Josiah Gregg

Early years

Josiah Gregg was born on 19 July 1806 in Overton County, Tennessee, the youngest son of seven children of Harmon and Susannah (Smelser) Gregg. Six years later his family moved to Howard County, Missouri. At age 18, Gregg was a school teacher at Liberty, Missouri until moving again with his family to Independence a year later in 1825. In Liberty, he studied law and surveying until his health declined from "consumption and chronic dyspepsia" in 1830.

Because of his failing health, Gregg followed his doctor's recommendation and traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico on a trail beginning at Van Buren, Arkansas in a merchant caravan in 1831. Once in what would become New Mexico Territory in 1850, Gregg worked as a bookkeeper for Jesse Sutton, one of the merchants of the caravan, before returning to Missouri in fall 1833, but by spring he was back on the road to Santa Fe, this time as wagonmaster of a caravan and Sutton's business partner. Gregg brought the first printing press to New Mexico in 1834, selling it to Ramon Abreu in Santa Fe where it was used to print the territory's first newspaper.

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. In the early 1840s Gregg briefly lived in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Only a few months later, he traveled through the Oklahoma Territory as far west as Cache Creek in the Comanche territory. During 1841 and 1842, Gregg's travels took him through Texas and up the Red River valley; and on a second trip he went from Galveston to Austin and back through Nacogdoches to Arkansas. Along the way he took notes of natural history and human culture and profitably sold mules to the Republic of Texas. He briefly settled as partner in a general store with his brother John and George Pickett in Van Buren. He began to work his travel notes into a manuscript and visited New York in the summer of 1843 to find a publisher. In New York he devoted himself to working on his book while staying at the Franklin Hotel at the corner of Broadway and Cortland Streets.

Commerce of the Prairies

Gregg's book Commerce of the Prairies, published in two volumes in 1844, was an account of his time spent as a trader on the Santa Fe Trail from 1831 to 1840 and includes commentary on the geography, botany, geology, and culture of New Mexico. Gregg wrote about local people and described Indian culture and artifacts. The book established Gregg's literary reputation. It was an immediate success, 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 in 1852.

The Mexican-American War

In the fall of 1845, Gregg began studying medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. He graduated two semesters later on 9 March 1846. By then, Gregg had learned to make daguerrotypes, and was friends with artist and daguerrotypist John Mix Stanley who was on the Owens wagon train with Gregg. As part of his equipment for his trip to Santa Fe with Samuel C. Owens' wagon train were special-sized plates for his sixth-plate camera probably delivered to him by naturalist Friedrich Adolph Wislizenus. The fate of the camera and any images he made is unknown. Gregg left Owens' caravan 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, left his effects and collections in Saltillo, and traveled to the east in 1847 to buy merchandise; upon arrival he received a message from Magoffin who had changed his mind. Gregg traveled to Washington, D.C., was unimpressed after meeting President James K. Polk and took a series of steamships down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, then up the Rio Grande and back to Saltillo at the end of 1847, where through the spring of 1848 he actively practiced medicine for the first time since earning his degree. He complained that his medical partner, Dr. G. M. Prevost, was disorganized and "in love" with a 13-year-old girl.

Plant collector

Several Southwestern plants bear the species patronym greggii to honor Gregg's contributions, including Ceanothus greggii, the Desert Ceanothus, which he collected at the site of the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847. He found and collected other plants, many of which were previously unknown, on a trip to Mexico between 1848 and 1849 with Wislizenus. He sent the specimens to his friend, botanist George Engelmann in St. Louis, Missouri, to be identified.

Gold Rush and Humboldt Bay

In 1849 Gregg joined the California Gold Rush by sailing from Mazatlán to San Francisco, eating canned food for the first time and remarking in a letter that he liked it. He left field notes with his former partner Jesse Sutton and gave Sutton instructions what to do with them if he did not return from what would turn out to be his last trip. 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 north of Helena intending to find "Trinity Bay" by crossing unknown territory and following the line of latitude westward. The roster of the party was: Gregg; Thomas Seabring of Ottawa, Illinois; David A. Buck of New York; J. B. Truesdale of Oregon; Charles C. Southard of Boston; Isaac Wilson of Missouri; Lewis Keysor Wood 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 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 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 a watercourse which they called the 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 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 what this party named "Trinity Bay," which a few months later became known as Humboldt Bay. The party walked around the bay and past the site of present-day Arcata, had a Christmas meal of elk meat near Elk River, and passed through present-day Eureka on 26 December. They reached the bay at a 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, and Gregg, Van Duzen, Southard and Truesdale going 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 and traveled along the South Fork of the Eel southward. 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 burying Gregg after his death may not be the whole truth. Other reports say he died on 25 February near Clear Lake, California of poor health and the hardships of his journey, while another casts doubt on the story that his companions buried him, instead suggesting he survived at least briefly at an Indian village. In any case, his papers, instruments and specimens were lost.

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 create treaties with Northern California Indians which were never ratified.

About eighty plant names were originally assigned to honor Gregg; as of 2002, 47 Mexican and Southwestern plant species bear the name greggii.

His portrait, which was painted by Herndon Davis between 1950 and 1962, is in the collection of Palace of the Governors, a New Mexico History Museum.

Publications

Additional reading