How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain

On this episode of Our American Stories, Old West historian Roger McGrath is here to tell the story of a time before the world knew Samuel Clemons by his pen name, Mark Twain. His time in the American West helped Clemens develop a distinctive Western voice and provided him with material that would make him America’s first celebrity author.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American Stories. And the next story is
about a writer, well whose name you know, whose story
you may not. This is the story of a time
before the world knew Samuel Clemens by his pen name
Mark Twain. The time he spent in the American West
helped Clemens develop a distinctive Western voice and provided him

(00:30):
with material that would make him America's first celebrity author.
Here to tell the story of Samuel Clemens's life in
the Old West is Roger McGrath. McGrath is the author
of Gunfighters, High Women, and Vigilantes, Violence on the Frontier.
A US marine and former history professor at UCLA, doctor
McGrath has appeared on numerous History Channel documentaries, and he's

(00:52):
a regular contributor for US. Here at our American Stories,
here's McGrath.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Most people know Sam Clemens as Mark Twain, the author
of Tom Swear and Huckleberry Finn. They have no idea
that as a young man he spent the eighteen sixties
in the mining camps of Nevada and California, and it
was in those camps he wrote professionally for the first time.
It was also in those camps that he learned from

(01:19):
older writers a style of writing common to the frontier West,
and adopted that style for his own. A book came
out of his experiences on the frontier, which is little
known but maybe his best work roughing it. Sam Clemens
is born in Florida, Missouri, in November eighteen thirty five.

(01:43):
Is the sixth of seven children, three of whom die
in childhood. His parents are of Scotch, Irish, Cornish, and
the English descent. The family moves to Hannibal, Missouri, a
port on the Mississippi, when Sam is four. There's regular
river traffic in and out of the port, and there
are pioneers passing through the town on their way west.

(02:06):
From a young age, Clemens understands there is a larger
world outside of Hannibal. When Clemens is eleven, his father,
an attorney and judge, dies Less than a year later,
Clemens drops out of school and is apprenticed to a printer.
Clemens soon becomes an accomplished typesetter, working long hours during

(02:30):
the day and reading in a library at night. When
he is thirteen, he watches one of his friends depart
for California in the Gold Rush of eighteen forty nine.
Clemens later describes a scene. I still remember the partsure
of the cavalcade when it spurred westward. We were all

(02:52):
there to see and to envy, And I can still
see the proud little chap sailing by in a great horse.
We were all on hand to gaze and envy. When
he returned two years later in unimaginable glory, for he
had traveled. None of us had ever been forty miles

(03:13):
from home, but he had crossed the continent. He had
been in the gold mines, that fairyland of our imagination.
We would have sold our souls to Satan for the
privilege of trading places with him. Clemens continues working as
a typesetter until eighteen fifty seven, when he meets Horace Bixby,

(03:36):
a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. For a price,
Bixby agrees to take on Clemens as an apprentice pilot,
or what's called a cub pilot. After training under Bixby
for two years, Clemens receives his pilot's license and begins
serving on the steamer A B. Chambers. It's a prestigious

(04:00):
job and the pay is good, but in eighteen sixty one,
the Civil War erupts closing most steamboat traffic on the Mississippi.
At the same time, Sam Clemens gets his chance to
go west, a dream since childhood. His older brother, Orion
is a practicing attorney and a vigorous supporter of the

(04:22):
Abraham Lincoln's campaign for president. Orion closes his wall office
and stumps throughout Missouri in beafa Lincoln. When Lincoln becomes president,
Orion is appointed secretary of the newly created Territory of Nevada.
Orion has a problem, though his months of campaigning for

(04:45):
Lincoln have exhausted his personal savings. Orion asks Sam to
finance his trip to Nevada. Sam agrees if Orion takes
him along and gives him a job, but Orion reckins
he will need a private secretary and Sam can be

(05:06):
the secretary. Sam pays four hundred dollars for the stagecoach
fair for the two of them from Saint Joseph, Missouri
to Carson City, Nevada. The cost is more than fifteen
thousand and today's dollars. The company that operates the line
is the Central Overland, California and Pike's Peak Express Company.

