One of the most interesting and picturesque regions of all New Mexico is
the immense tract of nearly two million acres known as Maxwell's Ranch,
through which the Old Trail ran, and the title to which was some years
since determined by the Supreme Court of the United States in favour of
an alien company.[59] Dead long ago, Maxwell belonged to a generation
and a class almost completely extinct, and the like of which will, in
all probability, never be seen again; for there is no more frontier to
develop them.
Several years prior to the acquisition of the territory by the United
States, the immense tract comprised in the geographical limits of
the ranch was granted to Carlos Beaubien and Guadalupe Miranda, both
citizens of the province of New Mexico, and agents of the American Fur
Company. Attached to the company as an employer, a trapper, and hunter,
was Lucien B. Maxwell, an Illinoisan by birth, who married a daughter
of Beaubien. After the death of the latter Maxwell purchased all the
interest of the joint proprietor, Miranda, and that of the heirs of
Beaubien, thus at once becoming the largest landowner in the United
States.
At the zenith of his influence and wealth, during the War of the
Rebellion, when New Mexico was isolated and almost independent of
care or thought by the government at Washington, he lived in a sort of
barbaric splendour, akin to that of the nobles of England at the time of
the Norman conquest.
The thousands of arable acres comprised in the many fertile valleys of
his immense estate were farmed in a primitive, feudal sort of way, by
native Mexicans principally, under the system of peonage then existing
in the Territory. He employed about five hundred men, and they were as
much his thralls as were Gurth and Wamba of Cedric of Rotherwood, only
they wore no engraved collars around their necks bearing their names and
that of their master. Maxwell was not a hard governor, and his people
really loved him, as he was ever their friend and adviser.
His house was a palace when compared with the prevailing style of
architecture in that country, and cost an immense sum of money. It was
large and roomy, purely American in its construction, but the manner of
conducting it was strictly Mexican, varying between the customs of the
higher and lower classes of that curious people.
Some of its apartments were elaborately furnished, others devoid of
everything except a table for card-playing and a game's complement of
chairs. The principal room, an extended rectangular affair, which might
properly have been termed the Baronial Hall, was almost bare except
for a few chairs, a couple of tables, and an antiquated bureau. There
Maxwell received his friends, transacted business with his vassals, and
held high carnival at times.
I have slept on its hardwood floor, rolled up in my blanket, with the
mighty men of the Ute nation lying heads and points all around me, as
close as they could possibly crowd, after a day's fatiguing hunt in the
mountains. I have sat there in the long winter evenings, when the
great room was lighted only by the cheerful blaze of the crackling
logs roaring up the huge throats of its two fireplaces built diagonally
across opposite corners, watching Maxwell, Kit Carson, and half a dozen
chiefs silently interchange ideas in the wonderful sign language, until
the glimmer of Aurora announced the advent of another day. But not a
sound had been uttered during the protracted hours, save an occasional
grunt of satisfaction on the part of the Indians, or when we white men
exchanged a sentence.
Frequently Maxwell and Carson would play the game of seven-up for hours
at a time, seated at one of the tables. Kit was usually the victor, for
he was the greatest expert in that old and popular pastime I have
ever met. Maxwell was an inveterate gambler, but not by any means in a
professional sense; he indulged in the hazard of the cards simply for
the amusement it afforded him in his rough life of ease, and he could
very well afford the losses which the pleasure sometimes entailed. His
special penchant, however, was betting on a horse race, and his own stud
comprised some of the fleetest animals in the Territory. Had he lived in
England he might have ruled the turf, but many jobs were put up on
him by unscrupulous jockeys, by which he was outrageously defrauded of
immense sums.
He was fond of cards, as I have said, both of the purely American game
of poker, and also of old sledge, but rarely played except with personal
friends, and never without stakes. He always exacted the last cent he
had won, though the next morning, perhaps, he would present or loan his
unsuccessful opponent of the night before five hundred or a thousand
dollars, if he needed it; an immensely greater sum, in all probability,
than had been gained in the game.
The kitchen and dining-rooms of his princely establishment were detached
from the main residence. There was one of the latter for the male
portion of his retinue and guests of that sex, and another for the
female, as, in accordance with the severe, and to us strange, Mexican
etiquette, men rarely saw a woman about the premises, though there were
many. Only the quick rustle of a skirt, or a hurried view of a reboso,
as its wearer flashed for an instant before some window or half-open
door, told of their presence.
