Witnessing a Pony Express Rider - Primary Source
A firsthand account describing what it was like to see a Pony Express rider on the trail.
Primary sources are a great way to learn about history. Like I tell the students in my history class, why would you want me to tell you what it is like on the surface of the moon when you can listen to somebody who has actually been there? So it is with many things in history. Instead of hearing a modern historian describe a time period, primary sources remove the filter between us and the past and give us direct access to it. Although primary sources are not all accurate (they have bias, misunderstandings, and different views), they are often rich with description, details, and imagery. One primary source that describes that romantic Pony Express comes from none other than legendary Mark Twain.
Mark Twain headed west in 1861 to begin what in his words was, “several years of variegated vagabondizing.” During that time, people who could afford it often traveled by the established stagecoach lines stretching from east to west. Twain himself boarded a stagecoach in St. Joseph and settled in for a ride of several weeks to see what the romantic West had to offer. Along the way, Twain records the landscape and stations the stagecoach passed through. For all there was to see in the West, Twain noted that seeing a Pony Express rider was at the top of his list. In his book Roughing It he wrote:
“We had had a consuming desire, from the beginning, to see a pony-rider, but somehow or other all that passed us and all that met us managed to streak by in the night, and so we heard only a whiz and a hail, and the swift phantom of the desert was gone before we could get our heads out of the windows. But now we were expecting one along every moment, and would see him in broad daylight.”
Somewhere between Julesburg and Scott’s Bluff, Twain and his traveling companions finally got their chance. In the next line, Twain continues:
“Presently the driver exclaims: ‘Here he comes!’ Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so! In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling—sweeping toward us nearer and nearer—growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer and still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear—another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider’s hand, but no reply and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go winging away like a belated fragment of a storm! So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for the flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail-sack after the vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have doubted whether we had seen any actual horse and man at all, maybe.”
According to Mark Twain, there might be more truth to the heroic image of the Pony Express riders than we think. Image via wikicommons.
The Pony Express was a massive undertaking that turned out to be a financial disaster. Still, it has lasted through the ages as one of the most iconic symbols of the Wild West. Although some people say the Pony Express is over-romanticized, by reading Mark Twain’s description of a Pony Express rider you can see that the picturesque image we hold may be how even people of the time viewed the heroic riders.
