Prelude to the Dust Bowl: Drought in the Nineteenth-Century Southern Plains
304
Prelude to the Dust Bowl: Drought in the Nineteenth-Century Southern Plains
304Hardcover
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780806153407 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Oklahoma Press |
| Publication date: | 08/16/2016 |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d) |
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Prelude to the Dust Bowl
Drought in the Nineteenth-Century Southern Plains
By Kevin Z. Sweeney
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the UniversityAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-5340-7
CHAPTER 1
The Great American Desert
Many educated Americans in the first half of the eighteenth century held an opinion that differed greatly from that of Katharine Bates, whose idyllic poem in the second half of the century depicted America's plains as amber waves of grain framed by majestic purple mountains. Through their publications and lectures, they, in turn, convinced others to think of the vast steppe situated between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains as a large wasteland, a barrier to westward expansion. The Long Expedition of 1820 did more than its fair share to promulgate the idea that this region was a great American desert. A team of naturalists who cataloged and collected samples of the animal and plant life they encountered gave the expedition scientific weight. Thomas Say, the mission's zoologist, reported that the group dreaded the journey across "the trackless desert which still separated [them] from the utmost boundary of civilisation," and Dr. Edwin James, the official chronicler of the expedition, stated that the explorers passed "through a barren and desolate region." James claimed that beyond the ninety-sixth meridian, travelers could expect a "wide sandy desert, stretching westward to the base of the Rocky Mountains." This seems incredible to present-day observers, for the ninety-sixth meridian runs near the beautifully green city of Tulsa in humid eastern Oklahoma. Yet the Long Expedition's official report was illustrated by a map labeling today's Great Plains the "Great American Desert." After the accounts and report of the expedition became public, the number of textbook references to the plains as a desert jumped dramatically. Although historians have debated how popular this description became and how long it dominated thought on the region, the Long Expedition will for some time be known for its description of the plains as a Great American Desert.
While modern scholarship has taken an interest in Stephen H. Long's exploration, neither modern nor earlier historians have considered what led the members of the expedition to reach these conclusions. Culture, education, and experience certainly influence how people perceive a region, and these factors must have guided the Long party's portrayal of the southern plains. Environmental factors can also color the way we see a landscape, but it is a common mistake to judge a region's climate only by a brief experience of it. On a mild spring day after a recent rain storm has refreshed the porous soil, and while the winds remain pleasantly calm, the high plains of Texas might seem to a traveler like a pleasant place to live. Yet if the tourist experienced one of the notorious dirt storms with wind gusts of seventy miles per hour blowing tumbleweeds into highline wires, driving small grains of soil through the tiniest crevices of the car and blanketing the dashboard with a fine layer of dust, that traveller would receive a sober awakening. Nature can fool us, and at times it hoodwinked our predecessors as well. Long and his men journeyed through a dry environment at its most arid and assumed incorrectly that this aridity was a constant characteristic of the region.
During the second decade of the nineteenth century, little information was accessible to the educated officer class of the U.S. military concerning the plains between the Mississippi River and the mountains of the West, and what reports did exist were contradictory. The early Louisiana fur traders, though usually tightlipped, could be encouraged to talk about the region with an adequate administration of spirituous liquors; then they tended toward depicting the interior plains as desert-like. But how much of this information was available to the officers of the Long party is unknown.
Lewis and Clark may have been influenced by this desert image. In 1804 Meriwether Lewis wrote to his mother that "from previous information I had been led to believe [the region above the Platte River] was barren, sterile, and sandy." He was pleased to note that he found it quite to the contrary and gave promising comments about much of the plains, with the exception of a stretch along the Missouri River the explorers referred to as the "deserts of America." Clark claimed he "did not think [this region could] ever be settled," while Lewis referred to it as "desert, barren country." Aside from that small section, Lewis and Clark gave glowing reports of the region they traversed. Likewise, President Thomas Jefferson, perhaps indulging in a bit of political spin to justify his highly controversial purchase of the territory, presented a very positive description in his "Official Account of Louisiana," claiming the absence of trees was caused by over-rich soil. Indeed!
Zebulon Pike, whose own findings were first published in 1810, did not share that favorable view. While crossing the central grasslands, he stated that "the vast plains of the western hemisphere may become in time equally celebrated as the sandy deserts of Africa." There were also numerous references in Pike's writings to deserts, aridity, and lack of vegetation. Pike's report influenced Elijah Parish, a Congregationalist preacher and compiler of topographic information, to update his geography text, A New System of Modern Geography. In his first four printings, Parish made no mention of a desert but stated in his 1814 revision (after Pike's report) that "between the great rivers, Missouri and Rio Bravo, vast sandy deserts present a dismal prospect; not a tree nor shrub relieves the eye; the salt in the soil forbids vegetation, as in the Tehama of Arabia, and renders the wilds of Louisiana, as cheerless and forlorn, as the deserts of Tartary or Africa." He attributes the description to Pike. It must be added that like many New Englanders, Parish was opposed to expansion for fear that the northeast's political influence would wane with the addition of new states' congressmen to the national legislature. The concept of a desert in the plains could be useful in discouraging the nation's western growth. Regardless of Parish's motives, his text very possibly influenced the educated members of Long's expedition. Parish's text was available in Boston and Newburyport, Massachusetts, as well as Portland, Maine; various New England universities endorsed it.
