THE FRÉMONT HOWITZER AND LAKE TAHOE
Hundreds of thousands of Americans doubtless have read "How a Woman's
Wit Saved California to the Union," yet few indeed know how intimately
that fascinating piece of history is linked with Lake Tahoe.
Here is the story of the link:
When Frémont started out on his Second Exploration (fairly well dealt
with in another chapter), he stopped at the Kansas frontier to equip.
When he finally started, the party (108) was armed generally with
Hall's carbines, which, says Frémont:
with a brass twelve-pound howitzer, had been furnished to me
from the United States arsenal at St. Louis, agreeably to the
command of Colonel S.W. Kearny, commanding the third
military division. Three men were especially detailed for the
management of this, under the charge of Louis Zindel, a native
of Germany, who had been nineteen years a non-commissioned
officer of the artillery in the Prussian army, and regularly
instructed in the duties of his profession.
As soon as the news that he had added a cannon to his equipment
reached Washington, the Secretary of War, James M. Porter, sent a
message after him, post haste, countermanding the expedition on the
ground that he had prepared himself with a military equipment, which
the pacific nature of his journey did not require. It was specially
charged as a heinous offense that he had procured a small mountain
howitzer from the arsenal at St. Louis, in addition to his other
firearms.
But Frémont had already started. He was not far on his way, and the
message could have reached him easily. It was not destined to do so,
however, until after his return. The message came to the hands of his
girl-wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, the daughter of Missouri's great
senator, Thomas H. Benton, and she knew, as Charles A. Moody has well
written, that
this order, obeyed, would indefinitely postpone the
expedition--probably wreck it entirely. She did not forward
it. Consulting no one, since there was no one at hand to
consult, she sent a swift messenger to her husband with word
to break camp and move forward at once--"he could not have
the reason for haste, but there was reason enough." And he,
knowing well and well trusting the sanity and breadth of
that girl-brain, hastened forward, unquestioning, while she
promptly informed the officer whose order she had vetoed,
what she had done, and why. So far as human wit may penetrate,
obedience to that backward summons would have meant, three
years later, the winning of California by another nation--and
what _that_ loss would have signified to the United
States none can know fully, but any may partly guess who
realizes a part of what California has meant for us.
In commenting later upon this countermand of the Expedition Frémont
remarks:
It is not probable that I would have been recalled from the
Missouri frontier to Washington to explain why I had taken an
arm that simply served to increase the means of defense for
a small party very certain to encounter Indian hostility, and
which involved very trifling expense. The administration in
Washington was apparently afraid of the English situation in
Oregon.
Unconscious, therefore, of his wife's action,--which might easily have
ruined his career--Frémont pushed on. The howitzer accompanied him
into Oregon, back through into Nevada, and is clearly seen in the
picture of Pyramid Lake drawn by Mr. Preuss (which appears in the
original report), showing it after it had traveled in the neighborhood
of four thousand miles.
The last time it was fired as far as the Frémont Expedition is
concerned was on Christmas Eve, in 1843. The party was camped on
Christmas Lake, now known as Warner Lake, Oregon, and the following
morning the gun crew wakened Frémont with a salute, fired in honor of
the day. A month later, two hundred and fifty miles south, it was to
be abandoned in the mountains near West Walker River, on account of
the deep snow which made it impossible for the weary horses to drag it
further.
On the 28th of January Frémont thus writes:
To-night we did not succeed in getting the howitzer into camp.
This was the most laborious day we had yet passed through, the
steep ascents and deep snows exhausting both men and animals.
Possibly now the thought began to take possession of him that the
weapon must be left behind. For long weary days it had been a constant
companion. It had been dragged over the plains, mountains and canyons.
It was made to ford rivers, plunge through quicksands and wallow
through bog, mire, mud, marsh and snow. Again and again it delayed
them when coming over sandy roads, but tenaciously Frémont held on to
it. Now deep snow forbade its being dragged further. Haste over the
high mountains of the Sierra Nevada was imperative, for such peaks
and passes are no lady's playground when the forces of winter begin to
linger there, yet one can well imagine the regret and distress felt by
the Pathfinder at being compelled to abandon this cannon, to which he
had so desperately clung on all the wearisome miles his company had
hitherto marched.
On the 29th he writes:
The principal stream still running through an impracticable
canyon, we ascended a very steep hill, which proved afterwards
the last and fatal obstacle to our little howitzer, which was
finally abandoned at this place. [This place appears to be
about eight or ten miles up the river from Coleville, and
on the right or east side of the river.] We passed through
a small meadow a few miles below, crossing the river, which
depth, swift current, and rock, made it difficult to ford
[this brings him to the west bank for the first time, but the
cannon did not get this far, and therefore was left on the
east side of the river. This is to be noted on account of
the fact that it was found on the other side of the river in
another canyon], and after a few more miles of very difficult
trail, issued into a larger prairie bottom, at the farther end
of which we camped, in a position rendered strong by rocks and
trees.
