1859

John Brown.

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“Nor may it be easily decided whether an adventurer – supposing himself under the direction of the Higher Law – may in such a manner attack the abuses of a State and whether, if he do, he strikes the blow in the character of a fool and madman or as the hero and protagonist of a new era.” 

John Clark Ridpath on John Brown.

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April 5: In February, Horace Tabor, living in Kansas with his wife Augusta (see: 1857 for the story of how the couple settled there and took to farming) hears of the discovery of gold in the Pike’s Peak region. As Augusta later wrote, her husband

 

at once decided to try his luck in the new El Dorado. I had my choice to return to my parents in Maine or remain with my husband and cast in my lot with him. After canvassing the subject with much reflection, it was settled that I should remain, as the more practicable course to be pursued. The two men decided to go along with us. Mr. Tabor worked at the Fort through March and April.

 

The fifth day of April we gathered together our scanty means, bought supplies for a few months, yoked our oxen and cows, mounted our seats in the wagon, and left the town of Zeandale with the determination of returning in the fall, or as soon as we had made money enough to pay for the one hundred and sixty acres of government land, and buy a little stock.

 

What I endured on this journey only the women who crossed the plains in 1859 can realize. There was no station until we arrived within eighty miles of Denver, via the Republican [River] route; no road and a good part of the way no fuel.

 

We were obliged to gather buffalo chips [dried buffalo dung], sometimes traveling miles to find enough to cook a meal with. This weary work fell to the women, for the men had enough do in taking care of the teams, and in “making” and “breaking” the camp. The Indians followed us all the time, and were continually begging and stealing.

 

Every Sunday we rested, if rest it could be called. The men went hunting, while I stayed to guard the camp, wash the soiled linen, and cook for the following week. Quite frequently the Indians gathered around my camp, so that I could I do nothing all day. They wallowed in the water-sources from which our supplies were obtained, and were generally very filthy. My babe was teething and suffering from fever and ague [fever and shivering, often caused by malaria, then common in America], so that he required constant attention day and night. I was weak and feeble having suffered all the time that I lived in Kansas with ague. My weight was only ninety pounds.

 

We arrived in Denver about the middle of June…[and later went on to Golden, where they heard of the rich “Gregory diggings”]. On the morning of the Fourth of July, the men took a supply of provisions on their backs, with a few blankets, and, leaving one of the party to keep me company, pushed forward into the mountains, hopeful of success. They were absent three weeks, and to me they were three very lonely, wearisome weeks, although wagons were camped around and Golden City was a half-mile away. A vast wilderness, whose silence was broken only by the lowing of cattle, stretched out on every side. Even to a pioneer woman, on whom the necessity of such experience was laid, the situation was one of indescribable isolation. On the 26th of July we again loaded the wagon and started into the mountains. The road was a mere trail; every few rods we were obliged to stop and widen it. Many times we unloaded the wagon, and, by pushing it, helped the cattle up the hills. Going downhill was so much easier than it was often necessary to fasten a full-grown pine tree to the back of the wagon for a hold-back or break. Often night overtook us where it was impossible to find a level place to spread a blanket. Under such circumstances we drove stakes in the ground, rolled a log against them, and lay with our feet against the log. Sometimes the hill was so steep that we slept almost upright. We were nearly three weeks cutting our way through Russell’s Gulch into Paine’s Bar, now called Idaho Springs.

 

Ours was the first wagon through, and I was the first white woman there, if white I could be called, after camping out three months. The men cut logs and laid them up four feet high, then put the 7 x 9 tent on for a roof. Mr. Tabor went prospecting. I opened a “bakery,” made bread and pies to sell, gave meals, and sold milk from our cow. Here one of our party, Mr. Maxey, had an attack of mountain fever, and for four weeks he lay very ill at the door of our tent, in a wagon bed, I acting as physician and nurse. A miner with a gunshot wound through his hand was also brought to my door for attention.

 

With the first snow-storm came an old miner to our camp, who told us dreadful stories of snow-slides, and advised Mr. Tabor to take me out of the mountains immediately. Those who know anything of the surroundings of Idaho [error, by the woman who transcribed Mrs. Tabor’s story?] will smile at the idea of a snow-slide there. But we, in our ignorance of mountains, believed all the old miner said, and left for Denver.

