by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing with the second and final part of this post on the recollections by Dr. Jonathan Huntington Lyman of his travels on the Old Spanish Trail with the Rowland and Workman Expedition of fall 1841, published in Thomas J. Farnham’s posthumous work, Life, Adventures and Travels in California with the ponderous subtitle of To Which Are Added the Conquest of California, Travels in Oregon, and History of the Gold Regions and issued in 1849, a year after Farnham’s death.
The writer informed readers that, in a section denoted “Upper California—River Colorado,” this being an area with which Farnham had no familiarity because his many travels in the west were concentrated to the north, “my friend, Doctor Lyman, of Buffalo [Lyman did not, however, reside there at any time in his life], who travelled from Santa Fé, in New Mexico, by way of the Colorado of the West, to Upper California, in the year 1841, has kindly furnished me with some of his observations, as well on that stream as the adjacent territories and the Indians inhabiting them.”
Farnham continued that the trek was “an eventful journey—through an unexplored country of untamed savages” and that Lyman’s “scientific attainments and interesting style amply qualify him to detail to his countrymen in a manner that would for ever connect his name with the border literature of America.”
This genre grew by leaps and bounds during this period and after, with increasing numbers of Americans and others (Germans, particularly, were fascinated with the American West) being educated and having leisure time to devour such tomes, but Farnham concluded, “to this task, I fear he can never be persuaded.”
A prior post here on Lyman and his travels included some references in Life, Adventures and Travels to these remembrances, focused largely on the Old Spanish Trail route, the landscape, and the ruins of indigenous settlements that the doctor and Farnham speculated was the mythical city of Cíbola.
After the rigors of traversing the 1,200-mile route over some two months, it was recorded that “Doctor Lyman suffered so many hardships and privations . . . that he, as well as his animals, barely lived to reach the green fields and pure waters of the Californian mountains.” This involved, moreover, “the sweet plains of the California sea-board” which was deemed “that most delightful of all lands—that paradise of the continent, if not of the world.”
We’ll look now at Farnham’s descriptions of native tribes and a particularly noteworthy anecdote related to indigenous persons and the Rowland and Workman Expedition. Pertaining to some the Ute Indians, Farnham quoted Lyman as recording,
The great Yutas tribe is divided into two tribes . . . the Taos Yutas [near the northern New Mexico town]. . . and the Timpanigos Yutas [in northern Utah near modern Provo] . . . these two families speak the same language, have the same manners and customs, and indulge in the same bitter hatred towards each other. A few years ago they were one people . . . the Timpanigos Yutas are a noble race, very friendly to Americans; and brave and hospitable. They look upon their brethren of the Taos mountains with contempt on account of their thieving propensities, and their treachery in robbing and often murdering the solitary wanderer who may chance to come into their country.
It is worth noting, as Tom Paine pointed out in his talk on his relative, that Lyman went alone into their lands and, apparently, was astounded that it was dangerous to do so. We can also add that the Workman family resided in Taos during this period and William Workman, a settler there in 1825, was an experienced fur trapper, merchant and liquor manufacturer with a full understanding of the indigenous people of that region, as opposed to the greenhorn physician. It was added that the San Juan River was a dividing line between what Lyman said were tribes of about 10,000 persons each and who were largely hunters and gatherers with some raising of maize.
Another comment about the “Timpanigos Yutas,” or Sanpete, was that their inclination to the American was such that they “are delighted to have him in their camp” while “they manifest the greatest contempt for the New Mexicans.” Lyman added that “I travelled through their country with one of their head chiefs, named Wah-cah-rah,” this being the great Walkara, or Walker, who some chroniclers account as one of the greatest horse thieves in the Americas with some 3,000 animals stolen from California—many in greater Los Angeles as the Utes used Cajon Pass as a conduit to the bounteous herds found there.
With respect to the “Nabajos,” or Navajo Indians, Lyman opined that they “are the most civilized of all the wild Indians of North America,” though one wonders how he would know that unless he somehow had contract with all such tribes. He cited their growing of many crops, including maize, tobacco and many vegetables while “they have large droves of magnificent horses, many of which will compare with the finest horses of the States, both as to appearance and value.” While also raising some mules, the doctor recorded that the Navajo “usually supply themselves with these animals by marauding expeditions into New Mexico and the Californias.”
It was added that “these Indians are constantly at war with white people, and attack them whenever they meet them,” though this was followed by the observation that “mere animosity and Indian [war] whoops form a poor defence against the rifles of our trappers.” As to the Latinos in New Mexico, it was asserted that the Navajo quickly violated peace treaties by marauding and theft, with Lyman recording that “so contemptible is the cowardice of those New Mexicans” when it came to agreements for peace that were so blatantly honored in the breach. Moreover, “these repeated acts of treachery seems [sic] to have no effect in arousing the courage and indignation of the New Mexicans” and it was remarked:
They are, in fact, morally and physically beneath even the Indian, and more unfit to rank among the civilized races. They are more treacherous, more cowardly and more despicable in every way. They cross themselves and adore the Virgin, at the same breath driving a concealed dagger to your heart; and pray God for the peace of your soul, while they kick you, because in your death-struggles you don’t lie conveniently still for them to rifle your pockets.
Concerning the Paiute tribes, which Lyman encountered along “the northern banks of the Colorado, the region of Severe [Sevier] river” and desert sections of Utah, Farnham noted that the doctor referred to them as “Paiuches,” while adding that some writers referred to them as “Shoshonies,” which Lyman said resided “a few degrees [latitude] to the northward,” though “very much like the Paiuches in character.”
