LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – In the first installment, I began telling the story of Kentucky-to-California pioneer, Nancy Kelsey, who was interviewed by her daughter in 1896.

The story was compiled by Roy M. Sylar.

Mrs. Kelsey and the Bidwell-Bartleson Party departed from Missouri in 1841. While in Nebraska the pioneer party dined on buffalo. The men in the group found it necessary to post night watchmen “who kept up a steady fire with their guns so the herds would split around the camp.” They lost a good number of their oxen team as they took off with the herds.

When the trail-weary travelers reached Soda Springs, the Bartleson Party and a missionary group split off to head to Oregon. Now, Nancy Kelsey had the distinction of being the only woman with the group of 32 men.

These became difficult times as the party traveled over the salt flat desert of the Great Salt Lake in search of “Mary’s River, “ which was depicted on Dr. John Marsh’s map. The story then states that they followed the Humboldt River believing it to be “Mary’s River.”

The Kelsey party eventually found their way to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but not before abandoning their wagons and relying only on horseback as a means for their travels.

Mrs. Kelsey explained, “Of course we did not know where we were. The party scattered here to find the best way to descend the mountains. I was left with my babe alone, and as I sat there on my horse and I listened to the sighing and moaning of the winds through the pines, it seemed the loneliest spot in the world. The descent was so abrupt that an Indian, who had come to us on the mountain, was allowed to lead my horse for part of the way. At one place an old man of the party (George Hanshaw) became so exhausted, or nearly so, that they had to threaten to shoot him before he would proceed.

“At another place four pack animals fell over a bluff and we never tried to recover them,” she said. “They had gone so far that it was no use to think of it. We were then out of provisions as we had eaten all of our cattle. I walked barefoot until my feet were blistered. For two days I had nothing to eat but acorns. My husband came near dying of cramps and it was suggested we leave him out, but I protested and declared I would never leave him as long as there was life. We killed a horse and stayed over until the next day when he was able to go on.”

After this harrowing experience, and many more, the party found their way to the San Joaquin Valley. By November, with the aid of some Indian scouts they made it to Dr. John Marsh’s ranch in what is now Martinez.

When you think about the mountain roads we travel now, with today’s fine highways, then compare this to the pioneer travel of yesteryear, it’s amazing indeed to comprehend just what those hardy pioneers lived through to get west.

Mrs. Kelsey’s story gets a bit confusing to follow, at times, and understandably so. When you consider all of the events that took place, along with the consideration of her age and health at the time she recounted them, she does a remarkable job. Events have been compared with other journals written at the time to corroborate her stories.

It was December when the Kelseys found themselves at John Sutter’s Fort near the Sacramento River.

They were aided, once again by unnamed Indians, who spent 15 days rowing the weary travelers up the river.

Mrs. Kelsey stated, “This winter was a very wet one and in the spring of ’42, in April, we left the kitchen door of Sutter’s Fort and landed near Cache Creek where we camped all summer, killed deer and elk, and made Spanish boots out of their hides and saved the tallow.”

Then, like a scene from a Western movie, Mrs. Kelsey recounted a run-in with Salvador Vallejo, who ran cattle in Lake County and was the brother of General Mariano Vallejo of Sonoma.

She explained, “Salvador unarmed us and ordered us to be taken to the mission (in Sonoma), but our men stole into their camp that night and quietly recaptured their weapons and we returned to Sutter’s Fort. With the profits we made on this hunt, we bought one hundred cattle and took them to Oregon in the spring and summer of 1843.”

By 1845 the Kelseys had a home in Napa Valley. Mrs. Kelsey recalled, “We were in Napa Valley when the Mexican War, or the Revolution as we called it then, broke out (in 1846). My husband offered his service to Fremont (John Fremont).

“I was sent to Fort Sonoma and rode the distance horseback and carried a one month old babe in my arms. (The Kelsey’s fourth child.) I was so weak when I arrived at my destination that I could hardly stand up.

“I found Mrs. Vallejo at Sonoma. Her husband had been captured and sent to Sutter’s Fort.”

Nancy Kelsey went on to explain that she and another woman sewed shirts and baked bread for Fremont’s men at that time. According to the records, it wasn’t only shirts that she sewed. Nancy Kelsey, Mrs. Benjamin Dewell, and Mrs. Mathews helped make the famous Bear Flag for the Bear Flag Revolt in Sonoma.

The rest of Nancy Kelsey’s story continues to read like a “Who’s Who” of the American West, with anecdotes about Kit Carson’s half-brothers, Lindsay and Moses Carson. Lindsay and some of the other Carsons had a ranch in Lake County.

A true tale of the American West wouldn’t be complete without stories of the Gold Rush, which are also woven into the colorful tapestry of Nancy Kelsey’s true history.

When we consider the settlement of our state, we never want to overlook the grim inhumanities that occurred to the Native population along the way, which assault our senses today.

Ken Burns, PBS movie maker and historian, said, “America without the West is unthinkable now. Yet there was nothing inevitable about our taking it. Others had prior claim to its vastness, after all, and we could have quite easily have remained forever huddled east of the Mississippi. In resolving to move west and become a continental nation we would exact a fearful price from those already living on the land. But we also became a different people, and it is no accident that the turbulent history – and the myths that have grown up around it – have made the West the most potent symbol of the nation as a whole, overseas as well as in our own hearts."

Burns continued, “The story of the West was once told as an unbroken series of triumphs- the victory of “civilization” over “barbarism,” a relentlessly inspirational epic in which greed and cruelty were often glossed over as enterprise and courage. Later, that epic would be turned upside down by some, so that the story of the West became another –equally misleading- morality tale, one in which the crimes of conquest and dispossession were allowed to overshadow everything else that ever happened beyond the Mississippi. The truth about the West is far more complicated and much more compelling.”

Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is an educator, potter, writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She also writes for NASA and JPL as one of their “Solar System Ambassadors.” She was selected “Lake County Teacher of the Year, 1998-99” by the Lake County Office of Education, and chosen as one of 10 state finalists the same year by the California Department of Education.