The tourist who to-day, in a palace car, surrounded by all the
conveniences of our American railway service, commences his tour of the
prairies at the Missouri River, enters classic ground the moment the
train leaves the muddy flood of that stream on its swift flight toward
the golden shores of the Pacific.
He finds a large city at the very portals of the once far West, with all
the bustle and energy which is so characteristic of American enterprise.
Gradually, as he is whirled along the iron trail, the woods lessen; he
catches views of beautiful intervales; a bright little stream flashes
and foams in the sunlight as the trees grow fewer, and soon he emerges
on the broad sea of prairie, shut in only by the great circle of the
heavens.
Dotting this motionless ocean everywhere, like whitened sails, are quiet
homes, real argosies ventured by the sturdy and industrious people who
have fought their way through almost insurmountable difficulties to the
tranquillity which now surrounds them.
A few miles west of Topeka, the capital of Kansas, when the train
reaches the little hamlet of Wakarusa, the track of the railroad
commences to follow the route of the Old Santa Fe Trail. At that point,
too, the Oregon Trail branches off for the heavily timbered regions of
the Columbia. Now begins the classic ground of the once famous highway
to New Mexico; nearly every stream, hill, and wooded dell has its
story of adventure in those days when the railroad was regarded as an
impossibility, and the region beyond the Missouri as a veritable desert.
After some hours' rapid travelling, if our tourist happens to be a
passenger on the "California Limited," the swift train that annihilates
distance, he will pass by towns, hamlets, and immense cattle ranches,
stopping only at county-seats, and enter the justly famous Arkansas
valley at the city of Hutchinson. The Old Trail now passes a few miles
north of this busy place, which is noted for its extensive salt works,
nor does the railroad again meet with it until the site of old Fort
Zarah is reached, forty-seven miles west of Hutchinson, though it runs
nearly parallel to the once great highway at varying distances for the
whole detour.
The ruins of the once important military post may be seen from the
car-windows on the right, as the train crosses the iron bridge spanning
the Walnut, and here the Old Trail exactly coincides with the railroad,
the track of the latter running immediately on the old highway.
Three miles westward from the classic little Walnut the Old Trail ran
through what is now the Court House Square of the town of Great Bend;
it may be seen from the station, and on that very spot occurred the
terrible fight of Captains Booth and Hallowell in 1864.
Thirteen miles further mountainward, on the right of the railroad, not
far from the track, stands all that remains of the once dreaded Pawnee
Rock. It lies just beyond the limits of the little hamlet bearing its
name. It would not be recognized by any of the old plainsmen were they
to come out of their isolated graves; for it is only a disintegrated,
low mass of sandstone now, utilized for the base purposes of a corral,
in which the village herd of milch cows lie down at night and chew
their cuds, such peaceful transformation has that great civilizer, the
locomotive, wrought in less than two decades.
Another five or six miles, and the train crosses Ash Creek, which, too,
was once one of the favourite haunts of the Pawnee and Comanche on their
predatory excursions, in the days when the mules and horses of passing
freight caravans excited their cupidity. A short whirl again, and the
town of Larned, lying peacefully on the Arkansas and Pawnee Fork, is
reached. Immediately opposite the centre of the street through which the
railroad runs, and which was also the course of the Old Trail, lying
in the Arkansas River, close to its northern bank, is a small
thickly-wooded island, now reached by a bridge, that is famous as the
battle-ground of a terrible conflict thirty years ago, between the
Pawnees and Cheyennes, hereditary enemies, in which the latter tribe was
cruelly defeated.
The railroad bridge crosses Pawnee Fork at the precise spot where the
Old Trail did. This locality has been the scene of some of the bloodiest
encounters between the various tribes of savages themselves, and between
them and the freight caravans, the overland coaches, and every other
kind of outfit that formerly attempted the passage of the now peaceful
stream. In fact, the whole region from Walnut Creek to the mouth of the
Pawnee, which includes in its area Ash Creek and Pawnee Rock, seemed to
be the greatest resort for the Indians, who hovered about the Santa Fe
Trail for the sole purpose of robbery and murder; it was a very lucky
caravan or coach, indeed, that passed through that portion of the route
without being attacked.
