THE OLD SANTA FE TRAIL
THE STORY OF A GREAT HIGHWAY
By Colonel Henry Inman
Late Assistant Quartermaster, United States Army
With a Preface by W. F. "BUFFALO BILL" CODY
PREFACE.
As we look into the open fire for our fancies, so we are apt to study the dim past for the wonderful and sublime, forgetful of the fact that the present is a constant romance, and that the happenings of to-day which we count of little importance are sure to startle somebody in the future, and engage the pen of the historian, philosopher, and poet.
Accustomed as we are to think of the vast steppes of Russia and Siberia as alike strange and boundless, and to deal with the unknown interior of Africa as an impenetrable mystery, we lose sight of a locality in our own country that once surpassed all these in virgin grandeur, in majestic solitude, and in all the attributes of a tremendous wilderness.
The story of the Old Santa Fe Trail, so truthfully recalled by Colonel Henry Inman, ex-officer of the old Regular Army, in these pages, is a most thrilling one. The vast area through which the famous highway ran is still imperfectly known to most people as "The West"; a designation once appropriate, but hardly applicable now; for in these days of easy communication the real trail region is not so far removed from New York as Buffalo was seventy years ago.
At the commencement of the "commerce of the prairies," in the early portion of the century, the Old Trail was the arena of almost constant sanguinary struggles between the wily nomads of the desert and the hardy white pioneers, whose eventful lives made the civilization of the vast interior region of our continent possible. Their daring compelled its development, which has resulted in the genesis of great states and large cities. Their hardships gave birth to the American homestead; their determined will was the factor of possible achievements, the most remarkable and important of modern times.
When the famous highway was established across the great plains as a line of communication to the shores of the blue Pacific, the only method of travel was by the slow freight caravan drawn by patient oxen, or the lumbering stage coach with its complement of four or six mules. There was ever to be feared an attack by those devils of the desert, the Cheyennes, Comanches, and Kiowas. Along its whole route the remains of men, animals, and the wrecks of camps and wagons, told a story of suffering, robbery, and outrage more impressive than any language. Now the tourist or business man makes the journey in palace cars, and there is nothing to remind him of the danger or desolation of Border days; on every hand are the evidences of a powerful and advanced civilization.
It is fortunate that one is left to tell some of its story who was a living actor and had personal knowledge of many of the thrilling scenes that were enacted along the line of the great route. He was familiar with all the famous men, both white and savage, whose lives have made the story of the Trail, his own sojourn on the plains and in the Rocky Mountains extending over a period of nearly forty years.
The Old Trail has more than common interest for me, and I gladly record here my indorsement of the faithful record, compiled by a brave soldier, old comrade, and friend.
W. F. Cody, "Buffalo Bill."
CONTENTS
[ PREFACE. ]
[ DETAILED CONTENTS. ]
[ INTRODUCTION. ]
[ CHAPTER I. ] UNDER THE SPANIARDS
[ CHAPTER II. ] LA LANDE AND PURSLEY
[ CHAPTER III. ] EARLY TRADERS
[ CHAPTER IV. ] TRAINS AND PACKERS
[ CHAPTER V. ] FIGHT WITH COMANCHES
[ CHAPTER VI. ] A ROMANTIC TRAGEDY
[ CHAPTER VII. ] MEXICO DECLARES WAR
[ CHAPTER VIII. ] THE VALLEY OF TAOS
[ CHAPTER IX. ] FIRST OVERLAND MAIL
[ CHAPTER X. ] CHARLES BENT
[ CHAPTER XI. ] LA GLORIETA
[ CHAPTER XII. ] THE BUFFALO
[ CHAPTER XIII. ] INDIAN CUSTOMS AND LEGENDS
[ CHAPTER XIV. ] TRAPPERS
[ CHAPTER XV. ] UNCLE JOHN SMITH
[ CHAPTER XVI. ] KIT CARSON
[ CHAPTER XVII. ] UNCLE DICK WOOTON
[ CHAPTER XVIII. ] MAXWELL'S RANCH
[ CHAPTER XIX. ] BENT'S FORTS
[ CHAPTER XX. ] PAWNEE ROCK
[ CHAPTER XXI. ] FOOLING STAGE ROBBERS
[ CHAPTER XXII. ] A DESPERATE RIDE
[ CHAPTER XXIII. ] HANCOCK'S EXPEDITION
[ CHAPTER XXIV. ] INVASION OF THE RAILROAD
[ FOOTNOTES. ]
DETAILED CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
The First Europeans who traversed the Great Highway—Alvar Nunez
Cabeca de Vaca—Hernando de Soto, and Francisco Vasquez de Coronado—
Spanish Expedition from Santa Fe eastwardly—Escape of the Sole Survivors.
CHAPTER I.
UNDER THE SPANIARDS.
Quaint Descriptions of Old Santa Fe—The Famous Adobe Palace—
Santa Fe the Oldest Town in the United States—First Settlement—
Onate's Conquest—Revolt of the Pueblo Indians—Under Pueblo Rule
—Cruelties of the Victors—The Santa Fe of To-day—Arrival of
a Caravan—The Railroad reaches the Town—Amusements—A Fandango.
CHAPTER II.
LA LANDE AND PURSLEY.
The Beginning of the Santa Fe Trade—La Lande and Pursley,
the First Americans to cross the Plains—Pursley's Patriotism—
Captain Ezekiel Williams—A Hungry Bear—A Midnight Alarm.
CHAPTER III.
EARLY TRADERS.
Captain Becknell's Expedition—Sufferings from Thirst—Auguste
Chouteau—Imprisonment of McKnight and Chambers—The Caches—
Stampeding Mules—First Military Escort across the Plains—
Captain Zebulon Pike—Sublette and Smith—Murder of McNess—
Indians not the Aggressors.
CHAPTER IV.
TRAINS AND PACKERS.
The Atajo or Pack-train of Mules—Mexican Nomenclature of
Paraphernalia—Manner of Packing—The "Bell-mare"—Toughness of
Mules among Precipices—The Caravan of Wagons—Largest Wagon-train
ever on the Plains—Stampedes—Duties of Packers en route—Order of
Travelling with Pack-train—Chris. Gilson, the Famous Packer.
CHAPTER V.
FIGHT WITH COMANCHES.
Narrative of Bryant's Party of Santa Fe Traders—The First Wagon
Expedition across the Plains—A Thrilling Story of Hardship and
Physical Suffering—Terrible Fight with the Comanches—Abandonment
of the Wagons—On Foot over the Trail—Burial of their Specie
on an Island in the Arkansas—Narrative of William Y. Hitt,
one of the Party—His Encounter with a Comanche—The First Escort
of United States Troops to the Annual Caravan of Santa Fe Traders,
in 1829—Major Bennett Riley's Official Report to the War Department
—Journal of Captain Cooke.
CHAPTER VI.
A ROMANTIC TRAGEDY.
The Expedition of Texans to the Old Santa Fe Trail for the Purpose
of robbing Mexican Traders—Innocent Citizens of the United States
suspected, arrested, and carried to the Capital of New Mexico—
Colonel Snively's Force—Warfield's Sacking of the Village of Mora
—Attack upon a Mexican Caravan—Kit Carson in the Fight—
A Crime of over Sixty Years Ago—A Romance of the Tragedy.
CHAPTER VII.
MEXICO DECLARES WAR.
Mexico declares War against the United States—Congress authorizes
the President to call for Fifty Thousand Volunteers—Organization of
the Army of the West—Phenomenon seen by Santa Fe Traders in the Sky
—First Death on the March of the Army across the Plains—Men in
a Starving Condition—Another Death—Burial near Pawnee Rock—
Trouble at Pawnee Fork—Major Howard's Report.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE VALLEY OF TAOS.
The Valley of Taos—First White Settler—Rebellion of the Mexicans
—A Woman discovers and informs Colonel Price of the Conspiracy—
Assassination of Governor Bent—Horrible Butcheries by the Pueblos
and Mexicans—Turley's Ranch—Murder of Harwood and Markhead—
Anecdote of Sir William Drummond Stewart—Fight at the Mills—
Battle of the Pueblo of Taos—Trial of the Insurrectionists—
Baptiste, the Juror—Execution of the Rebels.
CHAPTER IX.
FIRST OVERLAND MAIL.
Independence—Opening of Navigation on the Mississippi—Effect of
Water Transportation upon the Trade—Establishment of Trading-forts—
Market for Cattle and Mules—Wages paid Teamsters on the Trail—
An Enterprising Coloured Man—Increase of the Trade at the Close of
the Mexican War—Heavy Emigration to California—First Overland Mail
—How the Guards were armed—Passenger Coaches to Santa Fe—
Stage-coaching Days.
CHAPTER X.
CHARLES BENT.
The Tragedy in the Canyon of the Canadian—Dragoons follow the Trail
of the Savages—Kit Carson, Dick Wooton, and Tom Tobin the Scouts
of the Expedition—More than a Hundred of the Savages killed—
Murder of Mrs. White—White Wolf—Lieutenant Bell's Singular Duel
with the Noted Savage—Old Wolf—Satank—Murder of Peacock—
Satanta made Chief—Kicking Bird—His Tragic Death—Charles Bent,
the Half-breed Renegade—His Terrible Acts—His Death.
CHAPTER XI.
LA GLORIETA.
Neglect of New Mexico by the United States Government—Intended
Conquest of the Province—Conspiracy of Southern Leaders—
Surrender by General Twiggs to the Confederate Government of the
Military Posts and Munitions of War under his Command—Only One
Soldier out of Two Thousand deserts to the Enemy—Organization
of Volunteers for the Defence of Colorado and New Mexico—
Battle of La Glorieta—Rout of the Rebels.
CHAPTER XII.
THE BUFFALO.
The Ancient Range of the Buffalo—Number slaughtered in Thirteen Years
for their Robes alone—Buffalo Bones—Trains stopped by Vast Herds—
Custom of Old Hunters when caught in a Blizzard—Anecdotes of
Buffalo Hunting—Kit Carson's Dilemma—Experience of Two of Fremont's
Hunters—Wounded Buffalo Bull—O'Neil's Laughable Experience—
Organization of a Herd of Buffalo—Stampedes—Thrilling Escapes.
CHAPTER XIII.
INDIAN CUSTOMS AND LEGENDS.
Big Timbers—Winter Camp of the Cheyennes, Kiowas, and Arapahoes—
Savage Amusements—A Cheyenne Lodge—Indian Etiquette—Treatment
of Children—The Pipe of the North American Savage—Dog Feast—
Marriage Ceremony.
CHAPTER XIV.
TRAPPERS.
The Old Pueblo Fort—A Celebrated Rendezvous—Its Inhabitants—
"Fontaine qui Bouille"—The Legend of its Origin—The Trappers
of the Old Santa Fe Trail and the Rocky Mountains—Beaver Trapping—
Habits of the Beaver—Improvidence of the Old Trappers—Trading with
"Poor Lo"—The Strange Experience of a Veteran Trapper on the
Santa Fe Trail—Romantic Marriage of Baptiste Brown.
CHAPTER XV.
UNCLE JOHN SMITH.
Uncle John Smith—A Famous Trapper, Guide, and Interpreter—
His Marriage with a Cheyenne Squaw—An Autocrat among the People
of the Plains and Mountains—The Mexicans held him in Great Dread—
His Wonderful Resemblance to President Andrew Johnson—Interpreter
and Guide on General Sheridan's Winter Expedition against the
Allied Plains Tribes—His Stories around the Camp-fire.
CHAPTER XVI.
KIT CARSON.
Famous Men of the Old Santa Fe Trail—Kit Carson—Jim Bridger—
James P. Beckwourth—Uncle Dick Wooton—Jim Baker—Lucien B.
Maxwell—Old Bill Williams—Tom Tobin—James Hobbs.
CHAPTER XVII.
UNCLE DICK WOOTON.
Uncle Dick Wooton—Lucien B. Maxwell—Old Bill Williams—Tom Tobin—
James Hobbs—William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill).
CHAPTER XVIII.
MAXWELL'S RANCH.
Maxwell's Ranch on the Old Santa Fe Trail—A Picturesque Region—
Maxwell a Trapper and Hunter with the American Fur Company—
Lifelong Comrade of Kit Carson—Sources of Maxwell's Wealth—
Fond of Horse-racing—A Disastrous Fourth-of-July Celebration
—Anecdote of Kit Carson—Discovery of Gold on the Ranch—
The Big Ditch—Issuing Beef to the Ute Indians—Camping out with
Maxwell and Carson—A Story of the Old Santa Fe Trail.
CHAPTER XIX.
BENT'S FORTS.
The Bents' Several Forts—Famous Trading-posts—Rendezvous of the
Rocky Mountain Trappers—Castle William and Incidents connected
with the Noted Place—Bartering with the Indians—Annual Feast
of Arapahoes and Cheyennes—Old Wolf's First Visit to Bent's Fort—
The Surprise of the Savages—Stories told by Celebrated Frontiersmen
around the Camp-fire.
CHAPTER XX.
PAWNEE ROCK.
Pawnee Rock—A Debatable Region of the Indian Tribes—The most
Dangerous Point on the Central Plains in the Days of the Early
Santa Fe Trade—Received its Name in a Baptism of Blood—
Battle-ground of the Pawnees and Cheyennes—Old Graves on the
Summit of the Rock—Kit Carson's First Fight at the Rock with
the Pawnees—Kills his Mule by Mistake—Colonel St. Vrain's
Brilliant Charge—Defeat of the Savages—The Trappers' Terrible
Battle with the Pawnees—The Massacre at Cow Creek.
CHAPTER XXI.
FOOLING STAGE ROBBERS.
Wagon Mound—John L. Hatcher's Thrilling Adventure with Old Wolf,
the War-chief of the Comanches—Incidents on the Trail—A Boy
Bugler's Happy Escape from the Savages at Fort Union—A Drunken
Stage-driver—How an Officer of the Quartermaster's Department
at Washington succeeded in starting the Military Freight Caravans
a Month Earlier than the Usual Time—How John Chisholm fooled
the Stage-robbers—The Story of Half a Plug of Tobacco.
CHAPTER XXII.
A DESPERATE RIDE.
Solitary Graves along the Line of the Old Santa Fe Trail—The Walnut
Crossing—Fort Zarah—The Graves on Hon. D. Heizer's Ranch on
the Walnut—Troops stationed at the Crossing of the Walnut—
A Terrible Five Miles—The Cavalry Recruit's Last Ride.
CHAPTER XXIII.
HANCOCK'S EXPEDITION.
General Hancock's Expedition against the Plains Indians—Terrible
Snow-storm at Fort Larned—Meeting with the Chiefs of the
Dog-Soldiers—Bull Bear's Diplomacy—Meeting of the United States
Troops and the Savages in Line of Battle—Custer's Night Experience—
The Surgeon and Dog Stew—Destruction of the Village by Fire—
General Sully's Fight with the Kiowas, Comanches, and Arapahoes—
Finding the Skeletons of the Unfortunate Men—The Savages' Report
of the Affair.
CHAPTER XXIV.
INVASION OF THE RAILROAD.
Scenery on the Line of the Old Santa Fe Trail—The Great Plains—
The Arkansas Valley—Over the Rocky Mountains into New Mexico—
The Raton Range—The Spanish Peaks—Simpson's Rest—Fisher's Peak
—Raton Peak—Snowy Range—Pike's Peak—Raton Creek—The Invasion
of the Railroad—The Old Santa Fe Trail a Thing of the Past.
FOOTNOTES.
PUBLICATION INFORMATION.
INTRODUCTION.
For more than three centuries, a period extending from 1541 to 1851, historians believed, and so announced to the literary world, that Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, the celebrated Spanish explorer, in his search for the Seven Cities of Cibola and the Kingdom of Quivira, was the first European to travel over the intra-continent region of North America. In the last year above referred to, however, Buckingham Smith, of Florida, an eminent Spanish scholar, and secretary of the American Legation at Madrid, discovered among the archives of State the Narrative of Alvar Nunez Cabeca de Vaca, where for nearly three hundred years it had lain, musty and begrimed with the dust of ages, an unread and forgotten story of suffering that has no parallel in fiction. The distinguished antiquarian unearthed the valuable manuscript from its grave of oblivion, translated it into English, and gave it to the world of letters; conferring honour upon whom honour was due, and tearing the laurels from such grand voyageurs and discoverers as De Soto, La Salle, and Coronado, upon whose heads history had erroneously placed them, through no fault, or arrogance, however, of their own.
Cabeca, beyond any question, travelled the Old Santa Fe Trail for many miles, crossed it where it intersects the Arkansas River, a little east of Fort William or Bent's Fort, and went thence on into New Mexico, following the famous highway as far, at least, as Las Vegas. Cabeca's march antedated that of Coronado by five years. To this intrepid Spanish voyageur we are indebted for the first description of the American bison, or buffalo as the animal is erroneously called. While not so quaint in its language as that of Coronado's historian, a lustrum later, the statement cannot be perverted into any other reference than to the great shaggy monsters of the plains:—
Cattle come as far as this. I have seen them three times
and eaten of their meat. I think they are about the size
of those of Spain. They have small horns like the cows
of Morocco, and the hair very long and flocky, like that
of the merino; some are light brown, others black. To my
judgment the flesh is finer and fatter than that of this
country. The Indians make blankets of the hides of those
not full grown. They range over a district of more than
four hundred leagues, and in the whole extent of plain over
which they run the people that inhabit near there descend
and live on them and scatter a vast many skins throughout
the country.
It will be remembered by the student of the early history of our country, that when Alvar Nunez Cabeca de Vaca, a follower of the unfortunate Panphilo de Narvaez, and who had been long thought dead, landed in Spain, he gave such glowing accounts of Florida[1] and the neighbouring regions that the whole kingdom was in a ferment, and many a heart panted to emigrate to a land where the fruits were perennial, and where it was thought flowed the fabled fountain of youth.
Three expeditions to that country had already been tried: one undertaken in 1512, by Juan Ponce de Leon, formerly a companion of Columbus; another in 1520, by Vasquez de Allyon; and another by Panphilo de Narvaez. All of these had signally failed, the bones of most of the leaders and their followers having been left to bleach upon the soil they had come to conquer.
The unfortunate issue of the former expeditions did not operate as a check upon the aspiring mind of De Soto, but made him the more anxious to spring as an actor into the arena which had been the scene of the discomfiture and death of the hardy chivalry of the kingdom. He sought an audience of the emperor, and the latter, after hearing De Soto's proposition that, "he could conquer the country known as Florida at his own expense," conferred upon him the title of "Governor of Cuba and Florida."
On the 6th of April, 1538, De Soto sailed from Spain with an armament of ten vessels and a splendidly equipped army of nine hundred chosen men, amidst the roar of cannons and the inspiring strains of martial music.
It is not within the province of this work to follow De Soto through all his terrible trials on the North American continent; the wonderful story may be found in every well-organized library. It is recorded, however, that some time during the year 1542, his decimated army, then under the command of Luis de Moscoso, De Soto having died the previous May, was camped on the Arkansas River, far upward towards what is now Kansas. It was this command, too, of the unfortunate but cruel De Soto, that saw the Rocky Mountains from the east. The chronicler of the disastrous journey towards the mountains says: "The entire route became a trail of fire and blood," as they had many a desperate struggle with the savages of the plains, who "were of gigantic structure, and fought with heavy strong clubs, with the desperation of demons. Such was their tremendous strength, that one of these warriors was a match for a Spanish soldier, though mounted on a horse, armed with a sword and cased in armour!"
Moscoso was searching for Coronado, and he was one of the most humane of all the officers of De Soto's command, for he evidently bent every energy to extricate his men from the dreadful environments of their situation; despairing of reaching the Gulf by the Mississippi, he struck westward, hoping, as Cabeca de Vaca had done, to arrive in Mexico overland.
A period of six months was consumed in Moscoso's march towards the Rocky Mountains, but he failed to find Coronado, who at that time was camped near where Wichita, Kansas, is located; according to his historian, "at the junction of the St. Peter and St. Paul" (the Big and Little Arkansas?). That point was the place of separation between Coronado and a number of his followers; many returning to Mexico, while the undaunted commander, with as many as he could induce to accompany him, continued easterly, still in search of the mythical Quivira.
How far westward Moscoso travelled cannot be determined accurately, but that his route extended up the valley of the Arkansas for more than three hundred miles, into what is now Kansas, is proved by the statement of his historian, who says: "They saw great chains of mountains and forests to the west, which they understood were uninhabited."
Another strong confirmatory fact is, that, in 1884, a group of mounds was discovered in McPherson County, Kansas, which were thoroughly explored by the professors of Bethany College, Lindsborg, who found, among other interesting relics, a piece of chain-mail armour, of hard steel; undoubtedly part of the equipment of a Spanish soldier either of the command of Cabeca de Vaca, De Soto, or of Coronado. The probability is, that it was worn by one of De Soto's unfortunate men, as neither Panphilo de Narvaez, De Vaca, or Coronado experienced any difficulty with the savages of the great plains, because those leaders were humane and treated the Indians kindly, in contradistinction to De Soto, who was the most inhuman of all the early Spanish explorers. He was of the same school as Pizarro and Cortez; possessing their daring valour, their contempt of danger, and their tenacity of purpose, as well as their cruelty and avarice. De Soto made treaties with the Indians which he constantly violated, and murdered the misguided creatures without mercy. During the retreat of Moscoso's weakened command down the Arkansas River, the Hot Springs of Arkansas were discovered. His historian writes:
And when they saw the foaming fountain, they thought
it was the long-searched-for "Fountain of Youth," reported
by fame to exist somewhere in the country, but ten of the
soldiers dying from excessive drinking, they were soon
convinced of their error.
After these intrepid explorers the restless Coronado appears on the Old Trail. In the third volume of Hakluyt's Voyages, published in London, 1600, Coronado's historian thus describes the great plains of Kansas and Colorado, the bison, and a tornado:—
From Cicuye they went to Quivira, which after their account
is almost three hundred leagues distant, through mighty
plains, and sandy heaths so smooth and wearisome, and bare
of wood that they made heaps of ox-dung, for want of stones
and trees, that they might not lose themselves at their
return: for three horses were lost on that plain, and one
Spaniard which went from his company on hunting....
All that way of plains are as full of crooked-back oxen as
the mountain Serrena in Spain is of sheep, but there is
no such people as keep those cattle.... They were a
great succour for the hunger and the want of bread, which
our party stood in need of....
One day it rained in that plain a great shower of hail,
as big as oranges, which caused many tears, weakness
and bowes.
These oxen are of the bigness and colour of our bulls,
but their bones are not so great. They have a great bunch
upon their fore-shoulder, and more hair on their fore part
than on their hinder part, and it is like wool. They have
as it were an horse-mane upon their backbone, and much hair
and very long from their knees downward. They have great
tufts of hair hanging down on their foreheads, and it
seemeth they have beards because of the great store of hair
hanging down at their chins and throats. The males have
very long tails, and a great knob or flock at the end,
so that in some respects they resemble the lion, and in some
other the camel. They push with their horns, they run,
they overtake and kill an horse when they are in their
rage and anger. Finally it is a foul and fierce beast of
countenance and form of body. The horses fled from them,
either because of their deformed shape, or else because
they had never before seen them.
"The number," continues the historian, "was incredible." When the soldiers, in their excitement for the chase, began to kill them, they rushed together in such masses that hundreds were literally crushed to death. At one place there was a great ravine; they jumped into it in their efforts to escape from the hunters, and so terrible was the slaughter as they tumbled over the precipice that the depression was completely filled up, their carcasses forming a bridge, over which the remainder passed with ease.
The next recorded expedition across the plains via the Old Trail was also by the Spaniards from Santa Fe, eastwardly, in the year 1716, "for the purpose of establishing a Military Post in the Upper Mississippi Valley as a barrier to the further encroachments of the French in that direction." An account of this expedition is found in Memoires Historiques sur La Louisiane, published in Paris in 1858, but never translated in its entirety. The author, Lieutenant Dumont of the French army, was one of a party ascending the Arkansas River in search of a supposed mass of emeralds. The narrative relates:
There was more than half a league to traverse to gain the
other bank of the river, and our people were no sooner
arrived than they found there a party of Missouris, sent to
M. de la Harpe by M. de Bienville, then commandant general
at Louisiana, to deliver orders to the former. Consequently
they gave the signal order, and our other two canoes having
crossed the river, the savages gave to our commandant the
letters of M. de Bienville, in which he informed him that
the Spaniards had sent out a detachment from New Mexico
to go to the Missouris and to establish a post in that
country.... The success of this expedition was very
calamitous to the Spaniards. Their caravan was composed of
fifteen hundred people, men, women and soldiers, having
with them a Jacobin for a chaplain, and bringing also a
great number of horses and cattle, according to the custom
of that nation to forget nothing that might be necessary for
a settlement. Their design was to destroy the Missouris,
and to seize upon their country, and with this intention
they had resolved to go first to the Osages, a neighbouring
nation, enemies of the Missouris, to form an alliance with
them, and to engage them in their behalf for the execution
of their plan. Perhaps the map which guided them was not
correct, or they had not exactly followed it, for it chanced
that instead of going to the Osages whom they sought, they
fell, without knowing it, into a village of the Missouris,
where the Spanish commander, presenting himself to the great
chief and offering him the calumet, made him understand
through an interpreter, believing himself to be speaking
to the Osage chief, that they were enemies of the Missouris,
that they had come to destroy them, to make their women
and children slaves and to take possession of their country.
