By Al Bates
This article is one of a series that will appear in this space during this year and the next on historic events relating to the Arizona Territory’s Sesquicentennial.
In the afternoon of Saturday, September 25, 1863, after a two-hour delay to complete packing, the party of Governor John Goodwin and other Arizona Territorial officers left Leavenworth, Kansas, on the first leg of their wagon train trek to the wilds of the southwest. Soon afterwards, they, and their military escort, were completely lost.
Most of the appointed officials had been approved by early March, but circumstances had delayed their start west until late August when they began traveling in small groups by train and river steamer to gather at Leavenworth. Among them was Associate Justice of the Territorial Supreme Court Joseph Pratt Allyn who recorded the party’s cross-country progress over the next four months in letters published in his hometown newspaper, the Hartford Evening Press, using the pen name Putnam.
Allyn describes the beginning chaos thus: “The train dotted the further slope of the hill-side … thither I hastened and found a pile of our personal baggage unpacked, and no place for it apparently.” The Major in command of the escort solved that problem, “and in the twinkling of an eye what a change. Trunks, boxes, bundles, &c., began to fly, one into one wagon, another into another, until I concluded it would be much like looking for a needle in a haymow to ever try to find them again.
“About 4 o’clock we moved, the cavalry sweeping over the rolling swells of the prairie in advance … then the string of ambulances, each with four mules, our transportation train and that of the escort, some thirty odd white covered wagons in all. … From front to rear the whole stretched over a mile; the dark mass of cavalry creeping up the farther swell, throwing back the sun’s ray from flashing sabers and gleaming rifles, the starry banner flaunting its folds proudly over them; the long line of white wagons contrasted with the dark colored mules. … We went on perhaps an hour, when we discovered we had left the main road and telegraph wire.
A portrait of Judge Allyn from the book titled, The Arizona of Joseph Pratt Allyn, 1974 (Photo Courtesy of Author).
“We followed the troops, the wagons followed us. The road grew worse and worse until it got to be no road at all. Somebody had blundered. … There had been no guide, as it was supposed impossible to get out of a broad traveled main road. There we were. To turn around, impossible; before us a steep hill, at the foot of it a ravine fringed with trees, and beyond a beautiful little valley, a tiny house nestling alone in the grove. There we must camp. The troops of course went across without difficulty, and the ambulances followed empty and without accident except that one broke a spring.
“We bivouacked, for our wagons were stuck at the ravine, and improvised supper. I have told you how we started, mess chest in one wagon, trunks in another, bed in another; now even the wagons had not come. Necessity is the mother of invention; we had coffee, coffee pot, some tin plates and cups, a ham boiled in Leavenworth, and a loaf of bread; we borrowed sugar, bought milk, and in short fared sumptuously.
“To be sure we hadn’t any knives, or forks, or spoons, but we had appetites and fun—for this wagon business took the comical turn. They all got across, breaking four not badly, and upsetting one. … We slept on the ground without a tent, and I never slept better. Next morning we rose early and breakfasted much as we supped. How to get out was now the question. An hour spent in exploration found a passable way over the adjoining farms, taking down fences, &c. The troops and ambulances, as before, got safely out and the wagons stuck; six of them broke something, and the doctor’s large six-mule spring wagon upset … injuring it considerably. It was noon before we got fairly started on the main road again, and then we were just four miles from Leavenworth. At evening we reached precisely the camp we hoped to make the evening before.”
After a night spent repacking the wagons, a 6 am Monday start had them on their undaunted way towards Arizona Territory. Next week in this series: a look at their traveling routine under Army discipline.
(Days Past is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners, International (www.prescottcorral.org). This and other Days Past articles are available at www.sharlothallmuseum.org/library-archives/days-past. Please contact SHM Library & Archives Reference Desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14 or via email at archivesrequest@sharlothallmuseum.org for information.)