Josiah Gregg

|:Not related to John Gregg, Confederate general and namesake of Gregg County, Texas

Josiah Gregg

Josiah Gregg (19 July 1806 – 25 February 1850) was a merchant, explorer, naturalist, and author of Commerce of the Prairies about the American Southwest and Northern Mexico regions. He died of a fall from his horse due to starvation near Clear Lake, California, on 25 February 1850 after a cross-country expedition which fixed the location of Humboldt Bay.

Early years

Josiah Gregg was born on 19 July 1806 in Overton County, Tennessee, the youngest son of seven children. When he was six years old, his family moved to Howard County, Missouri. Gregg taught school near Liberty, Missouri, in 1824 and moved with his family again to Independence, Missouri, in 1825 where he studied surveying and law until his health declined from "consumption and chronic dyspepsia".

In 1831, following his doctor's recommendation, Gregg left his home, traveling to Santa Fe, New Mexico with a wagon train, on a new trail beginning at Van Buren, Arkansas. Gregg worked as a bookkeeper for Jesse Sutton, one of the merchants of the caravan in New Mexico Territory before returning to Missouri in the fall of 1833, but by spring he was back on the road to Santa Fe, this time as wagon master of the caravan and Sutton's business partner.

By 1840, Gregg had learned Spanish, crossed the plains between Missouri and Santa Fe four times, traveled the Chihuahua Trail into Mexico and become a successful businessman. On his last trip from Santa Fe eastward, he decided to take a more southerly route across to the Mississippi River. Leaving Santa Fe on 25 February 1840, he was accompanied by 28 wagons, 47 men, 200 mules and 300 sheep and goats. In March the caravan was attacked by Pawnee near Trujillo Creek in Oldham County, Texas, and a storm scattered most of his stock across the Llano Estacado but the group continued eastward through Indian Territory to Fort Smith and Van Buren, Arkansas. In the early 1840s, Gregg briefly lived in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Only a few months later, he toured the Indian Territories - Oklahoma Territory as far west as Cache Creek in the Comanche country. During 1841 and 1842, Gregg traveled through Texas and up the Red River valley, and a second trip went took him from Galveston to Austin and by way of Nacogdoches back to Arkansas. Along the way he took notes of natural history and human culture as well as selling mules to the Republic of Texas for a profit. He briefly settled as partner in a general store with his brother John and George Pickett in Van Buren. He began to work his notes into a manuscript and visited New York in the summer of 1843 to find a publisher.

Commerce of the Prairies

Gregg's book, "Commerce of the Prairies," which came out in two volumes in 1844 was an account of his time spent as a trader on the Santa Fe Trail from 1831 to 1840. He describes the geography, botany, geology, and culture of New Mexico. Gregg wrote of some locals, such as Maria Gertrudis Barceló, a Santa-Fe saloon owner and described Indian culture and artifacts. The book established Gregg's literary reputation and was an immediate success and went through several editions, sold a large number of books in England and was translated into French and German. The map he produced of the Santa Fe Trail and surrounding plains was the most detailed to that time, and his suggestions of where the Red River headwaters would be found inspired the journey of Randolph B. Marcy and George B. McClellan to find the headwaters in 1852.

The Mexican-American War

In the fall of 1845, Gregg began studying medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. Two semesters later, he left school and joined Samuel C. Owens' wagon caravan which he left at the outbreak of the Mexican-American War when he joined General John E. Wool's Arkansas Volunteers as an unofficial news correspondent and interpreter In this capacity, he traveled through Chihuahua.

After the war

Gregg had planned to enter business with Susan Shelby Magoffin's husband Samuel, but after that fell through, he practiced medicine with Dr. G. M. Prevost in Saltillo whom he complained was disorganized and love-struck by a 13-year-old girl.

Plant collector

Ceanothus greggii is one of many species named for Josiah Gregg.

During 1848 and 1849 Gregg traveled to western Mexico to study plants. He struck up a correspondence with George Engelmann in St. Louis, Missouri, sending to him collected specimens, many of which were previously undescribed. Several Southwestern plants bear the species patronym greggii to honor Gregg's contributions, including the Ceanothus greggii, the Desert Ceanothus, which he collected at the site of the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847 during the Mexican-American War near Saltillo.

Gold Rush - Humboldt Bay

In 1849 Gregg participated in the California Gold Rush by sailing from Mazatlán to San Francisco where he left his field notes with his old partner Jesse Sutton; shortly thereafter he visited placer mines on the Trinity River.

On 5 November 1849 a party of ill provisioned miners led by Gregg left Rich Bar, a mining camp on the Trinity River intending to find Trinidad Bay by crossing unknown territory and following the line of latitude westward. The roster of the party was: Dr. Josiah Gregg, of Missouri; Thomas Seabring, of Ottowa, Illinois; David A. Buck, of New York; J. B. Truesdell, of Oregon; Charles C. Southard, of Boston; Isaac Wilson, of Missouri; Lewis Keysor Wood (? - 12 July 1874), of Kentucky; and James Van Duzen.