The greater portion of his table-service was solid silver, and at his
hospitable board there were rarely any vacant chairs. Covers were laid
daily for about thirty persons; for he had always many guests, invited
or forced upon him in consequence of his proverbial munificence, or
by the peculiar location of his manor-house which stood upon a
magnificently shaded plateau at the foot of mighty mountains, a short
distance from a ford on the Old Trail. As there were no bridges over
the uncertain streams of the great overland route in those days, the
ponderous Concord coaches, with their ever-full burden of passengers,
were frequently water-bound, and Maxwell's the only asylum from the
storm and flood; consequently he entertained many.
At all times, and in all seasons, the group of buildings, houses,
stables, mill, store, and their surrounding grounds, were a constant
resort and loafing-place of Indians. From the superannuated chiefs, who
revelled lazily during the sunny hours in the shady peacefulness of the
broad porches; the young men of the tribe, who gazed with covetous eyes
upon the sleek-skinned, blooded colts sporting in the spacious corrals;
the squaws, fascinated by the gaudy calicoes, bright ribbons, and
glittering strings of beads on the counters or shelves of the large
store, to the half-naked, chubby little pappooses around the kitchen
doors, waiting with expectant mouths for some delicious morsel of refuse
to be thrown to them--all assumed, in bearing and manner, a vested right
of proprietorship in their agreeable environment.
To this motley group, always under his feet, as it were, Maxwell was
ever passively gracious, although they were battening in idleness on his
prodigal bounty from year to year.
His retinue of servants, necessarily large, was made up of a
heterogeneous mixture of Indians, Mexicans, and half-breeds. The
kitchens were presided over by dusky maidens under the tutelage of
experienced old crones, and its precincts were sacred to them; but the
dining-rooms were forbidden to women during the hours of meals, which
were served by boys.
Maxwell was rarely, as far as my observation extended, without a large
amount of money in his possession. He had no safe, however, his only
place of temporary deposit for the accumulated cash being the bottom
drawer of the old bureau in the large room to which I have referred,
which was the most antiquated concern of common pine imaginable. There
were only two other drawers in this old-fashioned piece of furniture,
and neither of them possessed a lock. The third, or lower, the one that
contained the money, did, but it was absolutely worthless, being one of
the cheapest pattern and affording not the slightest security; besides,
the drawers above it could be pulled out, exposing the treasure
immediately beneath to the cupidity of any one.
I have frequently seen as much as thirty thousand dollars--gold, silver,
greenbacks, and government checks--at one time in that novel depository.
Occasionally these large sums remained there for several days, yet there
was never any extra precaution taken to prevent its abstraction; doors
were always open and the room free of access to every one, as usual.
I once suggested to Maxwell the propriety of purchasing a safe for
the better security of his money, but he only smiled, while a strange,
resolute look flashed from his dark eyes, as he said: "God help the man
who attempted to rob me and I knew him!"
The sources of his wealth were his cattle, sheep, and the products of
his area of cultivated acres--barley, oats, and corn principally--which
he disposed of to the quartermaster and commissary departments of the
army, in the large military district of New Mexico. His wool-clip must
have been enormous, too; but I doubt whether he could have told the
number of animals that furnished it or the aggregate of his vast herds.
He had a thousand horses, ten thousand cattle, and forty thousand sheep
at the time I knew him well, according to the best estimates of his
Mexican relatives.
He also possessed a large and perfectly appointed gristmill, which was
a great source of revenue, for wheat was one of the staple crops of his
many farms.
Maxwell was fond of travelling all over the Territory, his equipages
comprising everything in the shape of a vehicle, through all their
varieties, from the most plainly constructed buckboard to the lumbering,
but comfortable and expensive, Concord coach, mounted on thorough braces
instead of springs, and drawn by four or six horses. He was perfectly
reckless in his driving, dashing through streams, over irrigating
ditches, stones, and stumps like a veritable Jehu, regardless of
consequences, but, as is usually the fortune of such precipitate
horsemen, rarely coming to grief.
The headquarters of the Ute agency were established at Maxwell's Ranch
in early days, and the government detailed a company of cavalry to camp
there, more, however, to impress the plains tribes who roamed along the
Old Trail east of the Raton Range, than for any effect on the Utes, whom
Maxwell could always control, and who regarded him as a father.