(05:30):
The company is owned by William Russell Alexander Majors and
William Waddell. They become famous not only for their stagecoach
service to California, but also for their creation of the
Pony Express. On July twenty sixth, the Clemens brothers climb
aboard a Central Overland stagecoach and begin a seventeen hundred

(05:54):
mile journey over the Great Plains, through the Rocky Mountains,
and across the Great Bay into Carson City. Sam is
dressed in a woolen shirt and pants and high top boots.
He carries a Smith and Western Revolver, which he hasn't
practiced much with, but he feels bully and is ready

(06:16):
for his grand adventure. Sam and Orion are among the
first to take a stagecoach over the Central Route, surface
begins only a week before their departure. The coaches used
by the company are the famous Conquered, which weigh nearly
a ton and are pulled by six horse teams. The

(06:37):
Conquered gives its passengers a relatively smooth ride. Suspension is
provided by two thick leather straps called thoroughbraces, that run
between the coach's axles and suspend the coach's body. Passengers
experience a rolling motion and not the jolting ride of

(06:58):
a wagon will run for a team of horses is
ten to thirteen miles. Teams are then changed at what
are called swing stations. Every fourth station is a home station,
where not only are teams changed, but also drivers. For

(07:19):
passengers such as Sam Clemens and his brother Orion, there
is no turning in. The overland stage runs on and
around the clock schedule to make the trip from Saint
Joseph to Sacramento in twenty days in average speed of
ten miles per hour. Passengers get out to stretch their
legs at each station and to eat at home stations,

(07:42):
but other than that they live on the stagecoach. Approaching
a home station in Wyoming, Sam begins to hear stories
about a division superintendent named Jack Slade. Sam's told that
Slade has killed more than twenty men, not counting Indians.
Slade had one old enemy, Jules Bennie, tied to a

(08:05):
post in a station kraw. Slade had almost died from
bullets he suffered when ambushed by Benny, so he was
now going to kill Benny slowly. First, Slade cut off
Benny's ears for souvenirs. Slade allowed Benny to suffer earless
at the post for hours, and then Slade began taking

(08:28):
target practice on his old enemy. One of Slade's bullets
took off one of Benny's fingers, another round tore flesh
off Benny's leg, and a third bullet ripped flesh off
Benny's arm. Slade kept firing until Benny begged to be
put out of his misery. Slade then sent a bullet

(08:51):
through Benny's head. Now, who do you suppose happens to
be at the home station? Sam Clemens is approaching, Yes,
than Jack Slade. When the stagecoach reaches the station, Sam,
his brother Ryan, and the other passengers sit down to
eat breakfast with, as Sam says, a half savage, half

(09:14):
civilized company of armed and bearded mountaineers, ranchmen, and station employees.
Sam winds up seated right next to Jack Slade himself. Oh,
Sam doesn't know it at first. Then someone calls Slade
by name, and Sam almost collapses, says, Sam never has

(09:38):
youth stared and shivered as I did when I heard
them call him Slade.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
And you've been listening to Roger McGrath tell the story
of Samuel Clemens in the West. When we come back
more of this remarkable storytelling here on our American stories,

(10:09):
and we continue here with our American stories. And now
let's return to Roger McGrath and continue with the story
of Samuel Clemens in the Old West.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Much Sam's surprise, he finds Slade gentlemanly and pleasant. Nonetheless,
Sam maintains a healthy fear. When the coffee is nearly
gone and Slade is about to take last cup, Slade
notices that Sam's cup is empty. Slade politely offers to
fill Sam's cup, but Sam, though he wants another cup,

(10:44):
quickly and politely declines the offer. Says Sam, I was
afraid he had not killed anybody that morning and he
might be needing diversion. Slade insists on filling Sam's cup.
I thanked him and drank it, says Sam. But it
gave me no comfort, for I could not feel sure

(11:04):
they would not be sorry presently that he had given
it away and proceeded to kill me to distract his
thoughts from the loss. Because Orion Clemens, as the new
Secretary of Nevada Territory, has to meet with territorial officials
of Utah Territory, Sam gets to spend a couple of

(11:25):
days in Salt Lake City. He's greatly impressed with the
Mormon splendid city they have built from scratch, but not
so much with the Book of Mormon. West of the
Great Salt Lake, the stagecoach rolls across a barren level
plain before entering Nevada and coming to the Humboldt River.

