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Frémont had met, and hired Joe Walker on his 2nd Expedition in 1844. In his 1845 Report to Congress, Frémont wrote that Joe Walker was... ...a man possessing great and intimate knowledge of the Indians, with an extraordinary firmness and decision of character...a western men, animated with the spirit of exploratory enterprise which characterizes that people...has more knowledge of these parts than any man I know...celebrated as one of the best and bravest leaders who have ever been in the country. Frémont not only named the pass after Joseph Walker, but also the Walker River and Walker Lake. And of Walker on his 3rd expedition, Frémont wrote. November 1845: I now divided the party, giving to Mr. [Edward] Kern [topographer] the charge of the main body to follow down and survey the Humboldt River and its valley to the termination in what was called "the sink."...Thence to continue on along the eastern foot of the Sierra to a lake which I have given the name of Walker, who was to be his guide on this survey. I had engaged Mr. Walker for guide in this part of the region to be explored, with which, and the southern part of the California Mountain he was well acquainted. It was actually Theodore Talbot who was put in command of the southern division; Edward Kern was the topographer; and Joseph Walker was the hired guide. So, why would Joe Walker have
such a contrary opinion of Frémont? Allan Nevins, DeWitt Clinton professor of history, Columbia University: "Professional assiduity, unusual self-control, readiness to endure any amount of monotonous hard work, deprivation, and exhaustion--these were traits of Frémont that we should not allow his many adventures, and the picturesqueness of the scenes in which he moved to obscure. It is significant that Carson, like that other expert frontiersman Alex Godey, regarded him with deferential respect. To both he was as efficient a man of action as they could desire--and in addition a scientist." Which brings us to it: "Facts more terrible than thunder! Lightning, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions! Hear! Hear! Great news! War! Capt. Frémont of the United States Topographical Corps with sixty or more mounted riflemen has fortified himself on the heights between San Juan and Don Joaquin Gomez' rancho..."
He continued his survey north as far as Klamath Lake, where, a month later, he was overtaken by marine Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie, sent from Washington by President Polk to find him. Gillespie, traveling in disguise, was carrying "secret orders" to Frémont. Just what those orders were, no one will ever know.
It should be noted here that, while Frémont held the rank of Captain (by double brevet) in the United States Corps of Topographical Engineers, the men of the company were civilians--hired as guides, voyageurs, and hunters. Frémont returned to the Sacramento Valley immediately and got things going in the Bear Flag Revolt at Sonoma. The war had, by then, started in Texas. He resigned his commission with the army, and was commissioned Major by Commodore Robert F. Fighting Bob Stockton of the U. S. Navy, and was ordered to form a battalion of mounted riflemen to complement Stockton's naval forces. The men of his expedition, and most American immigrants enlisted. A few months later the Mexican troops capitulated to, now, Col. Frémont at Couenga, (The Capitulation of Cahuenga) bringing the territory of California into the Union. There lay the pieces on the great chessboard before me with which the game for an empire had been played…I was but a pawn, and like a pawn I had been pushed forward to the front at the opening of the game. Frémont But, by then, Joseph Walker was long gone. Walker had already been on his own way to California when Frémont encountered and hired him to guide a contingent of his survey party down the Humboldt River while Frémont explored though central Nevada, and then, after a short rendezvous at Walker Lake, to guide them south to Walker Pass, while Frémont crossed Truckee Pass. After Walker left Frémont at Gabilan Peak, he traveled on to Los Angeles with his nephew Frank McClellen. In the late spring they arrived in Taos driving a herd of over 500 horses. Joseph Walker's first foray into California in 1833 was as leader of a trapping and trading venture as part of Bonneville's expedition. He had not been directed to travel to the Pacific: his orders had been to explore and trap the area around the Great Salt Lake--Mexican Territory until 1848, and part of California until the Sierra Nevada range was established as the eastern boundary between the to-be State of California and Utah Territory in 1849. Washington Irving, in his account of Capt. Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville's expedition, describes it thus:
Historian Alan Nevins notes, "[Walker] did almost everything else except that." Frederick S. Dellenbaugh said "Walker and his forty men started July 24, 1833...and there pursued a career toward California which emulated the Forty Thieves in the stirring story of Ali Baba." "Joe Walker with his forty land pirates" was the descriptive used by Alpheus H. Favor (the group included the master horse thieves "Old Bill" Williams and Joe Meek). After traveling down the Mary's [Humboldt] River and crossing the Sierra Nevada, the Walker enterprise devolved into a grand debauch of drinking, bear-baiting, and gambling at Monterey. Joe Meek, a member of the expedition, described it as, Some punkin! Meek's relation of the route after leaving "Ogden's [Humboldt] River" included "Pyramid Lake" and "Trucker's [Truckee] River," but he was relating this many years later, after these names had been applied to maps. Pyramid was certainly not the "swampy" lake Meek referred to. Frémont also confused the East Fork of the Carson River with the Truckee River--he called it the Salmon Trout River--in 1844. Meek's relation does not allude to Yosemite. Irving continues:
Favor, does, however, point out that "these lawless adventurers brought back information concerning the country beyond the Sierra, the people who inhabited the Pacific slope, and the resources of the country beyond the desert and of the Sierra." One accomplishment of the Walker expedition that
Bonneville did later acknowledge was the discovery
of the nonexistence of the fabled Buenaventura
River. But information gathered by early
mountain and basin travelers (including also Peter
Ogden and Jedediah Smith) did not circulate
widely--as Strangelove remarks of the Doomsday
Machine in the Kubrick classic, "What good is it if
no one knows about it?" Joseph Walker has been credited as the first white man to see Yosemite Valley. The route and daily events of Walker's trip to California was recorded by the clerk of the expedition Zenas Leonard (see bibliography below). The route across the Sierra leading to this point of discovery has been a subject of debate over the years. A careful reading of the Leonard journal with regard to the miles traveled between dates, and the scenes recorded, make it highly unlikely that on his western descent from the mountains Walker ever saw, or was even near, Yosemite Valley. All of these proposed routes taking Walker to a view of Yosemite Valley, and to the Merced or Tuolumne Groves of the Sequoiadendron, have been developed since his late 19th Century credit as discoverer. They have, therefore, been developed by backtracking from that point of possible discovery. But these proposed routes all lead to an impossibly too distant (in miles per day) starting point south of where Walker left the Humboldt River. A reasonable starting point in considering the actual route of Walker's 1833 Sierra crossing is found in F. N. Fletcher's 1929 Early Nevada--the Period of Exploration. The descriptive parallels found in the record a similar crossing of the Sierra in 1841 of the Bartleson-Bidwell-(Chiles) Party, as published in John Bidwell's Echoes of the Past, are also interesting. See bibliography below.