 

I had been very successful with my bakery in that camp, making enough to pay for the farm in Kansas and to keep us through the winter.

 

Arriving in Denver, we rented a room over a store. It was the first roof I had slept under for six months. I took a few borders, and Mr. Tabor returned to his prospect, which he found had been jumped by the miner who had advised us to leave. “Might was right” in those days, so he lost all his summer’s work, and had to sell the cow to buy the supply for the new camp, which was up the head-waters of the Arkansas.

 

The 19th of February, 1860, I was lifted from a bed of sickness to a wagon, and we started for the new mining excitement. No woman had yet been there.

 

We were seven days going to where Manitou [Manitou Springs, Colorado] now stands. I made biscuit with water of the soda springs; they were yellow, and tasted so strongly of soda that even we, with our out-door appetites, could not relish them.

 

We lingered there one week, the men doing a little prospecting, and working on a new road over the Ute Pass.

 

We made such slow progress over this road that every evening we could look back and see the smoke from the camp-fire of the previous evening. After two weeks of such wearying travel, we reached South Park. I shall never forget my first vision of the park. The sun was just setting. I can only describe it by saying it was one of Colorado’s sunsets. Those who have seen them know how glorious they are. Those who have not cannot imagine anything so gorgeously beautiful. The park looked like a cultivated field, with rivulets coursing through, and herds of antelope in the distance. We camped on the bank of a clear stream, and the men went fishing. We had broiled trout that night for supper, and passed the evening over a game of whist by the light of our campfire.

 

The fourth day in the park we came at night to Salt Creek. Tried the water and found that we could not let the cattle drink it; neither could we drink it. We tide the oxen to the wagon and went supper-less to bed. The night was very cold, and a jack [male mule; in this case, probably young] came to our tent and stood in the hot embers until he burned [the hair on] his fetlocks off. He stayed with us to the end of our trip, and carried me many miles upon his back.

 

We moved on the next day to freshwater, and camped on trout Creek. Knowing that a party of men had left Denver a few days before we did, and feeling anxious to come up with them, the men shouldered their rifles and started out in search of footprints, each going in a different direction. The one who came upon a trail was to fire off his gun as a signal to the others. All day long I listened for the report of a gun. The men had not arrived when night’s shadows gathered around, and I felt desolate indeed. The little jack came into the tent, and I bowed my head upon him and wept in loneliness of soul.

 

The men had gone farther than they expected, and were somewhat bewildered, and only for the camp-fire that I kept blazing, they could not have found their way back.

 

As they did not find a trail, we concluded to follow the way a stick might fall. It fell pointing southwest, and we went in that direction.

 

Finding what we thought a good fording place in the Arkansas River, we decided to cross as the road seemed better on the other side.

 

The river was very rapid and full of bowlders, around which clung cakes of ice. Our cattle, thin, weak, and tired, were numb with cold, and halted in the middle of the river. The men plunged into the cold stream, which was waist deep, tied ropes to their horns, went up on the opposite shore, and endeavored to drag them over, but with no success. They then unloaded the wagon, putting the goods upon the ice, which was liable to break off and float away, unyoked the oxen, dragged the wagon over, and carried the goods on their shoulders. The faithful little jack swam the river with me on its back. Upon consulting our watch we found that we had been six hours crossing the Arkansas.

 

We made a fire, dried our clothes on us, and nursed the cattle all night, feeling that we must save them, for our provision was getting low, and unless game came in from the valley, we should be obliged to eat them.

 

After camping in this place a week, we moved further up the river, where we went to work in earnest. Mr. Tabor and Mr. Maxey whip-sawed some lumber and made sluice-boxes, sawed riffles from a log, put in a ditch from the creek, and commenced washing the bank away. Cleaning the boxes up at night, we found fine gold in an abundance of black sand. I worked hard every day, trying to separate the gold from the iron sand, and at night would have only a few pennyweights of the precious metal. For four weeks we worked there; our supplies were about gone, and we felt discouraged. It had been one long year since we heard from the loved ones at home.