In 1817 the published notes of John Bradbury and Henry Brackenridge, two English gentlemen who had traveled through the plains, concurred with Pike. They depicted the Missouri River country as "having some resemblance to the Steppes of Tartary, or the Saara's [sic] of Africa." It is difficult to believe that Long and his men had read all of these reports, but it is not far-fetched to consider that they were familiar with the traditional view of the area they were preparing to explore.
The background of the primary chroniclers further influenced them to perceive the region's aridity in exaggerated terms. The journalists and scientists were all from the northeastern United States, an area of forests and abundant rainfall. The expedition of 1820 was the first trip into the southern plains region for three of the team's leading members: Stephen Long, the expedition's head who had commanded the Yellowstone expedition the previous year; Edwin James, a Vermont native and the expedition's physician, botanist, and author of its official account; and Philadelphia-born Thomas Say, the team's zoologist.
The bias of these chroniclers' eastern heritage was magnified by the climatic cycle during their lives. The period from 1800 to 1850 was a wetter than usual era for New England. It is no wonder that the scientists believed they were traversing an "inhospitable desert," for the effects of a drought would seem more pronounced to those accustomed to living in a region and period of greater moisture than what the plains experienced in even an average year.
In fact, the members of Long's expedition recorded that they indeed did have preconceived notions of the geographic character of the plains. In 1819, still early on the journey to the source of the Arkansas River, Thomas Say, the expedition's official chronicler at that time, wrote that "you discover numerous indications both in the soil and its animal and vegetable productions, of an approach to the borders of the great Sandy Desert which stretches eastward from the base of the Rocky Mountains." Say accepted the presence of a sandy desert as fact before he had traveled to, or had seen evidence of, a severely arid region. Upon his arrival in 1820 at the winter quarters of Engineer's Cantonment, just north of present-day Omaha, Nebraska, Edwin James became the official recorder of topographic features for the expedition. James wrote that a group of Indians near Council Bluffs laughed at the recklessness of attempting to cross a country that was at that time "so entirely destitute of water and grass that neither ourselves nor our horses could be subsisted while passing it." Captain John R. Bell felt this incident important enough to log in his own expedition journal as well, proving the importance the warning held in persuading the chroniclers that a wasteland awaited, while also revealing that the Natives were aware of the current drought conditions throughout the region. The Natives' annual hunts on the plains familiarized them with the region's climate, and even they considered the conditions of 1820 severe enough to warrant the warning. Accordingly, James, Bell, and the rest of Major Long's group expected a hostile environment of sand and little water.
In addition to the formidable task set before the exploration party, a financial crisis forced Long to undertake the mission without adequate supplies. Economic crisis hit the nation one year prior to Long's planned exploration to locate the source of the Red River. President James Monroe, in an effort to keep the nation financially solvent, reacted to the Panic of 1819 by cutting government spending; in turn, these cutbacks forced the War Department, headed by avowed proslavery expansionist John C. Calhoun, to reduce its budget, though the demand for more results from western exploration was maintained. These pressures on War Department spending were passed on to Major Long. Less funding was available for provisioning the expedition, but the expectations for his excursion had risen. The lack of sufficient supplies coupled with such ambitious goals created a concentration on speed at the expense of thorough scientific research, greatly hindering the party's chances of collecting ample specimens or making accurate observations about the terrain they crossed.
Not only was the approved funding from the War Department inadequate to provision the party, but Long did not even receive all of the funds that were approved. While Long was in the East visiting his new wife, he met with Calhoun, who promised him two thousand dollars. Long was to pick up that money in Saint Louis on his way back to Engineer's Cantonment. He paused in Saint Louis for two weeks, fulfilling obligations of surveying public lands there before progressing further west. Then he waited an additional week at Franklin, Missouri, hoping that the vital financial resources would arrive and further postponing his expedition's departure. Calhoun had sent the promised money rather tardily on April 28, 1820. It took, on average, six weeks for correspondence to reach Saint Louis from Washington; the funds would have arrived in Saint Louis ten days or so after the expedition had departed from the cantonment in today's eastern Nebraska! Major Long, obviously aware of the shortage in his party's provisions, attempted to purchase or requisition provisions from Camp Missouri near Council Bluffs. These actions not only proved fruitless but again delayed the expedition.