(11:46):
Here are the travelers come upon a tribe of Shoshone
Indians called goh Chute. Sam's not greatly impressed with the
goo Chute, saying they are very considerably inferior to even
the spy these digger Indians of California, and inferior to
all races of savages on our continent. And those are

(12:09):
the nicest things he says about the ghost Choote. On
the nineteenth day out from Saint Joseph, Missouri, including the
two days layover in Salt Lake City, Sam Clemens finds
himself in the waterless forty mile desert, which lies between
the Humboldt Sink and the Carson River in Nevada. As

(12:30):
Sam Clemens describes it, the coach wheel sunk from six
inches to a foot. We worked our passage most of
the way across. That is to say, we got out
and walked. It was a dreary pull, and a long
and thirsty one, for we had no water. From one

(12:51):
extremity of this desert to the other, the road was
white with the bones of oxen and horses. It would
hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could have
walked the forty miles and set our feet on a
bone at every step. The desert was one prodigious graveyard,

(13:12):
and the log chains, wagon tires, and rotting wrecks of
vehicles were almost as thick as the bones. On the
afternoon of the twentieth day of the overland journey, the
stagecoach rolls into Carson City, the capital of Nevada Territory,

(13:33):
earlier known as Washho. The area is in the midst
of a boom because of two great strikes, one at
Virginia City and the other at Aurora. Nevada Territory's first
governor is James Nye. Before his appointment, he was an
attorney in New York and a major general in the
state militia. He was also very active in Republican politics

(13:57):
in New York during the eighteen fifties. He brings several
of US old political allies with them to Nevada to
fill various jobs. He also brings Bridget Murphy, a motherly talented, energetic,
and fearless proprietor of a boarding house in New York City.
She sets up a boarding house in Carson City, and

(14:17):
most of NY's brigade moves into it, including Sam and
Ryan Clemens. They call the boarding house the Ranch. While
Why is trying to place all those of the boarding
house and official jobs, he keeps them busy with various
make work jobs, including surveying a possible railroad route. On

(14:38):
the survey job, they run into Tarantula's again and again
and begin to take the big erie spiders back to
the boarding house, keeping them under glass tumblers in a
large dormitory like bedroom. Sam Clemens hates the sight of them.
Late one night, a tremendous wind sends a portion of

(14:59):
a roof slamming into the side of the boarding house.
A shelf with a dozen tumbler covered tarantulas crashes to
the floor. Turned out boys, yells one of the boarders.
The tarantulas are loose. Sam Clemens describes the scene in
the dark room, no warning ever sounded so dreadful. Nobody

(15:24):
tried to leave the room lest they might step on
a tarantula. Every man groped for a trunk or a
bed and jumped on it. Then followed the strangest silence,
a silence of grisly suspense. It was too waiting, expectancy fear.
It was dark as pitch, and one had to imagine

(15:46):
the spectacle of those scant clad men roosting gingerly on
trunks and beds. Sam Clemens doesn't say how long all
the men remained frozen in place, but he yes say
different men at different times or certain a tarantula is
crawling over them, and no one was willing to cross

(16:07):
the floor to light a lantern. Suddenly the door to
the room swings open, and there's Missus Murphy with a
lantern in her hand. She shakes her head in disgust,
and fourteen grown men sheepishly climb down from their perches
on boxes, trunks, and beds. During the next several months,

(16:30):
Sam prospects for gold in various mining districts and tries
to take a claim on timberlands on the shores of
Lake Tahoe. Early in eighteen sixty two, Sam and several
of his friends set off for Aurora, the newest strike
in Nevada, with a slouch hat on his head and
high top boots on his feet. Wearing a woolen shirt

(16:52):
and trousers, and armed with a Colt revolver. Sam looks
the part of a prospector. He doesn't I think you
will have occasion to use the gun, but says he
carries it in deference to popular sentiment and an order
that I might not, by its absence, be offensively conspicuous

(17:14):
and a subject of remark. In Aurora, Sam begins writing
professionally under the non de plume Josh. He writes several
pieces for the Esmrale The Star, one of the town's
two daily newspapers. He also starts sending articles describing events
in Aurora to the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, again

(17:39):
as Josh. Sam does some mining, but most of the
time he's found in one or another of Aurora's many saloons,
sipping whiskey and telling stories. He's a gifted storyteller and
always has an audience. Meanwhile, Cal Higbee, Sam's trustee partner,