 

One morning a man came to the camp, and said he was one of the party that left Denver a few days in advance of us, and they had found gold in paying quantities. He gave us explicit directions how to reach the rich diggings. We followed his directions, and undertook to cross the river where it looked shallow. When near the opposite bank we came to a deep channel. Our wagon bed, with myself and child in it, raised above the wheels and floated down the stream. It was rapidly filling with water, when it occurred to me to cling to the willows on the bank. I did so, and held with unnatural strength until the men came to my rescue. We reached California Gulch three months after we left Denver. The first thing after camping was to have the faithful old oxen butchered that had brought us all the way from Kansas, – yes, from the Missouri River, three years before. We divided the beef with the miners, for they were without provisions or ammunition.

 

Before night they built me a cabin of green pine logs, without floor, door, or window. The roof was covered with poles, bark, and dirt, and the wagon was converted into table, side-board, and three legged stools. I entered this place happy that I once move had a roof to cover my head, and at once commenced taking boarders, with nothing to feed them except poor beef and dried apples.

 

It was soon noised about that gold was struck in California Gulch, and before many weeks that were ten thousand people there. A mail and express was immediately decided upon, and I was appointed postmistress.

 

With my many duties the day passed quickly. I was called upon to weigh all the gold taken from the upper part of the gulch, as we were the only owners in that section of a pair of gold-scales. The miners would clean up their boxes, get their gold weighed, and go to town (where Leadville now stands), spree all night, and return “dead broke” in the morning to commence again.

 

Mr. Tabor was then working our mine, which was No. 12 above discovery. We took that because it had a fall; but it was a mistake, for the gold was nearly all washed over the fall into the claim below, from which eighty thousand dollars was taken out during the summer of 1860.

 

I was very happy that summer, and joyfully anticipated a visit to my mother and father in the fall.

 

On the 20th of September Mr. Tabor gave me one thousand dollars in dust. I put my wardrobe – what there was of it – in a carpet-bag, and took passage with a mule train that was going to the Missouri River. I was five weeks crossing, and cooked for my board.

 

With that thousand dollars I purchased one hundred and sixty acres of land in Kansas, adjoining the tract we already owned. My folks dressed me up, and in the spring I bought a pair of mules and a wagon in St. Joe to return with, which took about all my money.

 

Mr. Tabor gave me one-fifth of what was made that summer, when I left; the other four thousand he sent to Iowa and bought flour, and in the spring we opened a store in my cabin. He worked in the mine during the day, while I attended to the store. Those were days and years of self-sacrifice, hard labor, and rigid economy, when the foundation of Mr. Tabor’s immense wealth was laid. A little less courage, fortitude, and perseverance would have turned us back, and the golden opportunity to amass a fortune had been lost forever. (See: Year 1879, and the story of how the Tabor’s became fabulously rich.)

 

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June: A rider crosses over the Sierra Nevada, from Washoe County in what is then Utah Territory. He has in his saddle bags some gold-bearing quartz. Melville Atwood, in Grass Valley, Ca. assays the rocks – gold content $1,000 per ton – silver content $3,000! The news spreads, all over Grass Valley, to Nevada City. Judge James Walsh bangs on the door of a friend and they pile supplies on a mule and head for the new diggings. One of the first to follow is George Hearst – with Atwood beside him, having spread the news. (See: American Heritage, “Go it, Washoe!” by Remi Nadeau.)

 

Peter O’Reilly and Pat McLaughlin had made the first strike, and now Hearst managed to buy McLaughlin’s share for $3500. He was so excited he rode back over the Sierras (150 mile trip) to raise the money.

 

Judge Walsh paid Henry Comstock $11,000 to buy out his claim. Comstock bragged to friends he had fooled “the California rock shark.”

 

Soon Walsh and Hearst were shipping ore 160 miles by muleback and another 80 by steamer, to SF, and still making a fortune, it was so rich. By 1859 most placers in California had played out. The hydraulic operations were in a lull, with most of the snow melt having passed; in September a Sacramento observer noted that as many as a million men roamed the city streets. “Never before have I seen so many people looking for work and can’t get it,” he said.

