Fremont's Second Visit in 1846
Fremont's Second Visit in 1846
© 2001 Jerry Dwyer
Fremont came back to Klamath County in 1846. Unlike the first trip in 1843, this second visit would not include peaceful encounters with the Native Americans who lived around Klamath Lake. And also unlike the first trip there were very little advances in the fields of cartography, botany or geology. But a decision made at a campsite near the west shore of Upper Klamath Lake on the evening of May 9, 1846 had far more impact on history then any event in his prior visit: "I resolved," Fremont recalled in his Memoirs "to move forward on the opportunity and return forthwith to the Sacramento Valley in order to bring to bear all the influences I could command...This decision was the first step in the conquest of California."
Fremont's third Expedition to the West left their encampment near Westport in what is now Kansas City on June 25, 1845. There was no cannon on this expedition but a lot more men. Many in the group served with Fremont before: Talbot, Godey, Lajeunesse. Charles Preuss, Fremont's cartographer on the first two expeditions, did not make this trip. Fremont hired the artist Edward Kern to take his place. Jacob Dodson, Fremont's Black servant on the Second Expedition, again joined the Third Expedition. Fremont also brought along nine Delaware Indians led by a fierce warrior named Sagundai plus the Chinook teenager, William Perkins, and Juan and Gregorio, the California Indian boys whom Fremont brought east the preceding year. The Chinook had spent the winter with Quakers in Pennsylvania while the California Indians stayed in Kentucky, probably on Benton's farm where Fremont stopped to pick up his magnificent horse, Sacramento, a gift from Sutter the preceding year.
This time the group headed almost due West across Kansas and Colorado to Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River, arriving there on August 2nd. Here the group split, Fremont sending 33 men to explore the Canadian River area south of the Arkansas. Lieutenants Abert and Peck were in charge of this group and Tom Fitzpatrick, Fremont's guide on his Second Expediton, again guided this group. Fremont's main party continued westward across the Rockies to Salt Lake. Along the way Fremont picked up Kit Carson and his pals Lucien Maxwell and Richard Owens. In the Rockies they came upon Joseph R. Walker and a group of his men and hired them to help guide the rest of the way. They then went on to Nevada where they twice split up the party: once, with Fremont's group making a diagonal path to Walker's Lake while the main party followed the Humboldt River to its sink and then on to Walker Lake. Fremont's group then crossed the Sierras near what is now Donner Pass and arrived at Sutter's Fort on December 10, 1846. The other group, led by Talbot and guided by Walker, headed south and crossed the mountains at what is now called Walker Pass.
Fremont recuperated at Sutter's Fort and then went south to meet the other group who was supposed to be camping on the King's River. But Walker mistook the Kern for the King and the two groups could not find each other. Fremont then visited Monterey and finally met the second party a few weeks later south of San Jose. According to his report he now had a total of 62 men in California.
The group hung around too long in the Monterey area and was causing a nuisance. The Californios were probably scared out of their wits by the ferocious appearances of the men, especially the Delawares. Fremont was then ordered to leave the country. Instead he fortified a position atop a peak in the Gavilan Mountains between Salinas and San Juan Bautista and defied the local authorities. After a couple of day's reflection, however, common sense got hold of him, and he withdrew to the San Joaquin valley and then made his way northwards to Sutter's Fort. Joseph R. Walker at this point took his men and withdrew from the expedition. Fremont had always been cordial with Walker and wrote kindly of him in his report on his Second Expedition. But Walker considered him a coward for not fighting the Californios and had nothing but harsh words to say about Fremont for the rest of his life.
Fremont slowly made his way North, visiting first Sam Neal's ranch on Butte Creek and then Lassen's Ranch near present day Marysville a little further north. Neal had served with Fremont on the Second Expedition but asked Fremont to be relieved when the party reached Sutter's Fort in 1844. Sutter was in dire need of a blacksmith and heavily recruited Neal. Later he helped Neal acquire the Rancho Esquon land grant.