On the 4th of July, 1867, Maxwell, who owned an antiquated and rusty
six-pound field howitzer, suggested to the captain of the troop
stationed there the propriety of celebrating the day. So the old piece
was dragged from its place under a clump of elms, where it had been
hidden in the grass and weeds ever since the Mexican War probably,
and brought near the house. The captain and Maxwell acted the role
of gunners, the former at the muzzle, the latter at the breech; the
discharge was premature, blowing out the captain's eye and taking off
his arm, while Maxwell escaped with a shattered thumb. As soon as the
accident occurred, a sergeant was despatched to Fort Union on one of the
fastest horses on the ranch, the faithful animal falling dead the moment
he stopped in front of the surgeon's quarters, having made the journey
of fifty-five miles in little more than four hours.
The surgeon left the post immediately, arriving at Maxwell's late that
night, but in time to save the officer's life, after which he dressed
Maxwell's apparently inconsiderable wound. In a few days, however, the
thumb grew angry-looking; it would not yield to the doctor's careful
treatment, so he reluctantly decided that amputation was necessary.
After an operation was determined upon, I prevailed upon Maxwell to come
to the fort and remain with me, inviting Kit Carson at the same time,
that he might assist in catering to the amusement of my suffering guest.
Maxwell and Carson arrived at my quarters late in the day, after a
tedious ride in the big coach, and the surgeon, in order to allow a
prolonged rest on account of Maxwell's feverish condition, postponed the
operation until the following evening.
The next night, as soon as it grew dark--we waited for coolness, as the
days were excessively hot--the necessary preliminaries were arranged,
and when everything was ready the surgeon commenced. Maxwell declined
the anaesthetic prepared for him, and sitting in a common office chair
put out his hand, while Carson and myself stood on opposite sides, each
holding an ordinary kerosene lamp. In a few seconds the operation was
concluded, and after the silver-wire ligatures were twisted in their
places, I offered Maxwell, who had not as yet permitted a single sigh to
escape his lips, half a tumblerful of whiskey; but before I had fairly
put it to his mouth, he fell over, having fainted dead away, while great
beads of perspiration stood on his forehead, indicative of the pain he
had suffered, as the amputation of the thumb, the surgeon told us then,
was as bad as that of a leg.
He returned to his ranch as soon as the surgeon pronounced him well, and
Carson to his home in Taos. I saw the latter but once more at Maxwell's;
but he was en route to visit me at Fort Harker, in Kansas, when he was
taken ill at Fort Lyon, where he died.
A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
How true it now seems to me, as the recollections of my boyish days,
when I read of the exploits of Kit Carson, crowd upon my memory! I
firmly believed him to be at least ten feet tall, carrying a rifle
so heavy that, like Bruce's sword, it required two men to lift it. I
imagined he drank out of nothing smaller than a river, and picked the
carcass of a whole buffalo as easily as a lady does the wing of a quail.
Ten years later I made the acquaintance of the foremost frontiersman,
and found him a delicate, reticent, under-sized, wiry man, as perfectly
the opposite of the type my childish brain had created as it is possible
to conceive.
At Fort Union our mail arrived every morning by coach over the Trail,
generally pulling up at the sutler's store, whose proprietor was
postmaster, about daylight. While Maxwell and Kit were my guests, I
sauntered down after breakfast one morning to get my mail, and while
waiting for the letters to be distributed, happened to glance at some
papers lying on the counter, among which I saw a new periodical--the
_Day's Doings_, I think it was--that had a full-page illustration of a
scene in a forest. In the foreground stood a gigantic figure dressed in
the traditional buckskin; on one arm rested an immense rifle; his other
arm was around the waist of the conventional female of such sensational
journals, while in front, lying prone upon the ground, were half a
dozen Indians, evidently slain by the singular hero in defending the
impossibly attired female. The legend related how all this had been
effected by the famous Kit Carson. I purchased the paper, returned with
it to my room, and after showing it to several officers who had called
upon Maxwell, I handed it to Kit. He wiped his spectacles, studied the
picture intently for a few seconds, turned round, and said: "Gentlemen,
that thar may be true, but I hain't got no recollection of it."
I passed a delightful two weeks with Maxwell, late in the summer of
1867, at the time that the excitement over the discovery of gold on his
ranch had just commenced, and adventurers were beginning to congregate
in the hills and gulches from everywhere. The discovery of the precious
metal on his estate was the first cause of his financial embarrassment.
It was the ruin also of many other prominent men in New Mexico, who
expended their entire fortune in the construction of an immense ditch,
forty miles in length--from the Little Canadian or Red River--to supply
the placer diggings in the Moreno valley with water, when the melted
snow of Old Baldy range had exhausted itself in the late summer. The
scheme was a stupendous failure; its ruins may be seen to-day in the
deserted valleys, a monument to man's engineering skill, but the wreck
of his hopes.
