soon in prime condition to exchange for other broken-down stock. This business was a source of great profit to many traders located in Wyoming.

That year the last cavalcade passed over the trail in September and was hurrying forward to find a location in Oregon before the winter set in, when an event occurred which horrified the civilized world. It was known as the Whitman massacre. This occurred at Waiilatpui, Oregon, where Dr. Whitman had built a school for the Indian children. The conditions which led up to this wholesale butchery have never been satisfactorily settled. The announcement of the treaty of 1846 was a death-blow to the Hudson Bay Company. That monopoly, which was chartered in 1670, had occupied the Columbia and its tributaries since its consolidation with the Northwest Company in 1821, and the last-named company succeeded the Astorians in 1813. It had protected the fur interest by keeping white people out, and had raised half-breeds to catch the fur-bearing animals. The insolence of this monopoly was manifested when John Jacob Astor founded Astoria. He was driven out of the country by the connivance of British fur traders, and all other American traders following him met the same fate, including Nathaniel J. Wyeth. When American settlers went to Oregon, the servants of the Hudson Bay Company pointed out to the Indians that these people had come to take away their lands, destroy the beaver, and eventually to drive them from their homes. The consequences were that the natives looked with suspicion on Americans and were ready and ripe at all times to do them injury. Added to the prejudice for which the English were directly responsible, was the superstitious belief of the savages that the new people who came into the country were the cause of diseases in epidemic form which afflicted the tribes. On the 29th of November, 1847, the massacre occurred. Fifteen were killed, including Dr. Whitman and wife. Fifty white persons were captured, many of them women who suffered worse than death. Let the English residents of Oregon at that time explain the massacre as they will, the facts are

that the treaty of 1846, which conceded Oregon to the United States, had much to do with the butchery of Dr. Whitman and his associates. The news of the treaty had a depressing effect on all Englishmen in that country, and while it is barely possible that they did not directly plan the murders, they stood aloof and allowed the devilish work to go on. The news of the murder of Dr. Whitman and his associates aroused deep feeling throughout the states, and during the spring of 1848, Oregon was the cry. That year large numbers of emigrants passed through Wyoming with the avowed purpose of taking possession of the country in spite of Indians, Englishmen or any other opposing force, and from early in the spring until late in the summer the road to Oregon was lined with trains which were so numerous as scarcely to be out of sight of each other. Those were great days for the traders along the Overland trail. They made their own prices on everything they had to sell, and the emigrants were glad to buy regardless of extortion.

At the time of which I write, the Oregon and California roads were one and the same across Wyoming. Occasionally a party would cross the Laramie Plains and go west through Bridger Pass and join the regular road on Green River, but this route was not yet a popular one. The main emigrant trail for both California and Oregon was up the Platte, through the South Pass, and thence on to Fort Hall. The Oregon road turned to the right, and the California route bore off to the left. Fremont made a map of the country which was published by the government in 1845, and this was much sought after by both those going to Oregon and to California. This route through the South Pass over to Fort Hall was first located by Captain Bonneville in 1832. It is true that other trappers and traders made the trip before Captain Bonneville, but over a trail of great length, winding in and out. Bonneville laid out a direct road, which was followed by other trappers and traders, and finally by Rev. Samuel Parker in 1835 and by Dr. Whitman, Rev. H. H. Spalding and their wives in 1836, and it became the road to Oregon.

In 1848 emigration to California was greatly increased over the preceding year, and Oregon drew its full share from the great trail. The trading post at Fort Laramie that season was a picturesque western settlement, emigrants coming and going almost every hour in the day and every day in the week. Wagons from each of the arriving trains had to be mended, horses and ox teams which had given out were being traded off for better animals, and stores replenished. The emigrants were not backward in denouncing the traders for overcharging them for almost every article they were compelled to purchase. The picture presented was rather a wild one, for on every side were blanketed Indians who watched the going and coming of the palefaces with as much interest as the noble red man is capable of showing. The brisk days of 1848, which excited so much attention in Wyoming, were nothing as compared with the year that is to follow. The slow-going ox teams of the past are largely to give way to powerful horse and mule teams, and the slow, easy-going emigrant on his way west in search of land must stand aside and give the gold prospector a chance.

Now we come to the most important year in the history of the Overland trail, which was 1849. The discovery of gold in California created throughout the east intense excitement, and as a result every road leading to the golden state was filled with hurrying crowds. Many took ships and went around Cape Horn. Others went by the way of the Isthmus of Panama, and still others came by the way of the Overland trail and consequently passed through Wyoming. This class of emigrants were better outfitted than any who had previously crossed the mountains. Large wagons drawn by fine horse and mule teams were the rule. There was no plodding by the way. Each outfit was hurried forward, and there seemed to be a grand struggle as to who should get to the gold fields first. Between May and October, some say 30,000, others 100,000, of these gold seekers passed through Wyoming. These were the "forty-niners," and they composed the grand army that rushed to Califor