 

Now mules, horses, picks, shovels, wash pans and provisions were in demand. “From the crack of dawn to the shades of night, nothing is heard but Washoe,” said one SF gentleman. Stagecoaches and mule trains were booked up days in advance. Men packed one stage so tightly that when it overturned no one was hurt. The road was bad and stagecoaches “whirled around blind bends, the passengers…looking hundreds of feet downward to the churning American River while the wheels dusted the brink.” When the road was too steep, they got out and walked and pushed the stage along.

 

J. Ross Brown, a writer, remembers trying to get a room for the night at Placerville, and his failed effort to get some sleep. Nadeau writes:

 

…People were rushing through the corridors all night, he wrote, “in and out of every room, banging the doors, calling for boots, carpet-sacks, cards, cock-tails, and toddies; while amidst the ceaseless din arose ever and anon that potent cry of ‘Washoe!’ …” In the midst of the pandemonium his door burst open.

 

“I say, Cap!” cried a disheveled intruder wearing a wide-brimmed hat and long underwear. “Are you the man that can’t get an animal for Washoe?”

 

“Yes, have you got one to sell or hire?”

 

“No I hain’t got one myself, but me and my pardner is going to walk there, and if you like you can jine our party.”

 

When Browne agreed, the door was closed, only to be opened again. 

“I say, Cap!”

 

“What now?”

 

“Do you believe in Washoe?”

 

“Of course; why not?”

 

As the prospectors passed along the streets of Placerville each day, onlookers shouted, “Go it, Washoe!”

 

Accommodations along the way were primitive. You could stop at Dirty Mike’s and pay for the privilege of a place on the floor. Hundreds of men gathered nightly at Strawberry Flats, which boasted a saloon.

 

Browne again:

 

At the first tinkle of the bell the door was burst open with a tremendous crash, and for a moment no battle-scene in Waterloo … could have equaled the terrific onslaught of the gallant troops of Strawberry. The whole house actually tottered and trembled at the concussion, as if shaken by an earthquake. Long before the main body had assaulted the table the din of arms was heard above the general uproar; the deafening clatter of plates, knives, and forks, and the dreadful battle-cry of “Waiter! Waiter! Pork and beans! Coffee, waiter! Beefsteak! … quick, waiter, for God’s sake!”

 

Here a traveler might share a floor with 250 others and wash up the next morning at a horse trough before heading east. At Genoa, on the far side of the Sierra, you could find a bunk to sleep in, but might share it with one or two others.

 

Storms hit the Sierra Nevada range in November, stopping all but “the most frantic rainbow-hunters,” as American Heritage calls them. Snow piled in 60 foot drifts; animals and men were frozen until next spring when a thaw came. Winter also meant the closing of supply routes and food became scarce and expensive in the new mining region. Spring brought a rush of freight-packers, anxious to cash in on the high prices. Sleighs were tried; but too many barren rock stretches made them useless. You could ride a mule – if you were willing to pay $30. As the thaw increased the trail became “nothing but one trough of mire from two to three feet deep” of mud. Broken down wagons and dead animals littered the route. When one caravan made camp in the forests one night, two of the travelers had to stay up at all times, waving torches to protect their bacon supply from grizzly bears “grumbling and gnashing their teeth.” By April 1860 around 150 Californians were reaching Washoe every day.  The Deseret News in Salt Lake City made an effort to suppress the news but Mormons still came. So did disappointed prospectors from the Pike’s Peak rush of 1859. “Nevada would soon boast that the best of America came to California, and the best of California came to Washoe,” Nadeau writes.

 

Naturally, speculators, gamblers and members of the world’s oldest profession, usually dressed in men’s clothing for the trip, joined the rush. Julia Bulette was one. When an epidemic of influenza struck the Lode, she nursed many of the sick men. Soon they were calling her the “Queen of Washoe.” “Fighting” Sam Brown arrived – having already killed several men in California – and another in Carson City. Now he got into an argument with a monte dealer and wounded two bystanders in the fight. John Mackay, an Irish immigrant, arrived. Eilley Orrum was there, running a boarding house. Eilley had already been married and divorced twice; but she had her eye on a new man, an eligible boarder named Sandy Bowers. Another guest was “Old Virginny” Fennimore, who had had a small claim in the Comstock discovery, and gave it up for a broken down horse. He gave the new town a name, “Virginia Town,” soon to grow into “Virginia City.” New arrivals slept in wagon beds and tents and under the stars. Newcomers in the spring of 1860 were less than impressed. “Imagine a flood in hell,” said one arrival, “succeeded by a snow-storm…”

