September 23rd: Desperation in the camp, which can no longer be hidden. The remaining single men have volunteered to ride on ahead, that they might alert the Californian authorities to our plight; they set out this morning. All our chances of success in this forlorn undertaking ride with them.
October 2nd: The Humboldt river. According to Charley the Indian guide, we are now rejoined with the main trail, and done at last with Clay's damned cut-off. No sign of any other parties along the banks of the river. It is late in the season-they will be safe across the mountains and in California now. A note from the men riding on ahead was discovered on the side of the trail, and brought straight to Clay. He will not disclose its contents. I am persuaded at last that the time has come to follow Bowden's counsel, and force a reckoning.
October 3rd: A catastrophe. The thing I most feared has come to pass. Last night Cagie Bowden led a deputation of the men to Clay's wagon and demanded he produce the note. Clay refused, and upon Bowden pressing him, drew a pistol and shot him through the chest. Instantly Clay was seized by the men, while aid was summoned for the stricken Bowden; alas, too late. Within a very little time he expired.
I was for burying him, then abandoning Clay in the wilderness and pressing on. Hiderick would have none of it, calling instead for frontier justice and a summary settling of accounts. His hotter temper won the day. Hiderick caused Clay's wagon to be tipped over on its side, and then hanged him from the shafts. It was a barbarous thing to watch as he strangled to death at the end of a short rope. Are we no better than beasts now? Have our hardships brought us to such an extremity of animal passion? Back in the wagon, I threw myself to the floor in a perfect storm of emotion; Elizabeth tried to comfort me, but I could take no solace even from her sweet voice. I have failed her-we have all failed, all of us men who stood by and let vanity and stupidity lead us into this hell on earth. Now on top of it all we are murderers. The mark of Cain lies upon us.
October 4th: In all my anguish of last night I forgot to set down that the note was found on Clay's body after all, tucked inside his pocket-book. It read-"Make haste. Indians in the foothills. Snow already on the peaks. Waste no time."
October 11th: Forging on down the valley of the Humboldt. Such oxen as remain alive are much weakened through great exertion and lack of fodder, and to save their strength we walk where we can. No man talks to his neighbour; our gazes are bent to the trail ahead, and our heads hang low. Why should we look up? Snow-caps clearly visible atop the mountains in the West.
October 23rd: In the night, a great alarm: Indians, howling down from the hills, attacking our wagons. Four wagons lost before we knew it-nine men dead in the onslaught. They have slaughtered half of the oxen too, the brutes. As they vanished back into the hills, we heard them laughing-a terrible and callous sound. I hear it now as I write, and it may be that it shall follow me to my grave: the mocking of savages in this savage land. Savages, I say? At least they do not kill their own as we have done.
October 31st: Our progress is so slow as to be hardly worth recording. Oxen dying between the wagon-shafts; if we are to make the crossing into California, I believe we shall have to rely on the mules and upon our own feet. Thunder atop the peaks, and the laughter of the Paiutes, echoing through these lonely canyons. They do not bother us much now, though; even the wolves leave us alone. We are not worth the bothering.
November 4th: Very nigh to the mountains now-can it be that the Lord will grant us safe passage before the winter comes? Dark clouds over all the white-capped peaks. One more week, Lord; one more week. At night on our knees by the bunks we pray, Elizabeth & I-God grant us another week.
November 8th: In the high passes. So close! Lord, can it be?
November 9th: Snow in the night, great flakes whirling out of a black sky. We pressed on without stopping, but in the morning it commenced again, and mounted to a wild flurry by midday. The oxen are slipping, and the wagons wholly ungovernable. We made camp by the side of a lake nigh to the tree-line, where some party long since departed fashioned four or five rough cabins out of logs. For tonight we must bide here by the lakeside, and pray for no more snow.
November 10th: Snow all through the night. Trail impassable-neither man nor beast can battle through the drifts. Exhausted, hope gone. Wind mounting to a howling frenzy, mercury falling, sky as black as lead. We have failed. The winter is upon us and we are lost in the high passes. God help us.
From the Sacramento Citizen-Journal,
February 2, 1847
Our readers, anxious for fresh news of the wagon-train of settlers trapped in the mountains, will doubtless remember our interview with Mr Henry Garroway, one of the outriders sent on ahead of the party who arrived in California last November, with the first of winter's storms at his heels. Mr Garroway, it will be recalled, announced it as his intention to lead a rescue company at the earliest opportunity, made up of brave souls from the vicinity of Sutter's Fort, kitted out and victualled by the magnanimous Mr John Augustus Sutter himself. Alas, grave news reaches us from the fort: the ferocity of the January storms has rendered even the lowest of the Western passes wholly impenetrable. Drifts higher than a man on horseback have been reported as the norm, and even the most sanguine estimate cannot anticipate the departure of any rescue party until March at the earliest…
Addendum to the Diary of John Buell
(undated, made by his wife, Elizabeth)
I had not thought to take up my dear husband's pen and bring the story of our family's tribulations to its conclusion; however, should this diary be all that remains of us, then it may serve as a testament-to much bravery, and also to wickedness beyond measure.
We have been snowed in at the lakeside for nigh on three months now. Things have gone hard with us since the beginning: our provisions were scanty on arrival, and dwindled soon enough to nothing. I have seen people trying to eat shoe-leather and the binding of books; bark and grass and dirt they have eaten, twigs and handfuls of leaves. We were thirty-five on our arrival, thirty-two adults and three nursing children including my angel Mary-Kate. Now we are reduced to three.
The hunger swallows all things. Whole days will pass, and we think of nothing save food, how it would be to fill our bellies to repletion. There is a narcotic in it; it lulls one into a dangerous inactivity, a dull vacant torpor. I have seen this look settle upon a score of people; in each case the end came very nigh after. Daily I look for it in myself. I must be strong, for my angel's sake.
The provisions ran out before the end of November: the last of the oxen were slaughtered and eaten by then, and the mules too. One of the children was the first to die, Sarah Doerr's little Emily; soon after her, Missy Shorstein, and her father the next day. Our sorrow was great-we had no way of knowing that all too soon death would become a familiar thing with us. It is hard to mourn, when horror is piled upon horror and the bodies are beyond counting or remembrance; but it is necessary. It is the most human of emotions, and we must remain human, even in this uttermost remove of hell.
From the start it was clear that some would not last the year out. A great depression settled over our camp like a funeral pall, and many succumbed to its all-embracing pressure. It was most prevalent among the men-not least in my dear husband John. From the first he reproached himself, and for many days after our arrival, half-crazy with remorse, he would not stir from his bed of leaves and moss in our cabin. Many times I spoke with him, and sought to assure him he was not to blame for our predicament; but he would not be consoled, and turned his head away to the wall. Greatly I feared for his life; that he would give up the will to live, and fade away like so many of the others.