©2025 Robert Lee Murphy
During the time we remained at Hardscrabble, talk invariably got around to the subject of when war with Mexico would begin. On the last day of his administration, March 3, 1845, President John Tyler had signed the resolution annexing the Texas Republic into the United States. It was widely believed this would provoke war with Mexico, which claimed that Texas was still part of its country. The new president, James K. Polk, had campaigned on the issue of annexing Texas as well as cancelling the joint administration of Oregon with the British. Polk, like Frémont’s father-in-law, Thomas Hart Benton, was a strong proponent of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny.
After leaving Hardscrabble, Bill Williams led the expedition north for two weeks through an area the mountain men called South Park. Snow-capped mountain peaks edged this broad basin to the east and west. On September 5, we crossed the Continental Divide and camped alongside the upper course of Piney River. This was the first body of water we encountered that flowed toward the Pacific Ocean.
Each day after setting up camp, the drovers had the task of butchering one of the cattle to provide meat for the men. I had the responsibility of taking selected cuts to Captain Frémont’s tepee where Jacob Dobson prepared the meal for the captain and the Indian boys.
I’d found it difficult to carry a rifle in one hand while trying to balance a plate of beef in the other hand without spilling the meat. Basil Lajeunesse had a leather sling for his rifle with a cupped end that slipped over the butt while the loose end tied around the barrel. I cut a strip of canvas from a damaged tent and fabricated a similar one. I could sling my rifle over my head and one shoulder and my powder horn and bullet pouch over the other and have my hands free.
That evening, I reached the tepee with a tin plate full of bloody beef just as Kit Carson emerged from the interior.
“Wagh!” he said. “Yer finally gettin’ some color into them clothes, Davy.” He laughed.
My shiny buckskin outfit was speckled with splotches of dark brown from being splashed with cow blood.
“Still going to take a while to get it as black as yours,” I said with a grin.
“Cap’n’ll be pleased yer early with his vittles. He and Ned want to climb back up to the divide tonight and take some readin’s. See ye later, Davy.”
“Good night, Kit.”
I ducked under the flap of the large tepee and delivered the meat to Jacob. He nodded for me to follow him back outside.
“You may need to stay here with the boys tonight,” Jacob said. “I’ll be helping the captain and Mr. Kern take some instruments up the mountain. He’s anxious to get started, and I’d also consider it a favor if you’d clean up the dishes.”
“Sure thing,” I said. “Shall I fetch my blanket roll?” I’d left my blanket rolled up in my rain poncho at the tent I shared with five other drovers.
“No, there’s blankets here.”
Jacob soon had the meal prepared, and while the captain and the mapmaker ate their steaks at a folding desk inside the tepee, the boys and I joined Jacob around the cookfire.
After supper, Ned Kern emerged from the tepee carrying his rifle and an armload of instruments. He was followed by Captain Frémont.
“Good evening, Mr. Brennan,” the captain said. “How are things?”
“Fine, sir. Just fine.”
“You may have to sleep here tonight. I doubt if we’ll be back early.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jacob,” the captain said, “grab the rest of the gear off my desk. Let’s get going.”
After the three men departed, I sent William, the Chinook boy, down to the river to fetch a bucket of water for the washing. Juan and Gregorio reluctantly accepted the task of scraping the leftovers from the tin plates into the fire. I went into the tepee to gather up the dishes the captain and Kern had left on the desk.
In addition to the tin plates and forks, there were two tin cups in which I could see the remnants of wine. In the process of trying to stack the items, I tipped over one of the cups. Red liquid ran across the desk toward a stack of papers. I jammed my arm into the path of the wine and tried to sop it up with my shirt sleeve. Buckskin wasn’t as absorbent as the wool shirt I wore under it, and the river of red did not stop. I brushed the stack of papers off the desk to keep them out of harm’s way.
After I mopped up the mess I’d made on the captain’s portable desk, I picked up the scattered papers. I had no way of knowing if I returned them in their proper order. The document that lay on top of the pile caught my attention. I pulled the Bullseye lantern closer. It was Captain Frémont’s orders from Colonel J. J. Abert, commanding officer of the Corps of Topographical Engineers. The document had been issued at Washington City and was dated February 12, 1845. The closing line stood out.
