THOMAS J. FARNHAM
I
A curious little book, the title-page of which bears the date 1841,
is Thomas J. Farnham’s, _Travels in the Great Western Prairies, The
Anahuac and Rocky Mountains, And in The Oregon Territory_. It was
published in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., by Killey & Lossing, printers. It
contains nearly two hundred pages, and is printed in very fine type,
and on thin paper, with small margins; so that in fact it looks more
like a tract than a volume. Yet it contains about a hundred and twenty
thousand words.
Its title indicates the character of the book. It is the narrative
of a journey made in order to obtain “a view of the Great Prairie
Wilderness, the Rocky Mountains, and the sweet vales of the Oregon
Territory.”
Farnham was one of a party of fourteen men who left Peoria, Ill.,
on the first day of May, 1839. The company was followed by a wagon
containing their provisions, ammunition, and other baggage, and each
man carried “a rifle swung at his back; a powder horn, bullet pouch and
long knife at his side.”
[Illustration: TRAIN STAMPEDED BY WILD HORSES.
From Bartlett’s _Texas, New Mexico, California_, etc.]
Their way westward was marked by no adventure, except the usual ones of
travel on the prairie; but at Quincy the author met Joe Smith, Jr., the
father of the Mormon prophet, and he interrupts his narrative to give
a somewhat extended account of Mormonism and the history of the Latter
Day Saints up to that time. From Quincy they passed on to Independence,
Mo., twenty days out from their starting point. Here the travellers
beheld a sight novel to them--the breaking of green mules to harness;
and after some time devoted to loitering about Independence, and making
preparations for their journey, they started westward in a storm.
Farnham’s party followed the track of the Santa Fé traders, and, like
others who passed over this road, they met with the Kauzaus (Kansas)
Indians, whom they saw and wondered at. Early in the trip, near the
Osage River, the members of Farnham’s company began to weary of prairie
life, and three of his best men determined to return to the “States,”
and left him. The journey continued along the Santa Fé trail, but
provisions began to grow short. Game was seen from time to time, but
none was killed. Continual storms drenched them, wet their packs and
their ropes, and made life more or less of a burden to them. At last,
however, in the latter half of June, they came to the buffalo range,
overtaking there a party of Santa Fé traders.
Buffalo now began to be found, and the party killed their first one,
“a noble bull; a mountain of flesh weighing at least three thousand
pounds.” This relieved their necessities, but they were anxious,
because of the prospect of soon meeting Indians--Caws, Pawnees, or
Comanches, or all three. And now, to make things worse, one of the
men of the party accidentally shot himself with his own rifle. For a
day or two he was carried in one of the wagons belonging to the Santa
Fé caravan, but presently Farnham’s party turned off from this trail,
and then the wounded man was obliged either to ride a horse or travel
in a litter. Experiment soon showed, however, that the last method of
travelling was impracticable, and it was necessary for the man to ride.
His wound became inflamed and painful, but the constant care of the
author made life much easier for the wounded man. “June 23, the buffalo
were more numerous than ever. They were ranged in long lines from the
eastern to the western horizon. The bulls were forty or fifty yards in
advance of the bands of cows, to which they severally intended to give
protection. And as the moving embankment of wagons, led by an advanced
guard, and flanked by horsemen riding slowly from front to rear, and
guarded in the rear by men, made its majestic way along, these fiery
cavaliers would march each to his own band of dames and misses, with
an air that seemed to say, ‘we are here’; and then back again to
their lines, with great apparent satisfaction, that they were able
to do battle for their sweet ones and their native plains.” Farnham
says that during three days they passed over a country so completely
covered by buffalo that it appeared oftentimes dangerous even for the
immense cavalcade of the Santa Fé traders to attempt to break its
way through them. He figures that they travelled over one thousand
three hundred and fifty square miles of territory so thickly covered
with buffalo that, when viewed from a height, it scarcely afforded a
sight of a square league of its surface. Soon after this, disaffection
showed itself in the ranks of Farnham’s company, and it was proposed to
abandon the wounded man, the mutineers declaring that he would die in
any event, and that it was not worth while to delay the whole party to
await that event.
