In 1843 Scotts Bluff witnessed the first mass migration to Oregon; it was promoted by Marcus Whitman. In May more than 1,000 persons, including 130 women and 610 children, left Independence, Mo., for the long trek overland. This well-organized expedition, with military rules to ensure protection, an elected captain, and division into companies, set the pattern for the hundreds of emigrant trains to follow. The elected captain was Peter Burnett who was to become the first Governor of California in 1850. The “Cow Column,” the last and slowest of the 1843 companies, has achieved fame through the writings of Jesse Applegate. Overton Johnson relates that the train reached camp “by a fine Spring, at the foot of Scott’s Bluffs” on July 9. Close behind the emigrant families came an elaborate hunting party, led by Sir William Stewart and William Sublette, making their farewell visit to the mountains. Baptiste Charbonneau, the infant son who had been carried by Sacajawea on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was hired as a driver. William Clark Kennerly’s reminiscences of this journey tells of a frightening incident that occurred near Scotts Bluff: Far out on the Platte one morning, while making preparations for our daily hunt, we descried coming toward us a herd, which I can state without any exageration must have numbered a million. The pounding of their hooves on the hard prairie sounded like the roaring of a mighty ocean, surging over the land and sweeping everything before it. Here was more game than we bargained for, and the predicament in which we now found ourselves gave us much cause for alarm. On they came, and as we were directly in their path and on the bank of the river, there was great danger of our being swept over. This danger was averted only by our exerting every effort to turn them off in another direction; and as it took the herd two entire days to pass, even at quite a rapid gait, we were kept busy placing guards of shouting, gesticulating men in the daytime and building huge bonfires at night. In the summer of 1844 four emigrant trains passed Scotts Bluff bound for Oregon. One of these was piloted by James Clyman, who had first seen the bluff 20 years before on his long hike from Independence Rock to Fort Atkinson. In his diary Clyman wrote: ... encamped in the midtst of Scotts blufs By a cool spring in a romantic & picturisque vally surounded except to the E. by high & allmost impassably steep clay cliffs of all immagenary shapes & forms supped on a most dlecious piece of venison from the loin of a fat Black taild Buck and I must not omit to mention that I took my rifle and (and) walked out in the deep ravin to guard a Beautifull covey of young Ladies & misses while they gathered wild currants & choke chirries which grow in great perfusion in this region and of the finerst kind.