(18:00):
who has been prospecting from sun up to sundown, strikes
a vein of ore. That night, the two men talk
of the riches that await them, says Sam Hickby, and
I went to bed at midnight, But it was only
till Ie Broad awake and think dream scheme. The floorless,
tumble down cabin was a palace. The ragged gray blankets, silk,

(18:25):
the furniture rosewood and mahogany, each new splendor that burst
out of my visions of the future, whirled me bodily
over in bed, or jerked me to a sitting plusture,
just as if an electric battery had been applied to
me by a complicated series of events. Clemens and Higby

(18:46):
lose the claim, and their dreams of becoming millionaires are dashed.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
And you're listening to Roger McGrath tell the story of
Samuel Clemens and my goodness. At thirteen years old, he
watches in awe as another young man departs for gold
Rush Territory. And why was he in awe? Well, Clemens
said it best before he had traveled. When we come
back more of this remarkable story, Roger McGrath on Samuel

(19:13):
Clemens in the West, here on our American stories, and

(19:38):
we continue here with our American stories and Roger McGrath
telling the story of Samuel Clemens and his time spent
in the American West. By the way, if you've read
Huck Finn and loved it, do read roughing it because
it is as good as Ulesses S. Grant's memoir. It's
that good. And if you haven't read Grant's memoir, pick
it up. You won't put it down, you'll thank me.

(20:00):
Let's continue with McGrath.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
After six months in Aurora, Sam gives up on mining
and leaves for Virginia City. In September eighteen sixty two,
Sam Clemens walks into the Territorial Enterprise office, introduces himself
to Irishman Dennis McCarthy, the co owner and editor of

(20:24):
the newspaper, and says, my name is Clemens, and I've
come to write for the paper. The Territorial Enterprise is
Nevada's first and most important newspaper. By the early eighteen sixties,
it has supplanted the Sacramento Union as the miner's bible.

(20:44):
The Enterprise wields enormous influence not only in Virginia City
but throughout the West. It's read on every mining frontier.
The paper is full of hard, factual news, but its
reporters are allowed to indulge themselves on page They then
become essayists, poets, philosophers, humorists. They pen stories about imaginary

(21:07):
mining strikes or mining disasters, or about anything that strikes
their fancy. The co owners and editors of the Territorial Enterprise,
Dennis McCarthy and Joe Goodman, tell the writers they are
free to write anything they want on page three, but
they must take personal responsibility for any explosive reaction by

(21:29):
the public. As a result of this policy, the newspaper
becomes a training school for original and versatile writers. The
one who achieves the greatest prominence in success is Sam Clemens,
although it's by his new non de plume Mark Twain
that he gains fame. Sam takes the name from his

(21:52):
river pilot days, when deck hands called out depth readings.
Each mark is six feet or one fathom. Twain is
two fathoms or twelve feet, the depth needed for safe
passage of the typical steamboat. Sam first attaches the name
to one of his Territorial Enterprise articles in February eighteen

(22:15):
sixty three. Sam's first of many tongue in cheek pieces
with the Territorial Enterprise appears in October eighteen sixty two.
Titled Petrified Man, Sam describes the discovery of a man's
body perfectly petrified, that is put on display by a
local politician in front of a crowd of onlookers. The

(22:39):
petrified man's arms at hands are in a position suggesting
he's thumbing his nose at the world, and one eye
appears to be winking. Newspapers throughout the country get the
story by way of the telegraph and reprinted as straight news.
In reality, none of it's true, but at Sam's way

(23:02):
of poking fun at the politician and his gillible constituents.
Or such tall tales come from Sam's pen, but most
of his work consists of solid factual reporting, especially on
the territorial legislature in Carson City. He has a nose
for sniffing out corruption and incompetence and lights in exposing

(23:26):
it in vitriolic prose. He makes friends and he makes enemies.
After several challenges to duels, he decides to take a
permanent vacation. He arrives in San Francisco in May eighteen
sixty four, and spends money freely, certain that his mining
stock will allow him many months of frivolity. However, his

(23:49):
stock plunges and he is forced to take a job
with the San Francisco daily newspaper, The Morning Call. The
work is hard and mostly routine, and he's not allowed
his flights of fancy. After too many months of what
Sam considers drudgery with The Call, the editor tells him

(24:10):
he has literary talents beyond a simple reporting job and
fires him. Sam now convinces the Territorial Enterprise that he
should be the San Francisco correspondent for the newspaper. Sam's
paint handsomely and again has allowed great latitude. This also
allows him to remain in San Francisco and continue to

(24:33):
be part of a literary circle of talented and aspiring
young writers who include Woking Miller and Brett Hart. Sam
also makes trips to California's mother Load Country, staying in
old mining camps with such colorful names as Jackass Hill,
Angels Camp, Rough and Ready, Red Dog, gold Hill, and Fiddletown.