All the once dangerous points of the Old Trail having been successively
passed--Cow Creek, Big and Little Coon, and Ash Creek, Fort Dodge,
Fort Aubrey,[73] and Point of Rocks--the tourist arrives at last at the
foot-hills. At La Junta the railroad separates into two branches; one
going to Denver, the other on to New Mexico. Here, a relatively short
distance to the northwest, on the right of the train, may be seen the
ruins of Bent's Fort, the tourist having already passed the site of
the once famous Big Timbers, a favourite winter camping-ground of the
Cheyennes and Arapahoes; but everywhere around him there reigns such
perfect quiet and pastoral beauty, he might imagine that the peaceful
landscape upon which he looks had never been a bloody arena.
I suggest to the lover of nature that he should cross the Raton Range
in the early morning, or late in the afternoon; for then the magnificent
scenery of the Trail over the high divide into New Mexico assumes its
most beautiful aspect.
In approaching the range from the Old Trail, or now from the railroad,
their snow-clad peaks may be seen at a distance of sixty miles. In the
era of caravans and pack-trains, for hour after hour, as they moved
slowly toward the goal of their ambition, the summit of the fearful
pathway on the divide, the huge forms of the mountains seemed to recede,
and yet ascend higher. On the next day's journey their outlines appeared
more irregular and ragged. Drawing still nearer, their base presented a
long, dark strip stretching throughout their whole course, ever widening
until it seemed like a fathomless gulf, separating the world of reality
from the realms of imagination beyond.
Another weary twenty miles of dusty travel, and the black void slowly
dissolved, and out of the shadows lines of broken, sterile, ferruginous
buttes and detached masses of rocks, whose soilless surface refuses
sustenance, save to a few scattered, stunted pines and lifeless mosses,
emerged to view.
The progress of the weary-footed mules or oxen was now through ravines
and around rocks; up narrow paths which the melting snows have washed
out; sometimes between beetling cliffs, often to their very edge, where
hundreds of feet below the Trail the tall trees seemed diminished into
shrubs. Then again the road led over an immense broad terrace, for
thousands of yards around, with a bright lake gleaming in the refracted
light, and brilliant Alpine plants waving their beautiful flowers on its
margin. Still the coveted summit appeared so far off as to be beyond the
range of vision, and it seemed as if, instead of ascending, the entire
mass underneath had been receding, like the mountains of ice over which
Arctic explorers attempt to reach the pole. Now the tortuous
Trail passed through snow-wreaths which the winds had eddied into
indentations; then over bright, glassy surfaces of ice and fragments
of rocks, until the pinnacle was reached. Nearer, along the broad
successive terraces of the opposite mountains, the evergreen pine, the
cedar, with its stiff, angular branches, and the cottonwood, with its
varied curves and bright colours, were crowded into bunches or strung
into zigzag lines, interspersed with shrubs and mountain plants, among
which the flaming cactus was conspicuous. To the right and left, the
bare cones of the barren peaks rose in multitude, with their calm, awful
forms shrouded in snow, and their dark shadows reflected far into the
valleys, like spectres from a chaotic world.
In going through the Raton Pass, the Old Santa Fe Trail meandered up a
steep valley, enclosed on either side by abrupt hills covered with
pine and masses of gray rock. The road ran along the points of varying
elevations, now in the stony bed of Raton Creek, which it crossed
fifty-three times, the sparkling, flitting waters of the bubbling stream
leaping and foaming against the animals' feet as they hauled the great
wagons of the freight caravans over the tortuous passage. The creek
often rushed rapidly under large flat stones, lost to sight for a
moment, then reappearing with a fresh impetus and dashing over
its flinty, uneven bed until it mingled with the pure waters of Le
Purgatoire.
Still ascending, the scenery assumed a bolder, rougher cast; then sudden
turns gave you hurried glimpses of the great valley below. A gentle dell
sloped to the summit of the pass on the west, then, rising on the
east by a succession of terraces, the bald, bare cliff was reached,
overlooking the whole region for many miles, and this is Raton Peak.[74]
The extreme top of this famous peak was only reached after more than
an hour's arduous struggle. On the lofty plateau the caravans and
pack-trains rested their tired animals. Here, too, the lonely trapper,
when crossing the range in quest of beaver, often chose this lofty
spot on which to kindle his little fire and broil juicy steaks of the
black-tail deer, the finest venison in the world; but before he indulged
in the savoury morsels, if he was in the least superstitious or devout,
or inspired by the sublime scene around him, he lighted his pipe, and
after saluting the elevated ridge on which he sat by the first whiff of
the fragrant kinnikinick, Indian-fashion, he in turn offered homage
in the same manner to the sky above him, the earth beneath, and to
the cardinal points of the compass, and was then prepared to eat his
solitary meal in a spirit of thankfulness.
