by
Ruth MacGill
Member since:
July 9, 2006 Major Samuel Heintzelman's Journal - Life at a Frontier Army Post
July 27, 2007 03:08 PM EDT
(Updated: July 29, 2007 01:55 PM EDT)
views: 71
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rating: 10/10
(8 votes)
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comments: 13
Major Samuel Heintzelman’s Journal – Life on a Frontier Army Post There were wild times at the Yuma crossing of the lower Colorado River even before the Gold Rush, and the U.S. Army determined to build a fort there to keep order. In 1850 Major Samuel Heintzelman was sent to oversee the construction. He kept a journal faithfully from Jan. 1851 until January 1, 1853, that provides us with an insight into the hazardous life and eventful times at Yuma Crossing before there was a town. The rush for gold was in full flow, bringing thousands of people. There were even more thousands of sheep to sell to hungry miners in California, and all had to be ferried across the river at Yuma Crossing. The price for sheep was 10 cents a head. There were many accidents and deaths. Travelers who had already crossed 90 miles of desert since their last place of relative safety from the Apache Indians, were usually in dire condition when they reached Yuma Crossing, Those who successfully crossed the river, found the trail across the Anza-Borrego desert littered with bones of men and beasts who died later. Major Heintzelman’s Journal is presented to us exactly as he wrote it in the disjointed style commonly used in diaries, and is sometimes hard to understand. It is most valuable as a resource for information. It recounts the day-to-day living in primitive conditions and a harsh environment. It tells of relations with river tribes such as the Yumas, Mohaves, Cocopahs, and others, who carried out continual attacks on each other. It reveals the hardships of high temperatures, floods in the spring, and the difficulty in raising and maintaining domestic animals and gardens. And all the while there was a never-ending stream of impoverished and pitiful families begging for help. The massacre of six of the nine members of the Oatman family occurred only 90 miles east of Fort Yuma. Of the three survivors, two sisters, 11 and 16 were captured, and their brother was thrown over a cliff and left for dead. He survived and was rescued by another wagon train. Heintzelman was asked for help in pursuing the Indians who captured the Oatman girls, but did not supply what was asked of him. The younger girl died, but Olive Oatman lived among the Indians for eight years before her release was purchased. She carried an Indian tattoo on her chin to her grave. A character mentioned in the journal, and whom I have read about before, is The Great Western. That was what she was always called. She was a strong woman who won the hearts of soldiers in the Mexican War when she, as a self-appointed medic, ventured onto battlefields and single-handedly carried wounded men to safety. She showed up at Yuma Crossing looking work with the army and was hired as cook for the Army mess. Meals improved greatly, even by Heintzelman’s begrudging standards. Heintzelman wrote of other colorful characters such as Cockney Bill, who hosted Col. Kearney’s army and Kit Carson in 1846, and he mentioned Lt. Cave Couts of the Whipple contingent who surveyed the boundaries of the Gadsden Purchase. He described the difficulties of bringing supplies from San Diego by side-wheelers on the Colorado River, and wrote often about his efforts to make money on the side by investing in the ferry service and the riverboat traffic from Mexico Heintzelman often mentioned his problems with drunken soldiers and officers, especially his dealings with Lt. Tom Sweeney, a hard-drinking, one-armed Irish veteran of the Mexican War who took delight in tormenting his small-sized, and irritable senior officer. I wrote an article about him. Heintzelman also revealed himself as a man lonely for his wife and two small children back in Buffalo, NY. Much of his time was spent writing letters, and impatiently awaiting mail and newspapers from home. The letters from his wife took three to six months to reach him. I bought this book for the Mountain Empire Historical Society’s library last year, and they repaid me for it. I like so well I cannot part with it. I will pay them back for this one, and they will have to buy another copy. Major Heintzelman’s Journal isn’t for everyone, and not readily available. I have written this review because I enjoyed it so much that I want to talk about it. It can be purchased at the gift shop of the Yuma Historical Society for about $45. It can probably also be found at Amazon or Alibris books on-line. To history buffs it is well worth the price.
