response. Hull promised to do what he could but rejected the idea that he mount the whole expedition himself, a reaction not unlike Lieutenant Kern's at Fort Sutter after the arrival of the Forlorn Hope. Hull insisted that if he agreed to outfit the entire operation during wartime, bureaucrats back at the War Department would balk at the expense. He was polite but firm. 'His sympathy was that of a man and gentleman,' Reed recalled.
So Reed turned to charity. Local leaders called a public meeting, and the men of the town gathered in the saloon of the best hotel. People asked Reed to speak, but when he rose to make his appeal the gravity of the moment overwhelmed him, and he was unable to go on. James Dunleavy, a Methodist minister who had also come west earlier that year, stepped in to take Reed's place. Trained by the weekly rigors of the pulpit, Dunleavy appealed to the crowd's basic empathy, describing what he guessed was the sad and deteriorating condition of the emigrants. He also mentioned his own journey, which was probably crucial in giving the San Franciscans, most of whom had arrived by sea, some sense of the rigors faced by overland emigrants.
It was a test of the mettle of the little community, and the response proved their pride. Collection jars filled with eight hundred dollars, and sailors on two American ships in the harbor pitched in three hundred more. Local leaders guessed that more money would come in soon. 'This speaks well for Yerba Buena,' one of the newspapers reported proudly.
Organizers agreed that the expedition would split in two initially. Reed would head for Napa and Sonoma, forty miles north, to raise more funds and recruit more help, while the bulk of the supplies would be sent up the Sacramento River on a donated schooner commanded by a young naval officer named Selim Woodworth, who volunteered for the job. The two parties would rendezvous at the confluence of the Sacramento and Feather rivers, and from there proceed on foot into the Sierra.
As Woodworth and Reed prepared to leave, a launch arrived from Sutter's Fort with the startling news that some of the trapped emigrants— the surviving members of the Forlorn Hope—had materialized from the wilderness. For the first time, San Franciscans learned that a preliminary relief expedition—the one led by Tucker—was already being mounted. But they also learned the true horror of the ordeal: starvation and death and cannibalism.
Surprisingly, given later coverage of the tragedy, these first public discussions were remarkably muted and sympathetic. The members of the Forlorn Hope apparently made no attempt to hide their cannibalism, and the first newspaper reports treated the issue as simply one component of the ordeal. Two papers broke the story on the same day, February 13. The
Aware that Tucker's initial relief was already on the way, Wood-worth delayed his departure from San Francisco while fund-raisers worked the town for more cash. The idea now was not merely to rush ahead with food but to set up a base camp partway into the mountains and then to resupply the emigrants thoroughly. In the end, private contributors donated thirteen hundred dollars, and Captain Hull loosened his purse strings enough to add four hundred dollars in government support. Supplies of every type soon filled the hold of Woodworth's vessel: fifteen barrels of flour, four hundred pounds of sugar, seventeen pounds of tobacco, six frying pans, two axes, two hatchets, a shovel, a tea kettle, twenty-four blankets, forty-eight pairs of woolen socks, two pounds of thread, four packets of needles, twelve pairs of women's stockings, twenty-four pairs of pantaloons, thirty red flannel shirts, fifteen pairs of children's shoes, a dozen pairs of adult shoes, four pairs of mittens. Everything was finally stowed on Sunday, February 7, so, without waiting for the passing of the Sabbath, Woodworth weighed anchor, set a spread of sail, and coasted upriver toward the mountains.
Reed went north on his fund-raising and recruiting expedition, successfully rounding up horses and men. But when the party arrived at the confluence of the Sacramento and the Feather, Woodworth was nowhere to be found. The young naval officer had encountered headwinds, so he and his crew had to warp the vessel—attaching ropes for pulling, the lines spitting off water as they were heaved taut, the boat literally dragged upriver against the twin enemies of wind and current. Progress slowed, and when Reed arrived, Woodworth was still well downriver.
Flush with winter rains, the Sacramento ripped along its bank. Without Woodworth's boat, Reed had no way to cross, so he found an elk herd and had his men shoot two of the animals. He intended to stretch the hides over wooden frames to make skin boats, the quickest way to construct some sort of vessel that would float. Crossing a pounding river in the fragile boats would have been treacherous, especially with horses and equipment, and Reed and his men were saved the trouble when a small launch suddenly appeared and offered to help. Reed crossed first with his horse, climbed into the saddle, and hustled off to the last settlement before the mountains, Johnson's Ranch.
Reed started slaughtering cattle while Johnson ordered his Indian workers to grind flour in hand mills. They worked round the clock for two days, the crackle of the drying fire and the creaking of the flour mills keeping time with their labors. Reed's men soon arrived, and on February 23 they headed up into the mountains. Woodworth was somewhere behind, presumably coming on as fast as he could.
Hoping to keep the pack animals from floundering in the snow, Reed left behind spare equipment and supplies, trying to create the lightest possible loads. When they cinched the packs down, each animal carried a mere eighty pounds, less than the lightest of jockeys. Even so, when they reached the snow, hooves plunged downward like rocks tossed into a pond.
They broke camp early the next morning, hoping that the snow would still be frozen from the night and thus would bear up under the animals. But again, as the day before, the horses lurched and sank, every step a trial. After only two hundred yards, the animals heaved and sweated in the dawn chill.
Calling a halt to the barely moving column, Reed must have pondered a perplexing and challenging decision. He knew the first relief party led by Tucker had taken this same route more than two weeks earlier, but he had no way of knowing their fate. Perhaps they had never reached the cabins at the lake. It was entirely possible they had been caught in the open by a blizzard at the higher elevations and frozen to death. From the stories of the Forlorn Hope, Reed knew the desperate straits of the trapped emigrants, including his own wife and children, and if no relief had reached them, death could be imminent for all. But if the animals could not go forward and he pushed on without substantial supplies, how much help would he be? He might arrive at the lake cabins virtually without food. Or his own men might be stranded for days by a storm, with few provisions to tide them over. The last thing anyone needed was yet another party in need of rescue. Standing there in the snow and cold, looking at Reed and waiting for his decision, the men grew silent.
Faced with his staring troops, Reed accepted the bald fact that the animals could no longer negotiate the deepening snow. Resolving to push onward anyway, he decided to shift the loads to the humans and leave the horses behind. So after the initial and pathetic two hundred yards of the morning march, the men slid the packs off the animals and began rearranging provisions. When they shouldered the loads, the uncertain silence that Reed had noted melted away, the presence of a definite task lightening their spirits even as the packs weighed down their backs. 'The hilarity Commenced as usual,' Reed wrote in his diary.
The long upward miles stretched out into the afternoon, until at last they saw two figures coming toward them, spots against the snow. They hurried forward and discovered two members of the first rescue party, detached and sent ahead for supplies. Questions pierced the cold mountain air: Were there survivors among the emigrants? What were the conditions at the camps? Who was walking out? Reed learned that his wife and two of his children were among those on the trail ahead and quickly sent two men forward with provisions.
The two men Reed sent ahead reached the long file of marchers that afternoon, shortly after the Tucker party had been reduced to a noon meal of roasted shoestrings. With fresh provisions at hand, a fire was quickly kindled and a meal of dried beef devoured by the famished survivors. Two parties were now only a few miles apart and headed directly toward one another—Tucker and his rescued emigrants heading west, Reed and the other men of the second relief party heading east—but night fell before they could close the gap and find one another. As both parties pitched camp, they knew of each other's presence, though certainly not their exact location, and they also knew that a sudden storm could transform the smallest distances into the largest obstacles.
Reed passed what must have been a fitful night, then roused his men early so they could make good time on