He begged the chief to be willing to form an alliance
with them, against a nation whom the Osages regarded as
their enemy, and to second them in this enterprise, promising
to recompense them liberally for the service rendered,
and always to be their friend in the future. Upon this
discourse the Missouri chief understood perfectly well
the mistake. He dissimulated and thanked the Spaniard for
the confidence he had in his nation; he consented to form
an alliance with them against the Missouris, and to join
them with all his forces to destroy them; but he represented
that his people were not armed, and that they dared not
expose themselves without arms in such an enterprise.
Deceived by so favourable a reception, the Spaniards fell
into the trap laid for them. They received with due
ceremony, in the little camp they had formed on their
arrival, the calumet which the great chief of the Missouris
presented to the Spanish commander. The alliance for war
was sworn to by both parties; they agreed upon a day for
the execution of the plan which they meditated, and the
Spaniards furnished the savages with all the munitions which
they thought were needed. After the ceremony both parties
gave themselves up equally to joy and good cheer. At the
end of three days two thousand savages were armed and in
the midst of dances and amusements; each party thought
nothing but the execution of its design. It was the evening
before their departure upon their concerted expedition,
and the Spaniards had retired to their camps as usual,
when the great chief of the Missouris, having assembled
his warriors, declared to them his intentions and exhorted
them to deal treacherously with these strangers who were come
to their home only with the design of destroying them.
At daybreak the savages divided into several bands, fell on
the Spaniards, who expected nothing of the kind, and in
less than a quarter of an hour all the caravan were murdered.
No one escaped from the massacre except the chaplain, whom
the barbarians saved because of his dress; at the same time
they took possession of all the merchandise and other
effects which they found in their camp. The Spaniards had
brought with them, as I have said, a certain number of horses,
and as the savages were ignorant of the use of these animals,
they took pleasure in making the Jacobin whom they had saved,
and who had become their slave, mount them. The priest gave
them this amusement almost every day for the five or six
months that he remained with them in their village, without
any of them daring to imitate him. Tired at last of his
slavery, and regarding the lack of daring in these barbarians
as a means of Providence to regain his liberty, he made
secretly all the provisions possible for him to make,
and which he believed necessary to his plan. At last,
having chosen the best horse and having mounted him,
after performing several of his exploits before the savages,
and while they were all occupied with his manoeuvres,
he spurred up and disappeared from their sight, taking the
road to Mexico, where doubtless he arrived.
Charlevoix,[2] who travelled from Quebec to New Orleans in the year 1721, says in one of his letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguieres, dated at Kaskaskia, July 21, 1721:
About two years ago some Spaniards, coming, as they say,
from New Mexico, and intending to get into the country of
the Illinois and drive the French from thence, whom they
saw with extreme jealousy approach so near the Missouri,
came down the river and attacked two villages of the
Octoyas,[3] who are the allies of the Ayouez,[4] and from
whom it is said also that they are derived. As the savages
had no firearms and were surprised, the Spaniards made an
easy conquest and killed a great many of them. A third
village, which was not far off from the other two, being
informed of what had passed, and not doubting but these
conquerors would attack them, laid an ambush into which
the Spaniards heedlessly fell. Others say that the savages,
having heard that the enemy were almost all drunk and
fast asleep, fell upon them in the night. However it was,
it is certain the greater part of them were killed.
There were in the party two almoners; one of them was
killed directly and the other got away to the Missouris,
who took him prisoner, but he escaped them very dexterously.
He had a very fine horse and the Missouris took pleasure
in seeing him ride it, which he did very skilfully. He took
advantage of their curiosity to get out of their hands.
One day as he was prancing and exercising his horse before
them, he got a little distance from them insensibly; then
suddenly clapping spurs to his horse he was soon out of sight.
The Missouri Indians once occupied all the territory near the junction of the Kaw and Missouri rivers, but they were constantly decimated by the continual depredations of their warlike and feudal enemies, the Pawnees and Sioux, and at last fell a prey to that dreadful scourge, the small-pox, which swept them off by thousands. The remnant of the once powerful tribe then found shelter and a home with the Otoes, finally becoming merged in that tribe.
CHAPTER I. UNDER THE SPANIARDS.
The Santa Fe of the purely Mexican occupation, long before the days of New Mexico's acquisition by the United States, and the Santa Fe of to-day are so widely in contrast that it is difficult to find language in which to convey to the reader the story of the phenomenal change. To those who are acquainted with the charming place as it is now, with its refined and cultured society, I cannot do better, perhaps, in attempting to show what it was under the old regime, than to quote what some traveller in the early 30's wrote for a New York leading newspaper, in regard to it. As far as my own observation of the place is concerned, when I first visited it a great many years ago, the writer of the communication whose views I now present was not incorrect in his judgment. He said:—
To dignify such a collection of mud hovels with the name
of "City," would be a keen irony; not greater, however,
than is the name with which its Padres have baptized it.
To call a place with its moral character, a very Sodom
in iniquity, "Holy Faith," is scarcely a venial sin;
it deserves Purgatory at least. Its health is the best
in the country, which is the first, second and third
recommendation of New Mexico by its greatest admirers.
It is a small town of about two thousand inhabitants,
crowded up against the mountains, at the end of a little
valley through which runs a mountain stream of the same
name tributary to the Rio Grande. It has a public square
in the centre, a Palace and an Alameda; as all Spanish
Roman Catholic towns have. It is true its Plaza, or
Public Square, is unfenced and uncared for, without trees
or grass. The Palace is nothing more than the biggest
mud-house in the town, and the churches, too, are unsightly
piles of the same material, and the Alameda[5] is on top of
a sand hill. Yet they have in Santa Fe all the parts and
parcels of a regal city and a Bishopric. The Bishop has a
palace also; the only two-storied shingle-roofed house in
the place. There is one public house set apart for eating,
drinking and gambling; for be it known that gambling is here
authorized by law. Hence it is as respectable to keep a
gambling house, as it is to sell rum in New Jersey; it is
a lawful business, and being lawful, and consequently
respectable and a man's right, why should not men gamble?
And gamble they do. The Generals and the Colonels and
the Majors and the Captains gamble. The judges and the
lawyers and the doctors and the priests gamble; and there
are gentlemen gamblers by profession! You will see squads
of poor peons daily, men, women and boys, sitting on the
ground around a deck of cards in the Public Square, gambling
for the smallest stakes.
The stores of the town generally front on the Public Square.
Of these there are a dozen, more or less, of respectable
size, and most of them are kept by others than Mexicans.
The business of the place is considerable, many of the
merchants here being wholesale dealers for the vast
territory tributary. It is supposed that about $750,000
worth of goods will be brought to this place this year, and
there may be $250,000 worth imported directly from the
United States.
In the money market there is nothing less than a five-cent
piece. You cannot purchase anything for less than five cents.
In trade they reckon ten cents the eighth of a dollar.
If you purchase nominally a dollar's worth of an article,
you can pay for it in eight ten-cent pieces; and if you
give a dollar, you receive no change. In changing a dollar
for you, you would get but eight ten-cent pieces for it.
Yet, although dirty and unkempt, and swarming with hungry
dogs, it has the charm of foreign flavour, and like
San Antonio retains some portion of the grace which long
lingered about it, if indeed it ever forsakes the spot
where Spain held rule for centuries, and the soft syllables
of the Spanish language are yet heard.
Such was a description of the "drowsy old town" of Santa Fe, sixty-five years ago. Fifteen years later Major W. H. Emory, of the United States army, writes of it as follows:[6]
The population of Santa Fe is from two to four thousand,
and the inhabitants are, it is said, the poorest people
of any town in the Province. The houses are mud bricks,
in the Spanish style, generally of one story, and built
on a square. The interior of the square is an open court,
and the principal rooms open into it. They are forbidding
in appearance from the outside, but nothing can exceed
the comfort and convenience of the interior. The thick
walls make them cool in summer and warm in winter.
The better class of people are provided with excellent beds,
but the poorer class sleep on untanned skins. The women
here, as in many other parts of the world, appear to be
much before the men in refinements, intelligence, and
knowledge of the useful arts. The higher class dress like
the American women, except, instead of a bonnet, they wear
a scarf over their head, called a reboso. This they wear
asleep or awake, in the house or abroad. The dress of the
lower classes of women is a simple petticoat, with arms and
shoulders bare, except what may chance to be covered by
the reboso.
The men who have means to do so dress after our fashion;
but by far the greater number, when they dress at all,
wear leather breeches, tight around the hips and open from
the knee down; shirt and blanket take the place of our
coat and vest.
The city is dependent on the distant hills for wood, and
at all hours of the day may be seen jackasses passing laden
with wood, which is sold at two bits, twenty-five cents,
the load. These are the most diminutive animals, and
usually mounted from behind, after the fashion of leap-frog.
The jackass is the only animal that can be subsisted in
this barren neighbourhood without great expense; our horses
are all sent to a distance of twelve, fifteen, and thirty
miles for grass.
I have interpolated these two somewhat similar descriptions of Santa Fe written in that long ago when New Mexico was almost as little known as the topography of the planet Mars, so that the intelligent visitor of to-day may appreciate the wonderful changes which American thrift, and that powerful civilizer, the locomotive, have wrought in a very few years, yet it still, as one of the foregoing writers has well said, "has the charm of foreign flavour, and the soft syllables of the Spanish language are still heard."
The most positive exception must be taken to the statement of the first-quoted writer in relation to the Palace, of which he says "It is nothing more than the biggest mud-house in the town." Now this "Palacio del Gobernador," as the old building was called by the Spanish, was erected at a very early day. It was the long-established seat of power when Penalosa confined the chief inquisitor within its walls in 1663, and when the Pueblo authorities took possession of it as the citadel of their central authority, in 1681.
The old building cannot well be overlooked by the most careless visitor to the quaint town; it is a long, low structure, taking up the greater part of one side of the Plaza, round which runs a colonnade supported by pillars of rough pine. In this once leaky old Palace were kept, or rather neglected, the archives of the Territory until the American residents, appreciating the importance of preserving precious documents containing so much of interest to the student of history and the antiquarian, enlisted themselves enthusiastically in the good cause, and have rescued from oblivion the annals of a relatively remote civilization, which, but for their forethought, would have perished from the face of the earth as completely as have the written records of that wonderful region in Central America, whose gigantic ruins alone remain to tell us of what was a highly cultured order of architecture in past ages, and of a people whose intelligence was comparable to the style of the dwellings in which they lived.
The old adobe Palace is in itself a volume whose pages are filled with pathos and stirring events. It has been the scene and witness of incidents the recital of which would to us to-day seem incredible. An old friend, once governor of New Mexico and now dead, thus graphically spoke of the venerable building:[7]
In it lived and ruled the Spanish captain general, so remote
and inaccessible from the viceroyalty at Mexico that he was
in effect a king, nominally accountable to the viceroy,
but practically beyond his reach and control and wholly
irresponsible to the people. Equally independent for the
same reason were the Mexican governors. Here met all the
provincial, territorial, departmental, and other legislative
bodies that have ever assembled at the capital of New Mexico.
Here have been planned all the Indian wars and measures
for defence against foreign invasion, including, as the
most noteworthy, the Navajo war of 1823, the Texan invasion
of 1842, the American of 1846, and the Confederate of 1862.
Within its walls was imprisoned, in 1809, the American
explorer Zebulon M. Pike, and innumerable state prisoners
before and since; and many a sentence of death has been
pronounced therein and the accused forthwith led away and
shot at the dictum of the man at the Palace. It has been
from time immemorial the government house with all its
branches annexed. It was such on the Fourth of July, 1776,
when the American Congress at Independence Hall in
Philadelphia proclaimed liberty throughout all the land,
not then, but now embracing it. Indeed, this old edifice
has a history. And as the history of Santa Fe is the
history of New Mexico, so is the history of the Palace
the history of Santa Fe.
The Palace was the only building having glazed windows. At one end was the government printing office, and at the other, the guard-house and prison. Fearful stories were connected with the prison. Edwards[8] says that he found, on examining the walls of the small rooms, locks of human hair stuffed into holes, with rude crosses drawn over them.
Fronting the Palace, on the south side of the Plaza, stood the remains of the Capilla de los Soldados, or Military Chapel. The real name of the church was "Our Lady of Light." It was said to be the richest church in the Province, but had not been in use for a number of years, and the roof had fallen in, allowing the elements to complete the work of destruction. On each side of the altar was the remains of fine carving, and a weather-beaten picture above gave evidence of having been a beautiful painting. Over the door was a large oblong slab of freestone, elaborately carved, representing "Our Lady of Light" rescuing a human being from the jaws of Satan. A large tablet, beautifully executed in relief, stood behind the altar, representing various saints, with an inscription stating that it was erected by Governor Francisco Antonio del Valle and his wife in 1761.
Church services were held in the Parroquia, or Parish church, now the Cathedral, which had two towers or steeples, in which hung four bells. The music was furnished by a violin and a triangle. The wall back of the altar was covered with innumerable mirrors, paintings, and bright-coloured tapestry.
The exact date of the first settlement of Santa Fe is uncertain. One authority says:
It was a primeval stronghold before the Spanish Conquest,
and a town of some importance to the white race when
Pennsylvania was a wilderness and the first Dutch governor
of New York was slowly drilling the Knickerbocker ancestry
in their difficult evolutions around the town-pump.
It is claimed, on what is deemed very authentic data by some, that Santa Fe is really the oldest settled town in the United States. St. Augustine, Florida, was established in 1565 and was unquestionably conceded the honour of antiquity until the acquisition of New Mexico by the Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty. Then, of course, Santa Fe steps into the arena and carries off the laurels. This claim of precedence for Santa Fe is based upon the statement (whether historically correct or not is a question) that when the Spaniards first entered the region from the southern portion of Mexico, about 1542, they found a very large Pueblo town on the present site of Santa Fe, and that its prior existence extended far back into the vanished centuries. This is contradicted by other historians, who contend that the claim of Santa Fe to be the oldest town in the United States rests entirely on imaginary annals of an Indian Pueblo before the Spanish Conquest, and that there are but slight indications that the town was built on the site of one.[9]
The reader may further satisfy himself on these mooted points by consulting the mass of historical literature on New Mexico, and the records of its primitive times are not surpassed in interest by those of any other part of the continent. It was there the Europeans first made great conquests, and some years prior to the landing of the Pilgrims, a history of New Mexico, being the journal of Geronimo de Zarate Salmaron, was published by the Church in the City of Mexico, early in 1600. Salmaron was a Franciscan monk; a most zealous and indefatigable worker. During his eight years' residence at Jemez, near Santa Fe, he claims to have baptized over eight thousand Indians, converts to the Catholic faith. His journal gives a description of the country, its mines, etc., and was made public in order that other monks reading it might emulate his pious example.
Between 1605 and 1616 was founded the Villa of Santa Fe, or San Francisco de la Santa Fe. "Villa," or village, was an honorary title, always authorized and proclaimed by the king. Bancroft says that it was first officially mentioned on the 3d of January, 1617.
The first immigration to New Mexico was under Don Juan de Onate about 1597, and in a year afterward, according to some authorities, Santa Fe was settled. The place, as claimed by some historians, was then named El Teguayo, a Spanish adaptation of the word "Tegua," the name of the Pueblo nation, which was quite numerous, and occupied Santa Fe and the contiguous country. It very soon, from its central position and charming climate, became the leading Spanish town, and the capital of the Province. The Spaniards, who came at first into the country as friends, and were apparently eager to obtain the good-will of the intelligent natives, shortly began to claim superiority, and to insist on the performance of services which were originally mere evidences of hospitality and kindness. Little by little they assumed greater power and control over the Indians, until in the course of years they had subjected a large portion of them to servitude little differing from actual slavery.
The impolitic zeal of the monks gradually invoked the spirit of hatred and resulted in a rebellion that drove the Spaniards, in 1680, from the country. The large number of priests who were left in the midst of the natives met with horrible fates:
Not one escaped martyrdom. At Zuni, three Franciscans
had been stationed, and when the news of the Spanish retreat
reached the town, the people dragged them from their cells,
stripped and stoned them, and afterwards compelled the
servant of one to finish the work by shooting them. Having
thus whetted their appetite for cruelty and vengeance,
the Indians started to carry the news of their independence
to Moqui, and signalized their arrival by the barbarous
murder of the two missionaries who were living there.
Their bodies were left unburied, as a prey for the wild
beasts. At Jemez they indulged in every refinement of
cruelty. The old priest, Jesus Morador, was seized in
his bed at night, stripped naked and mounted on a hog,
and thus paraded through the streets, while the crowd
shouted and yelled around. Not satisfied with this,
they then forced him to carry them as a beast would,
crawling on his hands and feet, until, from repeated beating
and the cruel tortures of sharp spurs, he fell dead in
their midst. A similar chapter of horrors was enacted
at Acoma, where three priests were stripped, tied together
with hair rope, and so driven through the streets, and
finally stoned to death. Not a Christian remained free
within the limits of New Mexico, and those who had been
dominant a few months before were now wretched and
half-starved fugitives, huddled together in the rude huts
of San Lorenzo.
As soon as the Spaniards had retreated from the country,
the Pueblo Indians gave themselves up for a time to
rejoicing, and to the destruction of everything which could
remind them of the Europeans, their religion, and their
domination. The army which had besieged Santa Fe quickly
entered that city, took possession of the Palace as the
seat of government, and commenced the work of demolition.
The churches and the monastery of the Franciscans were
burned with all their contents, amid the almost frantic
acclamations of the natives. The gorgeous vestments of
the priests had been dragged out before the conflagration,
and now were worn in derision by Indians, who rode through
the streets at full speed, shouting for joy. The official
documents and books in the Palace were brought forth,
and made fuel for a bonfire in the centre of the Plaza;
and here also they danced the cachina, with all the
accompanying religious ceremonies of the olden time.
Everything imaginable was done to show their detestation
of the Christian faith and their determination to utterly
eradicate even its memory. Those who had been baptized
were washed with amole in the Rio Chiquito, in order to be
cleansed from the infection of Christianity. All baptismal
names were discarded, marriages celebrated by Christian
priests were annulled, the very mention of the names Jesus
and Mary was made an offence, and estuffas were constructed
to take the place of ruined churches.[10]
For twelve years, although many abortive attempts were made to recapture the country, the Pueblos were left in possession. On the 16th of October, 1693, the victorious Spaniards at last entered Santa Fe, bearing the same banner which had been carried by Onate when he entered the city just a century before. The conqueror this time was Don Diego de Vargas Zapata Lujan, whom the viceroy of New Spain had appointed governor in the spring of 1692, with the avowed purpose of having New Mexico reconquered as speedily as possible.
Thus it will be seen that the quaint old city has been the scene of many important historical events, the mere outline of which I have recorded here, as this book is not devoted to the historical view of the subject.
In contradistinction to the quiet, sleepy old Santa Fe of half a century ago, it now presents all the vigour, intelligence, and bustling progressiveness of the average American city of to-day, yet still smacks of that ancient Spanish regime, which gives it a charm that only its blended European and Indian civilization could make possible after its amalgamation with the United States.
The tourist will no longer find a drowsy old town, and the Plaza is no longer unfenced and uncared for. A beautiful park of trees is surrounded by low palings, and inside the shady enclosure, under a group of large cottonwoods, is a cenotaph erected to the memory of the Territory's gallant soldiers who fell in the shock of battle to save New Mexico to the Union in 1862, and conspicuous among the names carved on the enduring native rock is that of Kit Carson—prince of frontiersmen, and one of Nature's noblemen.
Around the Plaza one sees the American style of architecture and hears the hum of American civilization; but beyond, and outside this pretty park, the streets are narrow, crooked, and have an ancient appearance. There the old Santa Fe confronts the stranger; odd, foreign-looking, and flavoured with all the peculiarities which marked the era of Mexican rule. And now, where once was heard the excited shouts of the idle crowd, of "Los Americanos!" "Los Carros!" "La entrada de la Caravana!" as the great freight wagons rolled into the streets of the old town from the Missouri, over the Santa Fe Trail, the shrill whistle of the locomotive from its trail of steel awakens the echoes of the mighty hills.
As may be imagined, great excitement always prevailed whenever a caravan of goods arrived in Santa Fe. Particularly was this the case among the feminine portion of the community. The quaint old town turned out its mixed population en masse the moment the shouts went up that the train was in sight. There is nothing there to-day comparable to the anxious looks of the masses as they watched the heavily freighted wagons rolling into the town, the teamsters dust-begrimed, and the mules making the place hideous with their discordant braying as they knew that their long journey was ended and rest awaited them. The importing merchants were obliged to turn over to the custom house officials five hundred dollars for every wagon-load, great or small; and no matter what the intrinsic value of the goods might be, salt or silk, velvets or sugar, it was all the same. The nefarious duty had to be paid before a penny's worth could be transferred to their counters. Of course, with the end of Mexican rule and the acquisition of the Province by the United States, all opposition to the traffic of the Old Santa Fe Trail ended, traders were assured a profitable market and the people purchased at relatively low prices.
What a wonderful change has taken place in the traffic with New Mexico in less than three-quarters of a century! In 1825 it was all carried on with one single annual caravan of prairie-schooners, and now there are four railroads running through the Rio Grande Valley, and one daily freight train of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe into the town unloads more freight than was taken there in a whole year when the "commerce of the prairies" was at its height!
Upon the arrival of a caravan in the days of the sleepy regime under Mexican control, the people did everything in their power to make the time pass pleasantly for every one connected with it during their sojourn. Bailes, or fandangoes, as the dancing parties were called by the natives, were given nightly, and many amusing anecdotes in regard to them are related by the old-timers.
The New Mexicans, both men and women, had a great fondness for jewelry, dress, and amusements; of the latter, the fandango was the principal, which was held in the most fashionable place of resort, where every belle and beauty in the town presented herself, attired in the most costly manner, and displaying her jewelled ornaments to the best advantage. To this place of recreation and pleasure, generally a large, capacious saloon or interior court, all classes of persons were allowed to come, without charge and without invitation. The festivities usually commenced about nine o'clock in the evening, and the tolling of the church bells was the signal for the ladies to make their entrance, which they did almost simultaneously.
New Mexican ladies were famous for their gaudy dresses, but it must be confessed they did not exercise good taste. Their robes were made without bodies; a skirt only, and a long, loose, flowing scarf or reboso dexterously thrown about the head and shoulders, so as to supersede both the use of dress-bodies and bonnets.
There was very little order maintained at these fandangoes, and still less attention paid to the rules of etiquette. A kind of swinging, gallopade waltz was the favourite dance, the cotillion not being much in vogue. Read Byron's graphic description of the waltz, and then stretch your imagination to its utmost tension, and you will perhaps have some faint conception of the Mexican fandango. Such familiarity of position as was indulged in would be repugnant to the refined rules of polite society in the eastern cities; but with the New Mexicans, in those early times, nothing was considered to be a greater accomplishment than that of being able to go handsomely through all the mazes of their peculiar dance.
There was one republican feature about the New Mexican fandango; it was that all classes, rich and poor alike, met and intermingled, as did the Romans at their Saturnalia, upon terms of equality. Sumptuous repasts or collations were rarely ever prepared for those frolicsome gatherings, but there was always an abundance of confectionery, sweetmeats, and native wine. It cost very little for a man to attend one of the fandangoes in Santa Fe, but not to get away decently and sober. In that it resembled the descent of Aeneas to Pluto's realms; it was easy enough to get there, but when it came to return, "revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras, hic labor, hoc opus est."
CHAPTER II. LA LANDE AND PURSLEY.
In the beginning of the trade with New Mexico, the route across the great plains was directly west from the Missouri River to the mountains, thence south to Santa Fe by the circuitous trail from Taos. When the traffic assumed an importance demanding a more easy line of way, the road was changed, running along the left bank of the Arkansas until that stream turned northwest, at which point it crossed the river, and continued southwest to the Raton Pass.
