George Bonniwell - The Gold Rush Diary

The Diary written by George Bonniwell gives a day by day outline of their journey from Milwaukee to California on April 12th 1850. Throughout the journey, Bonniwell discusses his views on the physical landscape that they venture through describing some places such as Beloit as a 'beautiful place' with large churches, a well-established society and a successful place for businesses.

As the journey towards the west continues, Bonniwell talks about how dysentery had affected the group of men he was travelling with and how they were able to recover from the disease within a short time even though it does reoccur within the group multiple times. Not only this, they also had medicine for scurvy for the men on the journey which suggests that disease and ill-health was a common occurrence.

Bonniwell discusses the variety of landscapes such as the woodlands and crossing the large prairies identifying that some were deemed good land whereas others were not, 'as far as the eyes could see'. He continues to discuss the Indian graveyards that he walks through being seen as 'quite a curiosity' within their newly founded society. As the society in Fort Des Moines inhabited nearly 400 people, they were able to protect themselves from the threat of the American Natives attacking due to the on-going conflict between the Natives and the settlers.

Bonniwell concludes his diary with the acceptance of his journey being potentially unsuccessful due to injuries, diseases, and the unsuccessfully built dam that failed due to leaks and the previous dam destabilised itself, therefore setting them back further from completion. The journey in itself had been a difficult one and that the end result of the journey had been a failure.

Sources: http://www.emigrantroad.com/gold05.html