Carnivorous Buffaloes

I see that in 1849 the clergy still believed that ignorance was bliss.

Besides if everyone moves to California who will tithe to his church.

I'm not really up on mid-19th Century psychology, but was fear of having your bones eaten by wild animals really a thing?

Thanks to White hunters, you don't have to worry about your bones being eaten by buffaloes. But you can still count on rodents to do a good job. Best to not leave your bones strewn around on the ground where passersby can start gnawing on them. People don't pick up after themselves anymore.

Maybe I'm weird (and my presence here would seem a strike against me in that regard), but I don't particularly care if something comes along and eats my bones, even a large vegetarian animal. I'm a bit more concerned about the carnivores interested in my flesh while I'm still running around in it.

I think the warning he was trying to get across was, "You'll die alone, with no one to know or mourn you, and the beasts will gnaw your bleaching bones, ifyou try to cross the country."
(Warning: Sarcasm ahead!
Aaand I'd bet a nickle he had a relative that'd book you a nice, safe steamboat passage down the Illinois River to the Mississippi River, then to New Orleans, where a nice, safe ship would sail you in comfort and luxury around the uneventful Cape Horn to the wonderful land of California... In half the time!

Miles, I agree entirely with you on that!
Harvey, yeah, cuz all the buffalo hunters were white. The demon white people have ruined everything! It is amazing how many statements that are made about white people without a challenge would never be spoken with any other race filled in instead. Sorry Harvey just a pet peeve.
We all die alone, but the scam sounds about right sweetie.

I sort of think that almost all 'yall have missed the point on this issue.
The level of education for newspaper editors in 1849 in Sangamon Co. Illinois was MAYBE 3rd or 4th grade - depending on the planting season.
Typesetters - using hand set lead type probably had less than that.
Clergy - All you needed was a firm belief in fire & brimstone, and the particular clergyman quoted probably had never seen a bison, much less a buffalo.
If you look at some of the other articles shown @ the link, you'll see much more egregious spelling and punctuation errors.
In the 1960s the Elgin Daily Courier (IL) was pointed out as a "bad newspaper" for these same issues.
A hundred years and 150 miles NE made no difference.

And the only difference today is that even though they've gotten an 'education' and hang a sheepskin on their wall they still misuse words, coin new meanings for old words, wear words into meaningless sounds, and have no clue as to what's going on in the real world.

John - typesetters have historically been better educated than the average layman. After all, they not only had to be able to read, but to read in reverse! They wouldn't have been university men, but in a world where the average person was a farm hand or a cobbler, typesetting was on the high end of non-academic jobs.