by Sally Denton
The flat land gave way to sand hills crawling with “thousands of lizards, snakes, and grasshoppers,” the oxen tripping in the dirt, kicking up dust into the faces of the emigrants. Jean Rio found the landscape “wild and romantic,” and often wandered off by herself to bask in the inspiring sight. The wagons forged up the Platte River valley through the gently rolling hills of sand, making their way to the upper Missouri Basin. She saw two more graves and, noting the names of the deceased in her journal, she wondered how those pioneers had died. The possibilities seemed endless. She knew that most injuries were caused by wagon accidents, often involving women and girls whose unsuitable dresses, cumbersome hoops, and long petticoats became caught in the wheel spokes, pulling them to gruesome deaths. The American feminist Amelia Bloomer had been advocating full trousers—known as bloomers—worn under shorter skirts. But such reformed fashion—called the “Move toward Rational Dress”—was far from acceptable in the patriarchal Mormon society.
Still more travelers were kicked or gored by oxen, poisoned by rattlesnakes or spiders, or stricken by the most dreaded disease of all: cholera. Women died in childbirth and newborns failed to thrive. Children were jostled off the wagons’ box seats to be run over by the wagons. Drowning in raging torrents often occurred, and dehydration afflicted the less sturdy. The most dangerous animal of the American continent, the grizzly bear, also was responsible for human casualties.
The threat of massacre at the hands of Indians was much exaggerated. Indians throughout the nation had killed only thirty-seven emigrants during a one-year period in 1849 that saw an estimated 14,500 people traverse the continent to the West Coast, of whom several hundred died of accidents and natural causes along the way. But that was enough for the myth of the “savage” to prevail, causing notable anxiety.
The trail was now comparatively easy, and to the children the journey seemed an endless picnic of fun and adventure. Sleeping outdoors was exciting; the howling coyotes had become welcome as fellow inhabitants of the lonely prairie. The children found plenty of playmates and invented games along the way. They chased groundhogs and lizards, hiked bluffs and splashed in streams, cut their names into rocks, and played hide-and-seek. To them, the landscape was a boundless natural zoo. Some of the families had brought their family pets—cats and dogs—which could often be seen peering out of the backs of wagons. A member of the company gave ten-year-old Elizabeth a puppy, which delighted and amused her and her younger brothers, John Edye and Charles West. For all the hardship, Jean Rio loved seeing her children so happy, so alive and vivacious in these foreign but natural surroundings.
Evening thundershowers left the road heavy in early morning, but the arid days dried it out quickly. Dramatic bluffs and rock formations rose out of the ground on both sides of the river, the topography now unlike anything the emigrants had ever seen. For Jean Rio, as for others, encountering the majesty of the landscape was a profound emotional experience. She poured out her awe and love in lush, lavish descriptions of fiery sunsets and swollen streams, miragelike vistas and violent weather. The travelers relished the days when they had moderate conditions, certain as they were that they would soon face the most arduous and challenging part of the journey as the gentle buttes melded first into foothills and then into the ten-thousand-foot mountain passes they could begin to see in the distance. A band of Sioux Indians joined them, “very fine looking fellows, and very gaily attired. The dresses of the women . . . nearly covered with beadwork.” The trail followed the river north toward Fort Laramie, which had been built in 1841 by the American Fur Company; there Jean Rio paid sixty-five dollars for a new yoke of oxen and “four fine hams.”
At night the cattle strayed, and precious hours were lost rounding them up at dawn. Good grass for grazing the livestock was getting more and more difficult to find. The party bridged the North Platte River near what is now Casper, Wyoming, in search of pasture and found themselves surrounded by ridges covered with cedar and pine. “A very hard road all day; crossed some mountains. The view from the top no pen can describe. We managed to get 20 miles, but it was hard work; did not get to camp till 11 o’clock,” Jean Rio noted. Along the way she saw four dead oxen, along with remnants of wagons, wheels, and axles, “the results of former accidents.” But the signs of destruction were mitigated by “loads of cherries and currants” on the hillsides. They stopped on the afternoon of August 19 to repair wagons and allow Jean Rio to employ her developing medical skills by acting as a midwife. “Sister gave birth to a daughter,” she wrote that evening, and proudly recorded that the newborn was “doing well.” (Among the Mormon brethren, the women were referred to as “Sisters” and the men as “Brothers.”)