 

Said another of the town:

 

Frame shanties, pitched together as if by accident; tents of canvas, of blankets, of brush, of potato sacks and old shirts, with empty whisky-barrels for chimneys: smoky hovels of mud and stone: coyote holes in the mountain side forcibly seized and held by men: pits and shafts with smoke issuing from every crevice …

 

Everywhere, there are “sharps” trying to sell shares in rich claims. The talk is all of “lodes,” “dips,” “angles” and “indications.”

 

“Nobody had any money,” one newcomer remembered, “yet everybody was a millionaire in silver claims.” A man digging a cellar hit a rich lode. New discoveries in nearby canyons would lead to fresh rushes; always the first to know tried to quietly load their mules and get there first; but the news always leaked. A rich vein did run along the side of the mountain, with each owner tunneling closer to it. Many men carried magnifying glasses to study ore samples. Shares in a mine worth $10 one morning might be worth $1,000 when news came that the mine had struck the vein. One young easterner, Nadeau writes, arrived in San Francisco and bought two shares in Washoe for $1,000; a few months later he sold out for $20,000 and sailed home, never having gone to the mines or turned a shovelful of dirt. Stock prices boomed and busted. By the fall of 1860 there had been 4,000 claims located in Washoe. Only 300 had been opened; and experts said only 20 were sound investments. As one Washoe observer put it to SF’ers: “fools at your end of the telegraph were deceived by knaves at our end…” An uprising of angry Native Americans further tarnished the reputation of the new diggings. Peter O’Reilly had sold out for $40,000, lost his wealth in speculation, and spent the next few years looking for a second strike, eventually losing his mind. Comstock’s path led downward in years to come, too, and he ended in suicide. “Old Virginny” died in a fall from his horse. Bulette was robbed for her jewels and murdered. She was given Virginia City’s “greatest funeral and her slayer its most elegant hanging.” Sam Brown bullied the wrong man, “an inoffensive innkeeper,” who chased him down the street and dropped him forever with the blast of a double-barreled shotgun.

 

Hearst made a fortune.

 

So did Mackay; he rose steadily from miner to mine superintendent, then owner. In the early 1870s he and three partners gained control of the Big Bonanza, a huge new lode – and a second boom carried Virginia City to fresh heights and, temporarily, splendor. Judge Walsh sold out too soon and lost a chance at a fortune. Eilley and her third husband, Sandy Bowers, made millions. They built a fabulous mansion, Washoe Hall, traveled in Europe, spent freely, and by the time Sandy died, had little money left. His widow got by, charging curiosity-seekers to tour her decaying home.

 

In 1877, two miners rode a handmade boat fifteen miles down a steep, curving flume, completing their wild ride in eleven minutes. Later they said they’d never do it again, even for all the silver in Nevada.

 

Browne’s articles are actually online.

 

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One common complaint among the miners was the limited menu available in rough and tumble camps. A typical miner joked that bacon and flapjacks, with coffee to wash them down, made three meals a day. It was even said that one miner got so good at flipping his pancakes he could flip one up the chimney of his cabin, run outside, and catch it on the way down.

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: My students used to enjoy doing a skit on the Nevada silver rush in class. It was fun to have a frying pan, and a few pancakes or frozen waffles for the skit. You could ask one of the “miners” to demonstrate his or her flipping skills, perhaps a behind the back flip. Bouncing a frozen waffle off the ceiling was good for a laugh.

 

*

 

In my loose notes I also have a mention of a funeral for a deceased miner. His friends are gathered beside the fresh grave. The minister is reading a prayer. One of the mourners, his eyes downcast, sees gold in the dirt piled beside the grave. “Gold! Gold, boys!” he shouts. The mourners remove the casket from the grave, set it roughly aside, and they – and the minister – go to work digging for riches.

 

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July: W. S. Bodey (first name, possibly “William,” “Wakeman,” or “Waterman,” discovers gold north of Mono Lake, on the border between California and the Territory of Nevada. A “rush” quickly follows, but not much gold is found. 

