The Prairie Traveler. A Hand-Book For Overland Expeditions,
by Randolph B. Marcy, Captain U. S. Army

Published: By Authority Of The War Department, 1859

Note: How to pack your wagon, what you'll encounter along the way, 28
detailed itineraries complete with mileage

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                                    THE
                             PRAIRIE TRAVELER.


                             A HAND-BOOK FOR
                           OVERLAND EXPEDITIONS.


               WITH MAPS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND ITINERARIES OF
                     THE PRINCIPAL ROUTES BETWEEN THE
                       MISSISSIPPI AND THE PACIFIC.


                          BY RANDOLPH B. MARCY,
                           CAPTAIN U. S. ARMY.


               PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE WAR DEPARTMENT

                                   1859.




CONTENTS:

PREFACE

CHAPTER I.
The different Routes to California and Oregon. -- Their respective 
Advantages. -- Organization of Companies. -- Elections of Captains. -- 
Wagons and Teams. -- Relative Merits of Mules and Oxen. -- Stores and 
Provisions. -- How packed. -- Desiccated and canned Vegetables. -- 
Pemmican. -- Anti-scorbutics. -- Cold Flour. -- Substitutes in case of 
Necessity. -- Amount of Supplies. -- Clothing. -- Camp Equipage.

CHAPTER II.
Marching. -- Treatment of Animals. -- Water. -- Different methods of 
finding and purifying it. -- Journadas. -- Methods of crossing them. -- 
Advance and Rear Guards. -- Selection of Camp. -- Sanitary 
Considerations. -- Dr. Jackson's Report. -- Picket Guards. -- 
Stampedes. - - How to prevent them. -- Corraling Wagons.

CHAPTER III.
Repairing broken Wagons. -- Fording Rivers. -- Quicksand. -- Wagon 
Boats. -- Bull Boats. - - Crossing Packs. -- Swimming Animals. -- Marching 
with loose Horses. -- Herding Mules. - - Best Methods of Marching. -- 
Herding and guarding Animals. -- Descending Mountains. -- Storms. -- 
Northers.

CHAPTER IV.
Packing. -- Saddles. -- Mexican Method. -- Madrina, or Bellmare. -- 
Attachment of the Mule illustrated. -- Best Method of Packing. -- Hoppling 
Animals. -- Selecting Horses and Mules. -- Grama and bunch grass. -- 
European Saddles. -- California Saddle. -- Saddle Wounds. -- Alkali. -- 
Flies. -- Colic. -- Rattlesnake Bites. -- Cures for the Bite.

CHAPTER V.
Bivouacs. -- Tente d'Abri. -- Gutta-percha Knapsack Tent. -- Comanche 
Lodge. -- Sibley Tent. -- Camp Furniture. -- Litters. -- Rapid 
Traveling. -- Fuel. -- Making Fires. -- Fires on the Prairies. -- Jerking 
Meat. -- Making Lariats. -- Making Caches. -- Disposition of Fire- 
arms. -- Colt's Revolvers. -- Gun Accidents. -- Trailing. -- Indian 
Sagacity.

CHAPTER VI.
Guides and Hunters. -- Delawares and Shawnees. -- Khebirs. -- Black 
Beaver. -- Anecdotes. -- Domestic Troubles. -- Lodges. -- Similarity of 
Prairie Tribes to the Arabs. -- Method of making War. -- Tracking and 
pursuing Indians. -- Method of attacking them. -- Telegraphing by Smokes.

CHAPTER VII.
Hunting. -- Its Benefits to the Soldier. -- Buffalo. -- Deer. -- 
Antelope. -- Bear. -- Big-horn, or Mountain Sheep. -- Their Habits, and 
Hints on the best Methods of hunting them.

LIST OF ITINERARIES - A
   From Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico. --
   From Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fe. -- Camping-places upon a road
   discovered and marked out from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Dona Ana and El
   Paso, New Mexico, in 1849. -- From Leavenworth City to Great Salt Lake
   City. -- From Salt Lake City to Sacramento and Benicia, California. --
   From Great Salt Lake City to Los Angeles and San Franciso, California.
   -- From Fort Bridger to the "City of Rocks." -- From Soda Springs to
   the City of Rocks. -- Sublet's Cut-off, from the junction of the Salt
   Lake and Fort Hall Roads. -- From Lawson's Meadows, on the Humboldt
   River, to Fort Reading, via Rogue River Valley, Fort Lane, Oregon
   Territory, Yreka, and Fort Jones. -- From Soda Springs to Fort Wallah
   Wallah and Oregon City, Oregon, via Fort Hall. -- Route for pack trains
   from John Day's River to Oregon City. -- From Indianola and Powder-horn
   to San Antonio, Texas. -- Wagon-road from San Antonio, Texas, to El
   Paso, N. M., and Fort Yuma, California. -- From Fort Yuma to San Diego,
   California.