The dust along the route filled their lungs, and what she described as “horrible roads” compelled them to cross the North Platte twice in one day. “Very hard and bad traveling; deep ravines,” she wrote on August 23, finding great solace the next day, a Sunday, on which an elder of the church “preached of the first principles of the Gospel of Christ.” Again she was called to deliver a baby. She now accepted her role as midwife, having become expert at inducing a baby down the birth canal, comforting a distraught young woman, snipping the umbilical cord, extracting the placenta by coaxing contractions from a depleted mother, and stimulating the newborn to breathe on its own. “I was sent for to go to Sister Henderson, who had been sick for two days. In one hour I was able to assist her in giving birth to a daughter, but the mother is so much exhausted that I fear she will not rally again.” Now, with no expertise or training to guide her, she felt unexpectedly responsible for two women and two infants, all four struggling for life, for a chance of survival on this harsh American frontier.
On August 26 the wagons were halted to give the two young mothers a chance to recover their strength and nurse their babies. As Jean Rio attended to them, Captain Brown sent a hunting party out to find fresh meat for the company, sustenance that it was hoped would fortify the new mothers as well as improve the morale of the rest.
“Sister Henderson died today at noon,” she wrote. “We buried her at 9 p.m. She left seven children.”
This was the first mother Jean Rio had lost, and she was devastated. Still, she took refuge in stoic understatement, seeking the place where her efforts ended and her faith began. She wondered if she could have changed the outcome, and in the end found the only solace possible—in the belief in a divine plan.
Mourning for Sister Henderson was cut short when Captain Brown announced on the morning of August 28 that Indians surrounded them. The wagons had to be brought close together, and they would move forward as a slow, unified body. Jean Rio could see an army of nearly one hundred warriors a mile in the distance. “Our men at once loaded their guns so as to be in readiness in case of an attack,” she wrote. Girding for battle, the party approached the band warily. But as the emigrants came nearer, the Indians’ formation opened to let them pass without incident. “They made a grand appearance, all on horseback . . . some with lances, others with guns or bows and arrows.” Colored ponies carried the Indians’ tents. “The men passed on one side of us, the women and children on the other.” Among the Indians, sitting in a buggy with a toddler between his knees, was the U.S. government Indian agent. He told Jean Rio that this was a detachment from the more than three thousand Shoshone encamped on the bank of the Sweetwater River twenty miles to the southwest. They were en route to “the great council of various tribes to endeavor to settle their differences and bury the tomahawk,” he told her.
From there the trail entered the Rocky Mountains and Jean Rio got her first sight of snowcapped Laramie Peak in the distance, a daunting portent of the days to come. She “walked under overhanging rocks, which seemed only to need the pressure of a finger to send them down headlong.” Likening them to old English castles, she gathered relics of silver and iron ore. “Our road is so steep as to seem almost like going down a staircase,” she wrote. She was intrigued by “the property of the atmosphere” that reve
aled far-off landmarks in sharp focus. “While crossing the plains, I have frequently noticed different objects, which I imagined I should have little trouble in reaching on foot, and on inquiring the distance, have been told they were perhaps 20 or 30 miles distant. In particular, one morning while at breakfast I observed a rather singularly shaped hill directly in our road, and as usual felt an instant desire to mount the summit.” Thinking it two or three miles away, she decided to leave camp ahead of the company in order to “view the surrounding country from the top.” But Captain Brown stopped her. “If we are able to reach that hill tomorrow night,” he said, “I shall be very satisfied with our teams, as it is at least 26 miles before us.”
