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Wagons Began To Roll Westward

As early as 1830 William Sublette, the St. Louis trader, experimented with wagons. Being a businessman, he realized that a horse could haul much more trade goods than could be carried on its back. However, in roadless country, wagons caused endless problems, and experienced fur traders were slow to make a change. The first to put a wagon train across the Continental Divide was a beginner in the business. Captain Benjamin L. Bonneville possessed considerable ability and liked to show off. He got a leave from the army and with the financial backing of eastern financiers - including John Jacob Astor - he loaded Indian trade goods on twenty wagons and started west in 1832. Crossing the Rockies by South Pass he reached Green River. Another 80o miles separated him from the Pacific, but he had opened the way. More than a decade went by, however, before wagons began to roll Westward, Ho! By the time of the "Great Migration" in 1843 the "prairie schooner," as the covered wagons soon came to be called, was playing a major role in the march of American empire.

Perhaps it all started when the eighteenth-century Dutch settlers in the Conestoga Valley of Pennsylvania cast aside their traditional Palatinate carts and replaced them with a fourwheeled wagon of their own design. This "Conestoga" wagon served as a model for various makes that were to see service in the West.

The most distinctive features of the Conestoga wagons were their sturdy, out-turned, saucer-shaped wheels. For ease in steering and to compensate for rough and often slanting mountain roads, the front wheels were commonly made some two feet smaller in diameter than the rear. In addition, the wagon's boat-shaped body caused the load to hold toward the center rather than the ends or sides, preventing too great a shift in the center of gravity. For protection from the sun and rain, there was a canvas top on a framework of sturdy ribs or bows. As it moved along the ridges, silhouetted against the sky, its boatlike appearance was emphasized, and perhaps it was then that some New Englander, homesick for the white-sailed ships that beat in and out of East Coast harbors, dubbed the Conestoga a "prairie schooner."

The prairie schooner was the dominant vehicle in the Santa Fe trade in the period between 1820 and 1840 and was used by the thousands of migrants who traveled west over the Oregon-California Trail. Because it could carry more freight than pack animals and was easier to defend against Indians and outlaws, it soon became the favorite of the commercial freighters.

The trade route between St. Louis and Santa Fe, which merchants failed to open in the 1790's, was finally established in 1821 by William Becknell, "Father of the Santa Fe Trail." Two routes were commonly used. Both crossed the Plains to the Big Bend of the Arkansas. From there, the safer route led up that stream to Bent's Fort at the mouth of the Purgatory (mispronounced "Picket Wire"), up this tributary to Raton Pass and across into New Mexico.

The other - much shorter and more dangerous - route left the Arkansas River near the western border of present Kansas and struck southwest across the Cimarron Desert. Even though wagons often had to go sixty miles without water, this cutoff proved more practical than the old one, and other freighters soon began assembling at Franklin. Later, Independence became a favored starting place and, still later, Council Grove, a hundred miles west. The freight was moved in huge Conestoga-type vehicles, pulled by three or more yokes of oxen or teams of mules and carrying upward of five thousand pounds of merchandise. It was these vehicles of the early freighting trade that came to be known as "Santa Fe wains."

When Indian raids threatened along the trail, teamsters would travel closely together, driving several wagons abreast. The caravans varied in size from year to year, but usually consisted of up to fifty wagons. At night they would corral, or circle, and guards would be stationed.

The rate of travel over the Santa Fe Trail averaged about fifteen miles a day and the time required for the round trip would be between two and three months. Once in Santa Fe, the cargoes of textiles, lead, hardware, cutlery, glassware and many other such items were traded with the Mexicans for silver, mules, pelts and hides, blankets and other things in demand back East.

In 1848, when New Mexico became an American territory, traffic and trade over the Santa Fe Trail underwent many changes. For example, during the Mexican regime the caravans made only one round trip each spring and summer, but now with United States soldiers, civil servants, and settlers to be served, teaming operations to Santa Fe were modified to allow regular year-round schedules.