The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad track substantially follows the Trail through the mountains, which here afford the wildest and most picturesquely beautiful scenery on the continent.
The Arkansas River at the fording of the Old Trail is not more than knee-deep at an ordinary stage of water, and its bottom is well paved with rounded pebbles of the primitive rock.
The overland trade between the United States and the northern provinces of Mexico seems to have had no very definite origin; having been rather the result of an accident than of any organized plan of commercial establishment.
According to the best authorities, a French creole, named La Lande, an agent of a merchant of Kaskaskia, Illinois, was the first American adventurer to enter into the uncertain channels of trade with the people of the ultramontane region of the centre of the continent. He began his adventurous journey across the vast wilderness, with no companions but the savages of the debatable land, in 1804; and following him the next year, James Pursley undertook the same pilgrimage. Neither of these pioneers in the "commerce of the prairies" returned to relate what incidents marked the passage of their marvellous expeditions. Pursley was so infatuated with the strange country he had travelled so far to reach, that he took up his abode in the quaint old town of Santa Fe where his subsequent life is lost sight of. La Lande, of a different mould, forgot to render an account of his mission to the merchant who had sent him there, and became a prosperous and wealthy man by means of money to which he had no right.
To Captain Zebulon Pike, who afterwards was made a general, is due the impetus which the trade with Santa Fe received shortly after his return to the United States. The student of American history will remember that the expedition commanded by this soldier was inaugurated in 1806; his report of the route he had taken was the incentive for commercial speculation in the direction of trade with New Mexico, but it was so handicapped by restrictions imposed by the Mexican government, that the adventurers into the precarious traffic were not only subject to a complete confiscation of their wares, but frequently imprisoned for months as spies. Under such a condition of affairs, many of the earlier expeditions, prior to 1822, resulted in disaster, and only a limited number met with an indifferent success.
It will not be inconsistent with my text if I herewith interpolate an incident connected with Pursley, the second American to cross the desert, for the purpose of trade with New Mexico, which I find in the Magazine of American History:
When Zebulon M. Pike was in Mexico, in 1807, he met,
at Santa Fe, a carpenter, Pursley by name, from Bardstown,
Kentucky, who was working at his trade. He had in a
previous year, while out hunting on the Plains, met with
a series of misfortunes, and found himself near the
mountains. The hostile Sioux drove the party into the
high ground in the rear of Pike's Peak. Near the headwaters
of the Platte River, Pursley found some gold, which he
carried in his shot-pouch for months. He was finally sent
by his companions to Santa Fe, to see if they could trade
with the Mexicans, but he chose to remain in Santa Fe
in preference to returning to his comrades. He told the
Mexicans about the gold he had found, and they tried hard
to persuade him to show them the place. They even offered
to take along a strong force of cavalry. But Pursley
refused, and his patriotic reason was that he thought the
land belonged to the United States. He told Captain Pike
that he feared they would not allow him to leave Santa Fe,
as they still hoped to learn from him where the gold was
to be found. These facts were published by Captain Pike
soon after his return east; but no one took the hint,
or the risk was too great, and thus more than a half
a century passed before those same rich fields of gold
were found and opened to the world. If Pursley had been
somewhat less patriotic, and had guided the Mexicans to
the treasures, the whole history and condition of the
western part of our continent might have been entirely
different from what it now is. That region would still
have been a part of Mexico, or Spain might have been
in possession of it, owning California; and, with the gold
that would have been poured into her coffers, would have
been the leading nation of European affairs to-day.
We can easily see how American and European history in
the nineteenth century might have been changed, if that
adventurer from Kentucky had not been a true lover of his
native country.
The adventures of Captain Ezekiel Williams along the Old Trail, in the early days of the century, tell a story of wonderful courage, endurance, and persistency. Williams was a man of great perseverance, patience, and determination of character. He set out from St. Louis in the late spring of 1807, to trap on the Upper Missouri and the waters of the Yellowstone, with a party of twenty men who had chosen him as their leader. After various exciting incidents and thrilling adventures, all of the original party, except Williams and two others, were killed by the Indians somewhere in the vicinity of the Upper Arkansas. The three survivors, not knowing where they were, separated, and Captain Williams determined to take to the stream by canoe, and trap on his way toward the settlements, while his last two companions started for the Spanish country—that is, for the region of Santa Fe. The journal of Williams, from which I shall quote freely, is to be found in The Lost Trappers, a work long out of print.[11] As the country was an unexplored region, he might be on a river that flowed into the Pacific, or he might be drifting down a stream that was an affluent to the Gulf of Mexico. He was inclined to believe that he was on the sources of the Red River. He therefore resolved to launch his canoe, and go wherever the stream might convey him, trapping on his descent, when beaver might be plenty.
The first canoe he used he made of buffalo-skins. As this kind of water conveyance soon begins to leak and rot, he made another of cottonwood, as soon as he came to timber sufficiently large, in which he embarked for a port, he knew not where.
Most of his journeyings Captain Williams performed during the hours of night, excepting when he felt it perfectly safe to travel in daylight. His usual plan was to glide along down the stream, until he came to a place where beaver signs were abundant. There he would push his little bark among the willows, where he remained concealed, excepting when he was setting his traps or visiting them in the morning. When he had taken all the beaver in one neighbourhood, he would untie his little conveyance, and glide onward and downward to try his luck in another place.
Thus for hundreds of miles did this solitary trapper float down this unknown river, through an unknown country, here and there lashing his canoe to the willows and planting his traps in the little tributaries around. The upper part of the Arkansas, for this proved to be the river he was on,[12] is very destitute of timber, and the prairie frequently begins at the bank of the river and expands on either side as far as the eye can reach. He saw vast herds of buffalo, and as it was the rutting season, the bulls were making a wonderful ado; the prairie resounded with their low, deep grunting or bellowing, as they tore up the earth with their feet and horns, whisking their tails, and defying their rivals to battle. Large gangs of wild horses could be seen grazing on the plains and hillsides, and the neighing and squealing of stallions might be heard at all times of the night.
Captain Williams never used his rifle to procure meat, except when it was absolutely necessary, or could be done with perfect safety. On occasions when he had no beaver, upon which he generally subsisted, he ventured to kill a deer, and after refreshing his empty stomach with a portion of the flesh, he placed the carcass in one end of the canoe. It was his invariable custom to sleep in his canoe at night, moored to the shore, and once when he had laid in a supply of venison he was startled in his sleep by the tramping of something in the bushes on the bank. Tramp! tramp! tramp! went the footsteps, as they approached the canoe. He thought at first it might be an Indian that had found out his locality, but he knew that it could not be; a savage would not approach him in that careless manner. Although there was beautiful starlight, yet the trees and the dense undergrowth made it very dark on the bank of the river, close to which he lay. He always adopted the precaution of tying his canoe with a piece of rawhide about twenty feet long, which allowed it to swing from the bank at that distance; he did this so that in case of an emergency he might cut the string, and glide off without making any noise. As the sound of the footsteps grew more distinct, he presently observed a huge grizzly bear coming down to the water and swimming for the canoe. The great animal held his head up as if scenting the venison. The captain snatched his axe as the most available means to defend himself in such a scrape, and stood with it uplifted, ready to drive it into the brains of the monster. The bear reached the canoe, and immediately put his fore paws upon the hind end of it, nearly turning it over. The captain struck one of the brute's feet with the edge of the axe, which made him let go with that foot, but he held on with the other, and he received this time a terrific blow on the head, that caused him to drop away from the canoe entirely. Nothing more was seen of the bear, and the captain thought he must have sunk in the stream and drowned. He was evidently after the fresh meat, which he scented from a great distance. In the canoe the next morning there were two of the bear's claws, which had been cut off by the well-directed blow of the axe. These were carefully preserved by Williams for many years as a trophy which he was fond of exhibiting, and the history of which he always delighted to tell.
As he was descending the river with his peltries, which consisted of one hundred and twenty-five beaver-skins, besides some of the otter and other smaller animals, he overtook three Kansas Indians, who were also in a canoe going down the river, as he learned from them, to some post to trade with the whites. They manifested a very friendly disposition towards the old trapper, and expressed a wish to accompany him. He also learned from them, to his great delight, that he was on the Big Arkansas, and not more than five hundred miles from the white settlements. He was well enough versed in the treachery of the Indian character to know just how much he could repose in their confidence. He was aware that they would not allow a solitary trapper to pass through their country with a valuable collection of furs, without, at least, making an effort to rob him. He knew that their plan would be to get him into a friendly intercourse, and then, at the first opportunity, strip him of everything he possessed; consequently he was determined to get rid of them as soon as possible, and to effect this, he plied his oars with all diligence. The Indians, like most North American savages, were lazy, and had no disposition to labour in that way, but took it quite leisurely, satisfied with being carried down by the current. Williams soon left them in the rear, and, as he supposed, far behind him. When night came on, however, as he had worked all day, and slept none the night before, he resolved to turn aside into a bunch of willows to take a few hours' rest. But he had not stopped more than forty minutes when he heard some Indians pull to the shore just above him on the same side of the river. He immediately loosened his canoe from its moorings, and glided silently away. He rowed hard for two or three hours, when he again pulled to the bank and tied up.
Only a short time after he had landed, he heard Indians again going on shore on the same side of the stream as himself. A second time he repeated his tactics, slipped out of his place of concealment, and stole softly away. He pulled on vigorously until some time after midnight, when he supposed he could with safety stop and snatch a little sleep. He felt apprehensive that he was in a dangerous region, and his anxiety kept him wide awake. It was very lucky that he did not close his eyes; for as he was lying in the bottom of his canoe he heard for the third time a canoe land as before. He was now perfectly satisfied that he was dogged by the Kansans whom he had passed the preceding day, and in no very good humour, therefore, he picked up his rifle, and walked up to the bank where he had heard the Indians land. As he suspected, there were the three savages. When they saw the captain, they immediately renewed their expressions of friendship, and invited him to partake of their hospitality. He stood aloof from them, and shook his head in a rage, charging them with their villanous purposes. In the short, sententious manner of the Indians, he said to them: "You now follow me three times; if you follow me again, I kill you!" and wheeling around abruptly, returned to his canoe. A third time the solitary trapper pushed his little craft from the shore and set off down stream, to get away from a region where to sleep would be hazardous. He plied his oars the remainder of the night, and solaced himself with the thought that no evil had befallen him, except the loss of a few hours' sleep.
While he was escaping from his villanous pursuers, he was running into new dangers and difficulties. The following day he overtook a large band of the same tribe, under the leadership of a chief, who were also descending the river. Into the hands of these savages he fell a prisoner, and was conducted to one of their villages. The principal chief there took all of his furs, traps, and other belongings. A very short time after his capture, the Kansans went to war with the Pawnees, and carried Captain Williams with them. In a terrible battle in which the Kansans gained a most decided victory, the old trapper bore a conspicuous part, killing a great number of the enemy, and by his excellent strategy brought about the success of his captors. When they returned to the village, Williams, who had ever been treated with kindness by the inhabitants, was now thought to be a wonderful warrior, and could have been advanced to all the savage honours; he might even have been made one of their principal chiefs. The tribe gave him his liberty for the great service he had rendered it in its difficulty with an inveterate foe, but declining all proffered promotions, he decided to return to the white settlements on the Missouri, at the mouth of the Kaw, the covetous old chief retaining all his furs, and indeed everything he possessed excepting his rifle, with as many rounds of ammunition as would be necessary to secure him provisions in the shape of game on his route. The veteran trapper had learned from the Indians while with them that they expected to go to Fort Osage on the Missouri River to receive some annuities from the government, and he felt certain that his furs would be there at the same time.
After leaving the Kansans he travelled on toward the Missouri, and soon struck the beginning of the sparse settlements. Just as evening was coming on, he arrived at a cluster of three little log-cabins, and was received with genuine backwoods hospitality by the proprietor, who had married an Osage squaw. Williams was not only very hungry, but very tired; and, after enjoying an abundant supper, he became stupid and sleepy, and expressed a wish to lie down. The generous trapper accordingly conducted him to one of the cabins, in which there were two beds, standing in opposite corners of the room. He immediately threw himself upon one, and was soon in a very deep sleep. About midnight his slumbers were disturbed by a singular and very frightful kind of noise, accompanied by struggling on the other bed. What it was, Williams was entirely at a loss to understand. There were no windows in the cabin, the door was shut, and it was as dark as Egypt. A fierce contest seemed to be going on. There were deep groanings and hard breathings; and the snapping of teeth appeared almost constant. For a moment the noise would subside, then again the struggles would be renewed accompanied as before with groaning, deep sighing, and grinding of teeth.
The captain's bed-clothes consisted of a couple of blankets and a buffalo-robe, and as the terrible struggles continued he raised himself up in the bed, and threw the robe around him for protection, his rifle having been left in the cabin where his host slept, while his knife was attached to his coat, which he had hung on the corner post of the other bedstead from which the horrid struggles emanated. In an instant the robe was pulled off, and he was left uncovered and unprotected; in another moment a violent snatch carried away the blanket upon which he was sitting, and he was nearly tumbled off the bed with it. As the next thing might be a blow in the dark, he felt that it was high time to shift his quarters; so he made a desperate leap from the bed, and alighted on the opposite side of the room, calling for his host, who immediately came to his relief by opening the door. Williams then told him that the devil—or something as bad, he believed—was in the room, and he wanted a light. The accommodating trapper hurried away, and in a moment was back with a candle, the light of which soon revealed the awful mystery. It was an Indian, who at the time was struggling in convulsions, which he was subject to. He was a superannuated chief, a relative of the wife of the hospitable trapper, and generally made his home there. Absent when Captain Williams arrived, he came into the room at a very late hour, and went to the bed he usually occupied. No one on the claim knew of his being there until he was discovered, in a dreadfully mangled condition. He was removed to other quarters, and Williams, who was not to be frightened out of a night's rest, soon sunk into sound repose.
Williams reached the agency by the time the Kansas Indians arrived there, and, as he suspected, found that the wily old chief had brought all his belongings, which he claimed, and the agent made the savages give up the stolen property before he would pay them a cent of their annuities. He took his furs down to St. Louis, sold them there at a good price, and then started back to the Rocky Mountains on another trapping tour.
CHAPTER III. EARLY TRADERS.
In 1812 a Captain Becknell, who had been on a trading expedition to the country of the Comanches in the summer of 1811, and had done remarkably well, determined the next season to change his objective point to Santa Fe, and instead of the tedious process of bartering with the Indians, to sell out his stock to the New Mexicans. Successful in this, his first venture, he returned to the Missouri River with a well-filled purse, and intensely enthusiastic over the result of his excursion to the newly found market.
Excited listeners to his tales of enormous profits were not lacking, who, inspired by the inducement he held out to them, cheerfully invested five thousand dollars in merchandise suited to the demands of the trade, and were eager to attempt with him the passage of the great plains. In this expedition there were thirty men, and the amount of money in the undertaking was the largest that had yet been ventured. The progress of the little caravan was without extraordinary incident, until it arrived at "The Caches" on the Upper Arkansas. There Becknell, who was in reality a man of the then "Frontier," bold, plucky, and endowed with excellent sense, conceived the ridiculous idea of striking directly across the country for Santa Fe through a region absolutely unexplored; his excuse for this rash movement being that he desired to avoid the rough and circuitous mountain route he had travelled on his first trip to Taos.
His temerity in abandoning the known for the unknown was severely punished, and his brave men suffered untold misery, barely escaping with their lives from the terrible straits to which they were reduced. Not having the remotest conception of the region through which their new trail was to lead them, and naturally supposing that water would be found in streams or springs, when they left the Arkansas they neglected to supply themselves with more than enough of the precious fluid to last a couple of days. At the end of that time they learned, too late, that they were in the midst of a desert, with all the tortures of thirst threatening them.
Without a tree or a path to guide them, they took an irregular course by observations of the North Star, and the unreliable needle of an azimuth pocket-compass. There was a total absence of water, and when what they had brought with them in their canteens from the river was exhausted, thirst began its horrible office. In a short time both men and animals were in a mental condition bordering on distraction. To alleviate their acute torment, the dogs of the train were killed, and their blood, hot and sickening, eagerly swallowed; then the ears of the mules were cut off for the same purpose, but such a substitute for water only added to their sufferings. They would have perished had not a superannuated buffalo bull that had just come from the Cimarron River, where he had gone to quench his thirst, suddenly appeared, to be immediately killed and the contents of his stomach swallowed with avidity. It is recorded that one of those who partook of the nauseous liquid said afterward, "nothing had ever passed his lips which gave him such exquisite delight as his first draught of that filthy beverage."
Although they were near the Cimarron, where there was plenty of water, which but for the affair of the buffalo they never would have suspected, they decided to retrace their steps to the Arkansas.
Before they started on their retreat, however, some of the strongest of the party followed the trail of the animal that had saved their lives to the river, where, filling all the canteens with pure water, they returned to their comrades, who were, after drinking, able to march slowly toward the Arkansas.
Following that stream, they at last arrived at Taos, having experienced no further trouble, but missed the trail to Santa Fe, and had their journey greatly prolonged by the foolish endeavour of the leader to make a short cut thither.
As early as 1815, Auguste P. Chouteau and his partner, with a large number of trappers and hunters, went out to the valley of the Upper Arkansas for the purpose of trading with Indians, and trapping on the numerous streams of the contiguous region.
The island on which Chouteau established his trading-post, and which bears his name even to this day, is in the Arkansas River on the boundary line of the United States and Mexico. It was a beautiful spot, with a rich carpet of grass and delightful groves, and on the American side was a heavily timbered bottom.
While occupying the island, Chouteau and his old hunters and trappers were attacked by about three hundred Pawnees, whom they repulsed with the loss of thirty killed and wounded. These Indians afterward declared that it was the most fatal affair in which they were ever engaged. It was their first acquaintance with American guns.
The general character of the early trade with New Mexico was founded on the system of the caravan. She depended upon the remote ports of old Mexico, whence was transported, on the backs of the patient burro and mule, all that was required by the primitive tastes of the primitive people; a very tedious and slow process, as may be inferred, and the limited traffic westwardly across the great plains was confined to this fashion. At the date of the legitimate and substantial commerce with New Mexico, in 1824, wheeled vehicles were introduced, and traffic assumed an importance it could never have otherwise attained, and which now, under the vast system of railroads, has increased to dimensions little dreamed of by its originators nearly three-quarters of a century ago.
It was eight years after Pursley's pilgrimage before the trade with New Mexico attracted the attention of speculators and adventurers. Messrs. McKnight,[13] Beard, and Chambers, with about a dozen comrades, started with a supply of goods across the unknown plains, and by good luck arrived safely at Santa Fe. Once under the jurisdiction of the Mexicans, however, their trouble began. All the party were arrested as spies, their wares confiscated, and themselves incarcerated at Chihuahua, where the majority of them were kept for almost a decade. Beard and Chambers, having by some means escaped, returned to St. Louis in 1822, and, notwithstanding their dreadful experience, told of the prospects of the trade with the Mexicans in such glowing colours that they induced some individuals of small capital to fit out another expedition, with which they again set out for Santa Fe.
It was really too late in the season; they succeeded, however, in reaching the crossing of the Arkansas without any difficulty, but there a violent snowstorm overtook them and they were compelled to halt, as it was impossible to proceed in the face of the blinding blizzard. On an island[14] not far from where the town of Cimarron, on the Santa Fe Railroad, is now situated, they were obliged to remain for more than three months, during which time most of their animals died for want of food and from the severe cold. When the weather had moderated sufficiently to allow them to proceed on their journey, they had no transportation for their goods and were compelled to hide them in pits dug in the earth, after the manner of the old French voyageurs in the early settlement of the continent. This method of secreting furs and valuables of every character is called caching, from the French word "to hide." Gregg thus describes it:
The cache is made by digging a hole in the ground, somewhat
in the shape of a jug, which is lined with dry sticks,
grass, or anything else that will protect its contents
from the dampness of the earth. In this place the goods
to be concealed are carefully stowed away; and the aperture
is then so effectually closed as to protect them from
the rains. In caching, a great deal of skill is often
required to leave no sign whereby the cunning savage may
discover the place of deposit. To this end, the excavated
earth is carried some distance and carefully concealed,
or thrown into a stream, if one be at hand. The place
selected for a cache is usually some rolling point,
sufficiently elevated to be secure from inundations.
If it be well set with grass, a solid piece of turf is
cut out large enough for the entrance. The turf is
afterward laid back, and, taking root, in a short time
no signs remain of its ever having been molested.
However, as every locality does not afford a turfy site,
the camp-fire is sometimes built upon the place, or the
animals are penned over it, which effectually destroys
all traces.
Father Hennepin[15] thus describes, in his quaint style, how he built a cache on the bank of the Mississippi, in 1680:
We took up the green sodd, and laid it by, and digg'd a hole
in the Earth where we put our Goods, and cover'd them with
pieces of Timber and Earth, and then put in again the green
Turf; so that 'twas impossible to suspect that any Hole had
been digg'd under it, for we flung the Earth into the River.
After caching their goods, Beard and the party went on to Taos, where they bought mules, and returning to their caches transported their contents to their market.
The word "cache" still lingers among the "old-timers" of the mountains and plains, and has become a provincialism with their descendants; one of these will tell you that he cached his vegetables in the side of the hill; or if he is out hunting and desires to secrete himself from approaching game, he will say, "I am going to cache behind that rock," etc.
The place where Beard's little expedition wintered was called "The Caches" for years, and the name has only fallen into disuse within the last two decades. I remember the great holes in the ground when I first crossed the plains, a third of a century ago.
The immense profit upon merchandise transported across the dangerous Trail of the mid-continent to the capital of New Mexico soon excited the cupidity of other merchants east of the Missouri. When the commonest domestic cloth, manufactured wholly from cotton, brought from two to three dollars a yard at Santa Fe, and other articles at the same ratio to cost, no wonder the commerce with the far-off market appeared to those who desired to send goods there a veritable Golconda.
The importance of internal trade with New Mexico, and the possibilities of its growth, were first recognized by the United States in 1824, the originator of the movement being Mr. Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, who frequently, from his place in the Senate, prophesied the coming greatness of the West. He introduced a bill which authorized the President to appoint a commission to survey a road from the Missouri River to the boundary line of New Mexico, and from thence on Mexican territory with the consent of the Mexican government. The signing of this bill was one of the last acts of Mr. Monroe's official life, and it was carried into effect by his successor, Mr. John Quincy Adams, but unfortunately a mistake was made in supposing that the Osage Indians alone controlled the course of the proposed route. It was partially marked out as far as the Arkansas, by raised mounds; but travellers continued to use the old wagon trail, and as no negotiations had been entered into with the Comanches, Cheyennes, Pawnees, or Kiowas, these warlike tribes continued to harass the caravans when these arrived in the broad valley of the Arkansas.
The American fur trade was at its height at the time when the Santa Fe trade was just beginning to assume proportions worthy of notice; the difference between the two enterprises being very marked. The fur trade was in the hands of immensely wealthy companies, while that to Santa Fe was carried on by individuals with limited capital, who, purchasing goods in the Eastern markets, had them transported to the Missouri River, where, until the trade to New Mexico became a fixed business, everything was packed on mules. As soon, however, as leading merchants invested their capital, about 1824, the trade grew into vast proportions, and wagons took the place of the patient mule. Later, oxen were substituted for mules, it having been discovered that they possessed many advantages over the former, particularly in being able to draw heavier loads than an equal number of mules, especially through sandy or muddy places.
For a long time, the traders were in the habit of purchasing their mules in Santa Fe and driving them to the Missouri; but as soon as that useful animal was raised in sufficient numbers in the Southern States to supply the demand, the importation from New Mexico ceased, for the reason that the American mule was in all respects an immensely superior animal.
Once mules were an important object of the trade, and those who dealt in them and drove them across to the river on the Trail met with many mishaps; frequently whole droves, containing from three to five hundred, were stolen by the savages en route. The latter soon learned that it was a very easy thing to stampede a caravan of mules, for, once panic-stricken, it is impossible to restrain them, and the Indians having started them kept them in a state of rampant excitement by their blood-curdling yells, until they had driven them miles beyond the Trail.
