First Day Out and Crossing the Missouri

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“First Day Out” and “Crossing the Missouri” from Ventures and Adventures of Ezra Meeker by Ezra Meeker, 1908.

First Day Out.

The first day’s drive out from Eddyville was a short one, and so far as I now remember the only one on the entire trip where the cattle were allowed to stand in the yoke at noon while the owners lunched and rested. I made it a rule, no matter how short the noontime, to unyoke and let the cattle rest or eat while we rested and ate, and on the last (1906) trip rigidly adhered to that rule.

An amusing scene was enacted when, at near nightfall, the first camp was made. Buck excitedly insisted we must not unyoke the cattle. “Well, what shall we do?” I asked; “they can’t live in the yoke always; we will have to unyoke them sometimes.”

“Yes, but if you unyoke here you will never catch them again,” came the response. One word brought on another, until the war of words had almost reached the stage of a dispute, when a stranger, Thomas McAuley, who was camped near by, with a twinkle in his eye I often afterwards saw and will always remember, interfered and said his cattle were gentle and there were three men of his party and that they would help us yoke up in the morning. I gratefully accepted his proffered help, speedily unyoked, and ever after that never a word with the merest semblance of contention passed between Buck and myself.

Scanning McAuley’s outfit the next morning I was quite troubled to start out with him, his teams being light, principally cows, and thin in flesh, with wagons apparently light and as frail as the teams. But I soon found that his outfit, like ours, carried no extra weight; that he knew how to care for a team; and was, withal, an obliging neighbor, as was fully demonstrated on many trying occasions, as we traveled in company for more than a thousand miles, until his road to California parted from ours at the big bend of the Bear River.

Of the trip through Iowa little remains to be said further than that the grass was thin and washy, the roads muddy and slippery, and weather execrable, although May had been ushered in long before we reached the little Mormon town of Kanesville (now Council Bluffs), a few miles above where we crossed the Missouri River.

Crossing the Missouri

“What on earth is that?” exclaimed Margaret McAuley, as we approached the ferry landing a few miles below where Omaha now stands.

“It looks for all the world like a great big white flatiron,” answered Eliza, the sister, “doesn’t it, Mrs. Meeker?” But, leaving the women folks to their similes, we drivers turned our attention more to the teams as we encountered the roads “cut all to pieces” on account of the concentrated travel as we neared the landing and the solid phalanx of wagons that formed the flatiron of white ground.

We here encountered a sight indeed long to be remembered. The “flatiron of white” that Eliza had seen proved to be wagons with their tongues pointing to the landing—a center train with other parallel trains extending back in the rear and gradually covering a wider range the further back from the river one would go. Several hundred wagons were thus closely interlocked, completely blocking the approach to the landing by new arrivals, whether in companies or single. All around about were camps of all kinds, from those without covering of any kind to others with comfortable tents, nearly all seemingly intent on merrymaking, while here and there were small groups engaged in devotional services. We soon ascertained these camps contained the outfits, in great part, of the wagons in line in the great white flatiron, some of whom had been there for two weeks with no apparent probability of securing an early crossing. At the turbulent river front the muddy waters of the Missouri had already swallowed up three victims, one of whom I saw go under the drift of a small island as I stood near his shrieking wife the first day we were there. Two scows were engaged in crossing the wagons and teams. In this case the stock had rushed to one side of the boat, submerged the gunwale, and precipitated the whole contents into the dangerous river. One yoke of oxen, having reached the farther shore, deliberately entered the river with a heavy yoke on and swam to the Iowa side, and were finally saved by the helping hands of the assembled emigrants.

“What should we do?” was passed around, without answer. Tom McAuley was not yet looked upon as a leader, as was the case later. The sister Margaret, a most determined maiden lady, the oldest of the party and as resolute and brave as the bravest, said to build a boat. But of what should we built it? While this question was under consideration and a search for material made, one of our party, who had gotten across the river in search of timber, discovered a scow, almost completely buried, on the sandspit opposite the landing, “only just a small bit of the railing and a corner of the boat visible.” The report seemed too good to be true. The next thing to do was to find the owner, which in a search of a day we did, eleven miles down the river. “Yes, if you will stipulate to deliver the boat safely to me after crossing your five wagons and teams, you can have it,” said the owner, and a bargain was closed right then and there. My! but didn’t we make the sand fly that night from that boat?

By morning we could begin to see the end. Then busy hands began to cut a landing on the perpendicular sandy bank on the Iowa side; others were preparing sweeps, and all was bustle and stir and one might say excitement.

By this time it had become noised around that another boat would be put on to ferry people over, and we were besieged with applications from detained emigrants. Finally, the word coming to the ears of the ferrymen, they were foolish enough to undertake to prevent us from crossing ourselves. A writ of replevin or some other process was issued, I never knew exactly what, directing the sheriff to take possession of the boat when landed, and which he attempted to do. I never before nor since attempted to resist an officer of the law, nor joined to accomplish anything by force outside the pale of the law, but when that sheriff put in an appearance, and we realized what it meant, there wasn’t a man in our party that did not run for his gun to the nearby camp, and it is needless to add that we did not need to use them. As if by magic a hundred guns were in sight. The sheriff withdrew, and the crossing went peaceably on till all our wagons were safely landed. But we had another danger to face; we learned that there would be an attempt made to take the boat from us, not as against us, but as against the owner, and but for the adroit management of McAnley and my brother Oliver (who had joined us) we would have been unable to fulfil our engagements with the owner.

Meeker, Ezra. Ventures and Adventures of Ezra Meeker. Rainier Printing Co., 1908.

Ezra Meeker

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