Fremont had a notion of meeting up with his 1843 rendezvous in the Klamath area and of then crossing a pass to the Willamette Valley, thus establishing a better way of reaching the Willamette Valley than the Oregon Trail. But he was also most likely stalling for time, waiting for word that the war with Mexico had commenced.
Unknown to Fremont the government in October 1845 had sent a courier named Archibald Gillespie to the West Coast. Gillespie was an officer in the US Marines but for this assignment he disguised himself as a whiskey merchant. He traveled across country to Mazatlan and then took a ship to Hawaii and finally arrived in Monterey on April 17, 1846. There he met with Thomas Larkin, U.S. Consul in California, and delivered his orders, one of which was the appointment of Larkin as Confidential Agent in California. He also inquired of the whereabouts of Fremont and set out to find him. He made his way first to Sutter's Fort and then followed the Sacramento to Lassen's Ranch where he learned that Fremont had left eight days before. Peter Lassen and Sam Neal and a few others agreed to help him find Fremont.
Fremont in the meanwhile had followed first the Pit and then the Lost River into southern Oregon, passing Tule Lake near the California border (he named the body of water Rhett Lake after a South Carolina friend). On May 6, 1846 the group crossed the Link River in what is now Klamath Falls and visited the Indian encampment there. They then made their way along the west side of Upper Klamath Lake, finally camping at a point near where a few years later Forth Klamath would be established.
Gillespie and his small group pushed on. For about a hundred miles they were stalked by a group of Indians and were getting very nervous. Sensing Fremont's near presence, Neal and a man named Sigler rode ahead and met up with Fremont at his camp. They told him that Gillespie and the rest of the party were about 30 miles south and in great danger. Fremont immediately gathered up ten of his best men, including Carson, Lajeunesse, Owens, Godey and four Delaware Indians and went to rescue the Gillespie Party. A few hours hard ride and the two groups met and Gillespie finally delivered his mail and secret orders. He had ridden 700 miles looking for Fremont.
Fremont was so nearly out of his mind in such excitement that he forgot to post a sentry. He admitted in his report that this was only the second time during the expedition in which he did so. He stayed up late by the campfire reading his mail and mulling over Gillespie's news. He thought he heard a strange noise and so drew his pistol and checked out the horses. Finding nothing, he finally retired for the night.
Carson awoke soon afterward to the sound of a thud. Later he was to learn that the thud was the sound of an ax being buried into the back of Basil Lajeunesse's skull. The party was under attack! The Delaware Crane led the defense and was rewarded with a multitude of arrows. He fell mortally wounded but not before dispatching one of the enemy warriors. Godey and Carson and the others finally drove back the attackers with their firepower but not before a half-breed named Denny was also killed and another man seriously injured. The group then placed blankets on branches around the camp to foil any more arrows. But the Indians did not return that night. Fremont named the creek by the campsite Denny Creek in honor of the half-breed who died there. There's a marker today on Highway 140 commemorating the event of May 9, 1846.
Later the next morning Fremont's group gathered up their three dead comrades and traveled north to the main camp, which they reached that evening. "Before we had been two hours on the way," Fremont reported in his Memoirs, "many canoes appeared on the lake, coming from different directions and apparently making for a point where the trail came down to the shore. As we approached this point the prolonged cry of a loon told us that their scout was giving the Indians warning of our approach. Knowing that if we came to a fight the care of our dead men would prove a great hindrance and probably cost more lives, I turned sharply off into the mountain, and buried, or cached them in a close laurel thicket.With our knives we dug a shallow grave, and wrapping their blankets round them, left them among the laurels. There are men above whom the laurels bloom who did not better deserve them than my brave Delaware and Basil. I left Denny's name on the creek where he died."
The next morning the whole group broke camp and headed toward the top of Upper Klamath Lake. The Delaware pleaded for revenge, however, and Fremont allowed them to sneak back to the campsite and ambush the Indians, knowing that they would be coming to the campground as soon as the party left. Sagundai and Swanuk caught up with the group a few hours later, each proudly displaying scalps from their latest fray.