The oxen had been pushed beyond fatigue, their hooves so tender the animals refused to move, and it became necessary to halt for several days as they regained their strength. “Remained in camp all day to give the sick oxen a rest,” she wrote on September 5. “Killed three antelopes and caught a lot of fish.” When they resumed their journey they could travel only a few hours a day, crossing a sixty-mile stretch of rocky ridges called Hell’s Reach. “The campsites were bad, the water worse, and stretches of alkali flats soon slowed the poor oxen down,” according to one account of the infamous section of trail. “Many were driven beyond their normal strengths and ‘gave up the ghost’ at this point. The stench of dead animals was ever present.”
Then came Devil’s Backbone, where one of Jean Rio’s oxen died, apparently from ingesting some Indian war paint. Because of the scarcity of grass for the animals, it became necessary to push on twenty miles without stopping. They proceeded south along the Sweetwater River—named Eau Sucrée by early French trappers grateful for its sweet and clear taste after the murky Platte. Flowing ninety-three miles to South Pass, three feet deep and seventy feet wide, the most welcome of all rivers would be crossed by Jean Rio three times in one day. She traversed the Continental Divide at the 7,500-foot-high South Pass.
On September 8 the party encountered John M. Bernhisel, a Mormon diplomat who was heading to Washington, D.C., from Salt Lake City. Two years earlier Congress had refused to acknowledge the “State of Deseret,” the independent theocracy created by Brigham Young on that huge chunk of territory. Instead, Congress had established Utah Territory, and President Millard Fillmore had appointed Young as governor. The new territory was smaller than Deseret but still an expansive landmass comprising what is now Utah, Nevada, and a portion of western Colorado. Though Young and his followers had deeply resented the federal government’s interference in their affairs, the prophet would use his new title and standing to his own advantage. Bernhisel had been elected the first congress-man from the territory, which covered more than 200,000 square miles. “All the news he brought us was of a cheering kind,” Jean Rio wrote of making Bernhisel’s acquaintance.
That week, a milk cow kicked a member of the party, a young girl, breaking her leg. Jean Rio helped the girl’s father examine the protruding bone, force it back into position, and fashion a splint with timber. Two men on mules overtook the group and reported that more than a thousand Indian lodges had been situated near Fort Laramie, and all on the trail were apprehensive that trouble was brewing. “Two Shoshones had been killed by a party of Cheyennes,” Jean Rio noted. “The Shoshones in return had slaughtered twenty-seven out of thirty Cheyennes they had fallen in with on their way to the Great Council of the Tribes. Poor prospect, this of Peace among them, as these thirty were actually delegates from their own people.” Fortunately, she and her party had pushed west beyond the conflict.
On the morning of September 13, a “general strike” broke out among the teamsters traveling with a member of the party. “There has been dissatisfaction for some weeks, owing to the scantiness and inferior quality of their rations,” Jean Rio wrote. The teamsters’ employer refused to amend the situation. The men “shouldered their blankets and set off” on foot. Captain Brown overtook the “mutineers” and told them that if they returned he would oversee an investigation of the matter. He then provided them with a tent and plenty of buffalo robes, and they agreed to rejoin the outfit.
Jean Rio’s sons went hunting for game, as the family’s provisions were dwindling, but came back empty-handed. Three supply wagons from Salt Lake City approached them, and the group cheered for what they anticipated would be much-needed food sent to them from Utah. Unfortunately, the supply train had already sold everything to emigrants ahead of them, but the leader promised that wagons laden with flour were en route to meet them. Disappointed and hungry, the party continued along the Big Sandy River to its conjunction with the Green River, passing through spectacularly beautiful country. “We were just the ones to appreciate it,” Jean Rio wrote, “having seen nothing but sand and wild sage for three hundred miles.”
