John Fremont's Fourth Exploratory Journey in 1848-49

Exploring the West was nothing new for Fremont. By October 1848, when he left on his fourth journey, he had been doing it for most of a decade. So, he gathered together a group of 33 (or 35--depending on the source you read) men and headed West. Most of these men had accompanied him on earlier expeditions, and so their loyalty and capability were unquestioned. Even listing their names would take me too far afield, though if I did so you might catch the "knowledge bug" and not rest until you had tracked down the career of one or several of these men. Let's move on...

When they arrived in Pueblo, CO (CO wasn't even a territory at this point, of course. I give the CO only for clarity) around November 20, the signs all around were ominous. As the late 19th century diary of party member Micajah McGehee says,

"Most of the old trappers at the pueblo declared that it was impossible to cross the mountains at that time; that the cold upon the mountains was unprecedented, and the snow deeper than they had ever known it so early in the year" (quoted in Tom Chaffin, Pathfinder, p. 395).

For some reason Fremont didn't heed their warning. Was it arrogance? A sense that he was heading to CA anyway (his wife and daughter would soon be heading to their CA property through a ship leaving from the East Coast and then a portage through the Isthmus of Panama) and needed to get there? A desire to please his father-in-law? To increase his own fame? Perhaps he thought of himself as nearly invincible by this time; the legend of John Fremont might have gone to his head.

The Ill-Fated Journey

For the next fifty or so days, until Fremont was safely ensconced in the Carson residence in Taos, things went from good to bad to worse to intolerable in the deep snows of the Colorado Rockies. Until the detailed work of trying to reconstruct the actual path of Fremont's party was performed by Patricia Richmond in her 1990 book Trail to Disaster, accounts of various scholars differed. That is, no one was quite sure exactly which path was pursued by the group. Yet using the combined sources of diaries, discovery of mule bones, the length of cut trees (the party sliced down many trees during these 50 days, and some places that have longer stumps are considered by scholars to have been campsites in the higher, snow-covered areas) and the watercolors of the expedition artists, as well as extensive hikes through the region (presumably when there wasn't snow around!), Richards has confidently pieced together the harrowing trip. Let me just give you some of the "highlights," or, more accurately, the "lowlights" of the trip.

After setting out from Pueblo on November 22, 1848, the party headed in a southwesterly direction until they crossed the Mosca Pass (about 9175 feet) on December 3. It was called the Robidoux Pass in those days. Many mules were lost in the process, but otherwise the party arrived safely at that point. The Mosca Pass is just East of the boundary of the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. Their plan was to head across the flat and long San Juan Valley (about 7,000' elevation) toward the headwaters of the Rio Grande before taking a northerly turn to go through a pass in the San Juan Mountains. On a good day they could make more than 20 miles along the valley floor, and so by December 15 they were in the vicinity of the nearly 13,000 foot Mesa Mountain (Mesa Peak in some maps). Fremont thought that all they had to do was to find a nearby pass and they would be through the Continental Divide and then "on the other (i.e., downward) side" of the Rockies. He would be wrong, very wrong, in this.

But then a dispute broke out between Fremont and his guide, Bill Williams. Fremont had wanted Carson for his guide but Carson had been unavailable (why was that? Was he otherwise employed or just taking some rare time with his family in Taos? He had married a daughter of an upper-crust Mexican family of Taos, Josefa Jaramillo, just a few years previously), and so he obtained the services of Williams earlier in the trip. He knew and generally trusted Williams from one of his earlier expeditions, and Williams had the reputation among Mountain Men of being one of the most knowledgeable guides in the West. Lore about his strange life, beginning with being a Methodist preacher in the 1810s and evolving to a foul-mouthed trapper, explorer and guide in the 1840s, added to his image and mystery. It was with Bill Williams, however, that Fremont quarreled. Again, the sources are not clear on this, but it seems that the dispute was over which pass to cross. Fremont wanted to cross the Cochetopa, lying at 38'10'' North and 106'30'' West, while Williams suggested another pass (the Carnero?), about 30 miles to the South. In any case, disaster probably would have struck them on whichever path they chose.

By December 17 they had left Mesa Mountain but every step they took toward whichever pass they desired was fraught with danger. They named their next camp "Camp Dismal," a sign of their growing desperation. They faced "whiteouts" and the continual loss of mules. Men were becoming hungry, drained of energy and frost-bitten. Finally, Fremont himself even admitted it: "All movement was paralyzed...To advance with the expedition was impossible: to get back, impossible. Our fate stood revealed. We were overtaken by sudden and inevitable ruin" (Chaffin, p. 399).

Further Disaster

The mules fell down steep mountains, freezing in the snow below. Some of them became so hungry that they began to eat their tethers. By Dec. 20 only 59 of the 120 mules were alive, even though no men had yet perished. But the fun was only beginning. Fremont decided to dispatch a rescue party down the Rio Grande, not too-far distant, to New Mexico in order to resupply his men. The remaining men stayed, and lugged their equipment to a campsite along a northern tributary of the Rio Grande. There, at a place they called Camp Hope, they spent Christmas Day 1848. Though the scholarly narratives tend to become confused at this point, it appears that Fremont decided to strike out with a small contingent of men towards New Mexico, not wanting to wait for the resupply party. He gave strict orders, however, to the dozen or so men remaining to organize all the baggage and equipment so that it wouldn't be lost.

How many groups from the expedition were now wandering in the forbidding Colorado mountains? We don't know, but it may have been three to five small groups. In any case, one or two of the groups, as expected, met horrendous conditions, and several of the men died. One of the dead men was partially eaten by his companions, and another group was so desperate that it began to make a sort of gooey paste soup from the bits of leather of the rawhide lariats or the blankets they had with them. All the mules had died by this time. The men were in not much better condition. Early in January, about January 6, Fremont's group met up with a friendly Ute Indian who, for the price of Fremont's musket and other goods promised when they arrived safely in Taos, led them first to Questa, on the Red River and then on to Taos. Fremont arrived in Taos around January 20 with injuries and frostbite, according to Carson. He gradually recuperated in Kit Carson's home. Hence, the January 27 letter.

Conclusion

I told this story much too quickly. A more careful telling would show the details of the routes, the various sub-groups that split off to find safety, the deaths in various groups, the condition of the men when arriving in New Mexico, the sense of "blame" that was assigned for the trip and the almost inexplicable way that Fremont had of deciding to "pick up and go on" to CA after he had a few week "break" in Taos. Fremont, of course, blamed Bill Williams for getting them into a pickle, and he was supported in this by some of his men. However, from the perspective of 160 years, it appears that it was Fremont's arrogance in ignoring the warnings at Pueblo that got them into difficulties. In any case, we have in this story a window into several worlds of the late 1840s in the Western territories of the United States. Human foibles are combined with human gallantry, and history comes alive. And now I can fully understand that little letter that I saw in the Kit Carson home when I visited it on June 20, just three days ago.

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