Apr 16, 2019 - Sale 2505

Sale 2505 - Lot 39

Price Realized: $ 5,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
"WE GOT NINE DOWN ON THE SPOT AND GOT THE WHITE MAN'S SCALP" (CALIFORNIA.) Small archive of Davis family letters, including two from the Gold Rush and one from the overland trail. 19 items including 16 letters; various sizes and conditions, minor wear and soiling. With 9 original postal covers. California and elsewhere, 1849-1915, bulk before 1864
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Small archive of correspondence from the Davis family, including two letters written by Hiram Davis from the California gold fields, and a letter written to Hiram by his cousin while crossing the plains in a wagon train in 1849. One of the California letters describes a surprise assault on an Indian encampment, in revenge for the scalping death of a miner.
Writing on 10 June 1849 from "Platte River ten miles above the crossing one hundred and forty miles above Forte Kearny fore hundred miles from St. Joseph," P.A. Dorry relates his experiences crossing the continent overland: "We scroste [i.e., crossed] the Mosouri River on the twety firste of May at the Savania landing was fore teen days cuming to Forte Kearney which is beste knone by the name of Childs [Chiles]. I saw our old campe ground, the plase . . . maid me feal very sollim. Emerson's sod house is still standing. They have finished the oald commissary mud house and are bilding a large frame. . . . Wee have saw and paste [i.e., passed] a bout one thousand wagons. We lay by to day to wash and sun our cloathing and about 80 wagons paste. We have not been out of site of wagons since we started. . . . The rode from St. Joseph to Grand Island is a perfecte grave yarde, dire and colry [i.e., cholera]. Wee saw one man yesterday lying by the side of the rode dying with the colory. . . . Wee saw now Indians & wee have learnte that they is five hundred Sioux encamped ten miles above."
This letter may have inspired Hiram, who writes back home from Shasta City in 1851 and 1852, describing life in the wilds of California: "I wrote to you from Sacramento City where we were. We have been in this country three months or 16 miles above here digging money, and are here now making an out fit for Salmon & Scotts Rivers or beond the Chesta Butes where there has been sum new & rich discoverys. . . . It is not worthwhile for me to say what I intend doing, for no man can tell what he will do in this country. But there is one thing I do know. . . . I shall stay until I make sum money. There are 11 of us gowing together and if there is enny thing to be fownd we will have it. . . . The Indians have stolen 800 dollars worth of property from us, cattle, blankets, provisions, &c. I cannot give you an idea of those brutes, more than they are worse than the wolf and I expect we will have more towsling with them before we get through. We have raked them down once for killing a white man. . . . [We] took a ranch of forty bucks, followed them all night and until 10 oclock in the morning, when we came in sight of their huts and got within 50 yards without being noticed. We had a verry lively time of it for sum little time but they could not stand it. We got nine down on the spot and got the white man's scalp, took one stolen horse, sundry other articles, fiered their camps and left." Hiram was still in search of his fortune the following year, writing on 21 March 1852: "Our dwelling is made of pine logs with boards nailed on the cracks with stone laid against the wall on the in side of the wall and the roof left open which constitute the chimney. We are at work 2 hundred yards on the creek. We have 11 ft to go to the bed rock and the last 8 days five of us have made 20 dollars."
Other family letters in the grouping are written from Oregon, Nebraska, and elsewhere. Most of the letters are addressed to family patriarch Wade Hampton Davis (1796-1877) of Nodaway, MO and his daughter Martha Jane Davis Long (1828-1910), who later moved west to Idaho and Nebraska. An 1850 letter from Hiram's brother Smithen H. Davis notes "Hiram & James have started for the El Dorado of the West. . . . I wish them all good luck, which is possible but not probbable." A June 1851 letter discusses a cholera outbreak in Vermont. Brother James Wade Davis writes in September 1851 with news from Oregon City, OR: "We have come down for the purpose of getting an outfit for California. We intend starting there in sum 8 or 12 days. . . . We will take a small pack of mules and a heavy stock of beef cattle." Daughter Mary J. Davis writes on 11 December [1851?] with news of Hiram: "He says thare is no danger of Indians thare now, but it is the opinion of people that they will wake things yet in the spring." A fine family group of Western emigration letters, with particularly dramatic content on the Gold Rush.