Now, too, a jealousy as to the command arose. There was a bully who
determined to frighten Farnham into abdicating the leadership of the
party in his favor.
At last they reached Fort William, or Bent’s Fort, on the Arkansas, and
on account of the differences which had sprung up within the party, it
was decided to disband here. The property owned in common was to be
divided up among the members of the expedition, and they were to go
their several ways. As it turned out, Farnham and a few others went on
together.
“Fort William,” he says, “is owned by three brothers by the name of
Bent, from St. Louis. Two of them were at the post when we arrived
there. They seemed to be thoroughly initiated into Indian life;
dressed like chiefs; in moccasins, thoroughly garnished with beads
and porcupine quills; in trousers of deer-skin, with long fringes of
the same extending along the outer seam from the ankle to the hip; in
the splendid hunting shirt of the same material, with sleeves fringed
on the elbow-seam from the wrist to the shoulder, and ornamented
with figures of porcupine quills of various colors, and leathern
fringe around the lower edge of the body. And chiefs they were in the
authority exercised in their wild and lonely fortress.”
The country in which the fort was situated was then the common
hunting-ground of several buffalo tribes, unfriendly alike to one
another and the whites. The Utaws and Cheyennes, the Pawnees and the
Comanches gathered here in summer to hunt the buffalo; and thus, in
the neighborhood of the post, there might be from fifteen to twenty
thousand savages, “ready and panting for plunder and blood.” If the
Indians engaged in fighting had their own battles among themselves,
the people of Bent’s Fort felt safe; but if the Indians kept the peace
among themselves, there was great anxiety at Fort William.
“Instances of the daring intrepidity of the Comanches that occurred
just before and after my arrival here, will serve to show the hazard
and dangers of which I have spoken. About the middle of June, 1839,
a band of sixty of them under cover of night crossed the river and
concealed themselves among the bushes that grow thickly on the bank
near the place where the animals of the establishment feed during
the day. No sentinel being on duty at the time, their presence was
unobserved, and when morning came the Mexican horse guard mounted
his horse, and with the noise and shouting usual with that class of
servants when so employed, rushed his charge out of the fort; and
riding rapidly from side to side of the rear of the band, urged them
on, and soon had them nibbling the short dry grass in the little vale
within grape-shot distance of the guns of the bastions. It is customary
for a guard of animals about these trading posts to take his station
beyond his charge; and if they stray from each other, or attempt to
stroll too far, he drives them together, and thus keeps them in the
best possible situation to be driven hastily to the corral, should the
Indians, or other evil persons, swoop down upon them. And as there is
constant danger of this, his horse is held by a long rope, and grazes
around him, that he may be mounted quickly at the first alarm for a
retreat within the walls. The faithful guard at Bent’s, on the morning
of the disaster I am relating, had dismounted after driving out his
animals, and sat upon the ground watching with the greatest fidelity
for every call of duty; when these fifty or sixty Indians sprang from
their hiding places, ran upon the animals, yelling horribly, and
attempted to drive them across the river. The guard, however, nothing
daunted, mounted quickly, and drove his horse at full speed among them.
The mules and horses hearing his voice amidst the frightening yells of
the savages, immediately started at a lively pace for the fort; but the
Indians were on all sides and bewildered them. The guard still pressed
them onward and called for help: and on they rushed, despite the
efforts of the Indians to the contrary. The battlements were covered
with men. They shouted encouragement to the brave guard--‘Onward!
onward!’ and the injunction was obeyed. He spurred his horse to his
greatest speed from side to side, and whipped the hindermost of the
band with his leading rope. He had saved every animal; he was within
twenty yards of the open gate; he fell; three arrows from the bows of
the Comanches had cloven his heart. And relieved of him, the lords of
the quiver gathered their prey, and drove them to the borders of Texas,
without injury to life or limb. I saw this faithful guard’s grave. He
had been buried a few days. The wolves had been digging into it. Thus
forty or fifty mules and horses and their best servant’s life, were
lost to the Messrs. Bent in a single day. I have been informed also
that those horses and mules, which my company had taken great pleasure
in recovering for them in the plains, were also stolen in a similar
manner soon after my departure from the post; and that the gentlemen
owners were in hourly expectation of an attack upon the fort itself.”