Did Joseph Walker ever actually make the
statement that Frémont was morally
and physically, the most complete coward I ever
knew...I would call him a woman, if it were
not casting an unmerited reproach on the sex?
You will note Camped at Yosemite, November 13, 1833 carved on the stone--a date by which the party had already arrived at the tidewater of the Pacific. Note Aug. 2011: The actual Walker route will be revealed in A Way Across the Mountain: The 1833 Sierra Crossing of Joseph R. Walker by Scott Stine. On the other side of the bay is the little-known historic site of the 1846 adobe of Lansford W. Hastings--Montezuma House. *Joe Walker always signed
his name "Joseph R. Walker."
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In
short, an opera buffa affair that
occurred near Mission San Juan Bautista.
It began on March 5th, 1846 when, after
having given consent for Capt.
Frémont's topographical expedition
to recruit his animals in California,
General José Castro changed his
mind and ordered Frémont out of the
district. Frémont was insulted, and
refusing to be driven out, removed to a
defensible mountain top, raised the
American Flag, and grumbled.
Castro, with 400 troops and cannon paraded
around the mission for three days and
issued bombastic proclamations. On the
third day, the flagpole fell down, and
Frémont came down from the
mountain, camped a couple of miles from
Castro, and the next day crossed over
Pacheco Pass into the San Joaquin
Valley.
Frémont
later said:
Captain
Frémont [of the Army Corps
of Topographical Engineers] having
been sent originally on a peaceful
[exploring] mission to the West
by way of the Rocky Mountains, it had
become necessary to give him warning of
the new state of affairs and the
designs of the President
[Polk]...The officer
[Gillespie] who had charge of
the dispatches from the Secretary of
the Navy to Commodore Sloat [at
Mazatlan], and who had purposely
been made acquainted with their import,
made his way to Captain
Frémont...Being absolved from
any duty as an explorer, Captain
Frémont was left to his duty as
an officer in the service of the United
States, with the further authoritative
knowledge that the government intended
to take California.
To
have this lake [Salt Lake]
properly explored, and all its secrets
revealed, was the grand scheme of the
captain [Bonneville] for the
present year...This momentous
undertaking he confided to his
lieutenant, Mr. Walker, in whose
experience and ability he had great
confidence.
I
took this photograph of Joe Walker's grave and
headstone at the old cemetery near Martinez, CA.
Martinez is more famous as the birthplace of
Joltin' Joe Dimagio. You have to collect the
key to the gate from the downtown police station.
The peaceful, oak-studded, cemetery overlooks the
Bay of Suisun just inside the Strait of Carquinez,
near the confluence of the Sacramento and San
Joaquin Rivers.
Frémont,
May 20, 1844--We
met a band of Utah Indians,
headed by a well-known chief,
who had obtained the American
or English name of Walker, by
which he is quoted and well
known. They were all mounted,
armed with rifles, and used
their rifles well. The chief
had a fusee, which he carried
slung, in addition to his
rifle. They were journeying
slowly towards the Spanish
trail, to levy their usual
tribute upon the great
California caravan. They were
robbers of a higher order than
those of the desert. They
conducted their depredations
with form, and under the color
of trade and toll, for passing
through their country.
Instead
of attacking and killing, they
affect to purchase--taking the
horses they like, and giving
something nominal in return.
The chief was quite civil to
me. He was personally
acquainted with his namesake,
our guide [Joseph R.
Walker], who made my name
known to him. He knew of my
expedition of 1842; and, as
tokens of friendship, and
proof that we had met,
proposed an interchange of
presents. We had no great
store to choose out of; so he
gave me a Mexican blanket, and
I gave him a very fine one
which I had obtained at
Vancouver.
Scott
Stine is a geomorphologist and
paleoclimatologist in Geography and
Environmental Studies at California
State University, East Bay and is the
author of two forthcoming books,
A Way Across the Mountain: The
1833 Sierran Crossing of Joseph R.
Walker, and The Once and
Future Mono Basin: An Atlas Through
Time.