It is likely that the Indians who attacked the group on May 9th were the same Indians who were stalking Gillespie for at least 100 miles. It is also likely that they were of the Modoc tribe who resided below the Klamath area, probably in California. But Fremont thought they were local Klamaths and the group was determined for vengeance. And they took this vengeance out on the first Indian village they came across.
That village was at the mouth of the Williamson River near the northeast corner of the lake. Fremont sent Carson, Owens and a group of 10 to reconnoiter but they started the battle when Indians discovered them on the opposite side of the river from the village. Fremont's main party hurried to join Carson, forded the river and attacked the village. The bow and arrow was no match for Fremont's rifles and the Indians fled into the forest leaving 14 dead. Fremont then burned the village. During the next few days Fremont traveled southward along the east side of the lake, killing a few more Indians in isolated incidents. Fremont describes in detail one of these incidents in his Memoirs:
"In the heart of the wood we came suddenly upon an Indian scout. He was drawing his arrow to the head as we came upon him, and Carson attempted to fire, but his rifle snapped, and as he swerved away the Indian was about to let his arrow go into him; I fired, and in my haste to save Carson, failed to kill the Indian, but Sacramento, as I have said, was not afraid of anything, and I jumped him directly upon the Indian and threw him to the ground. His arrow went wild. Sagundai was right behind me, and as I passed over the Indian he threw himself from his horse and killed him with a blow on the head from his war-club. It was the work of a moment, but it was a narrow chance for Carson. The poisoned arrow would have gone through his body."
Fremont left Oregon's Klamath area on May 16th and returned to Mexican California, retracing his path down the Lost River to Tule Lake. By May 24th he was back at Lassen's Ranch. In a few weeks he would join the Bear Flag Revolt and in a few months the whole of California would be conquered. After the conquest he would be court-martialed for mutiny and other charges but would receive a presidential pardon. He would then go on to lead two more expeditions to the West, serve as California's first US Senator, campaign for the presidency of the United States, manage a gold-mining empire, return to the Army as a general during the Civil War, and serve as governor of Arizona territory. He died in New York on July 13, 1890 at the age of 77.
The Chinook Indian William Perkins served with Fremont's Mounted Battalion during the California conquest. On June 16, 1847 he received his discharge at Johnson's Ranch. It is not known if he ever returned to Oregon.
In 1933 a few people stumbled upon a shallow grave on the edge of the woods at a place called Harriman Lodge, which is about nine miles from the Denny Creek battle site. A bright blue bead and a rusty tin button among crumbling bones provided evidence of the three fatalities suffered by Fremont's party.
Soon after Frenont's visit to the Klamath Levi Scott, Jesse Applegate and others opened up the Southern Route to Oregon and many hostile incidents occurred between the emigrants and the local Indians. It is posssible that the Klamaths were seeking revenge for the massacre of their village by Fremont and his men. These hostilities culminated 27 years later with the Modoc War that was fought in the lava beds area south of Tule Lake.
Did Gillespie really deliver some secret orders to Fremont? If so, what kind of orders were they? We will speculate on these questions in an article called Fremont's Secret Orders in the Conquest of California section of this website.
Sources:
The Expeditions of John Charles Fremont, Volume II: The Bear Flag Revolt and the Court-Martial. Edited by Mary Lee Spence and Donald Jackson. The University of Illinois Press. Urbana, 1973.
John Charles Fremont, "The Conquest of California," The Century Magazine Vol. XLI, New York, April 1891.
Kit Carson: A Portrait in Courage by M. Morgan Estergreen. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK. 1982.
Buena Cobb Stone, "John C. Fremont: Explored Klamath 100 Years Ago," Portland Oregonian, 1946.
Veston Casey, "John C. Fremont's Visit to Klamath One of Earliest Recorded Incidents," Klamath Falls Herald & News, May 26, 1965.
Ruth King, "Memoirs of Fremont Give Vivid Rock Creek History," Klamath Falls Herald & News, May 8, 1933.
Ruth King, "New Evidence in 125-Year-Old Massacre of Indians by White Men'" Klamath Falls Herald & News, July 25, 1965.