Captain Frémont will therefore be more particularly directed to the geography of localities within reasonable distance of Bent’s Fort, and of the streams that run east from the Rocky Mountains, and he will so time his operation, that his party will come in during the present year.
The Piney River flows west.
* * * * *
The next morning, I woke up early. I had slept, or tried to sleep, on the floor of the tepee near where the boys slept. I’d wrapped myself in a borrowed blanket, but I must have tossed and turned a lot because my clothes were all bunched up around me. My brain had kept busy struggling to understand what I’d read the night before.
I was still wrestling with what to do with the knowledge I now possessed. I couldn’t tell the captain. He would know I had pried into his papers. No one with whom I had associated since we’d departed Bent’s Fort had ever mentioned the subject of Colonel Abert’s order.
I decided there must be some truth to the rumor I’d heard that Captain Frémont was operating under secret directions from the president.
After sharing some breakfast with Jacob and the boys, I returned to the site of the tent where I was supposed to have slept the night before. The tent was gone, and my blanket roll lay on the ground. I picked it up and headed for my day job.
The men were folding up tents and loading pack horses and mules. The word had been passed that we were moving out. I needed to get to work.
On my way to the herd, I passed Kit Carson.
“Kit,” I asked, “where’re we going?”
“Don’t rightly know. Captain ain’t confided in me. Seein’ as how we’ve crossed the divide, I ‘spect we’re headin’ farther west.”
“Thank you.” I raised a finger to the brim of my slouch hat and hurried away. I’d decided not to mention to anyone, including Kit Carson, what I knew.
* * * * *
We followed the Piney River for several days until it flowed into the Colorado River. We crossed the Colorado and climbed over Sheep Mountain to the headwaters of the White River.
From here, we followed the White River west for well over a hundred miles. The first half of this journey took us through rolling green valleys, but the final half turned to more desolate terrain. In the early going, the men shot buffalo, elk, deer, and mountain sheep to supplement our diet of beef.
When we reached the White River’s juncture with the Green River, we added another member to the expedition. Joseph Reddeford Walker, dressed more like an Indian than a white man, was waiting there. His unkempt full beard was streaked with gray.
Kit Carson told me more about this well-known mountain man.
“Wagh!” Carson said. “I knowed Joe since way back when. He may’ve been to California more’n I have.” Kit looked at me with a grin. “He led the first wagon train there back in forty-three. Then, he joined up with the cap’n’s second expedition on our return.”
“How would Mr. Walker know to meet Captain Frémont here?”
“Well, now. I reckon ye’d have to ask him. And ye best not be callin’ him mister, either.”
Kit left me and joined the captain and Joe Walker. They were soon engaged in a heated discussion about something.
I found Jacob and asked if he knew how Walker came to be at this precise location.
“Joe took some fur pelts up to Fort Laramie earlier. The captain had hired him as a guide, but he had this other job to finish first. I suppose the captain told him to meet us here.”
“So, do you know where we’re going?” I asked.
Jacob smiled. “The captain does not confide in me. You can see as well as the rest of us that we’re heading west. When the captain thinks the time’s right for us to know, he’ll tell us.”
* * * * *
Captain Frémont had designated Joe Walker as senior guide. Kit Carson and “Old Bill” Williams were relegated to second places. If Kit were upset about this, he never let on.
On the final day of September 1845, we started up the Duchesne River. The going continued to be barren for a few days. Then, we climbed into forested regions and passed over the top of the Uinta Mountains. Once across, we intersected the Timpanogos River. As we followed the narrow canyon of this mountain stream downhill, we caught numerous trout. These tasty fish complemented our usual diet of red meat.
On October 10, we camped beside Utah Lake. We stayed only long enough for Captain Frémont and Kern to take some measurements. I was helping Jacob fillet some big lake trout at the campfire in front of the tepee when the two explorers returned from one of their rounds.
“Ned,” the captain said, “I was sure this lake would prove to be an extension of the Great Salt Lake. Our work today, however, confirms it’s fresh water that drains into the bigger lake.”
“Captain,” Ned said, “we’ve measured Utah Lake to be twenty-four miles long and thirteen miles wide at its widest spot.”
“That makes it the largest fresh-water lake I’ve encountered west of the Mississippi.”
