Under the Distant Sky

This book is lovingly dedicated to my precious sister, “Honey,”
who is like a mother to me…my friend…
and in memory of my sweet little sister, “Hauna,”
who is now in the presence of the angels.

I love you both with all my heart.
“Jody”

A Word from Al Lacy

It is with great pleasure that I introduce my precious wife JoAnna to those readers who have followed the Battles of Destiny, Journeys of the Stranger, and Angel of Mercy series. As I’ve written the books in these series, she has given valuable input on story ideas, and she has helped me with descriptions of feminine things and with the way women think and react under certain circumstances.

What a joy now to have her coauthoring our new Hannah of Fort Bridger series.

I
n 1802, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson had his eye on the great expanse of land west of the Mississippi River, known as the Louisiana Territory. His desire was to purchase the Territory from Spain, which had purchased it earlier from France. When the disturbing news came that Spain had secretly retroceded the Territory to aggressive Napoleonic France, Jefferson dispatched Robert Livingston and James Monroe as diplomats to offer the Frenchmen $2 million for New Orleans and West Florida.

The French, to whom the Louisiana Territory was of diminishing importance, offered to sell the entire Territory to the surprised diplomats for $15 million. The treaty of cession was dated April 30, 1803, and the U.S. flag was raised over New Orleans on December 20, that same year.

The Louisiana Purchase, extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to British North America, more than doubled the land area of the United States.

On the far edge of this unexplored Louisiana Territory was a vast section dubbed “Oregon Territory.” This section included the present states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Oregon.

In May 1804, President Thomas Jefferson dispatched a group of explorers, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
to find a land route to the Pacific Ocean, strengthen U.S. government claims to the Oregon Territory, and gather information on the country and its Indian inhabitants.

The group started up the Missouri River from St. Louis in May 1804. In 1805, Sacajaweah, a Shoshone Indian woman, led them across the Rocky Mountains. She guided them to the Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia Rivers, and they wintered on the Pacific Coast.

When Lewis and Clark arrived back in St. Louis in September of 1806, their glowing reports sparked tremendous interest in the vast new land to the west.

Word spread into the eastern states that there was fertile soil, better climate, and acreage for the taking in Oregon. “Oregon,” according to Lewis and Clark’s crude maps, meant the Willamette Valley between the western coastal range and the Cascade Mountains.

Hardly had Lewis and Clark made their report to President Jefferson when explorers, fur trappers, hunters, and other audacious men packed up and headed west, braving the hardships of the wilds in search of adventure. Among them over the next few years were such men as Jedediah Smith, David Jackson, Kit Carson, William Sublette, and Jim Bridger. Others followed them by the hundreds.

In the early 1830s, missionaries headed west, some to try to civilize the Indians, and others to preach to them the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In 1838 the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers was formed by order of President Martin Van Buren. The Corps was a body of military explorers made up of surveyors and map-makers—thirty-six intellectual elite of the military led by John C. Fremont. Congress had allotted Fremont—who became known as The Pathfinder—some $30,000 to survey and map the Oregon Trail. It took them until 1842 to finish the job.

When the maps were published, there was more enthusiasm
than ever among the people in the east to move west. Thus, 1843 became known as the year of the “Great Migration.” Eight hundred seventy-five in two hundred wagons—now including women and children—headed west.

In that same year, adventurer Jim Bridger established a fur-trading and supply post at the 1,026-mile point from Independence, Missouri, the main “jumping off” place onto the now mapped-out Oregon Trail. For some unknown reason, Bridger called the trading post “Fort Bridger,” though there were no military personnel established there.

The 1843 migration gave birth to the “wagon trains” that followed in the years to come. Many of the Indian tribes were angered by the white man’s continual encroachment on their land, the killing of their buffalo and other big game. The wagon trains were often attacked, as well as the homes of the emigrants who left the trains to take up residence on land they fell in love with along the way. The government found itself obligated to protect the wagon trains and the settlers. Thus, forts began to be erected along the Oregon Trail so the U.S. army troops could stand as threats to the hostile Indians. Though the presence of the army often hindered the Indian attacks, the forts were spread too far apart to stop them.

The California gold rush, in 1849, demanded that a trail be cut straight west to northern California. Thus, the California Trail was established. Some sixty-six miles northwest of Fort Bridger, the new trail was blazed due westward at a point called the “Parting of the Ways.” Those going to Oregon would continue northwest toward the Snake River and head for Oregon City. The California-bound wagons would head west toward the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and beyond them, Sacramento.

In 1857, the trading post that bore Jim Bridger’s name burned to the ground. In 1858, the U.S. Army took over the site and actually built a fort there, calling it Fort Bridger. A few years afterward, a settlement was established next to the fort,
and by the late 1860s was on the verge of becoming a town. In view of this, the people of the settlement decided their town would go by the same name as the military post—Fort Bridger.

As stated above, Independence, Missouri, was the main “jumping off” place to the Oregon Trail. Some wagon trains, however, crossed the Missouri River at St. Joseph, then joined the established trail a few miles west of the river.

From Independence, the Oregon Trail followed the Santa Fe Trail (established in 1822) some forty miles, then veered north to cross the Kaw River (now known as the Kansas River). It continued west across the windswept prairies to the Platte River, then followed along the Platte to the fork. It then wound along the North Platte to Fort Laramie. From there the trail moved deeper into Wyoming Territory to Fort Caspar.

Still following the North Platte out of Fort Caspar, the trail led in a southwesterly direction until it reached the Sweetwater River. It followed the Sweetwater past Devil’s Gate in dangerous rattlesnake country to the main range of the Rockies and across the Continental Divide at South Pass. The route turned southward across the Green River, then dipped down to Fort Bridger.

Travel on the Oregon Trail, and whether to stop and settle along the way or follow it to its eventual end in California or Oregon was not for the faint of heart. Death stalked the trail in the form of Indians, disease, severe weather, and sometimes thirst and starvation. Though relatively few were killed by Indians, massacres were highly publicized and instilled fear in the hearts of those who followed the trail westward.

Travelers were warned of the graves that lay beside the trail, and the terrible dust, knee-deep mud, flooding streams, buffalo stampedes, mosquitoes, and snakes. Still they set their sights toward the western sky and pressed forward to realize their dreams of a new life on the American frontier.

They were a hardy and determined people, the likes of which, on the whole, are unmatched today.