Far below this magnificent vantage-ground lies the valley of the Rio
Las Animas Perdidas. On the other verge of the great depression rise
the peerless, everlastingly snow-wreathed Spanish Peaks,[75] whose giant
summits are grim sentinels that for untold ages have witnessed hundreds
of sanguinary conflicts between the wily nomads of the vast plains
watered by the silent Arkansas.
All around you snow-clad mountains lift their serrated crowns above
the horizon, dim, white, and indistinct, like icebergs seen at sea by
moonlight; others, nearer, more rugged, naked of verdure, and irregular
in contour, seem to lose their lofty summits in the intense blue of the
sky.
Fisher's Peak, which is in full view from the train, was named from the
following circumstance: Captain Fisher was a German artillery officer
commanding a battery in General Kearney's Army of the West in the
conquest of New Mexico and was encamped at the base of the peak to which
he involuntarily gave his name. He was intently gazing at the lofty
summit wrapped in the early mist, and not being familiar with the
illusory atmospheric effects of the region, he thought that to go there
would be merely a pleasant promenade. So, leaving word that he would
return to breakfast, he struck out at a brisk walk for the crest. That
whole day, the following night, and the succeeding day, dragged their
weary hours on, but no tidings of the commanding officer were received
at the battery, and ill rumours were current of his death by Indians
or bears, when, just as his mess were about to take their seats at the
table for the evening meal, their captain put in an appearance, a very
tired but a wiser man. He started to go to the peak, and he went there!
On the summit of another rock-ribbed elevation close by, the tourist
will notice the shaft of an obelisk. It is over the grave of George
Simpson, once a noted mountaineer in the days of the great fur
companies. For a long time he made his home there, and it was his dying
request that the lofty peak he loved so well while living should be his
last resting-place. The peak is known as "Simpson's Rest," and is one of
the notable features of the rugged landscape.
Pike's Peak, far away to the north, intensely white and silvery in the
clear sky, hangs like a great dome high in the region of the clouds, a
marked object, worthy to commemorate the indefatigable efforts of the
early voyageur whose name it bears.
In this wonderful locality, both Pike's Peak and the snowy range over
two hundred miles from our point of observation really seem to the
uninitiated as if a brisk walk of an hour or two would enable one to
reach them, so deceptive is the atmosphere of these elevated regions.
About two miles from the crest of the range, yet over seven thousand
feet above the sea-level, in a pretty little depression about as large
as a medium-sized corn-field in the Eastern States, Uncle Dick Wooton
lived, and here, too, was his toll-gate. The veteran mountaineer erected
a substantial house of adobe, after the style of one of the old-time
Southern plantation residences, a memory, perhaps, of his youth, when he
raised tobacco in his father's fields in Kentucky.[76]
The most charming hour in which to be on the crest of Raton Range is in
the afternoon, when the weather is clear and calm. As the night comes
on apace in the distant valley beneath, the evening shadows drop down,
pencilled with broad bands of rosy light as they creep slowly across
the beautiful landscape, while the rugged vista below is enveloped in a
diffused haze like that which marks the season of the Indian summer
in the lower great plains. Above, the sky curves toward the relatively
restricted horizon, with not a cloud to dim its intense blue, nowhere so
beautiful as in these lofty altitudes.
The sun, however, does not always shine resplendently; there are times
when the most terrific storms of wind, hail, and rain change the entire
aspect of the scene. Fortunately, these violent bursts never last long;
they vanish as rapidly as they come, leaving in their wake the most
phenomenally beautiful rainbows, whose trailing splendours which they
owe to the dry and rare air of the region, and its high refractory
power, are gorgeous in the extreme.
In 1872 the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad entered the valley
of the Upper Arkansas. Twenty-four years ago, on a delicious October
afternoon, I stood on the absolutely level plateau at the mouth of
Pawnee Fork where that historic creek debouches into the great river.
The remembrance of that view will never pass from my memory, for it
showed a curious temporary blending of two distinct civilizations. One,
the new, marking the course of empire in its restless march westward;
the other, that of the aboriginal, which, like a dissolving view, was
soon to fade away and be forgotten.
