Death Valley:  First  Looks

by Len Wilcox
excerpt from 'Mojave Time'

That first sight of Death Valley is a shock: mountains can’t be that tall.  They rise from the flats like stone walls climbing far into the sky, an impenetrable barrier. The land can’t be this dry; it is incredibly barren, empty beyond words.  This is desert to the extreme, a land so devoid of water it pulls it from every visitor to use and reuse before it is lost to the hot, dry wind. The valley runs north and south, and it's a trap.  Getting in or out is difficult work.

It's hard to get a grip on it.  The Valley defies understanding, denies comprehension.

The sight of this incredible land is scary enough, when you’re riding in an air-conditioned, reliable vehicle; imagine riding a horse or walking into this valley.  Looking out the window, when you stare at the rugged and dry plains and hills, you absolutely know that an excursion out into this wilderness is dangerous business.  You can die here. Easily.  People still do; every so often the National Park Service loses a tourist or two to the heat and dehydration. Imagine, then, the Panamint and Timbesha Shoshone, and the Kawaiisu Paiutes, small tribes of small, dark, wiry men and women who made this valley their headquarters for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years.  They were here when the Spanish padres came in the 1700's, and when the Euro-American mountain men first explored the area in the early 1800's.  They greeted the Mormons, and watched the first gold rush. The Shoshone occupied much of what we call Death Valley, but they had neighbors.  Certain clans from the Paiute Nation lived there too.  These groups made Death Valley their winter homes and spent summers in the nearby mountains.  Archeological evidence shows that people have lived in this magnificent area for an estimated 10,000 years or more.

Telescope Peak in the Panamints, western border of Death Valley, from Panamint Playa

These first natives lived well, thanks to their strong orientation to the land.  The mesquites in the valley and the pinons in the mountains gave them their staples.  Down in the Valley, the ubiquitous mesquite grows wherever the water approaches the surface - and for such dry country, there are springs and water sources.  This is because of the Valley's depth.  It drains the nearby mountain ranges, whose winter snows provide a flow of underground water year-round.

So even if there is no rain, there is water, if a person knows where to look.  With water, the desert can flourish, and these native groups had a surprisingly abundant life in this dry land.  Petroglyph specialist David Whitley, who has exhaustively studied these and other native groups, calls them true environmental experts.  As he asks in his wonderful book The Art Of The Shaman, who but a true genius could find sufficient food to feed a family in a place such as Death Valley?

With mesquite beans plentiful in the spring - and dried or ground into flour for consumption all year long - and the annual pinon nut harvest in the fall, the first Americans had their basic stock for life.  With the seeds of native grasses and sunflowers, wild grapes, and squaw cabbage, they could have some variety; rabbits, squirrels, quail, ducks, and chuckwallas gave them meat, though less reliably. By moving to the mountains each spring, and back to the valley in the fall, they could avoid the worst of the seasons; by changing their homesites often, they could fit in with the environment without destroying it. A few farmed small plots of land to augment their supplies, making good use of the water coming out of the ground at the few springs. 

They had the essentials. They lived simply, with no need for elaborate structures because the weather was always moderate, even if a little warm. They were also in a land that no one else wanted, with few neighbors, so war or the threat of war was not as much a problem as it was for native groups in other areas. Their land was unwanted, that is, until the Gold Rush of 1849.

However, decades before the Americans found gold at Sutter’s mill, It was the Spanish who first intruded upon the quiet of the indigenous Death Valley people, at least those in the southern part of the Valley.  The Californians had too many horses, and the Santa Fe trade wanted them.  From there, the horses could be sent eastward to the young but booming United States.  While Spanish explorers and missionaries had traveled through this area in 1776, not many followed until around 1830 when traders and raiders made the long, hard trip from Los Angeles to Santa Fe by way of the southern tip of Death Valley.  This was the Death Valley Indians’ first contact with the European culture, and their introduction to the horse.  Hundreds of thousands of horses came east this way, some purchased, many stolen from the ranches near the coast.  It was a long, dangerous, dry journey, especially this stretch across the Mojave. 

This was the Spanish Trail, which later became the Mormon Road.  It was not well known among the Euro-Americans racing to the gold fields, but rumors persisted of a southern route that avoided that deadly, frozen crossing of the Sierras where the Donner party had suffered so unspeakably badly the year before.  The rumors of a southern passage to California reached Salt Lake, just in time to brighten the hopes of the 49'ers who had arrived at the Mormon settlements too late to cross the mountains in California before the snow.  The Argonauts who listened to the siren call of the desert crossing became what history and legend knows as the lost 49'er wagon train.

It was actually more than one wagon train - and a few of the travelers fared well enough by staying on the Old Spanish Trail.  Most did not, however.  The trail was long and hard on horseback; by wagon, it was virtually impossible.  No road had ever been cut - only once before had a wagon been taken over the Spanish Trail.  The Mormon Battalion had traveled this way, and Fremont had been through this area, so it wasn't unknown land, nor was it unknown that this was a very difficult journey.

The series of wagon trains probably consisted of one to two thousand people, many of whom turned around and returned to Salt Lake long before facing Death Valley. The largest group, the San Joaquin Company (later, the members called themselves the Sand Walking Company), was led by Jefferson Hunt, who had been up and down the trail before.  But, with 400 to 500 people, more than 100 wagons, and a thousand cattle and oxen, this time he was leading a large group, and forage would be a constant problem. 