A story is told of a small band of twelve men, who, while encamped on the Cimarron River, in 1826, with but four serviceable guns among them, were visited by a party of Indians, believed to be Arapahoes, who made at first strong demonstrations of friendship and good-will. Observing the defenceless condition of the traders, they went away, but soon returned about thirty strong, each provided with a lasso, and all on foot. The chief then began by informing the Americans that his men were tired of walking, and must have horses. Thinking it folly to offer any resistance, the terrified traders told them if one animal apiece would satisfy them, to go and catch them. This they soon did; but finding their request so easily complied with, the Indians held a little parley together, which resulted in a new demand for more—they must have two apiece! "Well, catch them!" was the acquiescent reply of the unfortunate band; upon which the savages mounted those they had already secured, and, swinging their lassos over their heads, plunged among the stock with a furious yell, and drove off the entire caballada of nearly five hundred head of horses, mules, and asses.
In 1829 the Indians of the plains became such a terror to the caravans crossing to Santa Fe, that the United States government, upon petition of the traders, ordered three companies of infantry and one of riflemen, under command of Major Bennet Riley, to escort the annual caravan, which that year started from the town of Franklin, Missouri, then the eastern terminus of the Santa Fe trade, as far as Chouteau's Island, on the Arkansas, which marked the boundary between the United States and Mexico.[16] The caravan started from the island across the dreary route unaccompanied by any troops, but had progressed only a few miles when it was attacked by a band of Kiowas, then one of the most cruel and bloodthirsty tribes on the plains.[17]
This escort, commanded by Major Riley, and another under Captain Wharton, composed of only sixty dragoons, five years later, were the sole protection ever given by the government until 1843, when Captain Philip St. George Cooke again accompanied two large caravans to the same point on the Arkansas as did Major Riley fourteen years before.
As the trade increased, the Comanches, Pawnees, and Arapahoes continued to commit their depredations, and it was firmly believed by many of the freighters that these Indians were incited to their devilish acts by the Mexicans, who were always jealous of "Los Americanos."
It was very rarely that a caravan, great or small, or even a detachment of troops, no matter how large, escaped the raids of these bandits of the Trail. If the list of those who were killed outright and scalped, and those more unfortunate who were taken captive only to be tortured and their bodies horribly mutilated, could be collected from the opening of the traffic with New Mexico until the years 1868-69, when General Sheridan inaugurated his memorable "winter campaign" against the allied plains tribes, and completely demoralized, cowed, and forced them on their reservations, about the time of the advent of the railroad, it would present an appalling picture; and the number of horses, mules, and oxen stampeded and stolen during the same period would amount to thousands.
As the excellent narrative of Captain Pike is not read as it should be by the average American, a brief reference to it may not be considered supererogatory. The celebrated officer, who was afterward promoted to the rank of major-general, and died in the achievement of the victory of York, Upper Canada, in 1813, was sent in 1806 on an exploring expedition up the Arkansas River, with instructions to pass the sources of Red River, for which those of the Canadian were then mistaken; he, however, even went around the head of the latter, and crossing the mountains with an almost incredible degree of peril and suffering, descended upon the Rio del Norte with his little party, then but fifteen in number.
Believing himself now on Red River, within the then assumed limits of the United States, he built a small fortification for his company, until the opening of the spring of 1807 should enable him to continue his descent to Natchitoches. As he was really within Mexican territory, and only about eighty miles from the northern settlements, his position was soon discovered, and a force sent to take him to Santa Fe, which by treachery was effected without opposition. The Spanish officer assured him that the governor, learning that he had mistaken his way, had sent animals and an escort to convey his men and baggage to a navigable point on Red River (Rio Colorado), and that His Excellency desired very much to see him at Santa Fe, which might be taken on their way.
As soon, however, as the governor had the too confiding captain in his power, he sent him with his men to the commandant general at Chihuahua, where most of his papers were seized, and he and his party were sent under an escort, via San Antonio de Bexar, to the United States.
Many citizens of the remote Eastern States, who were contemporary with Pike, declared that his expedition was in some way connected with the treasonable attempt of Aaron Burr. The idea is simply preposterous; Pike's whole line of conduct shows him to have been of the most patriotic character; never would he for a moment have countenanced a proposition from Aaron Burr!
After Captain Pike's report had been published to the world, the adventurers who were inspired by its glowing description of the country he had been so far to explore were destined to experience trials and disappointments of which they had formed no conception.
Among them was a certain Captain Sublette, a famous old trapper in the era of the great fur companies, and with him a Captain Smith, who, although veteran pioneers of the Rocky Mountains, were mere novices in the many complications of the Trail; but having been in the fastnesses of the great divide of the continent, they thought that when they got down on the plains they could go anywhere. They started with twenty wagons, and left the Missouri without a single one of the party being competent to guide the little caravan on the dangerous route.
From the Missouri the Trail was broad and plain enough for a child to follow, but when they arrived at the Cimarron crossing of the Arkansas, not a trace of former caravans was visible; nothing but the innumerable buffalo-trails leading from everywhere to the river.
When the party entered the desert, or Dry Route, as it was years afterward always, and very properly, called in certain seasons of drought, the brave but too confident men discovered that the whole region was burnt up. They wandered on for several days, the horrors of death by thirst constantly confronting them. Water must be had or they would all perish! At last Smith, in his desperation, determined to follow one of the numerous buffalo-trails, believing that it would conduct him to water of some character—a lake or pool or even wallow. He left the train alone; asked for no one to accompany him; for he was the very impersonation of courage, one of the most fearless men that ever trapped in the mountains.
He walked on and on for miles, when, on ascending a little divide, he saw a stream in the valley beneath him. It was the Cimarron, and he hurried toward it to quench his intolerable thirst. When he arrived at its bank, to his disappointment it was nothing but a bed of sand; the sometime clear running river was perfectly dry.
Only for a moment was he staggered; he knew the character of many streams in the West; that often their waters run under the ground at a short distance from the surface, and in a moment he was on his knees digging vigorously in the soft sand. Soon the coveted fluid began to filter upwards into the little excavation he had made. He stooped to drink, and in the next second a dozen arrows from an ambushed band of Comanches entered his body. He did not die at once, however; it is related by the Indians themselves that he killed two of their number before death laid him low.
Captain Sublette and Smith's other comrades did not know what had become of him until some Mexican traders told them, having got the report from the very savages who committed the cold-blooded murder.
Gregg, in his report of this little expedition, says:
Every kind of fatality seems to have attended this small
caravan. Among other casualties, a clerk in their company,
named Minter, was killed by a band of Pawnees, before they
crossed the Arkansas. This, I believe, is the only instance
of loss of life among the traders while engaged in hunting,
although the scarcity of accidents can hardly be said to be
the result of prudence. There is not a day that hunters
do not commit some indescretion; such as straying at
a distance of five and even ten miles from the caravan,
frequently alone, and seldom in bands of more than two or
three together. In this state, they must frequently be
spied by prowling savages; so that frequency of escape,
under such circumstances, must be partly attributed to
the cowardice of the Indians; indeed, generally speaking,
the latter are very loth to charge upon even a single
armed man, unless they can take him at a decided advantage.
Not long after, this band of Captain Sublette's very
narrowly escaped total destruction. They had fallen in
with an immense horde of Blackfeet and Gros Ventres, and,
as the traders were literally but a handful among thousands
of savages, they fancied themselves for a while in imminent
peril of being virtually "eated up." But as Captain
Sublette possessed considerable experience, he was at
no loss how to deal with these treacherous savages; so that
although the latter assumed a threatening attitude,
he passed them without any serious molestation, and finally
arrived at Santa Fe in safety.
The virtual commencement of the Santa Fe trade dates from 1822, and one of the most remarkable events in its history was the first attempt to introduce wagons in the expeditions. This was made in 1824 by a company of traders, about eighty in number, among whom were several gentlemen of intelligence from Missouri, who contributed by their superior skill and undaunted energy to render the enterprise completely successful. A portion of this company employed pack-mules; among the rest were owned twenty-five wheeled vehicles, of which one or two were stout road-wagons, two were carts, and the rest Dearborn carriages, the whole conveying some twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars' worth of merchandise. Colonel Marmaduke, of Missouri, was one of the party. This caravan arrived at Santa Fe safely, experiencing much less difficulty than they anticipated from a first attempt with wheeled vehicles.
Gregg continues:
The early voyageurs, having but seldom experienced any
molestation from the Indians, generally crossed the plains
in detached bands, each individual rarely carrying more than
two or three hundred dollars' worth of stock. This peaceful
season, however, did not last very long; and it is greatly
to be feared that the traders were not always innocent of
having instigated the savage hostilities that ensued in
after years. Many seemed to forget the wholesome precept,
that they should not be savages themselves because they
dealt with savages. Instead of cultivating friendly
feelings with those few who remained peaceful and honest,
there was an occasional one always disposed to kill,
even in cold blood, every Indian that fell into their power,
merely because some of the tribe had committed an outrage
either against themselves or friends.
As an instance of this, he relates the following:
In 1826 two young men named McNess and Monroe, having
carelessly lain down to sleep on the bank of a certain
stream, since known as McNess Creek,[18] were barbarously
shot, with their own guns, as it was supposed, in the very
sight of the caravan. When their comrades came up,
they found McNess lifeless, and the other almost expiring.
In this state the latter was carried nearly forty miles to
the Cimarron River, where he died, and was buried according
to the custom of the prairies, a very summary proceeding,
necessarily. The corpse, wrapped in a blanket, its shroud
the clothes it wore, is interred in a hole varying in depth
according to the nature of the soil, and upon the grave is
piled stones, if any are convenient, to prevent the wolves
from digging it up. Just as McNess's funeral ceremonies
were about to be concluded, six or seven Indians appeared
on the opposite side of the Cimarron. Some of the party
proposed inviting them to a parley, while the rest, burning
for revenge, evinced a desire to fire upon them at once.
It is more than probable, however, that the Indians were not
only innocent but ignorant of the outrage that had been
committed, or they would hardly have ventured to approach
the caravan. Being quick of perception, they very soon saw
the belligerent attitude assumed by the company, and
therefore wheeled round and attempted to escape. One shot
was fired, which brought an Indian to the ground, when he
was instantly riddled with balls. Almost simultaneously
another discharge of several guns followed, by which all
the rest were either killed or mortally wounded, except one,
who escaped to bear the news to his tribe.
These wanton cruelties had a most disastrous effect upon the
prospects of the trade; for the exasperated children of
the desert became more and more hostile to the "pale-faces,"
against whom they continued to wage a cruel war for many
successive years. In fact this party suffered very severely
a few days afterward. They were pursued by the enraged
comrades of the slain savages to the Arkansas River, where
they were robbed of nearly a thousand horses and mules.
The author of this book, although having but little compassion for the Indians, must admit that, during more than a third of a century passed on the plains and in the mountains, he has never known of a war with the hostile tribes that was not caused by broken faith on the part of the United States or its agents. I will refer to two prominent instances: that of the outbreak of the Nez Perces, and that of the allied plains tribes. With the former a solemn treaty was made in 1856, guaranteeing to them occupancy of the Wallola valley forever. I. I. Stevens, who was governor of Washington Territory at the time, and ex-officio superintendent of Indian affairs in the region, met the Nez Perces, whose chief, "Wish-la-no-she," an octogenarian, when grasping the hand of the governor at the council said: "I put out my hand to the white man when Lewis and Clark crossed the continent, in 1805, and have never taken it back since." The tribe kept its word until the white men took forcible possession of the valley promised to the Indians, when the latter broke out, and a prolonged war was the consequence. In 1867 Congress appointed a commission to treat with the Cheyennes, Kiowas, and Arapahoes, appropriating four hundred thousand dollars for the expenses of the commission. It met at Medicine Lodge in August of the year mentioned, and made a solemn treaty, which the members of the commission, on the part of the United States, and the principal chiefs of the three tribes signed. Congress failed to make any appropriation to carry out the provisions of the treaty, and the Indians, after waiting a reasonable time, broke out, devastated the settlements from the Platte to the Rio Grande, destroying millions of dollars' worth of property, and sacrificing hundreds of men, women, and children. Another war was the result, which cost more millions, and under General Sheridan the hostile savages were whipped into a peace, which they have been compelled to keep.
CHAPTER IV. TRAINS AND PACKERS.
As has been stated, until the year 1824 transportation across the plains was done by means of pack-mules, the art of properly loading which seems to be an intuitive attribute of the native Mexican. The American, of course, soon became as expert, for nothing that the genus homo is capable of doing is impossible to him; but his teacher was the dark-visaged, superstitious, and profanity-expending Mexican arriero.
A description of the equipment of a mule-train and the method of packing, together with some of the curious facts connected with its movements, may not be uninteresting, particularly as the whole thing, with rare exceptions in the regular army at remote frontier posts, has been relegated to the past, along with the caravan of the prairie and the overland coach. To this generation, barring a few officers who have served against the Indians on the plains and in the mountains, a pack-mule train would be as great a curiosity as the hairy mammoth. In the following particulars I have taken as a model the genuine Mexican pack-train or atajo, as it was called in their Spanish dialect, always used in the early days of the Santa Fe trade. The Americans made many modifications, but the basis was purely Mexican in its origin. A pack-mule was termed a mula de carga, and his equipment consisted of several parts; first, the saddle, or aparejo, a nearly square pad of leather stuffed with hay, which covered the animal's back on both sides equally. The best idea of its shape will be formed by opening a book in the middle and placing it saddle-fashion on the back of a chair. Each half then forms a flap of the contrivance. Before the aparejo was adjusted to the mule, a salea, or raw sheep-skin, made soft by rubbing, was put on the animal's back, to prevent chafing, and over it the saddle-cloth, or xerga. On top of both was placed the aparejo, which was cinched by a wide grass-bandage. This band was drawn as tightly as possible, to such an extent that the poor brute grunted and groaned under the apparently painful operation, and when fastened he seemed to be cut in two. This always appeared to be the very acme of cruelty to the uninitiated, but it is the secret of successful packing; the firmer the saddle, the more comfortably the mule can travel, with less risk of being chafed and bruised. The aparejo is furnished with a huge crupper, and this appendage is really the most cruel of all, for it is almost sure to lacerate the tail. Hardly a Mexican mule in the old days of the trade could be found which did not bear the scar of this rude supplement to the immense saddle.
The load, which is termed a carga, was generally three hundred pounds. Two arrieros, or packers, place the goods on the mule's back, one, the cargador, standing on the near side, his assistant on the other. The carga is then hoisted on top of the saddle if it is a single package; or if there are two of equal size and weight, one on each side, coupled by a rope, which balances them on the animal. Another stout rope is then thrown over all, drawn as tightly as possible under the belly, and laced round the packs, securing them firmly in their place. Over the load, to protect it from rain, is thrown a square piece of matting called a petate. Sometimes, when a mule is a little refractory, he is blindfolded by a thin piece of leather, generally embroidered, termed the tapojos, and he remains perfectly quiet while the process of packing is going on. When the load is securely fastened in its place, the blinder is removed. The man on the near side, with his knee against the mule for a purchase, as soon as the rope is hauled taut, cries out "Adios," and his assistant answers "Vaya!" Then the first says again, "Anda!" upon which the mule trots off to its companions, all of which feed around until the animals of the whole train are packed. It seldom requires more than five minutes for the two men to complete the packing of the animal, and in that time is included the fastening of the aperejo. It is surprising to note the degree of skill exercised by an experienced packer, and his apparently abnormal strength in handling the immense bundles that are sometimes transported. By the aid of his knees used as a fulcrum, he lifts a package and tosses it on the mule's back without any apparent effort, the dead weight of which he could not move from the ground.
An old-time atajo or caravan of pack-mules generally numbered from fifty to two hundred, and it travelled a jornado, or day's march of about twelve or fifteen miles. This day's journey was made without any stopping at noon, because if a pack-mule is allowed to rest, he generally tries to lie down, and with his heavy load it is difficult for him to get on his feet again. Sometimes he is badly strained in so doing, perhaps ruined forever. When the train starts out on the trail, the mules are so tightly bound with the ropes which confine the load that they move with great difficulty; but the saddle soon settles itself and the ropes become loosened so that they have frequently to be tightened. On the march the arriero is kept busy nearly all the time; the packs are constantly changing their position, frequently losing their balance and falling off; sometimes saddle, pack, and all swing under the animal's belly, and he must be unloaded and repacked again.
On arriving at the camping-ground the pack-saddles with their loads are ranged in regular order, their freight being between the saddles, covered with the petates to protect it from the rain, and generally a ditch is dug around to carry off the water, if the weather is stormy. After two or three days' travel each mule knows its own pack and saddle, and comes up to it at the proper moment with an intelligence that is astonishing. If an animal should come whose pack is somewhere else, he is soundly kicked in the ribs by the rightful mule, and sent bruised and battered to his place. He rarely makes a mistake in relation to the position of his own pack the second time.
This method of transportation was so cheap, because of the low rate of wages, that wagon-freighting, even in the most level region, could not compete with it. Five dollars a month was the amount paid to the muleteers, but it was oftener five with rations, costing almost nothing, of corn and beans. Meat, if used at all, was found by the arrieros themselves.
On the trail the mule-train is under a system of discipline almost as severe as that on board of a man-of-war. Every individual employed is assigned to his place and has certain duties to perform. There is a night-herder, called the savanero, whose duty it is to keep the animals from straying too far away, as they are all turned loose to shift for themselves, depending upon the grass alone for their subsistence. Each herd has a mulera, or bell-mare, which wears a bell hanging to a strap around her neck, and is kept in view of the other animals, who will never leave her. If the mare is taken away from the herd, every mule becomes really melancholy and is at a loss what to do or where to go. The cook of the party, or madre (mother) as he is called, besides his duty in preparing the food, must lead the bell-mule ahead of the train while travelling, the pack-animals following her with a devotion that is remarkable.
Sometimes in traversing the narrow ledges cut around the sides of a precipitous trail, or crossing a narrow natural bridge spanning the frightful gorges found everywhere in the mountains, a mule will be incontinently thrown off the slippery path, and fall hundreds of feet into the yawning canyon below. Generally instant death is their portion, though I recall an instance, while on an expedition against the hostile Indians thirty years ago, where a number of mules of our pack-train, loaded with ammunition, tumbled nearly five hundred feet down an almost perpendicular chasm, and yet some of them got on their feet again, and soon rejoined their companions, without having suffered any serious injury.
The wagons so long employed in this trade, after their first introduction in 1824, were manufactured in Pittsburgh, their capacity being about a ton and a half, and they were drawn by eight mules or the same number of oxen. Later much larger wagons were employed with nearly double the capacity of the first, hauled by ten and twelve mules or oxen. These latter were soon called prairie-schooners, which name continued to linger until transportation across the plains by wagons was completely extinguished by the railroads.
Under Mexican rule excessive tariff imposts were instituted, amounting to about a hundred per cent upon goods brought from the United States, and for some years, during the administration of Governor Manuel Armijo, a purely arbitrary duty was demanded of five hundred dollars for every wagon-load of merchandise brought into the Province, whether great or small, and regardless of its intrinsic value. As gold and silver were paid for the articles brought by the traders, they were also required to pay a heavy duty on the precious metals they took out of the country. Yankee ingenuity, however, evaded much of these unjust taxes. When the caravan approached Santa Fe, the freight of three wagons was transferred to one, and the empty vehicles destroyed by fire; while to avoid paying the export duty on gold and silver, they had large false axletrees to some of the wagons, in which the money was concealed, and the examining officer of the customs, perfectly unconscious of the artifice, passed them.
The army, in its expeditions against the hostile Indian tribes, always employed wagons in transporting its provisions and munitions of war, except in the mountains, where the faithful pack-mule was substituted. The American freighters, since the occupation of New Mexico by the United States, until the transcontinental railroad usurped their vocation, used wagons only; the Mexican nomenclature was soon dropped and simple English terms adopted: caravan became train, and majordomo, the person in charge, wagon-master. The latter was supreme. Upon him rested all the responsibility, and to him the teamsters rendered absolute obedience. He was necessarily a man of quick perception, always fertile in expedients in times of emergency, and something of an engineer; for to know how properly to cross a raging stream or a marshy slough with an outfit of fifty or sixty wagons required more than ordinary intelligence. Then in the case of a stampede, great clear-headedness and coolness were needed to prevent loss of life.
Stampedes were frequently very serious affairs, particularly with a large mule-train. Notwithstanding the willingness and patient qualities of that animal, he can act as absurdly as a Texas steer, and is as easily frightened at nothing. Sometimes as insignificant a circumstance as a prairie-dog barking at the entrance to his burrow, a figure in the distance, or even the shadow of a passing cloud will start every animal in the train, and away they go, rushing into each other, and becoming entangled in such a manner that both drivers and mules have often been crushed to death. It not infrequently happened that five or six of the teams would dash off and never could be found. I remember one instance that occurred on the trail between Fort Hays and Fort Dodge, during General Sheridan's winter campaign against the allied plains tribes in 1868. Three of the wagons were dragged away by the mules, in a few moments were out of sight, and were never recovered, although diligent search was made for them for some days. Ten years afterward a farmer, who had taken up a claim in what is now Rush County, Kansas, discovered in a ravine on his place the bones of some animals, decayed parts of harness, and the remains of three army-wagons, which with other evidence proved them to be the identical ones lost from the train so many years before.
The largest six-mule wagon-train that was ever strung out on the plains transported the supplies for General Custer's command during the winter above referred to. It comprised over eight hundred army-wagons, and was four miles in length in one column, or one mile when in four lines—the usual formation when in the field.
The animals of the train were either hobbled or herded at night, according to the locality; if in an Indian country, always hobbled or, preferably, tied up to the tongue of the wagon to which they belonged. The hobble is simply a strip of rawhide, with two slides of the same material. Placed on the front legs of the mule just at the fetlock, the slides pushed close to the limb, the animal could move around freely enough to graze, but was not able to travel very fast in the event of a stampede. In the Indian country, it was usual at night, or in the daytime when halting to feed, to form a corral of the wagons, by placing them in a circle, the wheels interlocked and the tongues run under the axles, into which circle the mules, on the appearance of the savages, were driven, and which also made a sort of fortress behind which the teamsters could more effectually repel an attack.
In the earlier trading expeditions to Santa Fe, the formation and march of the caravan differed materially from that of the army-train in later years. I here quote Gregg, whose authority on the subject has never been questioned. When all was ready to move out on the broad sea of prairie, he said:
We held a council, at which the respective claims of the
different aspirants for office were considered, leaders
selected, and a system of government agreed upon—as is
the standing custom of these promiscuous caravans.
A captain was proclaimed elected, but his powers were not
defined by any constitutional provision; consequently,
they were very vague and uncertain. Orders being only
viewed as mere requests, they are often obeyed or neglected
at the caprice of the subordinates. It is necessary to
observe, however, that the captain is expected to direct
the order of travel during the day and to designate the
camping-ground at night, with many other functions of
general character, in the exercise of which the company
find it convenient to acquiesce.
After this comes the task of organizing. The proprietors
are first notified by proclamation to furnish a list of
their men and wagons. The latter are generally apportioned
into four divisions, particularly when the company is large.
To each of these divisions, a lieutenant is appointed,
whose duty it is to inspect every ravine and creek on the
route, select the best crossings, and superintend what is
called in prairie parlance the forming of each encampment.
There is nothing so much dreaded by inexperienced travellers
as the ordeal of guard duty. But no matter what the
condition or employment of the individual may be, no one
has the slightest chance of evading the common law of
the prairies. The amateur tourist and the listless loafer
are precisely in the same wholesome predicament—they must
all take their regular turn at the watch. There is usually
a set of genteel idlers attached to every caravan, whose
wits are forever at work in devising schemes for whiling
away their irksome hours at the expense of others.
By embarking in these trips of pleasure, they are enabled
to live without expense; for the hospitable traders seldom
refuse to accommodate even a loafing companion with a berth
at their mess without charge. But these lounging attaches
are expected at least to do good service by way of guard
duty. None are ever permitted to furnish a substitute,
as is frequently done in military expeditions; for he that
would undertake to stand the tour of another besides
his own would scarcely be watchful enough for dangers
of the prairies. Even the invalid must be able to produce
unequivocal proofs of his inability, or it is a chance
if the plea is admitted.
The usual number of watchers is eight, each standing a
fourth of every alternate night. When the party is small,
the number is generally reduced, while in the case of
very small bands, they are sometimes compelled for safety's
sake to keep watch on duty half the night. With large
caravans the captain usually appoints eight sergeants
of the guard, each of whom takes an equal portion of men
under his command.
The wild and motley aspect of the caravan can be but
imperfectly conceived without an idea of the costumes of
its various members. The most fashionable prairie dress
is the fustian frock of the city-bred merchant, furnished
with a multitude of pockets capable of accommodating a
variety of extra tackling. Then there is the backwoodsman
with his linsey or leather hunting-shirt—the farmer with
his blue jean coat—the wagoner with his flannel sleeve
vest—besides an assortment of other costumes which go
to fill up the picture.