For some years previous to the discovery of gold in the mountains and
gulches of Maxwell's Ranch, it was known that copper existed in the
region; several shafts had been sunk and tunnels driven in various
places, and gold had been found from time to time, but was kept a secret
for many months. Its presence was at last revealed to Maxwell by a party
of his own miners, who were boring into the heart of Old Baldy for a
copper lead that had cropped out and was then lost.
Of course, to keep the knowledge of the discovery of gold from the
world is an impossibility; such was the case in this instance, and soon
commenced that squatter immigration out of which, after the ranch was
sold and Maxwell died, grew that litigation which has resulted in favour
of the company who purchased from or through the first owners after
Maxwell's death.
He was a representative man of the border of the same class as his
compeers--"wild-civilized men," to borrow an expressive term from John
Burroughs--of strong local attachments, and overflowing with the milk of
human kindness. To such as he there was an unconquerable infatuation in
life on the remote plains and in the solitude of the mountains. There
was never anything of the desperado in their character, while the
adventurers who at times have made the far West infamous, since the
advent of the railroad, were bad men originally.
Occasionally such men turn up everywhere, and become a terror to the
community, but they are always wound up sooner or later; they die with
their boots on; Western graveyards are full of them.
Maxwell, under contract with the Interior Department, furnished live
beeves to the Ute nation, the issue of which was made weekly from his
own vast herds. The cattle, as wild as those from the Texas prairies,
were driven by his herders into an immense enclosed field, and there
turned loose to be slaughtered by the savages.
Once when at the ranch I told Maxwell I should like to have a horse
to witness the novel sight. He immediately ordered a Mexican groom to
procure one; but I did not see the peculiar smile that lighted up
his face, as he whispered something to the man which I did not catch.
Presently the groom returned leading a magnificent gray, which I
mounted, Maxwell suggesting that I should ride down to the large field
and wait there until the herd arrived. I entered the great corral,
patting my horse on the neck now and then, to make him familiar with
my touch, and attempted to converse with some of the chiefs, who were
dressed in their best, painted as if for the war-path, gaily bedecked
with feathers and armed with rifles and gaudily appointed bows and
arrows; but I did not succeed very well in drawing them from their
normal reticence. The squaws, a hundred of them, were sitting on the
ground, their knives in hand ready for the labour which is the fate
of their sex in all savage tribes, while their lords' portion of the
impending business was to end with the more manly efforts of the chase.
Suddenly a great cloud of dust rose on the trail from the mountains, and
on came the maddened animals, fairly shaking the earth with their
mighty tread. As soon as the gate was closed behind them, and uttering a
characteristic yell that was blood-curdling in its ferocity, the Indians
charged upon the now doubly frightened herd, and commenced to discharge
their rifles, regardless of the presence of any one but themselves. My
horse became paralyzed for an instant and stood poised on his hind legs,
like the steed represented in that old lithographic print of Napoleon
crossing the Alps; then taking the bit in his teeth, he rushed aimlessly
into the midst of the flying herd, while the bullets from the guns of
the excited savages rained around my head. I had always boasted of my
equestrian accomplishments--I was never thrown but once in my life, and
that was years afterward--but in this instance it taxed all my powers to
keep my seat. In less than twenty minutes the last beef had fallen;
and the warriors, inflated with the pride of their achievement, rode
silently out of the field, leaving the squaws to cut up and carry away
the meat to their lodges, more than three miles distant, which they soon
accomplished, to the last quivering morsel.
As I rode leisurely back to the house, I saw Maxwell and Kit standing
on the broad porch, their sides actually shaking with laughter at my
discomfiture, they having been watching me from the very moment the herd
entered the corral. It appeared that the horse Maxwell ordered the groom
to bring me was a recent importation from St. Louis, had never before
seen an Indian, and was as unused to the prairies and mountains as a
street-car mule. Kit said that my mount reminded him of one that his
antagonist in a duel rode a great many years ago when he was young.
If the animal had not been such "a fourth-of-July" brute, his opponent
would in all probability have finished him, as he was a splendid shot;
but Kit fortunately escaped, the bullet merely grazing him under the
ear, leaving a scar which he then showed me.
