Transcript

I will next refer to some incidents in my travels west in the summer of 1848, with those that were going to the Valley that season. I have seen the buffalo for miles and miles as far as the eye could reach and half a day at a time and had some thrilling adventures in hunting them.

Where it was good roads on the Platte we traveled in two lines and when we camped for the night the lead wagons would form for the corall and the next wagons would come up on each line with the front wheels touching or locking in the hind wheel of the wagon in front with the tongue inside and so on until the corall was formed, leaving the gap at each end. We had ropes and stakes or picket pins for each and every one of our cattle and at dark we would fetch them in each man staking his cattle ouside and opposite his own wagon or wagons. Then we placed guards around the whole and called the time of night every half hour and changed the guards about one oclock in the night.

I will here refer to a thrilling incident. Our Company took turns in driving ahead. It came my turn for the day of which I speak. It was in the afternoon, I was some distance ahead and setting in the front of my wagon when I heard a great noise and on looking back the whole train was in comotion. It was a stampede. I jumped out, took my near leader by the horn and kept my team quiet so they did not run. The others ran till they caught up with my wagon when they stopped. There was one woman by the name of Hawks was run over and killed and a young woman by the name of Findley [Janet Mcdonald Findlay] was badly hurt but she got well. The damage to wagons I think was slight maybe a wagon tongue or two broke. We had some bad streams of water to cross, austensibly the Loup[e] Fork being the worst on account of quick sand. I recollect we had to put chunks under our wagon boxes to raise them up in crossing the Platte. One day while we were traveling below Ft. Laramie, a party of Sioux Indians met us and formed a line across the road and would not let us pass till we gave them some presents. We gave the flour, sugar and whatever else we had and could spare. It was deemed to be cheaper to feed than to fight them.

I will here refer to a miraculous escape of my father from being killed. It was a few miles west of Ft Laramie, on a ver[y] steep and rocky hill and when about half way down he slipped or fell in front of the wagon. His neck being immediately across the track. The wheel came so it touched his neck, when the horses stopped as suddenly as if they had been shot and my father got out of his peralous [perilous] situation unhurt.

Between North Platte and Sweet Watter [Water] I have seen cattle drop down in the yoke and be dead in a few minutes from drinking alkali water. I have seen the road strewn so thick with dead animals that in places a person could step from one to another. The best cattle generaly were the ones to die. My father had the little white mare that he took from Canada to Missouri. And in all our movings and a very large mare making an odd looking team. The large mare died at Independence Rock on Sweet Water from hard work and scarcity of feed. Then the company had to help him. When we got to Fort Bridger My brother Joshua Terry was working there and he let us have a yoke of oxen to help us on to the valley. Where we arrived the 15^th of October.