In the article of firearms there is also an equally
interesting medley. The frontier hunter sticks to his
rifle, as nothing could induce him to carry what he terms
in derision "the scatter-gun." The sportsman from the
interior flourishes his double-barrelled fowling-piece
with equal confidence in its superiority. A great many
were furnished beside with a bountiful supply of pistols
and knives of every description, so that the party made
altogether a very brigand-like appearance.
"Catch up! Catch up!" is now sounded from the captain's
camp and echoed from every division and scattered group
along the valley. The woods and dales resound with the
gleeful yells of the light-hearted wagoners who, weary of
inaction and filled with joy at the prospect of getting
under way, become clamorous in the extreme. Each teamster
vies with his fellow who shall be soonest ready; and it
is a matter of boastful pride to be the first to cry out,
"All's set."
The uproarious bustle which follows, the hallooing of those
in pursuit of animals, the exclamations which the unruly
brutes call forth from their wrathful drivers, together
with the clatter of bells, the rattle of yokes and harness,
the jingle of chains, all conspire to produce an uproarious
confusion. It is sometimes amusing to observe the athletic
wagoner hurrying an animal to its post—to see him heave
upon the halter of a stubborn mule, while the brute as
obstinately sets back, determined not to move a peg till
his own good pleasure thinks it proper to do so—his whole
manner seeming to say, "Wait till your hurry's over."
I have more than once seen a driver hitch a harnessed animal
to the halter, and by that process haul his mulishness
forward, while each of his four projected feet would leave
a furrow behind.
"All's set!" is finally heard from some teamster—
"All's set," is directly responded from every quarter.
"Stretch out!" immediately vociferates the captain.
Then the "heps!" to the drivers, the cracking of whips,
the trampling of feet, the occasional creak of wheels,
the rumbling of the wagons, while "Fall in" is heard from
head-quarters, and the train is strung out and in a few
moments has started on its long journey.
With an army-train the discipline was as perfect as that of a garrison. The wagon-master was under the orders of the commander of the troops which escorted the caravan, the camps were formed with regard to strategic principles, sentries walked their beats and were visited by an officer of the day, as if stationed at a military post.
Unquestionably the most expert packer I have known is Chris. Gilson, of Kansas. In nearly all the expeditions on the great plains and in the mountains he has been the master-spirit of the pack-trains. General Sheridan, who knew Gilson long before the war, in Oregon and Washington, regarded the celebrated packer with more than ordinary friendship. For many years he was employed by the government at the suggestion of General Sheridan, to teach the art of packing to the officers and enlisted men at several military posts in the West. He received a large salary, and for a long period was stationed at the immense cavalry depot of Fort Riley, in Kansas. Gilson was also employed by the British army during the Zulu war in Africa, as chief packer, at a salary of twenty dollars a day. Now, however, since the railroads have penetrated the once considered impenetrable fastnesses of the mountains, packing will be relegated to the lost arts.
CHAPTER V. FIGHT WITH COMANCHES.
Early in the spring of 1828, a company of young men residing in the vicinity of Franklin, Missouri, having heard related by a neighbour who had recently returned the wonderful story of a passage across the great plains, and the strange things to be seen in the land of the Greasers, determined to explore the region for themselves; making the trip in wagons, an innovation of a startling character, as heretofore only pack-animals had been employed in the limited trade with far-off Santa Fe. The story of their journey can best be told in the words of one of the party:[19]—
We had about one thousand miles to travel, and as there was
no wagon-road in those early days across the plains to the
mountains, we were compelled to take our chances through
the vast wilderness, seeking the best route we could.
No signs of life were visible except the innumerable buffalo
and antelope that were constantly crossing our trail.
We moved on slowly from day to day without any incident
worth recording and arrived at the Arkansas; made the
passage and entered the Great American Desert lying beyond,
as listless, lonesome, and noiseless as a sleeping sea.
Having neglected to carry any water with us, we were obliged
to go withot a drop for two days and nights after leaving
the river. At last we reached the Cimarron, a cool,
sparkling stream, ourselves and our animals on the point
of perishing. Our joy at discovering it, however, was
short-lived. We had scarcely quenched our thirst when
we saw, to our dismay, a large band of Indians camped on
its banks. Their furtive glances at us, and significant
looks at each other, aroused our worst suspicions, and
we instinctively felt we were not to get away without
serious trouble. Contrary to our expectations, however,
they did not offer to molest us, and we at once made up
our minds they preferred to wait for our return, as we
believed they had somehow learned of our intention to bring
back from New Mexico a large herd of mules and ponies.
We arrived in Santa Fe on the 20th of July, without further
adventure, and after having our stock of goods passed
through the custom house, were granted the privilege of
selling them. The majority of the party sold out in a
very short time and started on their road to the States,
leaving twenty-one of us behind to return later.
On the first day of September, those of us who had remained
in Santa Fe commenced our homeward journey. We started
with one hundred and fifty mules and horses, four wagons,
and a large amount of silver coin. Nothing of an eventful
character occurred until we arrived at the Upper Cimarron
Springs, where we intended to encamp for the night.
But our anticipations of peaceable repose were rudely
dispelled; for when we rode up on the summit of the hill,
the sight that met our eyes was appalling enough to excite
the gravest apprehensions. It was a large camp of
Comanches, evidently there for the purpose of robbery
and murder. We could neither turn back nor go on either
side of them on account of the mountainous character of
the country, and we realized, when too late, that we were
in a trap.
There was only one road open to us; that right through
the camp. Assuming the bravest look possible, and keeping
our rifles in position for immediate action, we started
on the perilous venture. The chief met us with a smile
of welcome, and said, in Spanish: "You must stay with us
to-night. Our young men will guard your stock, and we have
plenty of buffalo meat."
Realizing the danger of our situation, we took advantage
of every moment of time to hurry through their camp.
Captain Means, Ellison, and myself were a little distance
behind the wagons, on horseback; observing that the balance
of our men were evading them, the blood-thirsty savages
at once threw off their masks of dissimulation and in an
instant we knew the time for a struggle had arrived.
The Indians, as we rode on, seized our bridle-reins and
began to fire upon us. Ellison and I put spurs to our
horses and got away, but Captain Means, a brave man,
was ruthlessly shot and cruelly scalped while the life-blood
was pouring from his ghastly wounds.
We succeeded in fighting them off until we had left their
camp half a mile behind, and as darkness had settled down
on us, we decided to go into camp ourselves. We tied our
gray bell-mare to a stake, and went out and jingled the
bell, whenever any of us could do so, thus keeping the
animals from stampeding. We corralled our wagons for
better protection, and the Indians kept us busy all night
resisting their furious charges. We all knew that death
at our posts would be infinitely preferable to falling
into their hands; so we resolved to sell our lives as
dearly as possible.
The next day we made but five miles; it was a continuous
fight, and a very difficult matter to prevent their
capturing us. This annoyance was kept up for four days;
they would surround us, then let up as if taking time to
renew their strength, to suddenly charge upon us again,
and they continued thus to harass us until we were almost
exhausted from loss of sleep.
After leaving the Cimarron, we once more emerged on the
open plains and flattered ourselves we were well rid of
the savages; but about twelve o'clock they came down on us
again, uttering their demoniacal yells, which frightened
our horses and mules so terribly, that we lost every hoof.
A member of our party, named Hitt, in endeavouring to
recapture some of the stolen stock, was taken by the
savages, but luckily escaped from their clutches, after
having been wounded in sixteen parts of his body;
he was shot, tomahawked, and speared. When the painted
demons saw that one of their number had been killed by us,
they left the field for a time, while we, taking advantage
of the temporary lull, went back to our wagons and built
breastworks of them, the harness, and saddles. From noon
until two hours in the night, when the moon went down,
the savages were apparently confident we would soon fall
a prey to them, and they made charge after charge upon
our rude fortifications.
Darkness was now upon us. There were two alternatives
before us: should we resolve to die where we were, or
attempt to escape in the black hours of the night?
It was a desperate situation. Our little band looked
the matter squarely in the face, and, after a council
of war had been held, we determined to escape, if possible.
In order to carry out our resolve, it was necessary to
abandon the wagons, together with a large amount of silver
coin, as it would be impossible to take all of the precious
stuff with us in our flight; so we packed up as much of it
as we could carry, and, bidding our hard-earned wealth
a reluctant farewell, stepped out in the darkness like
spectres and hurried away from the scene of death.
Our proper course was easterly, but we went in a northerly
direction in order to avoid the Indians. We travelled
all that night, the next day, and a portion of its night
until we reached the Arkansas River, and, having eaten
nothing during that whole time excepting a few prickly-pears,
were beginning to feel weak from the weight of our burdens
and exhaustion. At this point we decided to lighten
our loads by burying all of the money we had carried
thus far, keeping only a small sum for each man.
Proceeding to a small island in the river, our treasure,
amounting to over ten thousand silver dollars, was cached
in the ground between two cottonwood trees.
Believing now that we were out of the usual range of
the predatory Indians, we shot a buffalo and an antelope
which we cooked and ate without salt or bread; but no meal
has ever tasted better to me than that one.
We continued our journey northward for three or four days
more, when, reaching Pawnee Fork, we travelled down it for
more than a week, arriving again on the Old Santa Fe Trail.
Following the Trail three days, we arrived at Walnut Creek,
then left the river again and went eastwardly to Cow Creek.
When we reached that point, we had become so completely
exhausted and worn out from subsisting on buffalo meat
alone, that it seemed as if there was nothing left for
us to do but lie down and die. Finally it was determined
to send five of the best-preserved men on ahead to
Independence, two hundred miles, for the purpose of
procuring assistance; the other fifteen to get along
as well as they could until succour reached them.
I was one of the five selected to go on in advance, and
I shall never forget the terrible suffering we endured.
We had no blankets, and it was getting late in the fall.
Some of us were entirely barefooted, and our feet so sore
that we left stains of blood at every step. Deafness, too,
seized upon us so intensely, occasioned by our weak
condition, that we coud not hear the report of a gun fired
at a distance of only a few feet.
At one place two of our men laid down their arms, declaring
they could carry them no farther, and would die if they
did not get water. We left them and went in search of some.
After following a dry branch several miles, we found
a muddy puddle from which we succeeded in getting half
a bucket full, and, although black and thick, it was life
for us and we guarded it with jealous eyes. We returned
to our comrades about daylight, and the water so refreshed
them they were able to resume the weary march. We travelled
on until we arrived at the Big Blue River, in Missouri,
on the bank of which we discovered a cabin about fifteen
miles from Independence. The occupants of the rude shanty
were women, seemingly very poor, but they freely offered us
a pot of pumpkin they were stewing. When they first saw us,
they were terribly frightened, because we looked more like
skeletons than living beings. They jumped on the bed while
we were greedily devouring the pumpkin, but we had to
refuse some salt meat which they had also proffered,
as our teeth were too sore to eat it. In a short time
two men came to the cabin and took three of our men
home with them. We had subsisted for eleven days on
one turkey, a coon, a crow, and some elm bark, with an
occasional bunch of wild grapes, and the pictures we
presented to these good people they will never, probably,
forget; we had not tasted bread or salt for thirty-two days.
The next day our newly found friends secured horses and
guided us to Independence, all riding without saddles.
One of the party had gone on to notify the citizens of
our safety, and when we arrived general muster was going on,
the town was crowded, and when the people looked upon us
the most intense excitement prevailed. All business was
suspended; the entire population flocked around us to hear
the remarkable story of our adventures, and to render us
the assistance we so much needed. We were half-naked,
foot-sore, and haggard, presenting such a pitiable picture
that the greatest sympathy was immediately aroused in
our behalf.
We then said that behind us on the Trail somewhere, fifteen
comrades were struggling toward Independence, or were
already dead from their sufferings. In a very few minutes
seven men with fifteen horses started out to rescue them.
They were gone from Independence several days, but had the
good fortune to find all the men just in time to save them
from starvation and exhaustion. Two were discovered
a hundred miles from Independence, and the remainder
scattered along the Trail fifty miles further in their rear.
Not more than two of the unfortunate party were together.
The humane rescuers seemingly brought back nothing but
living skeletons wrapped in rags; but the good people of
the place vied with each other in their attentions, and
under their watchful care the sufferers rapidly recuperated.
One would suppose that we had had enough of the great plains
after our first trip; not so, however, for in the spring
we started again on the same journey. Major Riley, with
four companies of regular soldiers, was detailed to escort
the Santa Fe traders' caravans to the boundary line between
the United States and Mexico, and we went along to recover
the money we had buried, the command having been ordered to
remain in camp to await our return until the 20th of October.
We left Fort Leavenworth about the 10th of May, and were
soon again on the plains. Many of the troops had never
seen any buffalo before, and found great sport in wantonly
slaughtering them. At Walnut Creek we halted to secure
a cannon which had been thrown into that stream two seasons
previously, and succeeded in dragging it out. With a seine
made of brush and grape vine, we caught more fine fish than
we could possibly dispose of. One morning the camp was
thrown into the greatest state of excitement by a band of
Indians running an enormous herd of buffalo right into us.
The troops fired at them by platoons, killing hundreds
of them.
We marched in two columns, and formed a hollow square
at night when we camped, in which all slept excepting
those on guard duty. Frequently some one would discover
a rattlesnake or a horned toad in bed with him, and it
did not take him a very long time to crawl out of his
blankets!
On the 10th of July, we arrived at the dividing line
separating the two countries, and went into camp. The next
day Major Riley sent a squad of soldiers to escort myself
and another of our old party, who had helped bury the
ten thousand dollars, to find it. It was a few miles
further up the Arkansas than our camp, in the Mexican
limits, and when we reached the memorable spot on the
island,[20] we found the coin safe, but the water had
washed the earth away, and the silver was exposed to view
to excite the cupidity of any one passing that way;
there were not many travellers on that lonely route in
those days, however, and it would have been just as secure,
probably, had we simply poured it on the ground.
We put the money in sacks and deposited it with Major Riley,
and, leaving the camp, started for Santa Fe with Captain
Bent as leader of the traders. We had not proceeded far
when our advanced guard met Indians. They turned, and when
within two hundred yards of us, one man named Samuel Lamme
was killed, his body being completely riddled with arrows.
His head was cut off, and all his clothes stripped from
his body. We had a cannon, but the Mexicans who hauled it
had tied it up in such a way that it could not be utilized
in time to effect anything in the first assault; but when
at last it was turned loose upon the Indians, they fled
in dismay at the terrible noise.
The troops at the crossing of the Arkansas, hearing the
firing, came to our assistance. The next morning the
hills were covered by fully two thousand Indians, who had
evidently congregated there for the purpose of annihilating
us, and the coming of the soldiers was indeed fortunate;
for as soon as the cowardly savages discovered them
they fled. Major Riley accompanied us on our march for
a few days, and, seeing no more Indians, he returned to
his camp.
We travelled on for a week, then met a hundred Mexicans
who were out on the plains hunting buffalo. They had
killed a great many and were drying the meat. We waited
until they were ready to return and then all started for
Santa Fe together.
At Rabbit-Ear Mountain the Indians had constructed
breastworks in the brush, intending to fight it out there.
The Mexicans were in the advance and had one of their
number killed before discovering the enemy. We passed
Point of Rocks and camped on the river. One of the
Mexicans went out hunting and shot a huge panther;
next morning he asked a companion to go with him and help
skin the animal. They saw the Indians in the brush, and
the one who had killed the panther said to the other,
"Now for the mountains"; but his comrade retreated,
and was despatched by the savages almost within reach
of the column.
We now decided to change our destination, intending to go
to Taos instead of Santa Fe, but the governor of the
Province sent out troops to stop us, as Taos was not a
place of entry. The soldiers remained with us a whole week,
until we arrived at Santa Fe, where we disposed of our goods
and soon began to make preparations for our return trip.
When we were ready to start back, seven priests and a
number of wealthy families, comfortably fixed in carriages,
accompanied us. The Mexican government ordered Colonel
Viscarra of the army, with five troops of cavalry,
to guard us to the camp of Major Riley.
We experienced no trouble until we arrived at the
Cimarron River. About sunset, just as we were preparing
to camp for the night, the sentinels saw a body of a
hundred Indians approaching; they fired at them and ran
to camp. Knowing they had been discovered, the Indians
came on and made friendly overtures; but the Pueblos who
who were with the command of Colonel Viscarra wanted to
fight them at once, saying the fellows meant mischief.
We declined to camp with them unless they would agree to
give up their arms; they pretended they were willing to
do so, when one of them put his gun at the breast of our
interpreter and pulled the trigger. In an instant a bloody
scene ensued; several of Viscarra's men were killed,
together with a number of mules. Finally the Indians
were whipped and tried to get away, but we chased them
some distance and killed thirty-five. Our friendly Pueblos
were delighted, and proceeded to scalp the savages,
hanging the bloody trophies on the points of their spears.
That night they indulged in a war-dance which lasted
until nearly morning.
We were delighted to see a beautiful sunshiny day after
the horrors of the preceding night, and continued our march
without farther interruption, safely arriving at the camp
on the boundary line, where Major Riley was waiting for us,
as we supposed; but his time having expired the day before,
he had left for Fort Leavenworth. A courier was despatched
to him, however, as Colonel Viscarra desired to meet the
American commander and see his troops. The courier overtook
Major Riley a short distance away, and he halted for us
to come up. Both commands then went into camp, and spent
several days comparing the discipline of the armies of
the two nations, and having a general good time.
Colonel Viscarra greatly admired our small arms, and
took his leave in a very courteous manner.
We arrived at Fort Leavenworth late in the season, and
from there we all scattered. I received my share of the
money we had cached on the island, and bade my comrades
farewell, only a few of whom I have ever seen since.
Mr. Hitt in his notes of this same perilous trip says:
When the grass had sufficiently started to insure the
subsistence of our teams, our wagons were loaded with
a miscellaneous assortment of merchandise and the first
trader's caravan of wagons that ever crossed the plains
left Independence. Before we had travelled three weeks
on our journey, we were one evening confronted with the
novel fact of camping in a country where not a stick of
wood could be found. The grass was too green to burn,
and we were wondering how our fire could be started
with which to boil our coffee, or cook our bread. One of
our number, however, while diligently searching for
something to utilize, suddenly discovered scattered all
around him a large quantity of buffalo-chips, and he soon
had an excellent fire under way, his coffee boiling and
his bacon sizzling over the glowing coals.
We arrived in Santa Fe without incident, and as ours
was the first train of wagons that ever traversed the
narrow streets of the quaint old town, it was, of course,
a great curiosity to the natives.
After a few days' rest, sight-seeing, and purchasing stock
to replace our own jaded animals, preparations were made
for the return trip. All the money we had received for
our goods was in gold and silver, principally the latter,
in consequence of which, each member of the company had
about as much as he could conveniently manage, and,
as events turned out, much more than he could take care of.
On the morning of the third day out, when we were not
looking for the least trouble, our entire herd was
stampeded, and we were left upon the prairie without
as much as a single mule to pursue the fast-fleeing
thieves. The Mexicans and Indians had come so suddenly
upon us, and had made such an effective dash, that we
stood like children who had broken their toys on a stone
at their feet. We were so unprepared for such a stampede
that the thieves did not approach within rifle-shot range
of the camp to accomplish their object; few of them
coming within sight, even.
After the excitement had somewhat subsided and we began
to realize what had been done, it was decided that while
some should remain to guard the camp, others must go to
Santa Fe to see if they could not recover the stock.
The party that went to Santa Fe had no difficulty in
recognizing the stolen animals; but when they claimed them,
they were laughed at by the officials of the place.
They experienced no difficulty, however, in purchasing
the same stock for a small sum, which they at once did,
and hurried back to camp. By this unpleasant episode
we learned of the stealth and treachery of the miserable
people in whose country we were. We, therefore, took every
precaution to prevent a repetition of the affair, and
kept up a vigilant guard night and day.
Matters progressed very well, and when we had travelled
some three hundred miles eastwardly, thinking we were
out of range of any predatory bands, as we had seen no
sign of any living thing, we relaxed our vigilance somewhat.
One morning, just before dawn, the whole earth seemed to
resound with the most horrible noises that ever greeted
human ears; every blade of grass appeared to re-echo
the horrid din. In a few moments every man was at his post,
rifle in hand, ready for any emergency, and almost
immediately a large band of Indians made their appearance,
riding within rifle-shot of the wagons. A continuous
battle raged for several hours, the savages discharging
a shot, then scampering off out of range as fast as
their ponies could carry them. Some, more brave than
others would venture closer to the corral, and one of these
got the contents of an old-fashioned flint-lock musket
in his bowels.
We were careful not all to fire at the same time, and
several of our party, who were watching the effects of
our shots declared they could see the dust fly out of
the robes of the Indians as the bullets struck them.
It was learned afterward that a number of the savages
were wounded, and that several had died. Many were armed
with bows and arrows only, and in order to do any execution
were obliged to come near the corral. The Indians soon
discovered they were getting the worst of the fight, and,
having run off all the stock, abandoned the conflict,
leaving us in possession of the camp, but it can hardly
be said masters of the situation.
There we were; thirty-five pioneers upon the wild prairie,
surrounded by a wily and terribly cruel foe, without
transportation of any character but our own legs, and with
five hundred miles of dangerous, trackless waste between
us and the settlements. We had an abundance of money,
but the stuff was absolutely worthless for the present,
as there was nothing we could buy with it.
After the last savage had ridden away into the sand hills
on the opposite side of the river, each one of us had a
thrilling story to relate of his individual narrow escapes.
Though none was killed, many received wounds, the scars
of which they carried through life. I was wounded six
times. Once was in the thigh by an arrow, and once while
loading my rifle I had my ramrod shot off close to the
muzzle of my piece, the ball just grazing my shoulder,
tearing away a small portion of the skin. Others had
equally curious experiences, but none were seriously injured.
After the excitement incident to the battle had subsided,
the realization of our condition fully dawned upon us.
When we were first robbed, we were only a short distance
from Santa Fe, where our money easily procured other stock;
now there were three hundred miles behind us to that place,
and the picture was anything but pleasant to contemplate.
To transport supplies for thirty-five men seemed impossible.
Our money was now a burden greater than we could bear;
what was to be done with it? We would have no use for it
on our way to the settlements, yet the idea of abandoning
it seemed hard to accept. A vigilant guard was kept up
that day and night, during which time we all remained
in camp, fearing a renewal of the attack.
The next morning, as there were no apparent signs of
the Indians, it was decided to reconnoitre the surrounding
country in the hope of recovering a portion, at least,
of our lost stock, which we thought might have become
separated from the main herd. Three men were detailed
to stay in the old camp to guard it while the remainder,
in squads, scoured the hills and ravines. Not a horse
or mule was visible anywhere; the stampede had been
complete—not even the direction the animals had taken
could be discovered.
It was late in the afternoon when I, having left my
companions to continue the search and returning to camp
alone, had gotten within a mile of it, that I thought I saw
a horse feeding upon an adjoining hill. I at once turned
my steps in that direction, and had proceeded but a short
distance when three Indians jumped from their ambush in
the grass between me and the wagons and ran after me.
The men in camp had been watching my every movement,
and as soon as they saw the savages were chasing me,
they started in pursuit, running at their greatest speed
to my rescue.
The savages soon overtook me, and the first one that
came up tackled me, but in an instant found himself flat
on the ground. Before he could get up, the second one
shared the same fate. By this time the third one arrived,
and the two I had thrown grabbed me by the legs so that
I could no longer handle myself, while the third one had
a comparatively easy task in pushing me over. Fortunately,
my head fell toward the camp and my fast-approaching
comrades. The two Indians held my legs to prevent my
rising, while the third one, who was standing over me,
drew from his belt a tomahawk, and shrugging his head
in his blanket, at the same time looking over his shoulder
at my friends, with a tremendous effort and that peculiar
grunt of all savages, plunged his hatchet, as he supposed,
into my head, but instead of scuffling to free myself
and rise to my feet, I merely turned my head to one side
and the wicked weapon was buried in the ground, just
grazing my ear.
The Indian, seeing that he had missed, raised his hatchet
and once more shrugging his head in his blanket, and
turning to look over his other shoulder, attempted to
strike again, but the blow was evaded by a sudden toss
of his intended victim's head. Not satisfied with two
abortive trials, the third attempt must be made to brain me,
and repeating the same motions, with a great "Ugh!" he
seemed to put all his strength into the blow, which, like
the others, missed, and spent its force in the earth.
