Impatient With Desire Page 2

  ALSO:

  Charles Stanton, 35, from Chicago, traveling with us

  Luis and Salvador, Indians, “vaqueros,” who came back with Mr. Stanton in October 1846 from Sutter’s Fort with mules and food

  We’re not sure yet which of the three shelters the others are in:

  John Denton, 28, from England, traveling with us, carved Sarah Keyes’s gravestone in Kansas

  Noah James, 16, from Springfield, our teamster

  Pat Dolan, 35?, originally from Ireland, friend of the Breens, most likely in their “shanty”

  Antonio (?), 23?, our herder, joined us at Fort Laramie

  Altogether, eighty-one of us are trapped in the mountains. Here at Alder Creek, we are six men, three women, and twelve children. At the lake camp shelters, there are seventeen men, twelve women, and thirty-one children.

  George and I have often talked about how the explorers went westward for knowledge or glory, the missionaries for converts, and the mountain men for adventure and fortune, but we of ’46 have thought of ourselves from the beginning as bringing a civilization. We are the first year of the families on the Trail: a responsibility and a privilege that we have borne eagerly, indeed with pride.

  When we were trying to hack our way through the Wasatch Mountains, we became aware of the liabilities of so many children, but that fact remained unspoken. Here in our grim shelter, the numbers laid out starkly on the page, there is no denying or ignoring their heart-sinking reality. As George and I worked out the ages of each for this list, we exchanged more than one look of dismay.

  Sister,

  Let me describe our shelter as for years I always described my current surroundings to you, Betsey, faithful to your instructions to “be particular with detail.” We are in a clearing, three shelters in all, each at roughly the point of a triangle. When the storm forced us to seek cover, we put our largest tent against a great lodgepole pine to form the west side of our shelter. Then we drove posts into the ground and covered them with oxen hides. Erected in haste, it has served us remarkably well.

  Inside at one end, we scooped a hollow in the ground, which serves as our fireplace. An opening at the top vents the smoke, but never all of it. There’s always a smoky haze, and we’re growing accustomed to our chronic throat clearings and coughs. It’s night now, but night or day, along with the smoky haze, there are shadows, silhouettes, dark corners. When we go outside, the light hurts our eyes at first; then when we come back, we squint for a few moments until things become clear again.

  At the other end of our shelter, posts and poles hold up crude wooden platforms we built out of weathered wagon boar. These platforms lift us off the wet earth, and we covered them with pine branches and blankets.

  We divided one platform into two by hanging a blanket in the middle to give Mrs. Wolfinger privacy. Doris Wolfinger is a young German widow we took into our wagon after her husband disappeared in the second desert. She may as well be a hermit in a remote cave for all she is with us.

  We made a rough table and two benches from wagon boards and put them close to the fire. We eat there, I lave and dress George’s wound there, Elitha sometimes reads her Dickens there. I sit there now, and most nights, writing. A giant pinecone, lit, is my “lamp.”

  Around the edges of the shelter we have several bowls filled with melting snow for our water. Close to the door, we have our slops and empty it outside daily except in the worst weather.

  We almost always wear our coats inside over many layers of clothes, which I’m sorry to say, have not been washed for some time, a state I fear will continue. I suppose we are fortunate that it is too cold to sustain vermin.

  Jacob and Elizabeth’s shelter across the clearing is pretty much the same as ours except smokier and more pungent, although Jean Baptiste and I do our best to keep the vent open and empty the slops.

  “The Indians do it this way,” Jean Baptiste told George, and he instructed the men in making the teamsters’ shelter, a kind of tepee, by covering triangulated poles with hides. Jean Baptiste is a godsend, and as good to the girls as if he were their brother. When the weather permits, he takes Georgia and Eliza outside and spreads out “Old Navajo,” his colorful Indian blanket, on the ground. Eliza plops down and grabs one side, Georgia the other, and they begin rolling inward until they meet in the middle like two sausages. Jean Baptiste picks them up and props them against a log, where they watch him probe the snow looking for cattle or climb a tree looking to the west for the rescuers to come or simply talk to themselves in a private language they have made up. I could not manage without him. He finds firewood for all three shelters. He’s of short stature, only five inches taller than I, but very strong. Jean Baptiste Trudeau is his full name. He is not sure where he was born. His father was French Canadian, a trapper, who was killed by Indians. His mother was Mexican and apparently died when he was very young. He says he doesn’t remember her. I feel very tender toward him. He is a good boy, and his eagerness makes him seem younger than his 21 years—“almost 22,” he said at Fort Bridger, where he begged George to hire him. “A dollar a day,” George said, “and all the food you can eat.”

  Your sister

  Thanksgiving 1846

  We give thanks that we are alive and together. It stormed all day. We ate boiled oxen hides for supper. We have a little bit of meat left that I dried and parcel out every few days. I kept the children in bed almost all day because of the cold.

  Personal History for the Children

  I was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on November 1st 1801, the seventh child, the baby, of William Eustis and Tamesin Wheelwright Eustis. Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the sixteen states.

