Overland in 1846

Overland in 1846 PDF Author: Dale Lowell Morgan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803282001
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Get Book Here

Book Description
"We pray the God of mercy to deliver us from our present Calamity," wrote Patrick Breen on the first day of 1847 as he and others in the Donner party awaited rescue from the snowbound Sierras. His famous diary appears in Overland in 1846, edited and annotated by Dale L. Morgan. This handsome two-volume work includes not only primary sources of the Donner tragedy but also the letters and journals of other emigrants on the trail that year. Their voices combine to create a sweeping narrative of the westward movement. Volume I concentrates on the experiences of particular pioneers making the passage—their letters and diaries describe omnipresent dangers and momentary joys, landmarks, Indians encountered, disputes within the companies, births and deaths. Volume II, also based on contemporary records, offers a broader but no less vivid view of what it was like to go west in 1846 and pictures what was found in California and Oregon.

Overland in 1846

Overland in 1846 PDF Author: Dale Lowell Morgan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803282001
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Get Book Here

Book Description
"We pray the God of mercy to deliver us from our present Calamity," wrote Patrick Breen on the first day of 1847 as he and others in the Donner party awaited rescue from the snowbound Sierras. His famous diary appears in Overland in 1846, edited and annotated by Dale L. Morgan. This handsome two-volume work includes not only primary sources of the Donner tragedy but also the letters and journals of other emigrants on the trail that year. Their voices combine to create a sweeping narrative of the westward movement. Volume I concentrates on the experiences of particular pioneers making the passage—their letters and diaries describe omnipresent dangers and momentary joys, landmarks, Indians encountered, disputes within the companies, births and deaths. Volume II, also based on contemporary records, offers a broader but no less vivid view of what it was like to go west in 1846 and pictures what was found in California and Oregon.

Indians and Emigrants

Indians and Emigrants PDF Author: Michael L. Tate
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806137100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the first book to focus on relations between Indians and emigrants on the overland trails, Michael L. Tate shows that such encounters were far more often characterized by cooperation than by conflict. Having combed hundreds of unpublished sources and Indian oral traditions, Tate finds Indians and Anglo-Americans continuously trading goods and news with each other, and Indians providing various forms of assistance to overlanders. Tate admits that both sides normally followed their own best interests and ethical standards, which sometimes created distrust. But many acts of kindness by emigrants and by Indians can be attributed to simple human compassion. Not until the mid-1850s did Plains tribes begin to see their independence and cultural traditions threatened by the flood of white travelers. As buffalo herds dwindled and more Indians died from diseases brought by emigrants, violent clashes between wagon trains and Indians became more frequent, and the first Anglo-Indian wars erupted on the plains. Yet, even in the 1860s, Tate finds, friendly encounters were still the rule. Despite thousands of mutually beneficial exchanges between whites and Indians between 1840 and 1870, the image of Plains Indians as the overland pioneers’ worst enemies prevailed in American popular culture. In explaining the persistence of that stereotype, Tate seeks to dispel one of the West’s oldest cultural misunderstandings.

What I Saw in California

What I Saw in California PDF Author: Edwin Bryant
Publisher: IndyPublish.com
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 500

Get Book Here

Book Description


Overland in 1846

Overland in 1846 PDF Author: Dale Morgan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780803282025
Category : California National Historic Trail
Languages : en
Pages : 825

Get Book Here

Book Description
"We pray the God of mercy to deliver us from our present Calamity," wrote Patrick Breen on the first day of 1847 as he and others in the Donner party awaited rescue from the snowbound Sierras. His famous diary appears in Overland in 1846, edited and annotated by Dale L. Morgan. This handsome two-volume work includes not only primary sources of the Donner tragedy but also the letters and journals of other emigrants on the trail that year. Their voices combine to create a sweeping narrative of the westward movement. Volume I concentrates on the experiences of particular pioneers making the passage—their letters and diaries describe omnipresent dangers and momentary joys, landmarks, Indians encountered, disputes within the companies, births and deaths. Volume II, also based on contemporary records, offers a broader but no less vivid view of what it was like to go west in 1846 and pictures what was found in California and Oregon.