The reader must not forget that the notes in brackets [ ] are
interjections in Frémont's narrative by Mr. Smith, (see the chapter on
Frémont's discovery of Lake Tahoe).
Frémont continues:
The other division of the party did not come in to-night, but
camped in the upper meadow, and arrived the next morning. They
had not succeeded in getting the howitzer beyond the place
mentioned, and where it had been left by Mr. Preuss, in
obedience to my orders; and, in anticipation of the snow-banks
and snow-fields ahead, foreseeing the inevitable detention to
which it would subject us, I reluctantly determined to leave
it there for a time. It was of the kind invented by the
French for the mountain part of their war in Algiers; and the
distance it had come with us proved how well it was adapted
to its purpose. We left it, to the great sorrow of the whole
party, who were grieved to part with a companion which had
made the whole
distance from St. Louis, and commanded respect for us on some
critical occasions, and which might be needed for the same
purpose again.
[It is the impression of those of the old settlers on Walker
River, of whom we have inquired regarding the subject, that
the cannon was found early in the 60's near the head of Lost
Canyon. This canyon comes into Little Antelope Valley--a
branch of Antelope Valley--from the south. This impression
evidently was accepted by the government geological surveyors,
for they twisted the name of the creek coming down this canyon
to "Lost Cannon Creek", and called a peak, which looks down
into this canyon, Lost Cannon Peak. The origin of the name of
this canyon lies in the fact that an emigrant party, on its
way to the Sonora Pass, and in an endeavor probably to avoid
the rough river canyon down which Frémont came, essayed this
pass instead of the meadows above. It is a canyon which,
at first, promises an easy pass but finally becomes almost
impassable. The party in question found it necessary to
abandon several of their wagons before they could get over.
They, or another party, buried one of their men there, also
some blacksmith tools. My endeavors to ascertain what party
this was have thus far not been successful. Mr. Timothy B.
Smith, who went to Walker River in 1859, says that the wagons
were there at that time. The cannon is supposed to have been
found with or near these wagons. Mr. Richard Watkins, of
Coleville, who went into that section in 1861, or soon after,
informs me that wagons were also found in one of the canyons
leading to the Sonora Pass from Pickle Meadow. The cannon,
according to Mr. Watkins, was found with these wagons. At any
rate, it seems likely that the cannon was not found at the
place where Frémont left it, but had been picked up by some
emigrant party, who, in turn, were compelled to abandon it
with several of their wagons.]
For several years the cannon remained where its emigrant finders
removed it, then at the breaking out of the Civil War, "Dan de
Quille," William Wright, the author of _The Big Bonanza_, the
fellow reporter of Mark Twain on one of the Virginia City newspapers,
called the attention of certain belligerent adherents of the south to
it, and they determined to secure it. But the loyal sons of the Union
were also alert and Captain A.W. Pray, who was then in the Nevada
mining metropolis, succeeded in getting and maintaining possession of
it. As he moved to Glenbrook, on Lake Tahoe, that year, he took the
cannon with him. Being mounted on a carriage with fairly high wheels,
these latter were taken and converted into a hay-wagon, with which,
for several years, he hauled hay from the Glenbrook meadows to his
barn in town. The cannon itself was mounted on a heavy wooden block to
which it was affixed with iron bands, securely held in place by bolts
and nuts. For years it was used at Glenbrook on all patriotic and
special occasions. Frémont never came back to claim it. The government
made no claim upon it. So while Captain Pray regarded it as his own
it was commonly understood and generally accepted that it was town
property, to be used by all alike on occasions of public rejoicing.
After Captain Fray's death, however, the cannon was sold by his widow
to the Native Sons of Nevada, and the news of the sale soon spread
abroad and caused no little commotion. To say that the people were
astonished is to put it mildly. They were in a state of consternation.
Frémont's cannon sold and going to be removed? Impossible! No! it was
so! The purchasers were coming to remove it the next day.
Were they? That remained to be seen!
That night in the darkness, three or four determined men quietly and
stealthily removed the nuts from the bolts, and, leaving the block
of wood, quietly carried the cannon and hid it in a car of scrap-iron
that was to be transported the next day from Glenbrook to Tahoe City.
When the day dawned and the purchasers arrived, the cannon was not
to be found, and no one, apparently, knew what had become of it.
Solicitations, arguments, threats had no effect. The cannon was gone.
That was all there was to it, and Mrs. Pray and the Nevada purchasers
had to accept that--to them--disagreeable fact.
But the cannon was not lost. It was only gone on before. For several
years it remained hidden under the blacksmith shop at Tahoe City,
its presence known only to the few conspirators--one of whom was my
informant. About five years ago it was resurrected and ever since then
its brazen throat has bellowed the salutation of the Fourth of July
to the loyal inhabitants of Tahoe. It now stands on the slight hill
overlooking the Lake at Tahoe City, a short distance east of the
hotel.