  I was named after my mother, Tamesin, a feminization of Thomas, a name that, for some curious reason, lent itself to fanciful variations, Tamazin, Thomasin, Thomazine, Tamzine, Tamzene…Long ago, I gave up correcting people—even my first husband, Tully, spelled it Tamsan. I sign my name Tamzene, but most people have called me Tamsen, which was fine with me because it’s what my father called me.

  In fifteen years, my mother bore four daughters and three sons: Tamesin, Molly, John, Elizabeth, William, William, Tamesin. It was commonplace to give the name of a deceased child to a later child, as happened with my brother William and me. Some people believed we carried the spirits of our deceased siblings along with their memory, that we’d live their lives as well as our own. It is curious that William and I are the only travelers in our family, that we have never been content to stay put. Do the spirits of our older sister and brother, deprived of their own experience, drive us on to seek their adventures as well as our own? Or were we just born with wanderlust?

  At the time of our emigration to California last April, only two of my siblings were still alive: Elizabeth (Betsey) Eustis Poor, nine years older than I, and William Eustis, two years older. Betsey, my dearest only sister, has always been my confidante, unfortunately most of the time by letter. In the past William and I had our moments of contention—though I’m not sure he noticed—but we are on excellent terms now. When I left Springfield, he said, “Illinois is overcrowded and unhealthy. Don’t be surprised if I show up at your door sometime.” “That would give me a great deal of pleasure,” I said from my heart.

  I’m writing all this down, because today Frances asked, “What was Illinois like?” I was taken aback, but I spoke matter-of-factly about George’s grown children back home, who were like indulgent uncles and aunts to them, the Sunday picnics, swimming in the creek, our farm when the fruit trees were in bloom. She and her sisters listened as if I was telling them stories from some book they’d read long ago and, worse yet, one they no longer had much interest in.

  But why was I shocked? Each day, my former life seems more a dream to me too. I feel bonds loosening. I strain to hold on to my stepchildren in Illinois, Allen Francis, the editor of the newspaper, and my other friends we left behind, and most of all my dear sister, Betsey, willing myself to write letters I fear she w
ill never read. The truth is it’s difficult for me to hold on to anyone outside this wretched dwelling. The rest of the Party, seven miles to our west, might as well be seventy miles or seven hundred miles, although Jean Baptiste goes back and forth and brings us the latest dispiriting news. Even my blood relatives across the clearing require a bottomless attention I’m increasingly reluctant to give. Every day the weather permits, I force myself to walk across the clearing with Leanna to encourage my sister-in-law, Elizabeth, and my niece and nephews to gather firewood, to pray, to get up off their platforms. Every time we’ve been there this week, my brother-in-law, Jacob, was slumped at the table, his head in his hands.

  Newburyport, Massachusetts, is a seaside town, and I grew up in a world that revolved around the sea. On the Trail every time a breeze moved the prairie grass someone would speak of it as waves. I can see they might think that, especially if they had never seen real waves. Prairie grass undulating is a pleasing sight, but it’s to the great Atlantic as a minnow is to a Blue Whale.

  My father was a sea captain, and he and my uncle and the other men in Newburyport were often at sea for a year or two at a time. My mother and the other women were in charge of home, money, and business. If the money Father left home ran low, Mother and later my stepmother made the long, difficult trip to Boston to sell whale oil used to light lamps, or barter it for goods we couldn’t make at home. I begged and begged, and shortly after my 9th birthday, my stepmother and aunt let me go with them. I had imagined Boston many times, and though I was often teased for my runaway imagination, this time it had lagged far behind the reality. Immediately, the vibrant energy of Boston coursed through me. Everything was in primary colors, the sounds a thrilling jangle and din, and it seemed that everyone we passed hurried on her way to perform an important task. I saw that we were crossing Salem Street and turned with only one thought: Christ Church, Old North, where Father was a sentinel when he was only 15. I had only gone a block or two when it came into view, and though still some distance away I ran to greet it. And there it was, exactly as Father had described it so many times. As if happening that moment, I saw the two lanterns blinking from the steeple, One if by land, two if by sea, the horse’s hooves slapping the ground, its mouth frothing, pealing church bells and town hall chimes, drumbeats and gunshots, carrying Paul Revere’s warning from town to town: The Redcoats are coming, the Redcoats are coming. I climbed 154 steps to the top of the steeple and, when I looked out the window, was completely surprised to see my stepmother and aunt in the street below hurrying this way and that in agitation. I was sorry for the concern I had caused, but not at all for my adventure, and Father later whispered in my ear that he would have done the same thing.

  A Ship Is Sighted

  Whenever a ship was spotted coming into Newburyport, my stepmother—and surely my mother before her, though I can’t remember—grabbed the long spyglass and we all rushed behind her up to the widow’s walk. All the ships had distinctive sails, and each captain his own flag, and what a happy day it was when she broke into a big smile. “It’s your father’s!” I was always the last to get the spyglass, and by then everyone was rushing downstairs to tidy the house, lay the fire, before we were off running to the wharf.

