long, to whom detailed instructions were issued by Secretary of War Calhoun. The scientific members of the expedition had meanwhile assembled at Pittsburg, and on May 5, 1819, they began the descent of the Ohio in the steamer "Western Engineer." The "Western Engineer" arrived at St. Louis on the ninth of June, and proceeded again on the twenty-first, after the party had completed certain arrangements for their journey and examined the Indian mounds in the vicinity. The voyage up the Missouri was begun on the twenty-second, being marked by no more important incident than an occasional halt to repair the machinery or clean the boiler. Notwithstanding it drew but nineteen inches of water, the boat grounded twice on sand-bars within four miles of the Mississippi; but on the whole, it worked fairly well and gave comparatively little annoyance. At St. Charles, on June 27, the party was joined by Benjamin O'Fallon, agent for Indian affairs, and John Dougherty, his interpreter. Here Messrs. Say, Jessup, Peale, and Seymour left the boat and made a land excursion, rejoining Meantime the steamer had left Fort Osage on August 10, and eight days later arrived at Cow Island, near Leavenworth, where a portion of the troops of the Yellowstone expedition had wintered. Here another week was spent in a council with the Kansa Indians. On the twenty-ninth of August, Say and his companions arrived at Cow Island, four days after the departure of the boat; both Say and Jessup were ill, and the party had decided to return to the river at that point instead of attempting the longer journey to Council Bluffs, the appointed rendezvous. The others succeeded in overtaking the steamer, the invalids remaining for a time at Cow Island. Near the quarters of the troops at Council Bluffs (Camp Missouri), Long's party also halted, on September 17, and prepared a winter camp, named "Engineer Cantonment." Here Long left his companions, and, accompanied by Jessup, returned to the East for the winter. His colleagues Long returned to the West in the spring of 1820. Leaving St. Louis on April 24, he crossed the intervening wilderness to Council Bluffs by land, arriving at Engineer Cantonment on May 28. With him came Captain J. R. Bell, to replace Major Biddle, also the author of the account herewith reprinted; the latter assumed the duties which had originally been assigned to Baldwin and Jessup. Edwin James was born at Weybridge, Vermont, in 1797, and after graduation at Middlebury College (1816) pursued the study of medicine under a brother, Daniel James, who was a practising physician of Albany, New York. At the same time he prosecuted studies in botany and geology under Dr. John Torrey and Professor Amos Eaton, joining the expedition in 1820 fresh from the tutelage of these men. Long was also the bearer of fresh instructions. Congress, annoyed at the first season's operations, the results of which had been out of all proportion to the heavy expenditures, had refused further appropriations, and the progress of the Yellowstone expedition was necessarily arrested. Long's party, however, with the exception of Lieutenant Graham, who with the steamboat was assigned to special duty on the Missouri and Mississippi, was to ascend the Platte to its source, and return to the Mississippi by way of the Arkansas and the Red. The company as now organized, in addition to the scientific On the thirtieth the Rockies were first sighted—their route along the Platte having borne directly towards the mountain which has since received Long's name, and which was, at first, mistaken for Pike's Peak. The fourth of July, which they had hoped to celebrate in the mountains, found them still at some distance from them; on the fifth they encamped upon the site of the present city of Denver, and the following day directly in front of the chasm through which issues the South Platte. Here two days were passed while James and Peale, with two companions, sought to cross the first range and gain the valley of the Platte beyond; but after surmounting several ridges, each of which appeared to be the summit, only to find A few days later, members of the expedition performed a more memorable exploit. On the twelfth of July, the camp then being a few miles south of the site of Colorado Springs, James set out with two men, and two days later succeeded in reaching the summit of Pike's Peak, being, so far as history records, the first to accomplish this feat. In honor of the achievement, Major Long christened the mountain James's Peak; but by force of local usage, the present name supplanted this appropriate designation. Lieutenant Swift had meanwhile quite accurately calculated the height of the peak above the basal plains, although an erroneous estimate of the elevation of the latter produced an error of nearly three thousand feet in the determination for the elevation of the summit above sea level. Here, as elsewhere, the observations for longitude and latitude involved a considerable error. On the sixteenth the party again broke camp, and moved southwest to the Arkansas, which they reached twelve or fifteen miles above the present city of Pueblo. The following day Captain Bell, Dr. James, and two of the men ascended the river to the site of CaÑon City, at the entrance of Royal Gorge, where they turned back, again baffled by what seemed to them impassable barriers. The expedition began the descent of the Arkansas on the nineteenth. After two days' march a camp was made a few miles above the future site of La Junta, Colorado; here a division into two parties was effected, for the purpose of carrying out