Three days later we pulled up stakes and followed the Jordan River from where it drained Utah Lake to where it entered the Great Salt Lake. A large island lay close offshore. We established our campsite here, and Captain Frémont announced we would plan to stay several days to explore the lake and its surrounding environs more thoroughly.
A small band of Ute Indians also camped nearby. Kit Carson spoke Ute, and Joe Walker was married to a Shoshone, who spoke a Ute dialect. The two mountain men soon ascertained from these Indians that the water between the shore and the large island was shallow.
On October 18, Captain Frémont, Kit Carson, Joe Walker, and a half dozen other men had assembled by the tepee. They were packing provisions onto a couple of mules. Their saddled horses stood nearby.
Carson saw me standing alone beside the tepee and yelled. “Wagh, Davy. Git yer rifle and a horse and come along. We’re goin’ out to that there island fer a couple days.” He pointed offshore.
“I can go?” I asked. “You sure?”
“Sure.”
I raced off to get a horse and tied my blanket roll behind the saddle’s cantle. I galloped after the small party which had already reached the shore.
“Thar ye be,” Carson said. He reached out and slapped my shoulder as I pulled up beside him.
“You’re the guide,” Captain Frémont said to Carson. “Let’s see if you translated that Ute lingo correctly. Lead off.”
“Come on, Davy,” Carson said.
The two of us urged our horses into the water. Their hooves plunged through the foamy surface and crunched into a layer of salt on the bottom. We eased forward toward the southern tip of the island which lay four miles away. Captain Frémont and the others paired off and followed us two-by-two. At the deepest point, the water reached just above the saddle girth.
The island turned out to be fifteen miles long and five miles wide. Sufficient fresh water and grass existed on the island to provide home for numerous antelope. We made camp, explored, and hunted for the next two days. Captain Frémont named the place Antelope Island. I killed a couple of the animals myself. By the time we were ready to return to the expedition’s main camp, we had enough meat to feed everybody for three days.
When we came ashore as we returned from the island, an old Goshute chief blocked our path. He gestured wildly toward Antelope Island, shook his fist at us, and berated us shrilly in Ute.
“Carson! Walker!” Captain Frémont called back over his shoulder. “Get up here and find out what this old coot’s yammering about.”
The two mountain men rode forward and with a mixture of the Ute tongue and sign language determined what the Indian was clamoring about.
“Captain,” Walker said. “The chief claims the antelope on that island belong to him, and we had no right to kill them without his permission.”
The captain laughed heartily. “Tell the old man to come to my tepee.”
At the tepee, the captain went inside and soon reemerged. He approached the chief, bowed slightly, and one by one handed him a length of red cloth, a butcher knife, and a plug of tobacco.
As the old man accepted each item, his grin grew broader. He spoke in a calmer voice to Walker and Carson.
“He is perfectly satisfied,” Walker said, “even though we trespassed on his property.”
All of us laughed, and the old chief waddled off with his gifts.
* * * * *
We spent two weeks at the Great Salt Lake, during which time we experienced unusually warm weather for the fall season. We found no fish or other marine life living in the briny lake. We tolerated the foul smell of thousands of insect larvae that regularly washed up onto the beach. Everywhere we went salt crunched underfoot. Salt crystals sprayed into the air when we brushed against the scrawny vegetation growing near the shoreline.
Most of the cattle had been consumed, and the captain decided I wasn’t needed as a drover any longer. He reassigned me to help Jacob full-time. That put me in a position to overhear a conversation one day between the captain and Ned Kern.
“Ned,” Captain Frémont said, “I’ve decided there’s no truth to the long-held belief a great river flows to the Pacific from this region.”
“All of these older maps we have with us show a Buenaventura River.”
“It doesn’t exist. It’s simply a figment of earlier explorers’ imagination. They wanted to believe such a river would provide easy access to the coast. I know from my last exploration of the Sierra Nevada Range that no rivers pass through it from the east. I am now convinced this whole region is a great basin.”
In the evenings on a few occasions, Captain Frémont, Ted Talbot, Ned Kern, Kit Carson, Joe Walker, and “Old Bill” Williams would sit around the campfire and converse with the Goshute chiefs from the nearby village about what lay to the west of the Great Salt Lake. Numerous times I witnessed the old chiefs shake their heads and pass their hands across their throats to emphasize that no man had ever crossed the glaring white desert that stretched toward a far distant range of mountains. The chiefs claimed there was no water and no grass.