The box-elders and cottonwoods thinly covering the creek-bottom were
gradually donning their autumn dress of russet, and the mirage had
already commenced its fantastic play with the landscape. On the sides
and crests of the sparsely grassed sand hills south of the Arkansas a
few buffaloes were grazing in company with hundreds of Texas cattle,
while in the broad valley beneath, small flocks of graceful antelope
were lying down, quietly ruminating their midday meal.
In the distance, far eastwardly, a train of cars could be seen
approaching; as far as the eye could reach, on either side of the track,
the virgin sod had been turned to the sun; the "empire of the plough"
was established, and the march of immigration in its hunger for the
horizon had begun.
Half a mile away from the bridge spanning the Fork, under the grateful
shade of the largest trees, about twenty skin lodges were irregularly
grouped; on the brown sod of the sun-cured grass a herd of a hundred
ponies were lazily feeding, while a troop of dusky little children were
chasing the yellow butterflies from the dried and withered sunflower
stalks which once so conspicuously marked the well-worn highway to the
mountains. These Indians, the remnant of a tribe powerful in the years
of savage sovereignty, were on their way, in charge of their agent,
to their new homes, on the reservation just allotted to them by the
government, a hundred miles south of the Arkansas.
Their primitive lodges contrasted strangely with the peaceful little
sod-houses, dugouts, and white cottages of the incoming settlers on the
public lands, with the villages struggling into existence, and above
all with the rapidly moving cars; unmistakable evidences that the new
civilization was soon to sweep the red men before it like chaff before
the wind.
Farther to the west, a caravan of white-covered wagons loaded with
supplies for some remote military post, the last that would ever travel
the Old Trail, was slowly crawling toward the setting sun. I watched it
until only a cloud of dust marked its place low down on the horizon,
and it was soon lost sight of in the purple mist that was rapidly
overspreading the far-reaching prairie.
It was the beginning of the end; on the 9th of February, 1880, the first
train over the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad arrived at Santa
Fe and the Old Trail as a route of commerce was closed forever. The once
great highway is now only a picture in the memory of the few who
have travelled its weary course, following the windings of the silent
Arkansas, on to the portals that guard the rugged pathway leading to the
shores of the blue Pacific.
FOOTNOTES.
[Footnote 1: The whole country watered by the Mississippi and Missouri was called
Florida at that time.]
[Footnote 2: The celebrated Jesuit, author of _The History of New France_,
_Journals of a Voyage to North America_, _Letters to the Duchess_, etc.]
[Footnote 3: Otoes.]
[Footnote 4: Iowas.]
[Footnote 5: Boulevard, Promenade.]
[Footnote 6: Notes of a Military Reconnoissance from Fort Leavenworth, in
Missouri, to San Diego, in California, including parts of the Arkansas,
Del Norte, and Gila Rivers. Brevet Major W. H. Emory, Corps of
Topographical Engineers, United States Army, 1846.]
[Footnote 7: Hon. W. F. Arny, in his Centennial Celebration Address at Santa Fe,
July 4, 1876.]
[Footnote 8: Edwards, _Conquest of New Mexico_.]
[Footnote 9: I think this is Bancroft's idea.]
[Footnote 10: _Historical Sketches of New Mexico_, L. Bradford Prince, late Chief
Justice of New Mexico, 1883.]
[Footnote 11: D. H. Coyner, 1847.]
[Footnote 12: He was travelling parallel to the Old Santa Fe Trail all the time,
but did not know it until he was overtaken by a band of Kaw Indians.]
[Footnote 13: McKnight was murdered south of the Arkansas by the Comanches in the
winter of 1822.]
[Footnote 14: Chouteau's Island.]
[Footnote 15: _Hennepin's Journal_.]
[Footnote 16: The line between the United States and Mexico (or New Spain, as
it was called) was defined by a treaty negotiated in 1819, between the
Chevalier de Onis, then Spanish minister at Washington, and John Quincy
Adams, Secretary of State. According to its provisions, the boundary
between Mexico and Louisiana, which had been added to the Union,
commenced with the river Sabine at its entrance into the Gulf of Mexico,
at about the twenty-ninth degree of north latitude and the ninety-fourth
degree of longitude, west from Greenwich, and followed it as far as its
junction with the Red River of Natchitoches, which then served to mark
the frontier up to the one hundredth degree of west longitude, where the
line ran directly north to the Arkansas, which it followed to its source
at the forty-second degree of north latitude, whence another straight
line was drawn up the same parallel to the Pacific coast.]
