We overtook similar wagons, heavily laden with goods bound for Santa Fe.  Most of the drivers were shrewd; all of them civil.  They were of various nationalities; some comfortably clad, others in tatters, and a few in picturesque threadbare costumes of Spanish finery.  Those hardy wayfarers gave us much valuable information regarding the route before us, and the Indian tribes we should encounter.  We were now averaging a distance of about two and a half miles an hour, and encamping nights where fuel and water could be obtained.

Early on the nineteenth of May we reached Colonel Russel’s camp on Soldiers’ Creek, a tributary of the Kansas River.  The following account of the meeting held by the company after our arrival is from the journal of Mr. Edwin Bryant, author of “What I Saw in California”: 

May 19, 1846.  A new census of our party was taken this morning; and it was found to consist of 98 fighting men, 50 women, 46 wagons, and 350 cattle.  Two divisions were made for convenience in travelling.  We were joined to-day by nine wagons from Illinois belonging to Mr. Reed and Messrs. Donner, highly respectable and intelligent gentlemen with interesting families.  They were received into the company by a unanimous vote.

Our cattle were allowed to rest that day; and while the men were hunting and fishing, the women spread the family washings on the boughs and bushes of that well-wooded stream.  We children, who had been confined to the wagon so many hours each day, stretched our limbs, and scampered off on Mayday frolics.  We waded the creek, made mud pies, and gathered posies in the narrow glades between the cottonwood, beech, and alder trees.  Colonel Russell was courteous to all; visited the new members, and secured their cheerful indorsement of his carefully prepared plan of travel.  He was at the head of a representative body of pioneers, including lawyers, journalists, teachers, students, farmers, and day-laborers, also a minister of the gospel, a carriage-maker, a cabinet-maker, a stonemason, a jeweller, a blacksmith, and women versed in all branches of woman’s work.

The government of these emigrant trains was essentially democratic and characteristically American.  A captain was chosen, and all plans of action and rules and regulations were proposed at a general assembly, and accepted or rejected by majority vote.  Consequently, Colonel Russell’s function was to preside over meetings, lead the train, locate camping ground, select crossings over fordable streams, and direct the construction of rafts and other expedients for transportation over deep waters.

A trumpet call aroused the camp at dawn the following morning; by seven o’clock breakfast had been cooked and served, and the company was in marching order.  The weather was fine, and we followed the trail of the Kansas Indians, toward the Big Blue.

At nooning our teams stood in line on the road chewing the cud and taking their breathing spell, while families lunched on the grass in restful picnic style.  Suddenly a gust of wind swept by; the sky turned a greenish gray; black clouds drifted over the face of the sun; ominous sounds came rumbling from distant hills, and before our effects could be collected and returned to cover, a terrific thunderstorm was upon us.