Colorado which I have been able to meet with, is in Pattie’s
Narrative, a hunter of Kentucky, who trapped on the Gila and
Colorado twenty-five years ago, whose journal is done into
readable English by the geographer, Flint. Pattie saw many of
these ruins; saw much fine land heavily timbered; and by the
friendship of the Nabahoes, was directed through a pass at the
head of the Colorado which carried him to the Platt of the
Missouri. This is, possibly, the pass sought for by Colonel
Fremont. Pattie went through it in May; if it was bad then, what
must it have been in the depth of winter! I am of opinion, that
between 32° and 37° there is sufficient land to make two States,
without going east of the Rio Grande del Norte. Yet, it was but
partially seen by Pattie. It appears to be a mountainous
country, well watered, and no doubt abounding in minerals, and
having many rich valleys adapted to cultivation. The Colorado is
a fine river, navigable eight hundred or a thousand miles with
steamboats, unless there be obstructions that we do not know of.
In extent, it is equal to Pennsylvania or Virginia. It will not
be long before it will be thoroughly explored by our countrymen.
Pattie says that it contains numerous bands of the most savage
and ferocious Indians, armed with bows and arrows pointed with
flint, who have had no intercourse or knowledge of the whites.
He says that the country in some respects reminded him of parts
of Kentucky, his native State.
H. M. BRACKENRIDGE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DESTRUCTION OF THE INDIANS BY SMALL-POX.
I could bring together numerous separate accounts of the fatal
ravages of this disease among the Indians in different portions
of the continent. Bernal Dias, _incidentally_ mentions, that it
carried off a _million_ shortly after the conquest, but how many
more we are not told. The disease, no doubt, appeared at
different intervals. A sermon by a New England divine, (in the
collection of Mr. Force) of 1621, mentions that not more than
one in twenty of the natives then remained, the rest having been
carried off by the small-pox. In a Jesuit account which I found
in the same collection, it appears that it broke out among the
Indians in Chiwawa in 1617, and carried off whole tribes of
Indians. There was no escape from it, for as long as two
remained together the contagion might be there; it was,
therefore, more fatal than an atmospheric epidemic, which might
be checked by change of place or season. The Indian fled from
his village or town, and never returned to it; he never dared to
approach it afterwards, believing it to be haunted by evil
spirits. In many places, this superstitious dread prevails to
this day.
McKenzie gives the following account of the destruction of the
Knistenew and Chippowyen tribes in 1780: “This was the small pox
which spread its destructive and desolating power, as the fire
consumes the dry grass of the field. The fatal infection spread
round with a baneful rapidity which no flight could escape, and
with a fatal effect that nothing could resist. It destroyed with
its pestilential breath whole families and tribes; and the
horrid scene presented to those who had the melancholy and
afflicting opportunity of beholding it, a combination of the
dead, the dying, and such, as to avoid the horrid fate their
friends around them, prepared to disappoint the plague of its
prey, by terminating their own existence.
“The habits and lives of those devoted people, which provided
not to-day for the wants of to-morrow, must have heightened the
pains of such an affliction, by leaving them not only without
remedy; but even without alleviation. Nought was left to those
but to submit in agony and despair.”
“To aggravate the picture, if aggravation were possible, may be
added, the putrid carcasses which the wolves, with a furious
voracity, dragged from the huts, or which were mangled within
them by the dogs, whose hunger was satisfied with the disfigured
remains of their masters. Nor was it uncommon for the father of
a family whom the infection had not reached, to call them around
him, to represent the cruel sufferings and horrid fate of their
relations, from the influence of some evil spirit who was
preparing to exterpate their race, and to invite them to baffle
death with all its horrors, by their own poignards. At the same
time, if their hearts failed them in this necessary act, he was
himself ready to perform the deed of mercy with his own hand, as
the last act of his affection; and instantly follow them to the
common place of rest and repose from human evil.
“It was never satisfactorily ascertained by what means this
malignant disorder was introduced, but it was generally supposed
to be from Missouri by a war party.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ This might be the Spice Islands.
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent
only when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).