[Footnote 17: This tribe kept up its reputation under the dreaded Satanta, until
1868--a period of forty years--when it was whipped into submission by
the gallant Custer. Satanta was its war chief, one of the most cruel
savages the great plains ever produced. He died a few years ago in the
state prison of Texas.]
[Footnote 18: McNess Creek is on the old Cimarron Trail to Santa Fe, a little
east of a line drawn south from Bent's Fort.]
[Footnote 19: Mr. Bryant, of Kansas, who died a few years ago, was one of the
pioneers in the trade with Santa Fe. Previous to his decease he wrote
for a Kansas newspaper a narrative of his first trip across the great
plains; an interesting monograph of hardship and suffering. For the use
of this document I am indebted to Hon. Sol. Miller, the editor of
the journal in which it originally appeared. I have also used very
extensively the notes of Mr. William Y. Hitt, one of the Bryant party,
whose son kindly placed them at my disposal, and copied liberally from
the official report of Major Bennett Riley--afterward the celebrated
general of Mexican War fame, and for whom the Cavalry Depot in Kansas is
named; as also from the journal of Captain Philip St. George Cooke, who
accompanied Major Riley on his expedition.]
[Footnote 20: Chouteau's Island, at the mouth of Sand Creek.]
[Footnote 21: Valley of the Upper Arkansas.]
[Footnote 22: About three miles east of the town of Great Bend, Barton County,
Kansas.]
[Footnote 23: The Old Santa Fe Trail crosses the creek some miles north of
Hutchinson, and coincides with the track again at the mouth of Walnut
Creek, three miles east of Great Bend.]
[Footnote 24: There are many conflicting accounts in regard to the sum Don
Antonio carried with him on that unfortunate trip. Some authorities put
it as high as sixty thousand; I have taken a mean of the various
sums, and as this method will suffice in mathematics, perhaps we can
approximate the truth in this instance.]
[Footnote 25: General Emory of the Union army during the Civil War. He made
an official report of the country through which the Army of the West
passed, accompanied by maps, and his _Reconnoissance in New Mexico and
California_, published by the government in 1848, is the first authentic
record of the region, considered topographically and geologically.]
[Footnote 26: _Doniphan's Expedition, containing an account of the Conquest
of New Mexico_, etc. John T. Hughes, A.B., of the First Regiment of
Missouri Cavalry. 1850.]
[Footnote 27: Deep Gorge.]
[Footnote 28: Colonel Leavenworth, for whom Fort Leavenworth is named, and who
built several army posts in the far West.]
[Footnote 29: Colonel A. G. Boone, a grandson of the immortal Daniel, was one of
the grandest old mountaineers I ever knew. He was as loyal as anybody,
but honest in his dealings with the Indians, and that was often a fault
in the eyes of those at Washington who controlled these agents. Kit
Carson was of the same honest class as Boone, and he, too, was removed
for the same cause.]
[Footnote 30: A narrow defile on the Trail, about ninety miles east of Fort
Union. It is called the "canyon of the Canadian, or Red, River," and
is situated between high walls of earth and rock. It was once a very
dangerous spot on account of the ease and rapidity with which the
savages could ambush themselves.]
[Footnote 31: Carson, Wooton, and all other expert mountaineers, when following
a trail, could always tell just what time had elapsed since it was
made. This may seem strange to the uninitiated, but it was part of their
necessary education. They could tell what kind of a track it was, which
way the person or animal had walked, and even the tribe to which the
savage belonged, either by the shape of the moccasin or the arrows which
were occasionally dropped.]
[Footnote 32: Lieutenant Bell belonged to the Second Dragoons. He was conspicuous
in extraordinary marches and in action, and also an accomplished
horseman and shot, once running and killing five buffalo in a quarter
of a mile. He died early in 1861, and his death was a great loss to the
service.]
[Footnote 33: Known to this day as "The Cheyenne Bottoms."]
[Footnote 34: Lone Wolf was really the head chief of the Kiowas.]
[Footnote 35: The battle lasted three days.]
[Footnote 36: Kicking Bird was ever afterward so regarded by the authorities of
the Indian department.]
[Footnote 37: Lorenzo Thomas, adjutant-general of the United States army.]
[Footnote 38: Kendall's _Santa Fe Expedition_ may be found in all the large
libraries.]
[Footnote 39: A summer-house, bower, or arbour.]
[Footnote 40: Frank Hall, Chicago, 1885.]