In the 1870s an entire town to be named “Bodie,” a misspelling of his name, will grow up in the desolate region, 8,379 feet above sea level, where Bodey first found gold. Population will reach 10,000; but when the gold runs out, Bodie becomes a ghost town. Winters high in the mountains prove to much. (See: Year 1877) 

Snow could pile 20 feet deep in winter, with winds of 100 mph and temps as low as 40 degrees below zero. 

Today, Bodie is a ghost town.

The Story of Bodie by Ella M. Cain includes some of the casual racism one could run into even as late as 1956. 

Bodey and three companions, including Black Taylor, were panning for gold (Bodey had left his wife and two older children, and come West in 1848, by sea) in the barren hills of eastern California, when they turned up “a long string of yellow metal coiling around the edge of the pan.” 

They drank up the last of their whiskey in celebration, and built a cabin beside a nearby mountain spring. 

Gold proved sparse, however, and two of the men soon quit and left for better diggings. Bodey and Taylor stuck it out.

 

*

 

October 16-18: John Brown and 21 followers launch an abortive raid on Harpers Ferry. This assessment comes from I Rode with Stonewall by Henry Kyd Douglas (paperback edition, Premier Books, 1961)

 

On John Brown:

 

With a previous record as a horse thief and a murderer, he was now playing the new role of a conspirator. Full of cunning, with much experience and no little intelligence, cruel, bloodthirsty, and altogether unscrupulous, he seemed singularly ignorant not only of the white people among whom he had camped, but of the characteristics of the race for whom he was about to raise the standard of insurrection. His cause, when the time came, frightened but did not attract the Negroes, and only made them keep quiet and remain the closer to their quarters. Five of them joined him in his Raid: one of those was killed, and the others deserted him.

 

There is nothing in all the history of fanaticism, its crimes and follies, so strange and inexplicable as that the people of New England, with all their shrewdness and general sense of justice, should have attempted to lift up the sordid name of that old wretch and, by a political apotheosis, to exalt him among the heroes and benefactors of this land. I can understand why enthusiasts and fanatics in the cause of the abolition of slavery might have sent him to Kansas and aided him with their means to keep that from becoming a slave state; but why they should have sent him money and arms to encourage him to murder the white people of Virginia is beyond my comprehension.  (20/14-15)

 

Ridpath offers up a quick assessment of Brown:

 

Next came the John Brown insurrection of 1859. Old John Brown, of Osawatomie, deliberately devised a scheme for a servile war and revolution throughout the South. He had been one of the leaders of the Free-State militia in the border war in Kansas. He was an enthusiast, fearless, persistent, determined to do or die, a religious fanatic who took no council of danger or defeat. With a party of twenty-one men like himself, but not his equals, he made a sudden descent out of Pennsylvania on the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, captured the place and held his ground for nearly two days. The militia of Virginia and the the national troops were called out to suppress the revolt. Thirteen of Brown’s men were killed. Two made their escape and the rest were captured. The leader and his six companions were given over to the authorities of Virginia, tried, condemned and hanged. The event was one which to the present day excites the keenest interest and liveliest controversy. Nor may it be easily decided whether an adventurer – supposing himself under the direction of the Higher Law – may in such a manner attack the abuses of a State and whether, if he do, he strikes the blow in the character of a fool and madman or as the hero and protagonist of a new era. (1219/363-64)

Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.

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November: W. S. Bodey and a companion, Black Taylor, leave their gold camp to go get supplies at the nearby town of Monoville. The two get caught in a blizzard and separated. Bodey freezes to death, and his body is not found until the following spring, when snow at the high elevation where they were digging finally melts. 