  My brother John would lift me to the top of a barrel so I could better see the fishing boat rowing out to the incoming ship. When the rower drew close enough, he shouted, “What luck?” and we all held our breath until a sailor on the ship shouted back.

  Oh, the relieved sighs, the whispered thanks of everyone when the shout was “All alive and well!”

  Sometimes the shout was “Two men less.” Then the hearts dropped, and we all waited in the heavy silence for the ship to slowly come to deliver its sad news.

  Men of all ages strode down the gangplank, even the small ones seeming tall, their tanned complexions a stark contrast to our pasty winter white faces, bringing us the sights and sounds and smells of the world beyond Newburyport. A monkey with a gaudy red jacket and gold buttons perched on one sailor’s shoulder; another had a screeching green and blue parrot. Then Father, tallest of all, swooped me up into his arms and onto his shoulders, and from that perch I saw the ecstatic reunions, I shook the paw of the monkey, feeling its viselike grip on my finger, and more than once from that perch, I saw at the side women and children weeping for their lost ones and was happy I was where I was.

  I was long past riding on shoulders the day Father came down the gangplank, his face grave, and went directly to my aunt, whose face had already begun to crumble, and we learned that my beloved uncle lay in a watery grave. He had caught fever in Suriname and, although Father nursed him with a brother’s tenderness for weeks, succumbed, and was buried at sea. For a long time, I never looked down at the ocean without thinking of those cold waters closing over Uncle.

  In those early years at home before Uncle’s death, everyone clustered around Father’s leather sea trunk, peering at its exotic contents. On one homecoming, an orange was handed reverently from one to another to smell. Aromatic teas made the rounds. Then Father took out a beautiful opalescent shell and cupped it to my ear.

  “Hear the trade winds, Tamsen.”

  I wanted to listen to the trade winds blowing forever, but William demanded a turn.

  “Give it to your brother now,” Father said.

  William and I had a ferocious tug-of-war over the shell until he won.

  Father looked at me with utmost sympathy. “If only you’d been a boy, you could be a sailor too.”

  “I will be a sailor!” I shouted.

  Everyone laughed, except Father and me.

  “Let her have the shell, William,” Father said. “I have something else for you.”

  Father reached into his trunk and took out a small compass in a leather case, its face so shiny and splendid as to immediately capture my attention. Spellbound, I watched the needle move north, east, south, west as Father turned slowly around the room.

  “West of the West,” Father said, “lies a country of the mind.”

  December

  1846

  Dec 2nd 1846

  In the front of my journal, I tucked a copy of the March 26th 1846 advertisement in the Sangamo Journal, Springfield, Illinois. Last night, when George couldn’t sleep, I unfolded it and read it to him, and we recalled the excitement we felt composing it at our kitchen table:

  * * *

  WESTWARD HO!

  FOR

  OREGON AND CALIFORNIA

  Who wants to go to California without it costing them anything?

  As many as eight young men of good character, who can drive an ox team, will be accommodated by gentlemen who will leave this vicinity about the first of April.

  Come on Boys. You can have as much land as you want without costing you anything.

  The Government of California gives large tracts of land to persons who move there.

  The first suitable persons who apply will be engaged.

  GEORGE DONNER AND OTHERS

  * * *

  In Springfield, as every place else in the country, California fever was on the land. No more scrabbling for a living, out West the opportunities were unlimited, you could be your own boss. Good-bye forever to the hard winters and fevers and agues that sapped your strength before your time—you couldn’t help being robust in the California climate. George loved to pass on the tale of the 250-year-old man who wanted to die and had to leave California to do it. “But when they sent back his body for burial,” George said, his eyes twinkling, “what do you know? He was immediately restored to health!”

  California was bigger than life!

  My weekly reading group began discussing emigration as far back as 1844. We western folks prided ourselves on being as “up to date” as any Yankee, and as editor of the paper, Allen Francis had access to all the latest books as well as the letters sent back by those who had already emigrated. Gradually, as the months went by, our reading material became almost exclusively related to the pros and con
s of emigration. Several of our more traditional members, who would have been content to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame until we had committed it to memory, found reasons to stop coming. I can’t say they were particularly missed.

  There were those in Springfield, as there always are anyplace, who thought only young, single men should go overland, that it was absurd and reckless for family men to consider it. But restlessness, risk taking, and adventure seeking are not confined only to the young temperament. Nor confined to males either. Though it’s true that some women went only to keep their families intact, I was not the only wife and mother who thought emigration was the opportunity of a lifetime for the whole family.

  The gentlemen got their eight young men, and a month later, we left Springfield, three family groups and our employees, in a little caravan of nine wagons.

  George was a hale 60, I was 44. Elitha was 13, Leanna, 11, Frances, 5, Georgia, 4, and Eliza, 3.

  George’s brother, Jacob, 58 and in poor health ever since I’ve known him, hoped to spend his last days in sunshine. His wife, Elizabeth, was 38, and although I thought she was willing to go, I have come to wonder since. They took seven children: Solomon Hook, 14, and William Hook, 12, Elizabeth’s children by her first husband, and George, 9, Mary, 7, Isaac, 5, Samuel, 4, and Lewis, 3.