By this time the rescuing party had come near enough to
prevent the savage from risking another effort, and he then
addressed the other Indians in Spanish, which I understood,
saying, "We must run or the Americans will kill us!"
and loosening his grasp, he scampered off with his
companions as fast as his legs could take him, hurried on
by several pieces of lead fired from the old flintlocks
of the traders.
By sundown every man had returned to the forlorn camp,
but not an animal had been recovered. Then, with tired
limbs and weary hearts, we took turns at guarding the
wagons through the long night. The next morning each man
shouldered his rifle, and having had his proportion of
the provisions and cooking utensils assigned him,
we broke camp, and again turned to take a last look at
the country behind us, in which we had experienced so much
misfortune, and started on foot for our long march through
the dangerous region ahead of us.
Scarcely had we gotten out of sight of our abandoned camp,
when one of the party, happening to turn his eyes in that
direction, saw a large volume of smoke rising in the
vicinity; then we knew that all of our wagons, and
everything we had been forced to leave, were burning up.
This proved that, although we had been unable to discover
any signs of Indians, they had been lurking around us
all the time, and this fact warned us to exercise the
utmost vigilance in guarding our persons.
Though our burdens were very heavy, the first few days
were passed without anything to relieve the dreadful
monotony of our wearisome march; but each succeeding
twenty-four hours our loads became visibly lighter,
as our supplies were rapidly diminishing. It had already
become apparent that even in the exercise of the greatest
frugality, our stock of provisions would not last until
we could reach the settlements, so some of the most expert
shots were selected to hunt for game; but even in this
they were not successful, the very birds seeming to have
abandoned the country in its extreme desolation.
After eight days' travel, despite our most rigid economy,
an inventory showed that there was less than one hundred
pounds of flour left. Day after day the hunters repeated
the same old story: "No game!" For two weeks the allowance
of flour to each individual was but a spoonful, stirred
in water and taken three times a day.
One afternoon, however, fortune smiled upon the weary party;
one of the hunters returned to camp with a turkey he had
killed. It was soon broiling over a fire which willing
hands had kindled, and our drooping spirits were revived
for a while. While the turkey was cooking, a crow flew
over the camp, and one of the company, seizing a gun,
despatched it, and in a few moments it, too, was sizzling
along with the other bird.
Now, in addition to the pangs of hunger, a scarcity of
water confronted us, and one day we were compelled to
resort to a buffalo-wallow and suck the moist clay where
the huge animals had been stamping in the mud. We were
much reduced in strength, yet each day added new
difficulties to our forlorn situation. Some became so weak
and exhausted that it was with the greatest effort they
could travel at all. To divide the company and leave
the more feeble behind to starve, or to be murdered by
the merciless savages, was not considered for a moment;
but one alternative remained, and that was speedily accepted.
As soon as a convenient camping-ground could be found,
a halt was made, shelter established, and things made as
comfortable as possible. Here the weakest remained to rest,
while some of the strongest scoured the surrounding country
in search of game. During this temporary halt the hunters
were more successful than before, having killed two
buffaloes, besides some smaller animals, in one morning.
Again the natural dry fuel of the prairies was called
into requisition, and juicy steak was once more broiling
over the fire.
With an abundance to eat and a few days' rest, the whole
company revived and were enabled to renew their march
homeward. We were now in the buffalo range, and every day
the hunters were fortunate enough to kill one or more of
the immense animals, thus keeping our larder in excellent
condition, and starvation averted.
Doubting whether our good fortune in relation to food
would continue for the remainder of our march, and our
money becoming very cumbersome, it was decided by a majority
that at the first good place we came to we would bury it
and risk its being stolen by our enemies. When not more
than half of our journey had been accomplished, we came
to an island in the river to which we waded, and there,
between two large trees, dug a hole and deposited our
treasure. We replaced the sod over the spot, taking the
utmost precaution to conceal every sign of having disturbed
the ground. Though no Indians had been seen for several
days, a sharp lookout was kept in all directions for fear
that some lurking savage might have been watching our
movements. This task finished, with much lighter burdens,
but more anxious than ever, we again took up our march
eastwardly, and, thus relieved, were able to carry a
greater quantity of provisions.
Having journeyed until we supposed we were within a few
miles of the settlements, some of our number, scarcely able
to travel, thought the best course to pursue would be to
divide the company; one portion to press on, the weaker
ones to proceed by easier stages, and when the advance
arrived at the settlements, they were to send back a relief
for those plodding on wearily behind them. Soon a few
who were stronger than the others reached Independence,
Missouri, and immediately sent a party with horses to
bring in their comrades; so, at last, all got safely to
their homes.
In the spring of 1829, Major Bennett Riley of the United States army was ordered with four companies of the Sixth Regular Infantry to march out on the Trail as the first military escort ever sent for the protection of the caravans of traders going and returning between Western Missouri and Santa Fe. Captain Philip St. George Cooke, of the Dragoons, accompanied the command, and kept a faithful journal of the trip, from which, and the official report of Major Riley to the Secretary of War, I have interpolated here copious extracts.
The journal of Captain Cooke states that the battalion marched from Fort Leavenworth, which was then called a cantonment, and, strange to say, had been abandoned by the Third Infantry on account of its unhealthiness. It was the 5th of June that Riley crossed the Missouri at the cantonment, and recrossed the river again at a point a little above Independence, in order to avoid the Kaw, or Kansas, which had no ferry.
After five days' marching, the command arrived at Round Grove, where the caravan had been ordered to rendezvous and wait for the escort. The number of traders aggregated about seventy-nine men, and their train consisted of thirty-eight wagons drawn by mules and horses, the former preponderating. Five days' marching, at an average of fifteen miles a day, brought them to Council Grove. Leaving the Grove, in a short time Cow Creek was reached, which at that date abounded in fish; many of which, says the journal, "weighed several pounds, and were caught as fast as the line could be handled." The captain does not describe the variety to which he refers; probably they were the buffalo—a species of sucker, to be found to-day in every considerable stream in Kansas.
Having reached the Upper Valley,[21] bordered by high sand hills, the journal continues:
From the tops of the hills, we saw far away, in almost
every direction, mile after mile of prairie, blackened
with buffalo. One morning, when our march was along the
natural meadows by the river, we passed through them for
miles; they opened in front and closed continually in
the rear, preserving a distance scarcely over three hundred
paces. On one occasion, a bull had approached within
two hundred yards without seeing us, until he ascended
the river bank; he stood a moment shaking his head, and
then made a charge at the column. Several officers
stepped out and fired at him, two or three dogs also rushed
to meet him; but right onward he came, snorting blood
from mouth and nostril at every leap, and, with the speed
of a horse and the momentum of a locomotive, dashed
between two wagons, which the frightened oxen nearly upset;
the dogs were at his heels and soon he came to bay, and,
with tail erect, kicked violently for a moment, and then
sank in death—the muscles retaining the dying rigidity
of tension.
About the middle of July, the command arrived at its destination—Chouteau's Island, then on the boundary line between the United States and New Mexico.
Our orders were to march no further; and, as a protection
to the trade, it was like the establishment of a ferry
to the mid-channel of a river.
Up to this time, traders had always used mules or horses.
Our oxen were an experiment, and it succeeded admirably;
they even did better when water was very scarce, which is
an important consideration.
A few hours after the departure of the trading company,
as we enjoyed a quiet rest on a hot afternoon, we saw
beyond the river a number of horsemen riding furiously
toward our camp. We all flocked out of the tents to hear
the news, for they were soon recognized as traders.
They stated that the caravan had been attacked, about
six miles off in the sand hills, by an innumerable host
of Indians; that some of their companions had been killed;
and they had run, of course, for help. There was not a
moment's hesitation; the word was given, and the tents
vanished as if by magic. The oxen which were grazing
near by were speedily yoked to the wagons, and into the
river we marched. Then I deemed myself the most unlucky
of men; a day or two before, while eating my breakfast,
with my coffee in a tin cup—notorious among chemists and
campaigners for keeping it hot—it was upset into my shoe,
and on pulling off the stocking, it so happened that the
skin came with it. Being thus hors de combat, I sought to
enter the combat on a horse, which was allowed; but I was
put in command of the rear guard to bring up the baggage
train. It grew late, and the wagons crossed slowly;
for the river unluckily took that particular time to
rise fast, and, before all were over, we had to swim it,
and by moonlight. We reached the encampment at one o'clock
at night. All was quiet, and remained so until dawn,
when, at the sound of our bugles, the pickets reported
they saw a number of Indians moving off. On looking
around us, we perceived ourselves and the caravan in the
most unfavorable defenceless situation possible—in the
area of a natural amphitheatre of sand hills, about fifty
feet high, and within gun-shot all around. There was
the narrowest practicable entrance and outlet.
We ascertained that some mounted traders, in spite of all
remonstrance and command, had ridden on in advance, and
when in the narrow pass beyond this spot, had been suddenly
beset by about fifty Indians; all fled and escaped save one,
who, mounted on a mule, was abandoned by his companions,
overtaken, and slain. The Indians, perhaps, equalled the
traders in number, but notwithstanding their extraordinary
advantage of ground, dared not attack them when they
made a stand among their wagons; and the latter, all well
armed, were afraid to make a single charge, which would
have scattered their enemies like sheep.
Having buried the poor fellow's body, and killed an ox for
breakfast, we left this sand hollow, which would soon have
been roasting hot, and advancing through the defile—of
which we took care to occupy the commanding ground—
proceeded to escort the traders at least one day's march
further.
When the next morning broke clear and cloudless, the command
was confronted by one of those terrible hot winds, still
frequent on the plains. The oxen with lolling tongues
were incapable of going on; the train was halted, and the
suffering animals unyoked, but they stood motionless,
making no attempt to graze. Late that afternoon, the
caravan pushed on for about ten miles, where was the
sandy bed of a dry creek, and fortunately, not far from
the Trail, up the stream, a pool of water and an acre
or two of grass was discovered. On the surface of the
water floated thick the dead bodies of small fish, which
the intense heat of the sun that day had killed.
Arriving at this point, it was determined to march no
further into the Mexican territory. At the first light
next day we were in motion to return to the river and
the American line, and no further adventure befell us.
While permanently encamped at Chouteau's Island, which is situated in the Arkansas River, the term of enlistment of four of the soldiers of Captain Cooke's command expired, and they were discharged. In his journal he says:
Contrary to all advice they determined to return to
Missouri. After having marched several hundred miles
over a prairie country, being often on high hills
commanding a vast prospect, without seeing a human being
or a sign of one, and, save the trail we followed, not
the slightest indication that the country had ever been
visited by man, it was exceedingly difficult to credit
that lurking foes were around us, and spying our motions.
It was so with these men; and being armed, they set out
on the first of August on foot for the settlements.
That same night three of the four returned. They reported
that, after walking about fifteen miles, they were
surrounded by thirty mounted Indians. A wary old soldier
of their number succeeded in extricating them before any
hostile act had been committed; but one of them, highly
elated and pleased at their forbearance, insisted on
returning among them to give them tobacco and shake hands.
In this friendly act he was shot down. The Indians
stripped him in an incredibly short time, and as quickly
dispersed to avoid a shot; and the old soldier, after
cautioning the others to reserve their fire, fired among
them, and probably with some effect. Had the others done
the same, the Indians would have rushed upon them before
they could have reloaded. They managed to make good
their retreat in safety to our camp.
We were instructed to wait here for the return of the
caravan, which was expected early in October.
Our provisions consisted of salt and half rations of flour,
besides a reserve of fifteen days' full rations—as to the
rest, we were dependent upon hunting. When the buffalo
became scarce, or the grass bad, we marched to other
ground, thus roving up and down the river for eighty
miles. The first thing we did after camping was to dig
and construct, with flour barrels, a well in front of
each company; water was always found at the depth of
from two to four feet varying with the corresponding
height of the river, but clear and cool. Next we would
build sod fire-places; these, with network platforms of
buffalo hide, used for smoking and drying meat, formed a
tolerable additional defence, at least against mounted men.
Hunting was a military duty, done by detail, parties of
fifteen or twenty going out with a wagon. Completely
isolated, and beyond support or even communication,
in the midst of many thousands of Indians, the utmost
vigilance was maintained. Officer of the guard every
fourth night; I was always awake and generally in motion
the whole time of duty. Night alarms were frequent; when,
as we all slept in our clothes, we were accustomed to
assemble instantly, and with scarcely a word spoken,
take our places in the grass in front of each face of
the camp, where, however wet, we sometimes lay for hours.
While encamped a few miles below Chouteau's Island, on the
eleventh of August, an alarm was given, and we were under
arms for an hour until daylight. During the morning,
Indians were seen a mile or two off, leading their horses
through the ravines. A captain, however, with eighteen
men was sent across the river after buffalo, which we saw
half a mile distant. In his absence, a large body of
Indians came galloping down the river, as if to charge
the camp, but the cattle were secured in good time.
A company, of which I was lieutenant, was ordered to
cross the river and support the first. We waded in some
disorder through the quicksands and current, and just
as we neared a dry sandbar in the middle, a volley was
fired at us by a band of Indians, who that moment rode
to the water's edge. The balls whistled very near,
but without damage; I felt an involuntary twitch of
the neck, and wishing to return the compliment instantly,
I stooped down, and the company fired over my head,
with what execution was not perceived, as the Indians
immediately retired out of our view. This had passed
in half a minute, and we were astonished to see, a little
above, among some bushes on the same bar, the party we had
been sent to support, and we heard that they had abandoned
one of the hunters, who had been killed. We then saw,
on the bank we had just left, a formidable body of the
enemy in close order, and hoping to surprise them,
we ascended the bed of the river. In crossing the channel
we were up to the arm-pits, but when we emerged on the
bank, we found that the Indians had detected the movement,
and retreated. Casting eyes beyond the river, I saw a
number of the Indians riding on both sides of a wagon
and team which had been deserted, urging the animals
rapidly toward the hills. At this juncture the adjutant
sent an order to cross and recover the body of the slain
hunter, who was an old soldier and a favourite. He was
brought in with an arrow still transfixing his breast,
but his scalp was gone.
On the fourteenth of October, we again marched on our
return. Soon after, we saw smokes arise over the distant
hills; evidently signals, indicating to different parties
of Indians our separation and march, but whether preparatory
to an attack upon the Mexicans or ourselves, or rather
our immense drove of animals, we could only guess.
Our march was constantly attended by great collections
of buffalo, which seemed to have a general muster, perhaps
for migration. Sometimes a hundred or two—a fragment
from the multitude—would approach within two or three
hundred yards of the column, and threaten a charge which
would have proved disastrous to the mules and their drivers.
Under the friendly cover of the shades of evening, on the
eighth of November, our tatterdemalion veterans marched
into Fort Leavenworth, and took quiet possession of the
miserable huts and sheds left by the Third Infantry in
the preceding May.
CHAPTER VI. A ROMANTIC TRAGEDY.
As early as November, 1842, a rumour was current in Santa Fe, and along the line of the Trail, that parties of Texans had left the Republic for the purpose of attacking and robbing the caravans to the United States which were owned wholly by Mexicans. In consequence of this, several Americans were accused of being spies and acting in collusion with the Texans; many were arrested and carried to Santa Fe, but nothing could be proved against them, and the rumours of the intended purposes of the Texans died out.
Very early in May, however, of the following year, 1843, a certain Colonel Snively did organize a small force, comprising about two hundred men, which he led from Northern Texas, his home, to the line of the Trail, with the intention of attacking and robbing the Mexican caravans which were expected to cross the plains that month and in June.
When he arrived at the Arkansas River, he was there reinforced by another Texan colonel, named Warfield with another small command. Gregg says:
This officer, with about twenty men, had some time
previously attacked the village of Mora, on the Mexican
frontier, killing five men, and driving off a number
of horses. They were afterward followed by a party of
Mexicans, however, who stampeded and carried away, not only
their own horses, but those of the Texans. Being left
afoot, the latter burned their saddles, and walked to
Bent's Fort, where they were disbanded; whence Warfield
passed to Snively's camp, as before mentioned.
The Texans now advanced along the Santa Fe Trail, beyond
the sand hills south of the Arkansas, when they discovered
that a party of Mexicans had passed toward the river.
They soon came upon them, and a skirmish ensuing, eighteen
Mexicans were killed, and as many wounded, five of whom
afterward died. The Texans suffered no injury, though
the Mexicans were a hundred in number. The rest were all
taken prisoners except two, who escaped and bore the news
to General Armijo, who was encamped with a large force
at Cold Spring, one hundred and forty miles beyond.
Kit Carson figured conspicuously in this fight, or, rather, immediately afterward. His recital differs somewhat from Gregg's account, but the stories substantially agree. Kit said that in April, previously to the assault upon Armijo's caravan, he had hired out as hunter to Bent's and Colonel St. Vrain's train caravan, which was then making its annual tour eastwardly. When he arrived at the crossing of Walnut Creek,[22] he found the encampment of Captain Philip St. George Cooke, of the United States army, who had been detailed with his command to escort the caravans to the New Mexican boundary. His force consisted of four troops of dragoons. The captain informed Carson that coming on behind him from the States was a caravan belonging to a very wealthy Mexican.
It was a richly loaded train, and in order to insure its better protection while passing through that portion of the country infested by the blood-thirsty Comanches and Apaches, the majordomo in charge had hired one hundred Mexicans as a guard. The teamsters and others belonging to the caravan had heard that a large body of Texans were lying in wait for them, and intended to murder and plunder them in retaliation for the way Armijo had treated some Texan prisoners he had got in his power at Santa Fe some time before. Of course, it was the duty of the United States troops to escort this caravan to the New Mexico line, but there their duty would end, as they had no authority to cross the border. The Mexicans belonging to the caravan were afraid they would be at the mercy of the Texans after they had parted company with the soldiers, and when Kit Carson met them, they, knowing the famous trapper and mountaineer well, asked him to take a letter to Armijo, who was then governor of New Mexico, and resided in Santa Fe, for which service they would give him three hundred dollars in advance. The letter contained a statement of the fears they entertained, and requested the general to send Mexican troops at once to meet them.
Carson, who was then not blessed with much money, eagerly accepted the task, and immediately started on the trail for Bent's Fort, in company with another old mountaineer and bosom friend named Owens. In a short time they arrived at the Fort, where Owens decided not to go any further, because they were informed by the men at Bent's that the Utes had broken out, and were scattered along the Trail at the most dangerous points, and he was fearful that his life would be endangered if he attempted to make Santa Fe.
Kit, however, nothing daunted, and determined to do the duty for which he had been rewarded so munificently, started out alone on his perilous trip. Mr. Bent kindly furnished him with the best and fastest horse he had in his stables, but Kit, realizing the dangers to which he would be exposed, walked, leading his animal, ready to mount him at a moment's notice; thus keeping him in a condition that would enable Carson to fly and make his escape if the savages tried to capture him. His knowledge of the Indian character, and wonderful alertness in moments of peril, served him well; for he reached the village of the hostile Indians without their discovering his proximity. Hiding himself in a rocky, bush-covered canyon, he stayed there until night came on, when he continued his journey in the darkness.
He took the trail to Taos, where he arrived in two or three days, and presented his letter to the alcalde, to be sent on to Santa Fe by special messenger.
He was to remain at Taos until an answer from the governor arrived, and then return with it as rapidly as possible to the train. While at Taos, he was informed that Armijo had already sent out a company of one hundred soldiers to meet the caravan, and was to follow in person, with a thousand more.
This first hundred were those attacked by Colonel Snively, as related by Gregg, who says that two survived, who carried the news of the disaster to Armijo at Cold Spring; but Carson told me that only one got away, by successfully catching, during the heat of the fight, a Texan pony already saddled, that was grazing around loose. With him he made Armijo's camp and related to the Mexican general the details of the terribly unequal battle. Armijo, upon receipt of the news, "turned tail," and retreated to Santa Fe.
Before Armijo left Santa Fe with his command, he had received the letter which Carson had brought from the caravan, and immediately sent one in reply for Carson to carry back, thinking that the old mountaineer might reach the wagons before he did. Carson, with his usual promptness, started on the Trail for the caravan, and came up with it while it was escorted by the dragoons, thus saving it from the fate that the Texans intended for it, as they dared not attempt any interference in the presence of the United States troops.
The rumour current in Santa Fe in relation to a probable raid of parties of Texans along the line of the Trail, for the purpose of attacking and robbing the caravans of the wealthy Mexican traders, was received with so little credence by the prominent citizens of the country, that several native trains left for the Missouri River without their proprietors having the slightest apprehension that they would not reach their destination, and make the return trip in safety.
Among those who had no fear of marauders was Don Antonio Jose Chavez, who, in February, 1843, left Santa Fe for Independence with an outfit consisting of a number of wagons, his private coach, several servants and other retainers. Don Antonio was a very wealthy Mexican engaged in a general mercantile business on a large scale in Albuquerque, who made all his purchases of goods in St. Louis, which was then the depot of supplies for the whole mountain region. He necessarily carried with him on these journeys a large amount of money, in silver, which was the legal currency of the country, and made but one trip yearly to replenish the stock of goods required in his extensive trade in all parts of Mexico.
Upon his arrival at Westport Landing, as Kansas City was then called, he would take the steamboat for St. Louis, leaving his coach, wagons, servants, and other appointments of his caravan behind him in the village of Westport, a few miles from the Landing.
Westport was at that time, like all steamboat towns in the era of water navigation, the harbor of as great a lot of ruffians as ever escaped the gallows. There was especially a noted gang of land pirates, the members of which had long indulged in speculations regarding the probable wealth of the Mexican Don, and how much coin he generally carried with him. They knew that it must be considerable from the quantity of goods that always came by boat with him from St. Louis.
At last a devilish plot was arranged to get hold of the rich trader's money. Nine men were concerned in the robbery, nearly all of whom were residents of the vicinity of Westport; their leader was one John McDaniel, recently from Texas, from which government he claimed to hold a captain's commission, and one of their number was a doctor. It was evidently the intention of this band to join Warfield's party on the Arkansas, and engage in a general robbery of the freight caravans of the Santa Fe Trail belonging to the Mexicans; but they had determined that Chavez should be their first victim, and in order to learn when he intended to leave Santa Fe on his next trip east, they sent their spies out on the great highway.
They did not dare attempt their contemplated robbery, and murder if necessary, in the State of Missouri, for there were too many citizens of the border who would never have permitted such a thing to go unpunished; so they knew that their only chance was to effect it in the Indian country of Kansas, where there was little or no law.
Cow Creek, which debouches into the Arkansas at Hutchinson, where the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad crosses the historic little stream,[23] was, like Big and Little Coon creeks, a most dangerous point in the transcontinental passage of freight caravans and overland coaches, in the days of the commerce of the prairies. It was on this purling little prairie brook that McDaniel's band lay in wait for the arrival of the ill-fated Don Antonio, whose imposing equipage came along, intending to encamp on the bank, one of the usual stopping-places on the route.
The Don was taken a few miles south of the Trail, and his baggage rifled. All of his party were immediately murdered, but the wealthy owner of the caravan was spared for a few moments in order to make a confession of where his money was concealed, after which he was shot down in cold blood, and his body thrown into a ravine.
It appears, however, that the ruffians had not completed their bloody work so effectually as they thought; for one of the Mexican's teamsters escaped, and, making his way to Leavenworth, reported the crime, and was soon on his way back to the Trail, guiding a detachment of United States troops in pursuit of the murderers.
John Hobbs, scout, trapper, and veteran plainsman, happened to be hunting buffalo on Pawnee Fork, on the ground where Larned is now situated, with a party from Bent's Fort. They were just on the point of crossing the Trail at the mouth of the Pawnee when the soldiers from Fort Leavenworth came along, and from them Hobbs and his companions first learned of the murder of Chavez on Cow Creek. As the men who were out hunting were all familiar with every foot of the region they were then in, the commanding officer of the troops induced them to accompany him in his search for the murderers.
Hobbs and his men cheerfully accepted the invitation, and in about four days met the band of cut-throats on the broad Trail, they little dreaming that the government had taken a hand in the matter. The band tried to escape by flight, but Hobbs shot the doctor's horse from under him, and a soldier killed another member of the band, when the remainder surrendered.
The money, about twelve or fifteen thousand dollars,[24] was all recovered, and the murderers taken to St. Louis, where some were hung and some imprisoned, the doctor escaping the death penalty by turning state's evidence. His sentence was incarceration in the penitentiary, from which he was pardoned after remaining there two years. Hobbs met the doctor some years after in San Francisco. He was then leading an honest life, publishing a newspaper, and begged his captor not to expose him.
The money taken from the robbers was placed in charge of Colonel Owens, a friend of the Chavez family and a leading Santa Fe trader. He continued on to the river, purchased a stock of goods, and sent back the caravan to Santa Fe in charge of Doctor Conley of Boonville, Missouri.
