of pamphlets issued during the gold rush. Henry R. Wagner (Charles L. Camp, ed.), The Plains and the Rockies (San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1937), P- 89. Staples un- doubtedly carried one of these works as a guide. See Fremont, op. cit., p. 13.
6. "In 1846 Congress allowed the War Department to garrison selected spots [on the overland route] for military posts. The first of these, near the head of Grand Island in the Platte, was 310 miles from Fort Leavenworth and was called Fort Kearny, after Stephen Watts Kearny, first lieutenant-colonel of the dragoon regiment." Paxson, op. cit., p. 338. Colonel Kearny, with Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke, led five companies of dragoons, each with its own uniform color of horses from the Missouri River along the old Oregon Trail to the South Pass. Fort Kearny saw much of the historical pageantry connected with the conquest and gold discovery in California.
7. "June 17 [1846].— We reached the ford of the Platte about two o'clock, P. M., and ascertained by an examination that, although the river was still rising, our wagons could pass over without much difficulty." Edwin Bryant, What I Saw in California: Being the Journal of a Tour . . .in the Years 1846, 184J (New York, 1848), p. 94. Bryant, in 1849, was again on his way west. He had left the Wakarusa about eleven days before the Staples party, with a train of 170 pack mules, and now was probably far ahead. Isaac Jones Wistar, Autobiography (Philadelphia: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Bi- ology, 1937), p. ss; Elizabeth Page, Wagons West, a Story of the Oregon Trail (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc.), p. 128.
8. Scott's Bluff was about a day's journey from Chimney Rock. This elevated and re- markable formation is said to have derived its name from a noted mountaineer named Scott in the employ of the American Fur Company. With a party of five or six trappers he was returning by boat down the Platte to the settlements when he was seized with a disease which rendered him helpless. His companions deserted him and left him in the boat to die. Returning to their employers, they reported that Scott had died and that they had buried him on the banks of the Platte. The next year a skeleton wrapped in blankets was discovered by a party of hunters. From the clothing and papers the remains were identified as those of Scott. After being deserted by his men, he had recovered suf- ficient strength to leave the boat and had wandered into the bluffs where his bones were found and which now bear his name. Bryant, op. cit., p. 104. A town called Scottsbluff now occupies the site.
9. Fort John was one mile south of Fort Platte upon the Laramie River. It was a station of the American Fur Company. For further information about these forts see Leroy R. Hafen and F. M. Young, Fort Laramie and the Pageant of the West, 18^4-1890 (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1938).
10. "Fort Laramie, or Tort John,' as it is otherwise called, has been the principal trad- ing-post of the American Fur Company. Its distance from Independence [by the Bryant route] is 672 miles ... It is situated on Laramie River, near its junction with the Platte, and is surrounded by an extensive plain . . . 'The Fort' ... is a quadrangle, the walls of which are constructed of adobes . . . The area enclosed is . . . about half or three-fourths of an acre of ground. Its walls are surmounted by watch-towers, and the gate is defended by two brass swivels. On three sides of the court, next to the walls, are various offices, store-rooms, and mechanical shops. The other side is occupied by the main building of the Fort, two stories in height." Bryant, op. cit., p. 109. Rufus Sage, in his Rocky Moun- tain Life; or Startling Scenes and Perilous Adventures in the Far West (Boston, 1857), p. 96, states that Fort John was a mile south of Fort Laramie and that "between these two posts a strong opposition is maintained in regard to the business of the country," Fort Laramie, 337 miles west of Fort Kearny, was built in 1835 [1834] by William Sub- lette and Robert Campbell and was then called Fort William. Later it passed into other control and was rechristened Fort Laramie for one Laramie who was killed there by the