(24:59):
He needs many ve in sour doughs from the gold
rush of eighteen forty nine and is regaled with stories
from the first days of the Great Strike. One of
these tales is about a jumping frog. Sam sees the
makings of a great story and takes notes. A few
weeks later, Sam has a story written and sends it

(25:21):
to a publisher in New York. What would become commonly
known as the celebrated Jumping Frog at Calaveras County appears
in November eighteen sixty five in the Saturday Press. It's
an instant sensation and is reprinted in various publications across

(25:43):
the United States. Suddenly, Mark Twain is a household name.
With his elevated status, Sam convinces the Sacramento Union newspaper
to send him to Hawaii as a correspondent. He arrives
in March eighteen sixty six, and for the next four
months sends stories about the islands to California. One of

(26:07):
his stories captures the attention of the entire nation. Sam
happens to be on the spot when survivors of a
forty three day or dalatxeaan lifeboat are brought ashore. They
are sailors from the ship Hornet, which caught fire in
the Pacific and sank. When Sam returns home, he finds

(26:30):
himself in great demand. Managed by Dennis McCarthy, is editor
from the Territorial Enterprise. Days Sam begins a lecture tour
that takes them to not only sold out venues in
San Francisco and Sacramento, but to packed venues in one
mining camp after another in the Motherload Country and over

(26:52):
the Sierras to Carson City, Gold Hill, and Virginia City.
He travels hundreds of miles in stagecoaches and is greeted
as a celebrity at every stop. In the final days
of his lecture tour, Sam has a practical joke played
on him that he would have enjoyed immensely were he

(27:13):
not the victim of it. After lecturing to a standing
room only crowd in Gold Hill, he and Dennis McCarthy
began the two mile walk back to their lodgings in
Virginia City. About midnight, they reached the desolate hilltop divide
between the two towns. Mine and wait for them are

(27:34):
a group of old friends, masked and disguised. The order
stand and deliver rings out, and a half dozen men
with guns drawn to send on Clemens and McCarthy. The
would be robbers wave their revolvers in Sam's face, says Sam,

(27:54):
don't flourish those pistols so promiscuously they might go off
by accident. Sam begins to reach in his pockets for
his money, but has told to reach for the sky.
As soon as he puts his hands up, he's told
to pull out his money. This goes on for another round.

(28:14):
Sam doesn't realize it's a joke, and, exasperated, asks how
he's supposed to get his money if he's reaching for
the sky. By now, the robbers are all about to
burst out laughing, so they dig through Sam's pockets while
he holds his hands high, pick up a satchel of
silver coins the proceeds from the Knight's lecture that McCarthy

(28:38):
had been carrying, and hastily depart, telling Clemens McCarthy to
remain in position for fifteen minutes were their hands high.
None the wiser Sam gets a story in the next
day's Territorial Enterprise about the dastardly robbery by six highwaymen
on the divide. Later, he has all the money returned

(29:01):
to him and learns it was all a practical joke.
Sam is steamed and remains a high Dudgeon until he
leaves for San Francisco. A couple of days later, late
in eighteen sixty seven, sam Clemens decides it's time to
return to the East. He soon marries and settles in Connecticut.

(29:26):
His days in the Old West drover, but his time
on the frontier created his writing style and gave him
enough material for a lifetime of stories most Americans today. No,
Mark Twain was once a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi,
but most Americans know nothing of as many years of

(29:50):
roughing it on the wild and wooly frontier.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
And great jobs always to Greg for producing that piece
into Roger McGrath and again Rogers, the author of Gunfighters,
Hollwoman and Vigilantes, Violence on the Frontier, a former US Marine,
and of course a history professor at UCLA, one of
the best there. The story of Samuel Clemens in the
Old West. Here on our American Stories