“Cap’n,” Williams said, “I been through these parts before, but I never went across that desert. I agree with the chiefs. I want no part of the Great Salt Lake Desert. You should swing north or south and go around.”
“Bill,” Captain Frémont said, “we have to reach the Sierra Nevada before the snows start. I don’t think there’s time to deviate from a straightforward path.”
Carson and Walker agreed with the captain that it was now too late to take any route except the most direct one.
On October 25, we moved from the Great Salt Lake to the west slope of the Stansbury Mountains and set up camp where a small spring watered a placed named Skull Valley.
The Cedar Mountains, a lower range, rose to the west of Skull Valley. From the mountains’ summit, Captain Frémont studied the far horizon through his telescope. He identified one high peak on the opposite side of the desert. He estimated it to be seventy miles away. Because of its darker silhouette, he speculated the peak’s slopes were forested. That meant water.
When it became clear that Captain Frémont had decided to cross the desert, “Old Bill” Williams resigned from the expedition and headed back toward the Rocky Mountains. He departed on October 27, leaving Kit Carson and Joe Walker as the senior guides.
The next day, Frémont and Carson stood in front of the tepee. I pretended to be busy building a cook fire for the evening meal so I could be close enough to hear their conversation.
“Kit,” the captain said, “I want you to strike out for that peak tonight. Traveling at night you won’t suffer as much. If you find water at the peak, build a signal fire. I’ll bring the main body, then. Who do you want to accompany you?”
“I’ll take Archambeault, Maxwell, and Lajeunesse.”
Shortly after sunset, the four men saluted Captain Frémont as they passed by the tepee on horseback, leading a pack mule loaded with extra water.
The next day, I accompanied Ned Kern and the captain back to the summit of the Cedar Mountains. We took turns observing the distant peak through the captain’s telescope. Late in the afternoon, I saw what appeared to be a whisp of smoke at the base of the peak.
“Captain,” I said, handing him the telescope. “I think that’s the signal.”
Captain Frémont took the telescope, steadied it on a rock, and adjusted the instrument’s focus. “You’re right,” he finally said. “They found water. Let’s go.”
The three of us hurried down the mountain to the camp. Two hours before sunset on October 29, the expedition headed into the desert. The captain had engaged one of the Goshutes to travel with us as a guide. He only lasted a few hours before he turned back, shaking his head as he left us. We were on our own.
It was the last day for the waning crescent moon. We traveled mostly by starlight. Fortunately, the cloud cover was minimal. Other than the constant crunching of the salt crust underfoot, the only sounds came from the occasional cough of a man or the snort of an animal.
I stayed close to Jacob and the three boys. We rode directly behind Captain Frémont and Joe Walker. The singular mountain peak that served as our destination could be seen as a dark shadow on the horizon.
“Joe,” the captain said at one time, “Pilot Peak is a suitable name for that lone mountain, don’t you think?”
“Sounds good to me, sir,” Joe answered.
Near midnight we came upon an isolated clump of sagebrush, and the captain called a halt for the night. We built several fires from dry sagebrush branches and cooked a late supper. We then fed more dead wood into the fires and built them up to serve as signal fires.
The men sat around the fires sipping coffee, not talking much. A light breeze blew out of the west. It carried a chill but lacked the strength to stir up the salty surface surrounding us.
I suddenly sat up straighter, turning my head to the side so an ear could better pick up a sound. Around the fires, other men did the same. The jingling of spurs and creaking of leather grew more pronounced. A silhouette appeared against the western sky. A rider approached.
August Archambault reined in opposite the fire where Captain Frémont sat. He dismounted and squatted on his heels. “Evenin’, Cap’n,” he said. “There’s water and grass at the base of the peak.”
Since he knew there was water ahead, after a few hours of sleep, the captain had us on the trail before sunrise. Not long before sunset that day, October 30, 1845, we set up camp next to a small stream at the peak. The animals greedily attacked the bunch grass. We humans washed the salt from our hair and clothes.
That evening after supper, Captain Frémont called us all together. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we are going to proceed farther west and explore this great basin country more fully.”
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