It was midsummer when Farnham left Fort William, with four companions,
for Oregon Territory. He stopped at Fort El Puebla, five miles above
Bent’s Fort, and here met a number of trappers. One of these greatly
impressed him, a man from New Hampshire. “He had been educated at
Dartmouth College, and was, altogether, one of the most remarkable
men I ever knew. A splendid gentleman, a finished scholar, a critic
on English and Roman literature, a politician, a trapper, an Indian.”
Dressed in a deer-skin frock, leggings and moccasins; there was not a
shred of cloth about his person. Stiff, cold, and formal at first, he
thawed as their acquaintance grew, and gave Farnham glimpses into his
nature which greatly interested the traveller. There were other men
among these trappers, who told the author tales of adventure which he
gladly set down, and which are well worth reproducing did space permit.
Here Farnham traded for additional horses, and before long they set out
to cross the mountains.
Led by a trapper named Kelly, who was familiar with the country
through which they were to go, the party followed up the Arkansas, and
at last entered the Rocky Mountains. Before they had gone very far
their way seemed barred by mountains impracticable for pack-horses;
yet their guides, after considering the way, marched straight onward
over mountains of which some notion may be had from the following
description: “The upper half, though less steep, proved to be the worst
part of the ascent. It was a bed of rocks, at one place small and
rolling, at another large and fixed, with deep openings between them.
So that our animals were almost constantly falling, and tottering upon
the brink of the cliffs, as they rose again and made their way among
them. An hour and a half of this most dangerous and tiresome clambering
deposited us in a grove of yellow pines near the summit. Our animals
were covered with sweat and dirt, and trembled as if at that instant
from the race track. Nor were their masters free from every ill of
weariness. Our knees smote each other with fatigue, as Belshazzar’s
did with fear. Many of the pines on this ridge were two feet in
diameter, and a hundred feet high, with small clusters of limbs around
the tops. Others were low, and clothed with strong limbs quite near
the ground. Under a number of these latter we had seated ourselves,
holding the reins of our riding horses, when a storm arose with the
rapidity of a whirlwind, and poured upon us hail and rain and snow with
all imaginable liberality. A most remarkable tempest was this.... One
portion of it had gathered its electricity and mist around James’ Peak
in the east; another among the white heights northwest; and a third
among the snowy pyramids of the Utaws in the southwest; and marshalling
their hosts, met over this connecting ridge between the eastern and
central ranges, as if by general battle to settle a vexed question
as to the better right to the pass; and it was sublimely fought. The
opposing storms met nearly at the zenith, and fiercely rolled together
their angry masses. And as if to carry out the simile I have here
attempted, at the moment of their junction, the electricity of each
leaped upon its antagonist transversely across the heavens, and in some
instances fell in immense bolts upon the trembling cliffs; and then
instantly came a volley of hail as grape-shot, sufficient to whiten all
the towers of this horrid war. It lasted an hour.”
After the tempest had ceased they clambered to the summit--whence they
had a marvellous view of the Great Main snowy range of the “Rocky,”
“Stony” or “Shining” mountains--then, clambering down on the other
side, they camped not far below, on the headwaters of the Platte River,
in what is now North Park, Colorado. Food was scarce, and nothing had
been killed since they left Fort William; but when they came in sight
of the Bayou Salade, Kelly promised them that before long they would
have meat; and sure enough, during the day a buffalo was seen, killed
by the guide, and greedily devoured. A hearty meal of its flesh;
tongue, fat ribs, tenderloin, marrow-bones, and blood-pudding were all
enjoyed, and the party ate almost the whole night long.