Western outposts also felt the cut in War Department funding. To compensate for the lack of financial support from the federal government and to supplement their meager stores, soldiers at Camp Missouri planted their own gardens, but a recent flood had destroyed the garrison's small harvest. Even though Major Long carried a note from the honorable secretary of war granting the power to requisition any provisions necessary to fulfill the expedition's orders, the commander of the fort could provide only a few supplies. Fresh mounts, so crucial in overland travel, were a priority, but the commanding officer considered the few horses at the fort vital and would not spare them.
Combined with the attempt to requisition supplies from Camp Missouri, Long's delays in Saint Louis and Franklin proved critical, for they set the party's starting date back a full month. Long planned to begin traveling toward the source of the Arkansas River on May 1, 1820, but the party was delayed until June 6. This delay pressed the necessity of speed upon the military mission to arrive at Fort Smith before the onset of cold weather, which can be brutal on the high plains, while forcing the party to traverse the southern plains during its driest and hottest months.
The supplies listed in Bell's journal reveal the inadequacy of the party's provisions. Compared to the usual rations issued to soldiers during the early nineteenth century, the provisions at Long's disposal could only supply the group with food for thirty days and meat for fourteen days, a woefully inadequate arrangement for a military expedition expecting to be in the field for four months. Given this minimum of provisions, it is apparent that the major intended to trade with Plains Indians for additional foodstuffs, totally discounting the warning of a parched grassland given earlier. Even the amount of trade goods could be expected to supplement the party's insufficient food rations for only three months, and that required meeting Native people on the journey. The meager provisions left a whole month of rations to be desired. The equipment necessary for collecting topographical data and samples was lacking as well. One wonders just how Major Long proposed to meet the many expectations of the War Department while completing this venture. Yet, as commander of the expedition, Long had no alternative but to proceed with the assignment, regardless of the inadequacy of the party's stores.
Unquestionably, Long felt pressured to command a successful military and scientific venture. The Yellowstone Expedition he led in 1819 had been an abysmal failure. It had headed toward the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers to establish an American presence on the British frontier, but the party never made it past Fort Atkinson, near present-day Omaha, Nebraska. More than one hundred expedition men perished from scurvy that winter.
Long did not spend the winter in Fort Atkinson with the rest of the expedition, but instead traveled east to see Calhoun and ask his approval for a renewed effort to explore the plains. The secretary of war obliged Long by issuing written orders for a new mission to explore the Platte River to the central Rocky Mountains and return along the Red River, which had become the boundary with New Spain as a result of the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819. Given a second chance, Long chose to conduct the expedition as best he could with what supplies he could muster rather than refuse what seemed an impossible task. In an attempt to ensure success on this new assignment, the major pushed his men and animals to their utmost endurance from the very beginning of the mission.
The shortage of supplies became critical in late July, but James mentions the dwindling rations as early as June 26, less than one month after the party had begun the expedition: "Our small stock of bread was by this time so nearly exhausted, that it was thought prudent to reserve the remainder as a last resort, in case of the failure of a supply of game, or other incident." When the expedition arrived at the point where the Arkansas River emerged from the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, Major Long divided his party as ordered on July 4. He sent Captain Bell with half of the force to continue down the Arkansas River, and led the remainder of the group, including the journalist Edwin James, south and west to locate the Red River. Even though each group's demands on the local wildlife for meat were reduced by the smaller number of mouths to feed, that did not lessen the per capita shortage of provisions. By July 29, supplies had become so meager that the major cut dinner rations to one ounce of jerked meat.
The acute shortage of food in an unfamiliar region dictated Long's decision to redirect the party's movement. The possibility of starving in the wilderness was a factor in Long's decision to discontinue the search for the Red River and to instead follow a local ravine in the hopes that it would prove to be one of the Red River's tributaries. Instead, it turned out to be the Canadian River. James, with a penchant for understatement, noted in his journal that the party's "suffering from want of provisions ... had given [them] a little distaste for prolonging farther than was necessary [their] journey towards the southwest." The absence of any contact with Natives made the prospect of trading for supplies bleak, so Long and his men were forced to rely on their hunting skills to keep themselves alive during their journey across the southern plains. As long as there was game present, this strategy could prove successful, but if the wildlife had migrated from the vicinity of the party's route, they would starve.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Prelude to the Dust Bowl by Kevin Z. Sweeney. Copyright © 2016 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
1 The Great American Desert 3
2 Long's Report and Indian Removal 19
3 Between the Droughts 31
4 Drought and Buffalo Migration 43
5 The Texas Indian Reserves 58
6 The Retreating Frontier of the Mid-Century 78
7 The Five Tribes and the Confederacy 92
8 The Early Civil War Years in Indian Territory 111
9 The Last War Years in Indian Territory 126
10 Crime in Civil War Texas 143
11 Boomer Bust 157
12 Attempts at Rainmaking 184
13 And the Skies Are Not Cloudy All Day 200
Epilogue 217
Notes 227
Bibliography 257
Index 273