Cain writes: 

The winter of ’59 came early and was severe. Bodey and Taylor were alone in their little cabin in the gulch. In November they found themselves getting short of food, and had to go on foot to Monoville for supplies. On the return trip they were overtaken by a blizzard and lost their way. Only one who has experienced a Bodey winter can realize the fury with which the blinding snow, driven by the wintry blast, can sweep those barren slopes; nor can one imagine the depth of snow which can pile up in the course of a few hours. The miners lost their way. The packs on their backs became burdensome. They left them one by one. Their safety lay in staying together. Finally Taylor realized that Bodey’s strength was failing. He tried to encourage him by saying that they were near home, that he could recognize landmarks, but Bodey, who was now lagging behind, did not seem to hear. At last he fell exhausted in the snow. In the blinding blizzard but Taylor had difficulty in even finding him. He groped in the snow banks, which were now waist deep, and called him by name. The wind caught his voice and it trailed off in a sort of wail. He finally stumbled on to Bodey’s prostate form, and, after several attempts, was able to lift it to his shoulders. He staggered on for a few hundred yards, but the wind held him back like a demon that was possessed. He finally laid Bodey in the snow, in order to rest and regain his own strength, but when he tried to lift him again it was impossible. Taylor wrapped a blanket around him, put his mouth close to Bodey’s ear, and told him they were not far from the cabin that he would soon come back. Struggling on blindly, he at last ran up against a stony cliff. He leaned against it for support. Then suddenly the fact that it was the black bluff which rose some little distance behind their cabin filtered into his benumbed brain. Some way, he never knew how, he eventually reached the cabin and staggered in. He kindled a fire, made coffee, and ate some food.

 

The thoughts of Bodey out there in the snow were driving him mad. Putting on some dry clothing, he opened the door and again plunged into the fury of the storm. All night long he hunted for his companion, and called him by name, but no answer came back excepting the moan of the mocking wind.

 

In the morning he staggered back exhausted to the cabin. It continued to snow the next day – and the next. On the third day, when the storm finally cleared, and the snow lay like a blanket deep and white over the mountains, no telltale spot disclosed the place where Bodey’s body lay buried. It remained for the prowling, hungry coyotes to find it; even before spring, and when Taylor at last came upon the spot, only naked bones, bowie knife, pistol and blanket told him at last he had found the place where his companion and friend had perished. Reverently he buried him where he had found him, wrapping all that remained of him and his belongings in the blanket. He made a mound of earth above him and placed a large boulder at the head as a marker.  (59/1, 59/2-4)

 

Taylor later gave up on the claim he and Bodey had found, and drifted to the little settlement at Benton. There he built a new cabin, where he lived by himself, near a hot spring. 

The land had long belonged to the Paiutes: 

One night when they were on the warpath they broke into Taylor’s cabin. Although taken unaware, he grabbed his gun from above his bed and fought them back with the ferocity of a tiger. When his ammunition was exhausted he used the butt of his gun, and not until ten savages lay dead on the floor was he finally taken. They then dragged him outside into the moonlight, and amid savage yells severed his head from his body. (59/4)

 

 
A gold rush in 1875, would see the town of Bodie, named after Bodey,
but misspelled, grow to at least 7,000 people in years to come.

Today, the population is 0.

 

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December 2: John Brown is executed by hanging.

 

*

 

December 22: A poem by John Greenleaf Whittier memorializing Brown’s death, is published in the New York Independent:

Brown of Ossawatomie 

John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dying day:
“I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in Slavery’s pay;
But let some poor slave-mother whom I have striven to free,
With her children, from the gallows-stair put up a prayer for me!” 

John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die;
And lo! a poor slave-mother with her little child pressed nigh:
Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, and the old harsh face grew mild,
As he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed the negro’s child! 

The shadows of his stormy life that moment fell apart,
And they who blamed the bloody hand forgave the loving heart;
That kiss from all its guilty means redeemed the good intent,
And round the grisly fighter’s hair the martyr’s aureole bent! 

Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil good!
Long live the generous purpose unstained with human blood!
Not the raid of midnight terror, but the thought which underlies;
Not the borderer’s pride of daring, but the Christian’s sacrifice. 

Nevermore may yon Blue Ridges the Northern rifle hear,
Nor see the light of blazing homes flash on the negro’s spear;
But let the free-winged angel Truth their guarded passes scale,
To teach that right is more than might, and justice more than mail! 

So vainly shall Virginia set her battle in array;
In vain her trampling squadrons knead the winter snow with clay!
She may strike the pouncing eagle, but she dares not harm the dove;
And every gate she bars to Hate shall open wide to Love!