the instructions of the War Department to explore the courses of both the Arkansas and the Leaving the Arkansas on the twenty-fourth, Long's party crossed Purgatory Creek and the upper waters of Cimarron River, and after six days reached a small tributary of Canadian River, which, after five days' still further travel, brought them to the latter near the present Texas-New Mexico boundary line. As the region in which they had encountered the waters of the Canadian was that wherein the sources of the Red had, previous to that time, been universally supposed to lie, they naturally at first believed that they were upon the latter stream. Their suspicions were soon aroused by the deviation of the river's course from that which they expected the Red to pursue; but it was not until they arrived at the confluence of this waterway with the Arkansas that they became certain of their error. During their descent of the Canadian they encountered parties of Kaskaia and Comanche Indians, whose conduct was not uniformly friendly. Few incidents of interest, however, broke the painful monotony of a journey accompanied by almost constant suffering from exposure to violent storms and intense heat, lack of food and water, and the attacks of wood ticks. On the thirteenth of September the explorers arrived at Fort Smith, the appointed rendezvous, where they found Bell's party awaiting them. The experience of the Arkansas division had, in most particulars, been quite similar to that of Long's, but on the whole less vexatious. The chief event, however, involved an irreparable loss to the expedition. This was the desertion, on the night of the thirtieth of August, of three soldiers, who wantonly took with them all the manuscripts completed by Dr. Say and Lieutenant Swift since leaving the Missouri. The stolen books contained notes on the manners, habits, history, and languages of the Indians, and on the animals which had been examined, a journal of the expedition, and a mass of topographical data. During part of the journey, Bell's party was even more astray than Long's. Soon after passing the Great Bend of the Arkansas, they mistook the Nennescah River for the Negracka, or Salt Fork of the Arkansas; similar errors added to their bewilderment, and for some time they were unaware whether they were near Fort Smith or still far distant—until, on the first of September, they met friendly Osage Indians near Verdigris River. They reached Fort Smith on the ninth. From Fort Smith the reunited party followed the Arkansas to the Cherokee towns on Illinois Creek, in Pope County, Arkansas, whence they proceeded overland directly to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. James and Swift, parting from their companions at the Cherokee towns, visited the Arkansas Hot Springs, now a famous health resort, and returning to the Arkansas at Little Rock, also crossed the country to Cape Girardeau, where all members of the expedition were assembled on October 12. Here nearly all of the party were attacked by intermittent fever. Two or three weeks later, the expedition being now disbanded, James's Account is the only narrative of the expedition, and his connection with the party gives his work the authority of an official report. Moreover, he not only had access to the notes of his associates, but received much personal assistance, especially from Long and Say. The original edition was published at Philadelphia in 1823, by Carey and Lea; it consisted of two volumes of 503 and 442 pages respectively, containing James's narrative, with appendices giving a catalogue of animals observed at Engineer Cantonment, the Indian sign language, Indian speeches at the councils held by Major O'Fallon, astronomical and meteorological records, and vocabularies of Indian languages, especially those of the Oto, Kansa, Omaha, Sioux, Minitaree, and Pawnee tribes. Extracts from Major Long's report to the secretary of war, dated January 20, 1821, and from the report made by his assistants to Long on the mineralogy and geology of the region explored, were incorporated in the second volume. A The same year another edition was published in London, by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown. This edition, the one selected by us for reprinting, was in three volumes, and contained the text essentially as printed in the Philadelphia edition. In certain ways the results of the expedition were disappointing, even to those persons whose expectations were far less extravagant than the Missourian who had declared that "ten years shall not pass away before we shall have the rich productions of [China] transported from Canton to the Columbia, up that river to the mountains, over the The teeming animal life of the great plains might have suggested to Long and his associates its adaptability to the needs of man; but for the occupation of the land without political peril, at least two agencies were required, which were, in their day, hardly more than dreams. We cannot blame the explorers for failing to anticipate the marvels of the railroad and the irrigating ditch; indeed, the repulse of the agricultural vanguard which attempted the invasion of the plains west of the hundredth meridian only half a generation ago, vindicates the prediction that the country could not be possessed by methods then known. It may be doubted whether their conservatism was not wiser than the confidence of the more ardent expansionists; yet it is doubtless true that their report, by depreciating the estimate of the value of the region, put weapons into the hands of those Eastern men who cherished a traditional