LIST OF ITINERARIES - B
   From El Paso, New Mexico, to Fort Yuma, California, via Santa Cruz. --
   From Westport, Missouri, to the gold diggings at Pike's Peak and
   "Cherry Creek," N. T., via the Arkansas River. -- From St. Paul's,
   Min., to Fort Wallah Wallah, Oregon. -- Lieutenant E. F. Beales's route
   from Albuquerque to the Colorado River. -- Captain Whipple's route from
   Albuquerque, New Mexico, to San Pedro, California. -- From Fort Yuma to
   Benicia, California. -- A new route from Fort Bridger to Camp Floyd 
   opened by Captain J. H. Simpson U.S.A., in 1858. -- From Fort Thorne,
   New Mexico to Fort Yuma, California. -- Lieutenant Bryan's Route from
   the Laramie Crossing of the South Platte to Fort Bridger, via Bridger's
   Pass. -- Wagon-route from Denver City, at the Mouth of Cherry Creek, to
   Fort Bridger, Utah. -- From Nebraska City, on the Missouri, to Fort
   Kearney. -- From Camp Floyd, Utah, to Fort Union, New Mexico. -- Wagon-
   route from Guaymas, Mexico, to Tabac, Arizona. From Captain Stone's
   Journal.

APPENDIX.



PREFACE. 

   A QUARTER of a century's experience in frontier life, a great portion 
of which has been occupied in exploring the interior of our continent, and 
in long marches where I have been thrown exclusively upon my own 
resources, far beyond the bounds of the populated districts, and where the 
traveler must vary his expedients to surmount the numerous obstacles which 
the nature of the country continually reproduces, has shown me under what 
great disadvantages the "voyageur" labors for want of a timely initiation 
into those minor details of prairie-craft, which, however apparently 
unimportant in the abstract, are sure, upon the plains, to turn the 
balance of success for or against an enterprise.

   This information is so varied, and is derived from so many different 
sources, that I still find every new expedition adds substantially to my 
practical knowledge, and am satisfied that a good Prairie Manual will be 
for the young traveler an addition to his equipment of inappreciable value.

   With such a book in his hand, he will be able, in difficult 
circumstances, to avail himself of the matured experience of veteran 
travelers, and thereby avoid many otherwise unforeseen disasters; while, 
during the ordinary routine of marching, he will greatly augment the sum 
of his comfort, avoid many serious loses, and enjoy a comparative 
exemption from doubts and anxieties. He will feel himself a master spirit 
in the wilderness he traverses, and not the victim of every new 
combination of circumstances which nature affords or fate allots, as if to 
try his skill and prowess.

   I have waited for several years, with the confidant expectation that 
some one more competent than myself would assume the task, and give the 
public the desired information; but it seems that no one has taken 
sufficient interest in the subject to disseminate the benefits of his 
experience in this way. Our frontier-men, although brave in council and 
action, and possessing an intelligence that quickens in the face of 
danger, are apt to feel shy of the pen. They shun the atmosphere of the 
student's closet; their sphere is in the free and open wilderness. It is 
not to be wondered at, therefore, that to our veteran borderer the field 
of literature should remain a "terra incognita." It is our army that 
unites the chasm between the culture of civilization in the aspect of 
science, art, and social refinement, and the powerful simplicity of 
nature. On leaving the Military Academy, a majority of our officers are 
attached to the line of the army, and forthwith assigned to duty upon our 
remote and extended frontier, where the restless and warlike habits of the 
nomadic tribes render the soldier's life almost as unsettled as that of 
the savages themselves.

   A regiment is stationed to-day on the borders of tropical Mexico; to-
morrow, the war- whoop, borne on a gale from the northwest, compels its 
presence in the frozen latitudes of Puget's Sound. The very limited 
numerical strength of our army, scattered as it is over a vast area of 
territory, necessitates constant changes of stations, long and toilsome 
marches, a promptitude of action, and a tireless energy and self-reliance, 
that can only be acquired through an intimate acquaintance with the sphere 
in which we act and move.

   The education of our officers at the Military Academy is doubtless well 
adapted to the art of civilized warfare, but can not familiarize them with 
the diversified details of border service; and they often, at the outset 
of their military career, find themselves compelled to improvise new 
expedients to meet novel emergencies.

   The life of the wilderness is an artas well as that of the city or 
court, and every art subjects the votaries to discipline in preparing them 
for a successful career in its pursuit. The Military Art, as enlarged to 
meet all the requirements of border service, the savage in his wiles or 
the elements in their caprices, embraces many other special arts which 
have hitherto been almost ignored, and results which experience and 
calculation should have guaranteed have been improvidently staked upon 
favorable chances.

   The main object at which I have aimed in the following pages has been 
to explain and illustrate, as clearly and succinctly as possible, the best 
methods of performing the duties devolving upon the prairie traveler, so 
as to meet their contingencies under all circumstances, and thereby to 
endeavor to establish a more uniform system of marching and campaigning in 
the Indian Country.

   I have also furnished itineraries of most of the principal routes that 
have been traveled across the plains, taken from the best and most 
reliable authorities; and I have given some information concerning the 
habits of the Indians and wild animals that frequent the prairies, with 
the secrets of the hunter's and warrior's strategy, which I have 
endeavored to impress more forcibly upon the reader by introducing 
illustrative anecdote.

   I take great pleasure in acknowledging my indebtedness to several 
officers of the Topographical Engineers and of other corps of the army for 
the valuable information I have obtained from their official reports 
regarding the different routes embraced in the itineraries, and to these 
gentlemen I beg leave very respectfully to dedicate my book.