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Comments: 13
What a life Olive Oatman lived, and such a lot of wonderful history about the Yuma crossing. Imagine that happening to a sixteen year old girl, seeing that happen to her family and then being held captive for eight years before her release. I would imagine that's where her extraordinary strength and character came from, such hardship from such a young age. This is very interesting reading my friend , I have heard some of the names you mention in this story, especially Kit Carson, although I don't know much about him either. I think I remember something about him going on to do shows about the wild west, but I could have him mixed up with someone else. Now you have done it again Ruth, I have to look up more about him. You have become very good at the amount of information you provide in such short articles Ruth, and you always leave me wanting to know more about these times and people. Another great read my friend, when I read your stories I always feel like I was born in the wrong time, and would have loved these pioneering times full of danger and adventure. Karen loved reading this with me this morning and also wants to find out more about Olive and her life. I hope you are well my friend, Kaz and Tallara send big {{{HUGS}}} and one from me too, Love to Jane, take care .
Darcey.
Hi Darcey - I'm so glad you and Karen liked reading about the book. Kit Carson was a fur trapper and mountain man who came earlier than the Wild West Show you are thinking of that toured Europe. It was Buffalo Bill who did that. He was a meat hunter for the first railroad across the country when they were building it. They finished it in 1869 and did the Wild West Show closer to the turn of the century. Kit Carson was the youngest son of a large family of boys and was the runt of the litter. But he is the one who lead Fremont on his exploring expeditions throughout the west and became a famous scout. Right after the U.S. acquired California he and another mountain man named Bad Hand Fitzsimmons were sent to Washington with the news. They ran into Kearney and his dragoons in New Mexico and Kit Carson was ordered to go back west with them as guide. Bad Hand went on east alone. LOL and hugs right back at you.
Take care,
Darcey D.
Ruth, you mention that the major would have been prosecuted for his sideline entrepreneurship. I hope he would have been prosecuted for everything he was doing out there. The trends of empire stay the same, but the law is changing. After WWII, three new varieties of crime became recognized: war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. A fourth candidate, wars of aggression, is still in the wings of the theater of general acceptance.
There is a joke I always want to make when I read or hear someone talking about Indians on the north American continent, past or present, with reference to the first Americans: do you mind if I try it out here? I'll give it a shot: these Indians: how did they get here from India? Was this an organized movement of people by the Indian authorities? Was this movement the advance party of an invasion force? And most importantly, given the onetime rule of India by the Moghul Empire--a Muslim empire!!--were these Indian infiltrators the first wave of the same Islamic terrorist tsunami, dedicated to the overthrow of everything we Americans hold dear, that we are battling today on our own frontiers in Iraq and Afghanistan?
The administrator of the US "Indian affairs" department, sometime in the 1860's, commented to the effect that if you asked the typical US person what the proper place of the "Indians" was, the typical person would say, "under the ground".
I hope that wouldn't be our answer with regard to the people we find on our new frontiers today, whether those frontiers are in southwest Asia or downtown Hometown, USA. Our laws represent our highest aspirations, for better or worse.
Christopher - Actually I have read somewhere within the last couple of years that when humans first migrated out of Africa they reached a point - the Middle East or Southern Russia, I think, where they took several directions. Some went east and some went west. Some that went east reached Australia about 40,000 years ago. Some reached Siberia and followed game trails across the Aleutian Islands to North America when melting glaciers allowed it. So the pre-Indian heritage is there back some 50,000 or 100,000 years ago.
But, I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Of course I am calling them Indians because it's easier. I live on a reservation and these Kumeyaay people don't object - out loud.
Heintzelman did his best to avoid conflict with the Yuma Indians. There had been a Catholic mission at Yuma Crossing. The Spanish soldiers kept trampling their fields, so they massacred all the soldiers and priests. They kept women and children captive until Lt. Fages rode out from San Diego and saved them. The Spanish made no further effort to travel to Mexico by that route again.
It was a hard group of people that settled this land. Life was not a bimmer ride to the mall.