They had been told by the Indians the Pacific Ocean was an eight day journey, so they provisioned for ten days rations. A few days past the start, David A. Buck discovered the South Fork of the Trinity River where the party encountered a group of Indians who fled from them. The party took smoked salmon from the Indian Rancheria and set up camp only a short distance away. That evening eighty warriors arrived at the Gregg party camp, but only a discussion followed; the Indians warned them against following the Trinity to the sea, and said to go westward and leave the river, a trail which later became part of California State Route 299. The party did not do that, instead followed the river until it became impassable, then went west. By 13 November, the provisions were gone and the party began to subsist on deer and smoked game averaging 7 miles (11 km) a day until they got to the Redwood forest after which they averaged about 2 miles (3.2 km) a day. About six weeks after they started, they emerged from the redwood forests and saw the ocean at the mouth of Little River. After exploring slightly to the north, they turned south along the coast and camped at Trinidad.

Leaving Trinidad, they crossed a large river, but the fed-up members of the exploring party did not wish to wait for Gregg to determine the latitude of the river mouth, and so pushed off without him. When he caught up with the group, his temper flared, and they named the river Mad River due to the outburst.

On 20 December 1849, David A. Buck was the first to find the bay which this party named "Trinity Bay" which later became known as Humboldt Bay. The party walked around the bay and past the site of present-day Arcata, and passed through present day Eureka on 26 December. They reached the bay at point which would later be both the location of Fort Humboldt and the townsite of Bucksport named after David A. Buck, the discoverer of the bay.

Three days later, they came upon and named the Eel River, the "Eel" in the name being a misnomer for the Pacific lamprey which local Indians had caught and shared with the party at about where the Van Duzen River, named after James Van Duzen, joins the Eel.

Shortly thereafter, the party argued again about the best way to get back to San Francisco. About 20 miles (32 km) from the coast on the Eel River, the group split in two: Seabring, Buck, Wilson and Wood following the Eel River; the others Gregg, Van Duzen, Southard and Truesdell went to the coast. L.K. Wood was permanently crippled by a Grizzly bear while stuck in a snow-bound camp. His fellow travelers packed him on a horse, traveled along the South Fork of the Eel southward and when they arrived at Santa Rosa news of their discovery spread.

Gregg's group fared badly. Wood wrote: "They attempted to follow along the mountain near the coast, but were very slow in their progress on account of the snow on the high ridges. Finding the country much broken along the coast, making it continually necessary to cross abrupt points, and deep gulches and canyons, after struggling along for several days, they concluded to abandon that route and strike easterly toward the Sacramento valley. Having very little ammunition, they all came nigh perishing from starvation, and, as Mr. Southard related to me, Dr. Gregg continued to grow weaker, from the time of our separation, until, one day, he fell from his horse and died in a few hours without speaking - died from starvation - he had had no meat for several days, had been living entirely upon acorns and herbs. They dug a hole with sticks and put him under ground, then carried rock and piled upon his grave to keep animals from digging him up. They got through to the Sacramento valley a few days later than we reached Sonoma valley. Thus ended our expedition."

Southard's story of the burial of Gregg after his death may not be the whole truth. Other reports say he died on 25 February near Clear Lake, California being tended by an Indian woman who found him alive near the Eel River and took him to her village. Gregg was unable to rally from the privations of the trip and starvation and died there at age 44.

Legacy

The expedition has been credited with the rediscovery of Humboldt Bay by land that resulted in its settlement.

The Gregg party's trip triggered the 1850 trip by Col. Redick McKee to created treaties with Northern California Indians which were never ratified.

About eighty plant names were originally assigned to honor Gregg, of those in 2002, 47 Mexican and Southwestern plant species bear the name greggii honoring him.

Publications

• Josiah Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, ed. Max I. Moorhead, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1954.
• Josiah Gregg, Diary and Letters of Josiah Gregg, 2 volumes, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1941, 1944).

See also

• Acacia greggii
• Amaranthus greggii
• Leucaena greggii
• Peniocereus greggii
• Pinus greggii
• Salvia greggii
• Yucca filifera

External links

• Josiah Gregg, Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture
• Barry Evans, Mad River Lore, North Coast Journal, 12 March 2009
• Plants of Dr. Gregg's collection, scanned field and transmission notes for plants collected, Botanicus.
• Owen C. Coy, The Last Expedition of Josiah Gregg, The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Texas State Historical Association, Volume 20, Number 1, July 1916, pages 41-49.
• Josiah Gregg's 1844 A Map of the Indian Territory, Northern Texas and New Mexico Showing the Great Western Prairies, Maps of the American West, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, 13 February 2011.

Additional reading

• David Dary, The Santa Fe Trail: its history, legends, and lore, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2000, ISBN 9780375403613.
• Howard T. Dimick, Reconsideration of the Death of Josiah Gregg, New Mexico Historical Review, Volume 22, Number 276, July 1947, pages 315-316, OCLC 8686602.
• Maurice Garland Fulton, editor, Diary and letters of Josiah Gregg, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1941-44. 2 vols.
• Paul Horgan, Josiah Gregg and his vision of the early West, Farrar Strauss Giroux, New York. 1979, ISBN 9780374180171.
• Oscar Lewis, The quest for Qual-a-wa-loo, Humboldt Bay: a collection of diaries and historical notes pertaining to the early discoveries of the area now known as Humboldt County, California, Holmes Book Company, 1943, 190 pages, OCLC 1129343
• Frederick W. Rathjen, The Texas Panhandle Frontier, Texas Tech University Press; Revised edition, 15 April 1998, ISBN 978-0896723993.