Arriving at his destination, the widow of the deceased Chavez employed the good doctor to sell the goods and take the sole supervision of her immense business interests, and there is a touch of romance attached to the terrible Kansas tragedy, which lies in the fact that the doctor in about two years married the rich widow, and lived very happily for about a decade, dying then on one of the large estates in New Mexico, which he had acquired by his fortunate union with the amiable Mexican lady.
CHAPTER VII. MEXICO DECLARES WAR.
Mexico declared war against the United States in April, 1846. In the following May, Congress passed an act authorizing the President to call into the field fifty thousand volunteers, designed to operate against Mexico at three distinct points, and consisting of the Southern Wing, or the Army of Occupation, the Army of the Centre, and the Army of the West, the latter to direct its march upon the city of Santa Fe. The original plan was, however, somewhat changed, and General Kearney, who commanded the Army of the West, divided his forces into three separate commands. The first he led in person to the Pacific coast. One thousand volunteers, under command of Colonel A. W. Doniphan, were to make a descent upon the State of Chihuahua, while the remainder and greater part of the forces, under Colonel Sterling Price, were to garrison Santa Fe after its capture.
There is a pretty fiction told of the breaking out of the war between Mexico and the United States. Early in the spring of 1846, before it was known or even conjectured that a state of war would be declared to exist between this government and Mexico, a caravan of twenty-nine traders, on their way from Independence to Santa Fe, beheld, just after a storm and a little before sunset, a perfectly distinct image of the Bird of Liberty, the American eagle, on the disc of the sun. When they saw it they simultaneously and almost involuntarily exclaimed that in less than twelve months the Eagle of Liberty would spread his broad plumes over the plains of the West, and that the flag of our country would wave over the cities of New Mexico and Chihuahua. The student of the classics will remember that just before the assassination of Julius Caesar, both Brutus and Cassius, while in their places in the Roman Senate, saw chariots of fire in the sky. One story is as true, probably, as the other, though separated by centuries of time.
The Army of the West, under General Stephen W. Kearney, consisted of two batteries of artillery, commanded by Major Clark; three squadrons of the First United States Dragoons, commanded by Major Sumner; the First Regiment of Missouri Cavalry, commanded by Colonel Doniphan, and two companies of infantry, commanded by Captain Aubrey. This force marched in detached columns from Fort Leavenworth, and on the 1st of August, 1846, concentrated in camp on the Santa Fe Trail, nine miles below Bent's Fort.
Accompanying the expedition was a party of the United States topographical engineers, under command of Lieutenant W. H. Emory.[25] In writing of this expedition, so far as its march relates to the Old Santa Fe Trail, I shall quote freely from Emory's report and Doniphan's historian.[26]
The practicability of marching a large army over the waste, uncultivated, uninhabited prairie regions of the West was universally regarded as problematical, but the expedition proved completely successful. Provisions were conveyed in wagons, and beef-cattle driven along for the use of the men. These animals subsisted entirely by grazing. To secure them from straying off at night, they were driven into corrals formed of the wagons, or tethered to an iron picket-pin driven into the ground about fifteen inches. At the outset of the expedition many laughable scenes took place. Our horses were generally wild, fiery, and unused to military trappings and equipments. Amidst the fluttering of banners, the sounding of bugles, the rattling of artillery, the clattering of sabres and also of cooking utensils, some of them took fright and scampered pell-mell over the wide prairie. Rider, arms and accoutrements, saddles, saddle-bags, tin cups, and coffee-pots, were frequently left far behind in the chase. No very serious or fatal accident, however, occurred from this cause, and all was right as soon as the affrighted animals were recovered.
The Army of the West was, perhaps, composed of as fine material as any other body of troops then in the field. The volunteer corps consisted almost entirely of young men of the country.
On the 9th of July, a separate detachment of the troops arrived at the Little Arkansas, where the Santa Fe Trail crosses that stream—now in McPherson County, Kansas. The mosquitoes, gnats, and black flies swarmed in that locality and nearly drove the men and animals frantic. While resting there, a courier came from the commands of General Kearney and Colonel Doniphan, stating that their men were in a starving condition, and asking for such provisions as could be spared. Lieutenant-Colonel Ruff of Doniphan's regiment, in command of the troops now camped on the Little Arkansas, was almost destitute himself. He had sent couriers forward to Pawnee Fork to stop a train of provisions at that point and have it wait there until he came up with his force, and he now directed the courier from Kearney to proceed to the same place and halt as many wagons loaded with supplies, as would suffice to furnish the three detachments with rations. One of the couriers, in attempting to ford the fork of the Pawnee, which was bank-full, was drowned. His body was found and given a military funeral; he was the first man lost on the expedition after it had reached the great plains, one having been drowned in the Missouri, at Fort Leavenworth, before the troops left.
The author of Doniphan's Expedition says:
In approaching the Arkansas, a landscape of the most
imposing and picturesque nature makes its appearance.
While the green, glossy undulations of the prairie to
the right seem to spread out in infinite succession,
like waves subsiding after a storm, and covered with
herds of gambolling buffalo, on the left, towering to
the height of seventy-five to a hundred feet, rise the
sun-gilt summits of the sand hills, along the base of
which winds the broad, majestic river, bespeckled with
verdant islets, thickly beset with cottonwood timber,
the sand hills resembling heaps of driven snow.
I refer to this statement to show how wonderfully the settlement of the region has changed the physical aspect of that portion bordering the Arkansas River. Now those sand hills are covered with verdure, and this metamorphosis has taken place within the last thirty years; for the author of this work well remembers how the great sand dunes used to shine in the sunlight, when he first saw them a third of a century ago. In coming from Fort Leavenworth up the Smoky Hill route to the Santa Fe Trail, where the former joined the latter at Pawnee Rock, the contour of the Arkansas could be easily traced by the white sand hills referred to, long before it was reached.
On the 15th of July the combined forces formed a junction at Pawnee Fork, now within the city limits of Larned, Kansas. The river was impassable, but General Kearney, with the characteristic energy of his family, determined not to be delayed, and to that end caused great trees to be cut down and their trunks thrown across the stream, over which the army passed, carrying in their arms the sick, the baggage, tents, and other paraphernalia; the animals being forced to swim. The empty bodies of the wagons, fastened to their running gear, were floated across by means of ropes, and hauled up the slippery bank by the troops. This required two whole days; and on the morning of the 17th, not an accident having occurred, the entire column was en route again, the infantry, as is declared in the official reports, keeping pace with the cavalry right along. Their feet, however, became terribly blistered, and, like the Continentals at Valley Forge, their tracks were marked with blood.
In a day or two after the command had left Pawnee Fork, while camping in a beautiful spot on the bank of the Arkansas, an officer, Major Howard, who had been sent forward to Santa Fe some time previously by the general to learn something of the feeling of the people in relation to submitting to the government of the United States, returned and reported
that the common people, or plebeians, were inclined to
favour the conditions of peace proposed by General Kearney;
viz. that if they would lay down their arms and take the
oath of allegiance to the government of the United States,
they should, to all intents and purposes, become citizens
of the same republic, receiving the protection and enjoying
the liberties guaranteed to other American citizens; but
that the patricians who held the offices and ruled the
country were hostile, and were making warlike preparations.
He added, further, that two thousand three hundred men
were already armed for the defence of the capital, and
that others were assembling at Taos.
This intelligence created quite a sensation in camp, and it was
believed, and earnestly hoped, that the entrance of the troops into
Santa Fe would be desperately opposed; such is the pugnacious character
of the average American the moment he dons the uniform of a soldier.
The army arrived at the Cimarron crossing of the Arkansas on the 20th, and during the march of nearly thirty miles from their last camp, a herd of about four hundred buffalo suddenly emerged from the Arkansas, and broke through the long column. In an instant the troops charged upon the surprised animals with guns, pistols, and even drawn sabres, and many of the huge beasts were slaughtered as they went dashing and thundering among the excited troopers and infantrymen.
On the 29th an express from Bent's Fort brought news to General Kearney from Santa Fe that Governor Armijo had called the chief men together to deliberate on the best means of defending the city; that hostile preparations were rapidly going on in all parts of New Mexico; and that the American advance would be vigorously opposed. Some Mexican prisoners were taken near Bent's Fort, with blank letters on their persons addressed to the general; it was supposed this piece of ingenuity was resorted to to deceive the American residents at the fort. These men were thought to be spies sent out from Santa Fe to get an idea of the strength of the army; so they were shown everything in and around camp, and then allowed to depart in peace for Santa Fe, to report what they had seen.
On the same date, the Army of the West crossed the Arkansas and camped on Mexican soil about eight miles below Bent's Fort, and now the utmost vigilance was exercised; for the troops had not only to keep a sharp lookout for the Mexicans, but for the wily Comanches, in whose country their camp was located. Strong picket and camp guards were posted, and the animals turned loose to graze, guarded by a large force. Notwithstanding the care taken to confine them within certain limits, a pack of wolves rushed through the herd, and in an instant it was stampeded, and there ensued a scene of the wildest confusion. More than a thousand horses were dashing madly over the prairie, their rage and fright increased at every jump by the lariats and picket-pins which they had pulled up, and which lashed them like so many whips. After desperate exertions by the troops, the majority were recovered from thirty to fifty miles distant; nearly a hundred, however, were absolutely lost and never seen again.
At this camp the troops were visited by the war chief of the Arapahoes, who manifested great surprise at the big guns, and declared that the Mexicans would not stand a moment before such terrible instruments of death, but would escape to the mountains with the utmost despatch.
On the 1st of August a new camp near Bent's Fort was established, from whence twenty men under Lieutenant de Courcy, with orders to proceed through the mountains to the valley of Taos, to learn something of the disposition and intentions of the people, and to rejoin General Kearney on the road to Santa Fe. Lieutenant de Courcy, in his official itinerary, relates the following anecdote:
We took three pack-mules laden with provisions, and as
we did not expect to be long absent, the men took no extra
clothing. Three days after we left the column our mules
fell down, and neither gentle means nor the points of our
sabres had the least effect in inducing them to rise.
Their term of service with Uncle Sam was out. "What's to
be done?" said the sergeant. "Dismount!" said I.
"Off with your shirts and drawers, men! tie up the sleeves
and legs, and each man bag one-twentieth part of the flour!"
Having done this, the bacon was distributed to the men also,
and tied to the cruppers of their saddles. Thus loaded,
we pushed on, without the slightest fear of our provision
train being cut off.
The march upon Santa Fe was resumed on the 2d of August.
As we passed Bent's Fort the American flag was raised,
in compliment to our troops, and, like our own, streamed
most animatingly in the gale that swept from the desert,
while the tops of the houses were crowded with Mexican girls
and Indian squaws, intently beholding the American army.
On the 15th of the month, the army neared Las Vegas; when two spies who had been sent on in advance to see how matters stood returned and reported that two thousand Mexicans were camped at the pass a few miles beyond the village, where they intended to offer battle.
Upon receipt of this news, the general immediately formed a line of battle. The United States dragoons with the St. Louis mounted volunteers were stationed in front, Major Clark with the battalion of volunteer light artillery in the centre, and Colonel Doniphan's regiment in the rear. The companies of volunteer infantry were deployed on each side of the line of march as flankers. The supply trains were next in order, with Captain Walton's mounted company as rear guard. There was also a strong advance guard. The cartridges were hastily distributed; the cannon swabbed and rigged; the port-fires burning, and every rifle loaded.
In passing through the streets of the curious-looking village of Las Vegas, the army was halted, and from the roof of a large house General Kearney administered to the chief officers of the place the oath of allegiance to the United States, using the sacred cross instead of the Bible. This act completed, on marched the exultant troops toward the canyon where it had been promised them that they should meet the enemy.
On the night of the 16th, while encamped on the Pecos River, near the village of San Jose, the pickets captured a son of the Mexican General Salezar, who was acting the rôle of a spy, and two other soldiers of the Mexican army. Salezar was kept a close prisoner; but the two privates were by order of General Kearney escorted through the camp and shown the cannon, after which they were allowed to depart, so that they might tell what they had seen. It was learned afterward that they represented the American army as composed of five thousand troops, and possessing so many cannons that they were not able to count them.
When Armijo was certain that the Army of the West was really approaching Santa Fe, he assembled seven thousand troops, part of them well armed, and the remainder indifferently so. The Mexican general had written a note to General Kearney the day before the capture of the spies, saying that he would meet him on the following day.
General Kearney, at this, hastened on, arriving at the mouth of the Apache canyon at noon, with his whole force ready and anxious to try the mettle of the Mexicans in battle. Emory in his Reconnoissance says:
The sun shone with dazzling brightness; the guidons and
colours of each squadron, regiment, and battalion were
for the first time unfurled. The drooping horses seemed
to take courage from the gay array. The trumpeters
sounded "to horse" with spirit, and the hills multiplied
and re-echoed the call. All wore the aspect of a gala day.
About the middle of the day's march the two Pueblo Indians,
previously sent to sound the chief men of that formidable
tribe, were seen in the distance, at full speed, with arms
and legs both thumping the sides of their mules at every
stride. Something was now surely in the wind. The smaller
and foremost of the two dashed up to the general, his face
radiant with joy, and exclaimed:
"They are in the canyon, my brave; pluck up your courage
and push them out." As soon as his extravagant delight at
the prospect of a fight, and the pleasure of communicating
the news, had subsided, he gave a pretty accurate idea
of Armijo's force and position.
Shortly afterwards a rumour reached the camp that the
two thousand Mexicans assembled in the canyon to oppose us,
have quarrelled among themselves; and that Armijo, taking
advantage of the dissensions, has fled with his dragoons
and artillery to the south. It is well known that he has
been averse to a battle, but some of his people threatened
his life if he refused to fight. He had been, for some
days, more in fear of his own people than of the American
army, having seen what they are blind to—the hopelessness
of resistance.
As we approached the ancient town of Pecos, a large fat
fellow, mounted on a mule, came toward us at full speed,
and, extending his hand to the general, congratulated him
on the arrival of himself and army. He said with a roar
of laughter, "Armijo and his troops have gone to h—-ll,
and the canyon is all clear."
On reaching the canyon, it was found to be true that the Mexican troops had dispersed and fled to the mountains, just as the old Arapahoe chief had said they would. There, however, they commenced to fortify, by chopping away the timber so that their artillery could play to better advantage upon the American lines, and by throwing up temporary breastworks. It was ascertained afterward, on undoubted authority, that Armijo had an army of nearly seven thousand Mexicans, with six pieces of artillery, and the advantage of ground, yet he allowed General Kearney, with a force of less than two thousand, to march through the almost impregnable gorge, and on to the capital of the Province, without any attempt to oppose him.
Thus was New Mexico conquered with but little loss relatively. For the further details of the movements of the Army of the West, the reader is referred to general history, as this book, necessarily, treats only of that portion of its march and the incidents connected with it while travelling the Santa Fe Trail.
CHAPTER VIII. THE VALLEY OF TAOS.
The principal settlement in New Mexico, immediately after it was reconquered from the Indians by the Spaniards, was, of course, Santa Fe, and ranking second to it, that of the beautiful Valle de Taos, which derived its name from the Taosa Indians, a few of whose direct descendants are still occupying a portion of the region. As the pioneers in the trade with Santa Fe made their first journeys to the capital of the Province by the circuitous route of the Taos valley, and the initial consignments of goods from the Missouri were disposed of in the little villages scattered along the road, the story of the Trail would be deficient in its integrity were the thrilling historical facts connected with the romantic region omitted.
The reader will find on all maps, from the earliest published to the latest issued by the local railroads, a town with the name of Taos, which never had an existence. Fernandez de Taos is the chief city, which has been known so long by the title of the valley that perhaps the misnomer is excusable after many years' use.
Fernandez, or Taos as it is called, was once famous for its distilleries of whiskey, made out of the native wheat, a raw, fiery spirit, always known in the days of the Santa Fe trade as "Taos lightning," which was the most profitable article of barter with the Indians, who exchanged their buffalo robes and other valuable furs for a supply of it, at a tremendous sacrifice.
According to the statement of Gregg, the first white settler of the fertile and picturesque valley was a Spaniard named Pando, who established himself there about 1745. This primitive pioneer of the northern part of the Province was constantly exposed to the raids of the powerful Comanches, but succeeded in creating a temporary friendship with the tribe by promising his daughter, then a young and beautiful infant, to the chief in marriage when she arrived at a suitable age. At the time for the ratification of her father's covenant with the Indians, however, the maiden stubbornly refused to fulfil her part. The savages, enraged at the broken faith of the Spaniard, immediately swept down upon the little settlement and murdered everybody there except the betrothed girl, whom they carried off into captivity. She was forced to live with the chief as his wife, but he soon became tired of her and traded her for another woman with the Pawnees, who, in turn, sold her to a Frenchman, a resident of St. Louis. It is said that some of the most respectable families of that city are descended from her, and fifty years ago there were many people living who remembered the old lady, and her pathetic story of trials and sufferings when with the Indians.
The most tragic event in the history of the valley was the massacre of the provisional governor of the Territory of New Mexico, with a number of other Americans, shortly after its occupation by the United States.
Upon General Kearney's taking possession of Santa Fe, acting under the authority of the President, he established a civil government and put it into operation. Charles Bent was appointed governor, and the other offices filled by Americans and Mexicans who were rigidly loyal to the political change. At this time the command of the troops devolved upon Colonel Sterling Price, Colonel Doniphan, who ranked him, having departed from Santa Fe on an expedition against the Navajoes. Notwithstanding the apparent submission of the natives of New Mexico, there were many malcontents among them and the Pueblo Indians, and early in December, some of the leaders, dissatisfied with the change in the order of things, held secret meetings and formulated plots to overthrow the existing government.
Midnight of the 24th of December was the time appointed for the commencement of their revolutionary work, which was to be simultaneous all over the country. The profoundest secrecy was to be preserved, and the most influential men, whose ambition induced them to seek preferment, were alone to be made acquainted with the plot. No woman was to be privy to it, lest it should be divulged. The sound of the church bell was to be the signal, and at midnight all were to enter the Plaza at the same moment, seize the pieces of artillery, and point them into the streets.
The time chosen for the assault was Christmas-eve, when the soldiers and garrison would be indulging in wine and feasting, and scattered about through the city at the fandangoes, not having their arms in their hands. All the Americans, without distinction, throughout the State, and such New Mexicans as had favoured the American government and accepted office by appointment of General Kearney, were to be massacred or driven from the country, and the conspirators were to seize upon and occupy the government.
The conspiracy was detected in the following manner: a mulatto girl, residing in Santa Fe, had married one of the conspirators, and had by degrees obtained a knowledge of their movements and secret meetings. To prevent the effusion of blood, which would inevitably be the result of a revolution, she communicated to Colonel Price all the facts of which she was in possession, and warned him to use the utmost vigilance. The rebellion was immediately suppressed, but the restless and unsatisfied ambition of the leaders of the conspiracy did not long permit them to remain inactive. A second and still more dangerous conspiracy was formed. The most powerful and influential men in the State favoured the design, and even the officers of State and the priests gave their aid and counsel. The people everywhere, in the towns, villages, and settlements, were exhorted to arm and equip themselves; to strike for their faith, their religion, and their altars; and drive the "heretics," the "unjust invaders of the country," from their soil, and with fire and sword pursue them to annihilation. On the 18th of January this rebellion broke out in every part of the State simultaneously.
On the 14th of January, Governor Bent, believing the conspiracy completely crushed, with an escort of five persons—among whom were the sheriff and circuit attorney—had left Santa Fe to visit his family, who resided at Fernandez.
On the 19th, he was early roused from sleep by the populace, who, with the aid of the Pueblos of Taos, were collected in front of his dwelling striving to gain admittance. While they were effecting an entrance, he, with an axe, cut through an adobe wall into another house; and the Mexican wife of the occupant, a clever though shiftless Canadian, hearing him, with all her strength rendered him assistance. He retreated to a room, but, seeing no way of escaping from the infuriated assailants, who fired upon him from a window, he spoke to his weeping wife and trembling children, and, taking paper from his pocket, endeavoured to write; but fast losing strength, he commended them to God and his brothers and fell, pierced by a ball from a Pueblo. Then rushing in and tearing off his gray-haired scalp, the Indians bore it away in triumph.
The circuit attorney, T. W. Leal, was scalped alive and dragged through the streets, his relentless persecutors pricking him with lances. After hours of suffering, they threw him aside in the inclement weather, he imploring them earnestly to kill him to end his misery. A compassionate Mexican at last closed the tragic scene by shooting him. Stephen Lee, brother to the general, was killed on his own housetop. Narcisse Beaubien, son of the presiding judge of the district, hid in an outhouse with his Indian slave, at the commencement of the massacre, under a straw-covered trough. The insurgents on the search, thinking that they had escaped, were leaving, but a woman servant of the family, going to the housetop, called to them, "Kill the young ones, and they will never be men to trouble us." They swarmed back and, by cruelly putting to death and scalping him and his slave, added two more to the list of unfortunate victims.
The Pueblos and Mexicans, after their cruelties at Fernandez de Taos, attacked and destroyed Turley's Ranch on the Arroyo Hondo[27] twelve miles from Fernandez, or Taos. Arroyo Hondo runs along the base of a ridge of a mountain of moderate elevation, which divides the valley of Taos from that of the Rio Colorado, or Red River, both flowing into the Del Norte. The trail from one place to the other passes over the mountain, which is covered with pine, cedar, and a species of dwarf oak; and numerous little streams run through the many canyons.
On the bank of one of the creeks was a mill and distillery belonging to an American named Turley, who did a thriving business. He possessed herds of goats, and hogs innumerable; his barns were filled with grain, his mill with flour, and his cellars with whiskey. He had a Mexican wife and several children, and he bore the reputation of being one of the most generous and kind-hearted of men. In times of scarcity, no one ever sought his aid to be turned away empty-handed; his granaries were always open to the hungry, and his purse to the poor.
When on their road to Turley's, the Pueblos murdered two men, named Harwood and Markhead. Markhead was one of the most successful trappers and daring men among the old mountaineers. They were on their way to Taos with their pack-animals laden with furs, when the savages, meeting them, after stripping them of their goods, and securing their arms by treachery, made them mount their mules under pretence of conducting them to Taos, where they were to be given up to the leaders of the insurrection. They had hardly proceeded a mile when a Mexican rode up behind Harwood and discharged his gun into his back; he called out to Markhead that he was murdered, and fell to the ground dead.
Markhead, seeing that his own fate was sealed, made no struggle, and was likewise shot in the back with several bullets. Both men were then stripped naked, scalped, and horribly mutilated; their bodies thrown into the brush to be devoured by the wolves.
These trappers were remarkable men; Markhead, particularly, was celebrated in the mountains for his courage, reckless daring, and many almost miraculous escapes when in the very hands of the Indians. When some years previously he had accompanied Sir William Drummond Stewart on one of his expeditions across the Rockies, it happened that a half-breed Indian employed by Sir William absconded one night with some animals, which circumstance annoyed the nobleman so much, as it disturbed all his plans, that he hastily offered, never dreaming that he would be taken up, to give five hundred dollars for the scalp of the thief. The very next evening Markhead rode into camp with the hair of the luckless horse-thief dangling at the muzzle of his rifle.
The wild crowd of rebels rode on to Turley's mill. Turley had been warned of the impending uprising, but had treated the report with indifference, until one morning a man in his employ, who had been despatched to Santa Fe with several mule-loads of whiskey a few days before, made his appearance at the gate on horseback, and hastily informing the inmates of the mill that the New Mexicans had risen and massacred Governor Bent and other Americans, galloped off. Even then Turley felt assured that he would not be molested; but at the solicitation of his men, he agreed to close the gate of the yard around which were the buildings of the mill and distillery, and make preparations for defence.
A few hours afterward a large crowd of Mexicans and Pueblo Indians made their appearance, all armed with guns and bows and arrows, and, advancing with a white flag, summoned Turley to surrender his house and the Americans in it, guaranteeing that his own life should be saved, but that every other American in the valley must be destroyed; that the governor and all the Americans at Fernandez had been killed, and that not one was to be left alive in all New Mexico.
To this summons Turley answered that he would never surrender his house nor his men, and that if they wanted it or them, they must take them.
The enemy then drew off, and, after a short consultation, commenced the attack. The first day they numbered about five hundred, but were hourly reinforced by the arrival of parties of Indians from the more distant Pueblos, and New Mexicans from Fernandez, La Canada, and other places.