Discord and problems were with them from the start, and the train quickly broke down into at least a dozen separate groups.  Some of these groups soon disbanded, and by the time the leaders were staring down into Death Valley, the train was scattered more than 200 miles along the trail.  It was early November of 1849 when the real problems started.  Rumors of a short cut and an east-west mountain range that didn't exist fractured the groups even more, and fueled by greed, individually, in pairs, and in bands, the gold seekers rushed straight into the 'Jaws of Hell'.

It was a rabble that descended into the Valley.  They were disorganized groups of exhausted men, women, and children.  They lost their wagons and belongings along the way, and nearly starved in the process.  Following disparate routes, all of them gradually faced the realization that the wall of the Panamint Mountains would stop their westward progress.  There was no east-west mountain range; they all ran north and south, forming a difficult barrier that must be crossed. All but a few of the emigrants eventually made their way back to the Old Spanish Trail to follow the path of those hundreds of thousands of horses.  The Death Valley Indians rescued some.  Others died, but ironically, only one of these first pioneers was known to die in Death Valley itself.

Two of the Argonauts – Lewis Manly and John Rogers – were traveling with a group of about thirty, including three families – the Bennetts, with three children, the Arcans, with an infant child, and the Wades, with three children.  With this group was Luis Nusbaumer, a German immigrant who recorded his experiences in a journal which surfaced over a hundred years later.  This journal gives us a glimpse into the horrible conditions the migrants endured during this long journey.

"December 24.  Twelve miles.  Our prospects again look dismal.  One of our oxen is about to die but we will not despair on the eve of the day when our Saviour was born.  We came about fifteen miles today through abominable alkali swamps and were compelled to camp without water and grass.  In fact, we had to go back quite a distance to get water for our supper.'

They slowly wandered south from Furnace Creek along the base of the Panamints. At a point of final desperation, in mid-January, Manly and Rogers decided to go on ahead to get help from the California settlements.  These two men made the difficult journey to settlements, then, heroically, immediately turned around to ride back and rescue the families that were relying on them.  It was mid-February when they finally returned to find the families, who had almost given up hope of ever seeing them again - they had been gone much longer than any of them had expected.  When the ragtag group finally found its way out, one or the other of the men – it isn’t known for certain which of them – looked back at the barren expanse and said, “Goodbye, Death Valley”, thus giving this remarkable place its name.

It must have astonished the Death Valley natives when these first Argonauts descended into their valley. One Native American who, years later, went by the name of George Hansen, was around ten years old when the Euros came.  He was interviewed about the event.

"The snow was on See-umba when a strange tribe of other people came down Furnace Creek wash, some walking slow like sick people and some in big wagons pulled by cows.  They stopped there by Furnace Creek water and rested.  When other Indians see them, they run away and tell all the other Indians at other camps.

"Our people were afraid of these strange people and these cows they had never seen before.  Never had they seen wagons or wheels or any of the things these people had."

The trials of the trail were severe, and the Indians were well aware of the suffering of these strange invaders.

"As they go, they drop things all along the trail, maybe they are worthless things, or too heavy to carry…. By and by they went away, all go over the Panamints and we never see them again.  The hearts of our people were heavy for these strange people, but we were afraid.  They had things that made fire with a loud noise and we had never seen these before.  After this happened we were afraid more of the strange ones would come."

Though it was a rabble, the 49'er emigrants were trail-hardened and road-wise after months of travel.  They were tough but undisciplined, disorganized bands that were caught up in the frenzy of free gold awaiting them.  This frenzy was a consuming fever that kept the Argonauts hunting for gold and silver even while they were staring death in the face in the barren expanse of the Mojave Desert – and they found it.

At least two of the lost 49’er groups found gold and silver.  Ironically, the first gold was found by a couple of Mormon missionaries who were on their way to the South Seas.  Another group found silver – lots of silver, in an almost pure state, pieces that were enticingly large and pure.  One of the Argonauts carried a chunk out with him, and later had it hammered into a gunsight for his rifle – thus creating the legend of the Lost Gunsight mine, a story that sent thousands rushing to the Mojave.  Some of the lost Argonauts swore they’d never return to this God-forsaken desert, no matter how much gold was here, but others thought constantly of the hidden wealth and made their way back when they could, on their own terms, conquer the land. When the gold rush faded away in the Sierras, thousands more made their way to the desert, and the land of the Shoshone and the Pauite ceased to be theirs.  Tens of thousands of Rainbow Seekers came to dig holes in the ground, build towns and railroads, and take the wealth of the land away. 

Now Death Valley has hotels, highways, an airstrip, and even golf courses.   But, beyond the few settlements, the wilderness remains.  The mines and camps tell stories of men and women long gone, men and women who tried but usually failed to remove the mineral wealth at a profit.  The cost of transportation and the lack of water were the real enemies of the miners; even when riches were found, these problems could not be overcome and a profit made.  That reality didn't keep them from trying in dozens of camps and thousands of mines and claims.

But the land rests peacefully now, recovering from the onslaught of miners and gold seekers who left when they finally learned it was not cost-effective to remove most of the minerals found here. 

Death Valley now has National Park status to protect the land from further development. This status protected the land, but it also completed the job the Rainbow Seekers began. The Timbesha Shoshone and other tribes who had lived here in harmony for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years were fully dispossessed when the Park Service took charge of the land.  They were allowed to live on 40 acres in the heart of the valley, but could no longer hunt or forage for the pinons and mesquite beans that were their mainstay in the old days.