Book Review: Uncle Sam's Camels

Uncle Sam's Camels: The Journal of May Humphreys Stacey Supplemented by the Report of Edward Fitzgerald Beale (1857-1858), Edited by Lewis Burt Lesley, forward by Paul Andrew Hutton, Harvard University Press, 1929, reprint: Huntington Library Press, 2006.

I was first introduced to the idea of camels in North America when I visited the museum in Benicia which is housed in an old camel barn, which is next to another camel barn preserved as a camel barn.  Some of the camels which came across with Beale ended up in Benicia as documented in this book.

The book starts out with an introductory section which was very useful.  It presents the history of Edward Beale before the camel excursion.  He was with Commodore Stockton when he entered San Francisco Bay and ended for all practical purposes the Mexican American War in northern California.   For the first time the American flag flew over Yerba Buena which became San Francisco.  He served in both the U.S. Army and Navy and also worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as the agent in California.  He had crossed the plains no less than four times between 1847-1849.  He had taken both northern and southern routes.  He was charged with taking word of the gold discovery to Texas on one of these trips.  He had many important connections in Washington and was appointed to lead the expedition of camels to find a southern route other than the Santa Fe route.  

This book presents the story of traveling Fort Defiance to the Colorado River.  The journal of Stacey documents his trip, mostly by river boat to get to Fort Defiance where he would meet up with Captain Beale and the camel company.  he trek also included horses but the camels were used to haul most of their equipment and food and water.  Throughout the history Beale's praise of the camels and their usefulness is included.  The first part of the trek is somewhat unremarkable, but after arriving at the Arizona desert the were hindered by the lack of water, often having to go backwards to a previous spring.  At one point the kidnapped a Native American and forced him to show them where the next spring might be.  Beal is credited with finding Beale Spring near Kingman; however I do not think they found the spring on this trip but a later journey.  Of course the Native Americans knew of many springs.  They eventually arrived in California, and Beale housed the camel on his ranch.  He offered to buy them but the government eventually sold the camel; some to mining operations and some for display purposes.  The camel did fine but other animals and even humans were wary of them and this lead to problems, such as burros stampeding.  The camel showed great promise, but with the Civil War the government lost interest in the project.  Beale returned east and served as an officer for the Union in the Civil War.