One of the largest wagon-freighting firms ever to emerge on the Great Plains was headed by three men who were veterans of the Santa Fe trade. This was the firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell. The first member of the firm, William E. Russell, was born in Vermont but came West as a child. As a young man, he operated a store in Missouri and during the Mexican War shipped goods - much of it military supplies - to Santa Fe. The trade proved profitable, and Russell formed a merchandising firm with William B. Waddell as a partner. Then, after some business shifts the firm was expanded to include Alexander Majors.

These three had one thing in common: They were aggressive and enterprising frontier businessmen. But there the similarity ended. Russell was a tense, nervously energetic New Englander with a gentlemanly background and manner, while Waddell was a slow-moving, introspective and sometimes quarrelsome Virginian. Majors came from Kentucky. In his autobiography, Seventy Years On The Frontier, he said simply, "I was brought up to handle animals." It is not surprising, then, that this practical and devoutly religious man became indispensable to the successful operations of the business.

Prominence, success and wealth came to Russell, Majors and Waddell as a result of war rumors. Brigham Young, in Salt Lake City, had been appointed governor there, but inept officials were sent from Washington to help him administer the territory. Friction soon developed into what seemed like a threat of rebellion. At this point, President Buchanan decided to send an army and a new governor to replace Young. Fifteen hundred troops were ordered from Fort Leavenworth to the Great Salt Lake Valley, and the contract to move the three million pounds of supplies they would require went to the firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell.

For movement of the freight over the 1,161-mile trail that lay between the Missouri River and the Mormon headquarters, the War Department contracted to pay rates varying from $1.80 to $4.50 per hundred pounds per hundred miles. A project as enormous as this had never before been witnessed on the Plains, and called for the innovation of a system that was to serve as a pattern for the future.

Alexander Majors worked out a plan for the movement of the vast array of men, animals and vehicles. Eventually he formulated his method in a manual for his men, entitled Rules and Regulations for Governing of Russell, Majors and Waddell's Outfit (Nebraska, i859). The manual went into great detail specifying the most suitable number of wagons in a train, the animals needed, and the duties of the wagon master and his assistants. It also prescribed the daily routine of travel, the distances to be covered and the stops for grazing the animals and serving meals to the men. This manual was, in short, the teamster's bible.

Although the firm grew financially through its military contracts, much of its profits were plowed back into other transportation schemes that were considerably less successful and resulted in bankruptcy for the firm. But the financial ruin of Russell, Majors and Waddell did not lessen the march of wagon freight across the Plains. In fact, except for temporary fluctuations, the freighting volume increased steadily until the completion of the various transcontinental railroads.

Irish Teamsters

The Irish were different in terms of religion and were not well received. They were not easy transplants and were deprived economically, culturally and socially. The best many of them could do was escape the famine. The Irish found themselves at the bottom of the social pile, receiving little pay for long hours of back-breaking work. Men worked in factories or found jobs in police or fire departments or as teamsters and horsemen.

The Battle of Kinsdale, Ireland, in 1602 began the Irish exodus from their homeland, for it ended with the English defeat of the Irish armies. For the next 320 years, the Irish were denied both education and political representation. The predominantly Catholic Irish were also persecuted for their religion by the Anglican English. After the passage of the Test Act in 1703, many of the same abuses were inflicted also upon the Presbyterian Irish.

Time after time the Irish attempted to overthrow English domination; time after time they were defeated. Each defeat generated a new wave of emigration – first to France, Spain and Austria, later to New Spain. The Potato Famine in the 1840s, when Irish livestock and grain were shipped to England while the Irish starved, created an even larger tide of Irish immigration to all parts of the United States. Some of the Irish came to the west with the U.S. Army during the War with Mexico, many serving as sutlers and teamsters. Some remained in the army, while others were artisans, merchants and politicians. Other Irish came to the west later to work on the railroads.

Jay Monaghan, (Editor). The Book of the American West. Simon & Schuster. 1963.

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