They forded the cottonwood-lined Green River—“a wide rushing stream, clear as crystal”—where Jean Rio observed a white substance shimmering among the pebbles on the riverbank. “I managed to scramble down to the water’s edge, and on taking up some, first looking at it and then tasting it, found it to be pure salt.” As they sat down to dinner the evening of September 15, a man from a trading post two miles away joined them. He had come to inquire if they wanted any cattle or other provisions. “What have you got?” Jean Rio asked him. “Bacon and whiskey, Madam,” he answered. “Any butter?” “No butter,” he responded. “Any groceries or fresh meat?” “No, Madam, but there is plenty at Fort Bridger fifty miles further.”
Still, she sent her oldest son, Walter, with him to the trading post, so eager had they become for any fresh food. Walter returned with some bacon. He described the man’s “trading post” as a group of huts inhabited by Snake Indians who had among them four Ute women who had been captured and made prisoners while children. The white trader had lived with the Indians for the past fifteen years and was one of four white men who resided there with their Indian wives. “Each had his own habitation, several hundred head of cattle, and 150 horses, and seemed to be very happy in their wilderness way of life.”
On September 19 the party reached Fort Bridger, where Jean Rio happily purchased forty pounds of fresh beef at ten cents a pound. “I never saw finer in the London markets, and that is saying a great favor,” she noted. They continued on, ascending the rim of the Great Basin two days later. A gentle but incessant rain kept the dust down, and she described the scenery as “sublime . . . our road being between and around high mountains.” Climbing one mountain required ten yoke to each wagon, but the end felt near, so morale was high.
Her pregnant daughter-in-law, Eliza, was suddenly very ill, and Jean Rio worried about a premature birth. Just as she feared, Eliza went into labor in the middle of the night. At daybreak on September 22 Jean Rio delivered her first grandchild, a tiny boy who would be named Henry William Rio Baker. The Baker children were overjoyed by this new addition, so close to Zion.
“I have some fear for its life,” Jean Rio wrote, “but I do hope our Heavenly Father will spare it to us and make it a blessing to us all and an honorable member of His Kingdom.” Remembering the burial at sea of her small son, Josiah, she felt the imminence of death all around her. While she noted the occurrences in terms that today would sound archaic and even naïve, her endless appeals to God at such times, and her absolute faith in a divine plan, were common and universal to Christians of her time and place. She had committed herself and her family to the hands of a higher power. She had been converted not to Christianity but to a deeper notion of the “everlasting,” and she sought solace in that conception when the world seemed most precarious.
The travelers rested for three days so Eliza could recover from the delivery and nurture her newborn. Jean Rio lost another ox to poison but was so enraptured with the birth of the baby and the proximity of Salt Lake City that she considered it but a minor inconvenience. She wrote that the country had been “beyond description for wilderness and beauty. We are indeed among the everlasting hills.” Still, there were challenges ahead. Wea
ving its way through a ninety-mile chain of cliffs that cut into the Wasatch Range of the Rockies, the party reached the summit of the Bear Divide, at 7,245 feet, on September 27. There Jean Rio got her first glimpse of the Great Salt Lake Valley. Greeting the group at the top were several Mormon men with fresh teams to assist in the sheer and precarious descent.
Jean Rio took her new grandson into her arms and carried him four miles rather than risk having him ride in a wagon that might overturn. She would remember the joy of that moment for the rest of her life, triumphantly carrying the newborn Henry William Rio Baker all the way to the magnificent valley of the Great Salt Lake. Eliza and another woman who had just given birth—“the two ladies ‘in the straw’ ”— were the only members of the party to remain in the wagons. As Jean Rio reached the bottom, she panicked when she looked up to see the wagons rushing down even though the wheels had been locked. Miraculously they all arrived intact. “We are now at the entrance of a narrow defile between rocks measuring 800 feet perpendicular height, with a serpentine stream running through it which we shall have to cross nineteen times.”