jealousy of Westward expansion, and caused the government rather to follow than to lead the movement. Another apparent ground for criticism is the failure of the expedition to accomplish either of the great objects mentioned in the instructions—the discovery of the sources of the Platte and of the Red. The readiness with which the explorers relinquished their efforts to penetrate the mountains at the caÑons of the Platte and Arkansas, although the season was midsummer, seems to indicate inefficiency as well as indifference to instructions. Likewise, when the Canadian was reached and mistaken for the Red, no effort was made to ascend the stream to its source; the explorers were content to descend the river, When all allowances have been made, much carelessness is evident in the explorations of the Long expedition. The bewilderment of Bell's party was inexcusable in men of science possessing instruments for determining latitude and longitude; their geographical errors to some extent nullified their observations of natural features. Cimarron River, the most important tributary of the Arkansas next to the Canadian, they missed entirely, and the relative size and location of the tributaries of the Arkansas remained uncertain for years after. Upon beginning the descent of the Arkansas they travelled two hundred miles without, so far as James's Account shows, making a note on geography or topography; but possibly some allowance for this omission should be made because of the theft of manuscripts by the deserters. Of the itinerary of the expedition from the Platte to the Canadian, it has been said, "It would be scarcely possible to find in any narrative of Western history so careless an itinerary, and in a scientific report like that of Dr. James it is quite inexcusable." After all criticisms have been urged to the utmost, the work of the expedition was, and is, of considerable value. The exploration of the Canadian River was an important contribution to American geography. It was thenceforth evident that the sources of the Red must be looked for farther south than had previously been supposed, although a generation was to elapse before their discovery. Otherwise, the exploration added greatly to the knowledge of a portion of the country but imperfectly known through hunters and traders. Especially is this true as regards details relative to natural history and ethnology; for the work was done in the spirit of modern scientific investigation, and in this respect anticipated later expeditions, for which American public sentiment in 1820 was hardly ripe. The collections included more than sixty skins of new or rare animals, several thousand insects, of which many hundreds were new, nearly five hundred undescribed plants, mineral specimens, many new species of shells, numerous fossils, a hundred and twenty-two animal sketches, and a hundred and fifty landscape views. While not primarily designed as a scientific report on these collections, James's Account gives in the form of notes Soon after his return from the Rockies, Major Long was sent upon another expedition, this time to the sources of the St. Peter's (now Minnesota) River. This enterprise was contemplated by the original instructions issued to Long at the time of the Yellowstone project; but the subsequent abandonment of the latter compelled alterations in the programme of the scientific division. As in the case of the first journey, the report of the St. Peter's exploration is the work of another person—William H. Keating, author of Long's Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River, Lake of the Woods, etc. (Philadelphia, 2 vols., 1824). For these several explorations, Long was breveted lieutenant-colonel. In 1827 he assumed charge of the survey of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and for many years thereafter was much engaged in railroad engineering. His Railroad Manual (1829) was the first original treatise on railroad building published in this country. Upon the organization of the Topographical Engineers as a separate corps (1838), he became a major; later (1861) he was made chief of the corps, with the rank of colonel. He was retired from active service in 1863, still being entrusted with important duties, which were interrupted by his death, occurring at Alton, Illinois, the following year. After the publication of his account of Long's expedition, Dr. James received an appointment as army surgeon, and was on the frontier for six years, which he utilized in studying Indian dialects; during this period he translated the New Testament into the Chippewa tongue (1833), and published The Narrative of John Tanner (New York, In the preparation for the press of this reprint of James's Account, the Editor has had throughout the assistance of Homer C. Hockett, B.A., instructor in history in the University of Wisconsin. R. G. T. Madison. Wis., March, 1905. Preliminary Notice reprinted from Volume I of Philadelphia edition, 1823. Text reprinted from Volume I of London edition, 1823. TO THE HONOURABLE JOHN C. CALHOUN, SECRETARY OF WAR; WHOSE LIBERAL VIEWS, ENLIGHTENED POLICY, AND JUDICIOUS MEASURES, WHILE THEY HAVE BEEN PROSECUTED WITH THE UTMOST CIRCUMSPECTION AND ECONOMY, HAVE CONTRIBUTED IN AN EMINENT DEGREE TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OF THE UNITED STATES, BOTH IN SCIENCE AND POLITICS; THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHORS, AS A FEEBLE TESTIMONIAL OF THEIR HIGH CONSIDERATION OF HIS TALENTS AND PATRIOTISM, AND A GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF HIS INDULGENCE AND PATRONAGE. |