Murder State

Murder State PDF Author: Brendan C. Lindsay
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 080324021X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 456

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Euro-American citizenry of California carried out mass genocide against the Native population of their state, using the processes and mechanisms of democracy to secure land and resources for themselves and their private interests. The murder, rape, and enslavement of thousands of Native people were legitimized by notions of democracy—in this case mob rule—through a discreetly organized and brutally effective series of petitions, referenda, town hall meetings, and votes at every level of California government. Murder State is a comprehensive examination of these events and their early legacy. Preconceptions about Native Americans as shaped by the popular press and by immigrants’ experiences on the overland trail to California were used to further justify the elimination of Native people in the newcomers’ quest for land. The allegedly “violent nature” of Native people was often merely their reaction to the atrocities committed against them as they were driven from their ancestral lands and alienated from their traditional resources. In this narrative history employing numerous primary sources and the latest interdisciplinary scholarship on genocide, Brendan C. Lindsay examines the darker side of California history, one that is rarely studied in detail, and the motives of both Native Americans and Euro-Americans at the time. Murder State calls attention to the misuse of democracy to justify and commit genocide.

Surviving the Oregon Trail, 1852

Surviving the Oregon Trail, 1852 PDF Author: Weldon Willis Rau
Publisher: Washington State University Press
ISBN: 1636820646
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Get Book Here

Book Description
With numbers swelled by Oregon-bound settlers as well as hordes of gold-seekers destined for California, the 1852 overland migration was the largest on record in a year taking a terrible toll in lives mainly due to deadly cholera. Included here are firsthand accounts of this fateful year, including the words and thoughts of a young married couple, Mary Ann and Willis Boatman, released for the first time in book-length form. In its immediacy, Surviving the Oregon Trail, 1852 opens a window to the travails of the overland journeyers--their stark camps, treacherous river fordings, and dishonest countrymen; the shimmering plains and mountain vastnesses; trepidation at crossing ancient Indian lands; and the dark angel of death hovering over the wagon columns. But also found here are acts of valor, compassion, and kindness, and the hope for a new life in a new land at the end of the trail.

Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West

Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West PDF Author: Dale Lowell Morgan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803251380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 474

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1822, before Jedediah Smith entered the West, it was largely an unknown land, “a wilderness,” he wrote, “of two thousand miles diameter.” During his nine years as a trapper for Ashley and Henry and later for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, “the mild and Christian young man” blazed the trail westward through South Pass; he was the first to go from the Missouri overland to California, the first to cross the length of Utah and the width of Nevada, first to travel by land up through California and Oregon, first to cross the Sierra Nevada. Before his death on the Santa Fe Trail at the hands of the Comanches, Jed Smith and his partners had drawn the map of the west on a beaver skin.

Lands of Promise and Despair

Lands of Promise and Despair PDF Author: Rose Marie Beebe
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806153571
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 543

Get Book Here

Book Description
This copious collection of reminiscences, reports, letters, and documents allows readers to experience the vast and varied landscape of early California from the viewpoint of its inhabitants. What emerges is not the Spanish California depicted by casual visitors—a culture obsessed with finery, horses, and fandangos—but an ever-shifting world of aspiration and tragedy, pride and loss. Conflicts between missionaries and soldiers, Indians and settlers, friends and neighbors spill from these pages, bringing the ferment of daily life into sharp focus.

The Gold Seekers of '49

The Gold Seekers of '49 PDF Author: Kimball Webster
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
Kimball Webster (1828-1916), a New Hampshire farmer, began his overland journey to California in April 1849, and remained in California and Oregon until 1854. The gold seekers of '49 (1917) uses Webster's diary as the basis for the account of his trip to California via a wagon train from Independence, Missouri, and his first weeks in the Sacramento Valley. A much later narrative picks up the story of his later career in California as a goldseeker on the Feather River and Nelson's Creek mines, 1849-1850; descriptions of Sacramento, Yuba City, and Marysville; and surveying in Oregon, 1851-1854.

Covered Wagon Women, Volume 1

Covered Wagon Women, Volume 1 PDF Author: Kenneth L. Holmes
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496225546
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
The women who traveled west in covered wagons during the 1840s speak through these letters and diaries. Here are the voices of Tamsen Donner and young Virginia Reed, members of the ill-fated Donner party; Patty Sessions, the Mormon midwife who delivered five babies on the trail between Omaha and Salt Lake City; Rachel Fisher, who buried both her husband and her little girl before reaching Oregon. Still others make themselves heard, starting out from different places and recording details along the way, from the mundane to the soul-shattering and spirit-lifting.