Lyman went into great detail about the Paiutes, briefly noting their spiritual beliefs, which, to his understanding, meant that “their life [was] one of brutal sensuality, and death a supposed annihilation,” while he recorded that there was no “mutual affection of parents and children, so universally observed in the brute.” He noted the gathering of grass seeds for the making of mush, but deemed that they were “too stupid and improvident to make provision for the remainder of the year” and that “they are often in the most wretched condition of want.
The account of the Paiutes, slaves of other tribes, some trappers, and New Mexican Latinos with 10-15 year olds said to fetch from $50 to $100, went on:
Without knowledge, without shelter, without raiment, food, water, fit for man, they are born and live and die among those terrible deserts, the most miserable of men, yet contented with their lot . . . Their filth in their native state can scarcely be conceived by one who has not beheld it.
The Paiutes were accounted to be “very cowardly,” though some detail was provided concerning bows and arrows made and used by them. As to their houses, Lyman remarked that they “are of the rudest character” as “some of them are mere holes dug in the sand-hills,” while “others consist of sticks and branches or brush and trees piled up conically, and covered with dirt.” These latter were in villages “and stand huddled closely together,” but it was averred that “the interior of these huts is filthy beyond description.”
With respect to the Rowland and Workman Expedition and an incident involving indigenous persons, Lyman recalled through Farnham that the Paiutes “were the innocent cause of a great deal of suffering to myself and two companions.” What was meant by this was that a quartet of genízaros, or detribalized Indians from Abiquiú, from whence the party set forth on their trek along the Old Spanish Trail to greater Los Angeles (a highlight of the conference was a field trip to the town), seized a family of three Indians on the shore of the Colorado River. The doctor added that “the other Americans of our company would not aid” Lyman and his two unnamed companions as they tried to get the natives freed.
Given this inaction, the account went on, “our humanity raised such prejudices against us, that dissensions arose” which compelled the trio to separate from the larger group “and to prosecute our journey ‘on our own hook.” Even those Anglos who were “as desirous of ourselves for the liberation of the captives” were “too discreet, [and] remained with the Mexicans.”
Therefore, Lyman and his compatriots spent more than half the trip, or some forty days, on their own “and endured the most excessive fatigue, and deprivations of food and water,” which could have been avoided had they followed the example of the other expedition members “and been guided by their greater experience over those dreadful wastes.”
The doctor continued,
As it was, however, we travelled many successive days along the Colorado, over sandy deserts, subsisting on a daily allowance of a few mouthsful [sic] of thin mush, and a little nauseous and bitter water wherewith to wet out mouths once in twenty-four or forty-eight hours. No druggist ever compounded a draught more disgusting than the green, slimy or brackish waters which we were compelled to drink Finally our little stock of provisions was consumed to the last grain; and starvation was staring us in the face; but relief was not denied us; the sight of the wooded mountains [the San Bernardino and San Gabriel ranges] inspired us with new strength and courage, and we soon fell in with a river [the Mojave] of pure waters coming down from them; more delicious than the streams of olden fable; and our thankfulness and delight—who can measure it? It was ecstasy—such feelings have no words.
The famished and thirsty men gorged on “rich meats and fruits there abounding” and did so by allowing that “prudence was cast to the winds,” though as was so often the case in these situations where severe want was followed by abandonment of caution, “ere long we suffered bitterly from our imprudence.”
Then, Lyman recounted, “we were not a little gratified” to discover “on arriving at the settlements on the sea-shore” that after he and his companions left the group to go on their own, “our countrymen . . . secretly in the night time loosed the Paiuche captives and sent them to their desert homes.”
Lyman’s recollections to Farnham are certainly remarkable and take on, as published, an authority as a first-person, primary source account of the Rowland and Workman Expedition to a degree of detail and dramatic retelling that stands apart from surviving accounts of that 1841 migration over the Old Spanish Trail to greater Los Angeles. It bears noting, however, that much of what the good doctor related was based on only a cursory acquaintance of a very short duration when it came to his descriptions of the several indigenous tribes mentioned in his account.
Beyond this, who knows how much embellishment was added for color, drama and an eye to an audience? Then, there are the common harsh judgments made about a people living in some of the most forbidding lands on the American continent and these based on biases that did not seem to account for those formidable conditions. Lyman’s conclusions are hardly unique, but they are a reminder that it is all too easy to cast aspersions on people who look, sound and live far differently than the commentator.
In fact, it is not that far a stretch from the physician’s perspectives to those that so dehumanized indigenous persons that capture for slavery, forced marches on trails of tears for resettlement in unfamiliar lands, and unrelenting wars and genocide were rationalized and justified by Americans overspreading the continent for the next half-century or more.
This is not a judgment on Lyman specifically, so much as it is a reminder of the conditions on the continent often embraced by the term “manifest destiny” and which also applied, within several years of the expedition, to the American seizure of Mexican California and the issues that have reverberated in its wake to the present.
In 2026, the nation will commemorate, through the America250 project, the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The ideals of that foundational document for American democracy, not to mention the Constitution, Bill of Rights and others, should be measured against the realities that have followed from 1776 to our era. An honest exploration of those two-and-a-half centuries will be undertaken by the Homestead as part of its programming during that year and this post may certainly be considered a precursor of sorts.