One night Kit Carson, Maxwell, and I were up in the Raton Mountains
above the Old Trail, and having lingered too long, were caught above
the clouds against our will, darkness having overtaken us before we were
ready to descend into the valley. It was dangerous to undertake the trip
over such a precipitous and rocky trail, so we were compelled to make
the best of our situation. It was awfully cold, and as we had brought no
blankets, we dared not go to sleep for fear our fire might go out,
and we should freeze. We therefore determined to make a night of it by
telling yarns, smoking our pipes, and walking around at times. After
sitting awhile, Maxwell pointed toward the Spanish Peaks, whose
snow-white tops cast a diffused light in the heavens above them, and
remarked that in the deep canyon which separates them, he had had one of
the "closest calls" of his life, willingly complying when I asked him to
tell us the story.
"It was in 1847. I came down from Taos with a party to go to the
Cimarron crossing of the Santa Fe Trail to pick up a large herd of
horses for the United States Quartermaster's Department. We succeeded in
gathering about a hundred and started back with them, letting them graze
slowly along, as we were in no hurry. When we arrived at the foot-hills
north of Bent's Fort, we came suddenly upon the trail of a large
war-band of Utes, none of whom we saw, but from subsequent developments
the savages must have discovered us days before we reached the
mountains. I knew we were not strong enough to cope with the whole Ute
nation, and concluded the best thing for us to do under the ticklish
circumstances was to make a detour, and put them off our trail. So we
turned abruptly down the Arkansas, intending to try and get to Taos
in that direction, more than one hundred and fifty miles around. It
appeared afterward that the Indians had been following us all the way.
When we found this out, some of the men believed they were another
party, and not the same whose trail we came upon when we turned down
the river, but I always insisted they were. When we arrived within a few
days' drive of Taos, we were ambushed in one of the narrow passes of the
range, and had the bloodiest fight with the Utes on record. There were
thirteen of us, all told, and two little children whom we were escorting
to their friends at Taos, having received them at the Cimarron crossing.
"While we were quietly taking our breakfast one morning, and getting
ready to pull out for the day's march, perfectly unsuspicious of the
proximity of any Indians, they dashed in upon us, and in less than a
minute stampeded all our stock--loose animals as well as those we were
riding. While part of the savages were employed in running off the
animals, fifty of their most noted warriors, splendidly mounted and
horribly painted, rushed into the camp, around the fire of which the men
and the little children were peacefully sitting, and, discharging their
guns as they rode up, killed one man and wounded another.
"Terribly surprised as we were, it did not turn the heads of the old
mountaineers, and I immediately told them to make a break for a clump of
timber near by, and that we would fight them as long as one of us could
stand up. There we fought and fought against fearful odds, until all
were wounded except two. The little children were captured at the
beginning of the trouble and carried off at once. After a while the
savages got tired of the hard work, and, as is frequently the case, went
away of their own free will; but they left us in a terrible plight. All
were sore, stiff, and weak from their many wounds; on foot, and without
any food or ammunition to procure game with, having exhausted our supply
in the awfully unequal battle; besides, we were miles from home, with
every prospect of starving to death.
"We could not remain where we were, so as soon as darkness came on, we
started out to walk to some settlement. We dared not show ourselves by
daylight, and all through the long hours when the sun was up, we were
obliged to hide in the brush and ravines until night overtook us again,
and we could start on our painful march.
"We had absolutely nothing to eat, and our wounds began to fester, so
that we could hardly move at all. We should undoubtedly have perished,
if, on the third day, a band of friendly Indians of another tribe had
not gone to Taos and reported the fight to the commanding officer of the
troops there. These Indians had heard of our trouble with the Utes, and
knowing how strong they were, and our weakness, surmised our condition,
and so hastened to convey the bad news.
"A company of dragoons was immediately sent to our rescue, under the
guidance of Dick Wooton, who was and has ever been a warm personal
friend of mine. They came upon us about forty miles from Taos, and never
were we more surprised; we had become so starved and emaciated that
we had abandoned all hope of escaping what seemed to be our inevitable
fate.
"When the troops found us, we had only a few rags, our clothes having
been completely stripped from our bodies while struggling through the
heavy underbrush on our trail, and we were so far exhausted that we
could not stand on our feet. One more day, and we would have been laid
out.
"The little children were, fortunately, saved from the horror of that
terrible march after the fight, as the Indians carried them to their
winter camp, where, if not absolutely happy, they were under shelter and
fed; escaping the starvation which would certainly have been their fate
if they had remained with us. They were eventually ransomed for a cash
payment by the government, and altogether had not been very harshly
treated."