The building lay at the foot of a gradual slope in the sierra, which was covered with cedar bushes. In front ran the stream of the Arroyo Hondo, about twenty yards from one side of the square, and the other side was broken ground which rose abruptly and formed the bank of the ravine. In the rear and behind the still-house was some garden ground enclosed by a small fence, into which a small wicket-gate opened from the corral.
As soon as the attack was determined upon, the assailants scattered and concealed themselves under cover of the rocks and bushes which surrounded the house. From these they kept up an incessant fire upon every exposed portion of the building where they saw preparations for defence.
The Americans, on their part, were not idle; not a man but was an old mountaineer, and each had his trusty rifle, with a good store of ammunition. Whenever one of the besiegers exposed a hand's-breadth of his person, a ball from an unerring barrel whistled. The windows had been blockaded, loopholes having been left, and through these a lively fire was maintained. Already several of the enemy had bitten the dust, and parties were seen bearing off the wounded up the banks of the Canada. Darkness came on, and during the night a continual fire was kept up on the mill, whilst its defenders, reserving their ammunition, kept their posts with stern and silent determination. The night was spent in casting balls, cutting patches, and completing the defences of the building. In the morning the fight was renewed, and it was found that the Mexicans had effected a lodgment in a part of the stables, which were separated from the other portions of the building by an open space of a few feet. The assailants, during the night, had sought to break down the wall, and thus enter the main building, but the strength of the adobe and logs of which it was composed resisted effectually all their attempts.
Those in the stable seemed anxious to regain the outside, for their position was unavailable as a means of annoyance to the besieged, and several had darted across the narrow space which divided it from the other part of the building, which slightly projected, and behind which they were out of the line of fire. As soon, however, as the attention of the defenders was called to this point, the first man who attempted to cross, who happened to be a Pueblo chief, was dropped on the instant, and fell dead in the centre of the intervening space. It appeared to be an object to recover the body, for an Indian immediately dashed out to the fallen chief, and attempted to drag him within the shelter of the wall. The rifle which covered the spot again poured forth its deadly contents, and the Indian, springing into the air, fell over the body of his chief. Another and another met with a similar fate, and at last three rushed to the spot, and, seizing the body by the legs and head, had already lifted it from the ground, when three puffs of smoke blew from the barricaded windows, followed by the sharp cracks of as many rifles, and the three daring Indians were added to the pile of corpses which now covered the body of the dead chief.
As yet the besieged had met with no casualties; but after the fall of the seven Indians, the whole body of the assailants, with a shout of rage, poured in a rattling volley, and two of the defenders fell mortally wounded. One, shot through the loins, suffered great agony, and was removed to the still-house, where he was laid on a large pile of grain, as being the softest bed that could be found.
In the middle of the day the attack was renewed more fiercely than before. The little garrison bravely stood to the defence of the mill, never throwing away a shot, but firing coolly, and only when a fair mark was presented to their unerring aim. Their ammunition, however, was fast failing, and to add to the danger of their situation, the enemy set fire to the mill, which blazed fiercely, and threatened destruction to the whole building. Twice they succeeded in overcoming the flames, and, while they were thus occupied, the Mexicans and Indians charged into the corral, which was full of hogs and sheep, and vented their cowardly rage upon the animals, spearing and shooting all that came in their way. No sooner were the flames extinguished in one place than they broke out more fiercely in another; and as a successful defence was perfectly hopeless, and the numbers of the assailants increased every moment, a council of war was held by the survivors of the little garrison, when it was determined, as soon as night approached, that every one should attempt to escape as best he could.
Just at dusk a man named John Albert and another ran to the wicket-gate which opened into a kind of enclosed space, in which were a number of armed Mexicans. They both rushed out at the same moment, discharging their rifles full in the face of the crowd. Albert, in the confusion, threw himself under the fence, whence he saw his companion shot down immediately, and heard his cries for mercy as the cowards pierced him with knives and lances. He lay without motion under the fence, and as soon as it was quite dark he crept over the logs and ran up the mountain, travelled by day and night, and, scarcely stopping or resting, reached the Greenhorn, almost dead with hunger and fatigue. Turley himself succeeded in escaping from the mill and in reaching the mountain unseen. Here he met a Mexican mounted on a horse, who had been a most intimate friend of his for many years. To this man Turley offered his watch for the use of the horse, which was ten times more than it was worth, but was refused. The inhuman wretch, however, affected pity and consideration for the fugitive, and advised him to go to a certain place, where he would bring or send him assistance; but on reaching the mill, which was a mass of fire, he immediately informed the Mexicans of Turley's place of concealment, whither a large party instantly proceeded and shot him to death.
Two others escaped and reached Santa Fe in safety. The mill and Turley's house were sacked and gutted, and all his hard-earned savings, which were concealed in gold about the house, were discovered, and, of course, seized upon by the victorious Mexicans.
The following account is taken from Governor Prince's chapter on the fight at Taos, in his excellent and authentic History of New Mexico:—
The startling news of the assassination of the governor was
swiftly carried to Santa Fe, and reached Colonel Price the
next day. Simultaneously, letters were discovered calling
on the people of the Rio Abajo to secure Albuquerque and
march northward to aid the other insurgents; and news
speedily followed that a united Mexican and Pueblo force of
large magnitude was marching down the Rio Grande valley
toward the capital, flushed with the success of the revolt
at Taos. Very few troops were in Santa Fe; in fact, the
number remaining in the whole territory was very small,
and these were scattered at Albuquerque, Las Vegas, and
other distant points. At the first-named town were Major
Edmonson and Captain Burgwin; the former in command of the
town, and the latter with a company of the First Dragoons.
Colonel Price lost no time in taking such measures as his
limited resources permitted. Edmonson was directed to come
immediately to Santa Fe to take command of the capital; and
Burgwin to follow Price as fast as possible to the scene
of hostilities. The colonel himself collected the few
troops at Santa Fe, which were all on foot, but fortunately
included the little battalion which under Captain Aubrey
had made such extraordinary marches on the journey across
the plains as to almost outwalk the cavalry. With these
was a volunteer company formed of nearly all of the American
inhabitants of the city, under the command of Colonel Ceran
St. Vrain, who happened to be in Santa Fe, together with
Judge Beaubien, at the time of the rising at Taos.
With this little force, amounting in all to three hundred
and ten men, Colonel Price started to march to Taos, or at
all events to meet the army which was coming toward the
capital from the north and which grew as it marched by
constant accessions from the surrounding country.
The city of Santa Fe was left in charge of a garrison under
Lieutenant-Colonel Willock. While the force was small
and the volunteers without experience in regular warfare,
yet all were nerved to desperation by the belief, since
the Taos murders, that the only alternative was victory
or annihilation.
The expedition set out on January 23d, and the next day
the Mexican army, under command of General Montoya as
commander-in-chief, aided by Generals Tafoya and Chavez,
was found occupying the heights commanding the road near
La Canada (Santa Cruz), with detachments in some strong
adobe houses near the river banks. The advance had been
seen shortly before at the rocky pass, on the road from
Pojuaque; and near there and before reaching the river, the
San Juan Pueblo Indians, who had joined the revolutionists
reluctantly and under a kind of compulsion, surrendered and
were disarmed by removing the locks from their guns.
On arriving at the Canada, Price ordered his howitzers to
the front and opened fire; and after a sharp cannonade,
directed an assault on the nearest houses by Aubrey's
battalion. Meanwhile an attempt by a Mexican detachment
to cut off the American baggage-wagons, which had not yet
come up, was frustrated by the activity of St. Vrain's
volunteers. A charge all along the line was then ordered
and handsomely executed; the houses, which, being of adobe,
had been practically so many ready-made forts, were
successively carried, and St. Vrain started in advance to
gain the Mexican rear. Seeing this manoeuvre, and fearing
its effects, the Mexicans retreated, leaving thirty-six
dead on the field. Among those killed was General Tafoya,
who bravely remained on the field after the remainder had
abandoned it, and was shot.
Colonel Price pressed on up the river as fast as possible,
passing San Juan, and at Los Luceros, on the 28th, his
little army was rejoiced at the arrival of reinforcements,
consisting of a mounted company of cavalry, Captain Burgwin's
company, which had been pushed up by forced marches on foot
from Albuquerque, and a six-pounder brought by Lieutenant
Wilson. Thus enlarged, the American force consisted of
four hundred and eighty men, and continued its advance up
the valley to La Joya, which was as far as the river road at
that time extended. Meanwhile the Mexicans had established
themselves in a narrow pass near Embudo, where the forest
was dense, and the road impracticable for wagons or cannon,
the troops occupying the sides of the mountains on both
sides of the canyon. Burgwin was sent with three companies
to dislodge them and open a passage—no easy task.
But St. Vrain's company took the west slope, and another
the right, while Burgwin himself marched through the gorge
between. The sharp-shooting of these troops did such
terrible execution that the pass was soon cleared, though
not without the display of great heroism, and some loss;
and the Americans entered Embudo without further opposition.
The difficulties of this campaign were greatly increased by
the severity of the weather, the mountains being thickly
covered with snow, and the cold so intense that a number
of men were frost-bitten and disabled. The next day Burgwin
reached Las Trampas, where Price arrived with the remainder
of the American army on the last day of January, and all
together they marched into Chamisal.
Notwithstanding the cold and snow they pressed on over the
mountain, and on the 3d of February reached the town of
Fernandez de Taos, only to find that the Mexican and Pueblo
force had fortified itself in the celebrated Pueblo of Taos,
about three miles distant. That force had diminished
considerably during the retreat from La Canada, many of the
Mexicans returning to their homes, and its greater part
now consisting of Pueblo Indians. The American troops were
worn out with fatigue and exposure, and in most urgent need
of rest; but their intrepid commander, desiring to give his
opponents no more time to strengthen their works, and full
of zeal and energy, if not of prudence, determined to
commence an immediate attack.
The two great buildings at this Pueblo, certainly the most
interesting and extraordinary inhabited structures in
America, are well known from descriptions and engravings.
They are five stories high and irregularly pyramidal in
shape, each story being smaller than the one below, in order
to allow ingress to the outer rooms of each tier from the
roofs. Before the advent of artillery these buildings were
practically impregnable, as, when the exterior ladders were
drawn up, there were no means of ingress, the side walls
being solid without openings, and of immense thickness.
Between these great buildings, each of which can accommodate
a multitude of men, runs the clear water of the Taos Creek;
and to the west of the northerly building stood the old
church, with walls of adobe from three to seven and a half
feet in thickness. Outside of all, and having its northwest
corner just beyond the church, ran an adobe wall, built for
protection against hostile Indians and which now answered
for an outer earthwork. The church was turned into a
fortification, and was the point where the insurgents
concentrated their strength; and against this Colonel Price
directed his principal attack. The six-pounder and the
howitzer were brought into position without delay, under
the command of Lieutenant Dyer, then a young graduate of
West Point, and since then chief of ordnance of the
United States army, and opened a fire on the thick adobe
walls. But cannon-balls made little impression on the
massive banks of earth, in which they embedded themselves
without doing damage; and after a fire of two hours,
the battery was withdrawn, and the troops allowed to return
to the town of Taos for their much-needed rest.
Early the next morning, the troops, now refreshed and ready
for the combat, advanced again to the Pueblo, but found
those within equally prepared. The story of the attack and
capture of this place is so interesting, both on account
of the meeting here of old and new systems of warfare—of
modern artillery with an aboriginal stronghold—and because
the precise localities can be distinguished by the modern
tourist from the description, that it seems best to insert
the official report as presented by Colonel Price.
Nothing could show more plainly how superior strong
earthworks are to many more ambitious structures of defence,
or more forcibly display the courage and heroism of those
who took part in the battle, or the signal bravery of the
accomplished Captain Burgwin which led to his untimely death.
Colonel Price writes:
"Posting the dragoons under Captain Burgwin about two
hundred and sixty yards from the western flank of the church,
I ordered the mounted men under Captains St. Vrain and Slack
to a position on the opposite side of the town, whence they
could discover and intercept any fugitives who might attempt
to escape toward the mountains, or in the direction of
San Fernando. The residue of the troops took ground about
three hundred yards from the north wall. Here, too,
Lieutenant Dyer established himself with the six-pounder
and two howitzers, while Lieutenant Hassendaubel, of Major
Clark's battalion, light artillery, remained with Captain
Burgwin, in command of two howitzers. By this arrangement
a cross-fire was obtained, sweeping the front and eastern
flank of the church. All these arrangements being made,
the batteries opened upon the town at nine o'clock A.M.
At eleven o'clock, finding it impossible to breach the
walls of the church with the six-pounder and howitzers,
I determined to storm the building. At a signal, Captain
Burgwin, at the head of his own company and that of Captain
McMillin, charged the western flank of the church, while
Captain Aubrey, infantry battalion, and Captain Barber and
Lieutenant Boon, Second Missouri Mounted Volunteers, charged
the northern wall. As soon as the troops above mentioned
had established themselves under the western wall of the
church, axes were used in the attempt to breach it, and a
temporary ladder having been made, the roof was fired.
About this time, Captain Burgwin, at the head of a small
party, left the cover afforded by the flank of the church,
and penetrating into the corral in front of that building,
endeavoured to force the door. In this exposed situation,
Captain Burgwin received a severe wound, which deprived me
of his valuable services, and of which he died on the
7th instant. Lieutenants McIlvaine, First United States
Dragoons, and Royall and Lackland, Second Regiment
Volunteers, accompanied Captain Burgwin into the corral,
but the attempt on the church door proved fruitless, and
they were compelled to retire behind the wall. In the
meantime, small holes had been cut in the western wall, and
shells were thrown in by hand, doing good execution.
The six-pounder was now brought around by Lieutenant Wilson,
who, at the distance of two hundred yards, poured a heavy
fire of grape into the town. The enemy, during all of
this time, kept up a destructive fire upon our troops.
About half-past three o'clock, the six-pounder was run up
within sixty yards of the church, and after ten rounds,
one of the holes which had been cut with the axes was
widened into a practicable breach. The storming party,
among whom were Lieutenant Dyer, of the ordnance, and
Lieutenant Wilson and Taylor, First Dragoons, entered and
took possession of the church without opposition.
The interior was filled with dense smoke, but for which
circumstance our storming party would have suffered great
loss. A few of the enemy were seen in the gallery,
where an open door admitted the air, but they retired
without firing a gun. The troops left to support the
battery on the north side were now ordered to charge on
that side.
"The enemy then abandoned the western part of the town.
Many took refuge in the large houses on the east, while
others endeavoured to escape toward the mountains.
These latter were pursued by the mounted men under Captains
Slack and St. Vrain, who killed fifty-one of them, only two
or three men escaping. It was now night, and our troops
were quietly quartered in the house which the enemy had
abandoned. On the next morning the enemy sued for peace,
and thinking the severe loss they had sustained would prove
a salutary lesson, I granted their supplication, on the
condition that they should deliver up to me Tomas, one of
their principal men, who had instigated and been actively
engaged in the murder of Governor Bent and others.
The number of the enemy at the battle of Pueblo de Taos
was between six and seven hundred, and of these one hundred
and fifty were killed, wounded not known. Our own loss was
seven killed and forty-five wounded; many of the wounded
have since died."
The capture of the Taos Pueblo practically ended the main
attempt to expel the Americans from the Territory.
Governor Montoya, who was a very influential man in the
conspiracy and styled himself the "Santa Ana of the North,"
was tried by court-martial, convicted, and executed on
February 7th, in the presence of the army. Fourteen others
were tried for participating in the murder of Governor Bent
and the others who were killed on the 19th of January, and
were convicted and executed. Thus, fifteen in all were
hung, being an equal number to those murdered at Taos, the
Arroyo Hondo, and Rio Colorado. Of these, eight were
Mexicans and seven were Pueblo Indians. Several more were
sentenced to be hung for treason, but the President very
properly pardoned them, on the ground that treason against
the United States was not a crime of which a Mexican
citizen could be found guilty, while his country was
actually at war with the United States.
There are several thrilling, as well as laughable, incidents connected with the Taos massacre, and the succeeding trial of the insurrectionists; in regard to which I shall quote freely from Wah-to-yah, whose author, Mr. Lewis H. Garrard, accompanied Colonel St. Vrain across the plains in 1846, and was present at the trial and execution of the convicted participants.
One Fitzgerald, who was a private in Captain Burgwin's company of Dragoons, in the fight at the Pueblo de Taos, killed three Mexicans with his own hand, and performed heroic work with the bombs that were thrown into that strong Indian fortress. He was a man of good feeling, but his brother having been killed, or rather murdered by Salazar, while a prisoner in the Texan expedition against Santa Fe, he swore vengeance, and entered the service with the hope of accomplishing it. The day following the fight at the Pueblo, he walked up to the alcalde, and deliberately shot him down. For this act he was confined to await a trial for murder.
One raw night, complaining of cold to his guard, wood was brought, which he piled up in the middle of the room. Then mounting that, and succeeding in breaking through the roof, he noiselessly crept to the eaves, below which a sentinel, wrapped in a heavy cloak, paced to and fro, to prevent his escape. He watched until the guard's back was turned, then swung himself from the wall, and with as much ease as possible, walked to a mess-fire, where his friends in waiting supplied him with a pistol and clothing. When day broke, the town of Fernandez lay far beneath him in the valley, and two days after he was safe in our camp.
Many a hand-to-hand encounter ensued during the fight at Taos, one of which was by Colonel Ceran St. Vrain, whom I knew intimately; a grand old gentleman, now sleeping peacefully in the quaint little graveyard at Mora, New Mexico, where he resided for many years. The gallant colonel, while riding along, noticed an Indian with whom he was well acquainted lying stretched out on the ground as if dead. Confident that this particular red devil had been especially prominent in the hellish acts of the massacre, the colonel dismounted from his pony to satisfy himself whether the savage was really dead or only shamming. He was far from being a corpse, for the colonel had scarcely reached the spot, when the Indian jumped to his feet and attempted to run a long, steel-pointed lance through the officer's shoulder. Colonel St. Vrain was a large, powerfully built man; so was the Indian, I have been told. As each of the struggling combatants endeavoured to get the better of the other, with the savage having a little the advantage, perhaps, it appears that "Uncle Dick" Wooton, who was in the chase after the rebels, happened to arrive on the scene, and hitting the Indian a terrific blow on the head with his axe, settled the question as to his being a corpse.
Court for the trial of the insurrectionists assembled at nine o'clock. On entering the room, Judges Beaubien and Houghton were occupying their official positions. After many dry preliminaries, six prisoners were brought in—ill-favoured, half-scared, sullen fellows; and the jury of Mexicans and Americans having been empanelled, the trial commenced. It certainly did appear to be a great assumption on the part of the Americans to conquer a country, and then arraign the revolting inhabitants for treason. American judges sat on the bench. New Mexicans and Americans filled the jury-box, and American soldiery guarded the halls. It was a strange mixture of violence and justice—a middle ground between the martial and common law.
After an absence of a few minutes, the jury returned with a verdict of "guilty in the first degree"—five for murder, one for treason. Treason, indeed! What did the poor devil know about his new allegiance? But so it was; and as the jail was overstocked with others awaiting trial, it was deemed expedient to hasten the execution, and the culprits were sentenced to be hung on the following Friday—hangman's day.
Court was daily in session; five more Indians and four Mexicans were sentenced to be hung on the 30th of April. In the court room, on the occasion of the trial of these nine prisoners, were Senora Bent the late governor's wife, and Senora Boggs, giving their evidence in regard to the massacre, of which they were eye-witnesses. Mrs. Bent was quite handsome; a few years previously she must have been a beautiful woman. The wife of the renowned Kit Carson also was in attendance. Her style of beauty was of the haughty, heart-breaking kind—such as would lead a man, with a glance of the eye, to risk his life for one smile.
The court room was a small, oblong apartment, dimly lighted by two narrow windows; a thin railing keeping the bystanders from contact with the functionaries. The prisoners faced the judges, and the three witnesses—Senoras Bent, Boggs, and Carson—were close to them on a bench by the wall. When Mrs. Bent gave her testimony, the eyes of the culprits were fixed sternly upon her; when she pointed out the Indian who had killed the governor, not a muscle of the chief's face twitched or betrayed agitation, though he was aware her evidence settled his death warrant; he sat with lips gently closed, eyes earnestly fixed on her, without a show of malice or hatred—a spectacle of Indian fortitude, and of the severe mastery to which the emotions can be subjected.
Among the jurors was a trapper named Baptiste Brown, a Frenchman, as were the majority of the trappers in the early days of the border. He was an exceptionally kind-hearted man when he first came to the mountains, and seriously inclined to regard the Indians with that mistaken sentimentality characterizing the average New England philanthropist, who has never seen the untutored savage on his native heath. His ideas, however, underwent a marked change as the years rolled on and he became more familiar with the attributes of the noble red man. He was with Kit Carson in the Blackfeet country many years before the Taos massacre, when his convictions were thus modified, and it was from the famous frontiersman himself I learned the story of Baptiste's conversion.
It was late one night in their camp on one of the many creeks in the Blackfoot region, where they had been established for several weeks, and Baptiste was on duty, guarding their meat and furs from the incursions of a too inquisitive grizzly that had been prowling around, and the impertinent investigations of the wolves. His attention was attracted to something high up in a neighbouring tree, that seemed restless, changing its position constantly like an animal of prey. The Frenchman drew a bead upon it, and there came tumbling down at his feet a dead savage, with his war-paint and other Indian paraphernalia adorning his body. Baptiste was terribly hurt over the circumstance of having killed an Indian, and it grieved him for a long time. One day, a month after the incident, he was riding alone far away from our party, and out of sound of their rifles as well, when a band of Blackfeet discovered him and started for his scalp. He had no possible chance for escape except by the endurance of his horse; so a race for life began. He experienced no trouble in keeping out of the way of their arrows—the Indians had no guns then—and hoped to make camp before they could possibly wear out his horse. Just as he was congratulating himself on his luck, right in front of him there suddenly appeared a great gorge, and not daring to stop or to turn to the right or left, the only thing to do was to make his animal jump it. It was his only chance; it was death if he missed it, and death by the most horrible torture if the Indians captured him. So he drove his heels into his horse's sides, and essayed the awful leap. His willing animal made a desperate effort to carry out the desire of his daring rider, but the dizzy chasm was too wide, and the pursuing savages saw both horse and the coveted white man dash to the bottom of the frightful canyon together. Believing that their hated enemy had eluded them forever, they rode back on their trail, disgusted and chagrined, without even taking the trouble of looking over the precipice to learn the fate of Baptiste.
The horse was instantly killed, and the Frenchman had both of his legs badly broken. Far from camp, with the Indians in close proximity, he did not dare discharge his rifle—the usual signal when a trapper is lost or in danger—or to make any demonstration, so he was compelled to lie there and suffer, hoping that his comrades, missing him, would start out to search for him. They did so, but more than twenty-four hours had elapsed before they found him, as the bottom of the canyon was the last place they thought of.
Doctors, in the wild region where their camp was located, were as impossible as angels; so his companions set his broken bones as well as they could, while Baptiste suffered excruciating torture. When they had completed their crude surgery, they improvised a litter of poles, and rigged it on a couple of pack-mules, and thus carried him around with them from camp to camp until he recovered—a period extending over three months.
This affair completely cured Baptiste of his original sentimentality in relation to the Indian, and he became one of their worst haters.
When acting as a juror in the trials of rebel Mexicans and Indians, he was asleep half the time, and never heard much of the evidence, and that portion which he did was so much Greek to him. In the last nine cases, in which the Indian who had murdered Governor Bent was tried, Baptiste, as soon as the jury room was closed, sang out: "Hang 'em, hang 'em, sacre enfans des garces, dey dam gran rascale!" "But wait," suggested one of the cooler members; "let's look at the evidence and find out whether they are really guilty." Upon this wise caution, Baptiste got greatly excited, paced the floor, and cried out: "Hang de Indian anyhow; he may not be guilty now—mais he vare soon will be. Hang 'em all, parceque dey kill Monsieur Charles; dey take son topknot, vot you call im—scalp. Hang 'em, hang 'em—sa-a-cre-e!"
On Friday the 9th, the day for the execution, the sky was unspotted, save by hastily fleeting clouds; and as the rising sun loomed over the Taos Mountain, the bright rays, shining on the yellow and white mud-houses, reflected cheerful hues, while the shades of the toppling peaks, receding from the plain beneath, drew within themselves. The humble valley wore an air of calm repose. The Plaza was deserted; woe-begone burros drawled forth sacrilegious brays, as the warm sunbeams roused them from hard, grassless ground, to scent their breakfast among straw and bones.
Poor Mexicans hurried to and fro, casting suspicious glances around; los Yankees at El casa Americano drank their juleps, and puffed their cigarettes in silence.