[Footnote 41: The greater portion of this chapter I originally wrote for
_Harper's Weekly_. By the kind permission of the publishers, I am
permitted to use it here.]
[Footnote 42: These statistics I have carefully gathered from the freight
departments of the railroads, which kept a record of all the bones that
were shipped, and from the purchasers of the carbon works, who paid out
the money at various points. Some of the bones, however, may have been
on the ground for a longer time, as decay is very slow in the dry air of
the plains.]
[Footnote 43: La Jeunesse was one of the bravest of the old French Canadian
trappers. He was a warm friend of Kit Carson and was killed by the
Indians in the following manner. They were camping one night in the
mountains; Kit, La Jeunesse, and others had wrapped themselves up in
their blankets near the fire, and were sleeping soundly; Fremont sat
up until after midnight reading letters he had received from the United
States, after finishing which, he, too, turned in and fell asleep.
Everything was quiet for a while, when Kit was awakened by a noise that
sounded like the stroke of an axe. Rising cautiously, he discovered
Indians in the camp; he gave the alarm at once, but two of his
companions were dead. One of them was La Jeunesse, and the noise he had
heard was the tomahawk as it buried itself in the brave fellow's head.]
[Footnote 44: This black is made from a species of plumbago found on the hills of
the region.]
[Footnote 45: The Pawnees and Cheyennes were hereditary enemies, and they
frequently met in sanguinary conflict.]
[Footnote 46: A French term Anglicised, as were many other foreign words by the
trappers in the mountains. Its literal meaning is, arrow fender, for
from it the plains Indians construct their shields; it is buffalo-hide
prepared in a certain manner.]
[Footnote 47: Boiling Spring River.]
[Footnote 48: For some reason the Senate refused to confirm the appointment, and
he had consequently no connection with the regular army.]
[Footnote 49: Point of Rocks is six hundred and forty seven miles from
Independence, and was always a favourite place of resort for the Indians
of the great plains; consequently it was one of the most dangerous
camping-spots for the freight caravans on the Trail. It comprises a
series of continuous hills, which project far out on the prairie in
bold relief. They end abruptly in a mass of rocks, out of which gushes a
cold, refreshing spring, which is, of course, the main attraction of the
place. The Trail winds about near this point, and many encounters with
the various tribes have occurred there.]
[Footnote 50: "Little Mountain."]
[Footnote 51: General Gatlin was a North Carolinian, and seceded with his State
at the breaking out of the Rebellion, but refused to leave his native
heath to fight, so indelibly was he impressed with the theory of
State rights. He was willing to defend the soil of North Carolina, but
declined to step across its boundary to repel invasion in other States.]
[Footnote 52: The name of "Crow," as applied to the once powerful nation of
mountain Indians, is a misnomer, the fault of some early interpreter.
The proper appellation is "Sparrowhawks," but they are officially
recognized as "Crows."]
[Footnote 53: Kit Carson, ten years before, when on his first journey, met with
the same adventure while on post at Pawnee Rock.]
[Footnote 54: The fusee was a fire-lock musket with an immense bore, from which
either slugs or balls could be shot, although not with any great degree
of accuracy.]
[Footnote 55: The Indians always knew when the caravans were to pass certain
points on the Trail, by their runners or spies probably.]
[Footnote 56: It was one of the rigid laws of Indian hospitality always to
respect the person of any one who voluntarily entered their camps
or temporary halting-places. As long as the stranger, red or white,
remained with them, he enjoyed perfect immunity from harm; but after
he had left, although he had progressed but half a mile, it was just as
honourable to follow and kill him.]
[Footnote 57: In their own fights with their enemies one or two of the defeated
party are always spared, and sent back to their tribe to carry the news
of the slaughter.]
[Footnote 58: The story of the way in which this name became corrupted into
"Picketwire," by which it is generally known in New Mexico, is this:
When Spain owned all Mexico and Florida, as the vast region of the
Mississippi valley was called, long before the United States had an
existence as a separate government, the commanding officer at Santa Fe
received an order to open communication with the country of Florida. For
this purpose an infantry regiment was selected. It left Santa Fe rather
late in the season, and wintered at a point on the Old Trail now known
as Trinidad. In the spring, the colonel, leaving all camp-followers
behind him, both men and women, marched down the stream, which flows
for many miles through a magnificent canyon. Not one of the regiment
returned or was ever heard of. When all hope had departed from the
wives, children, and friends left behind at Trinidad, information was
sent to Santa Fe, and a wail went up through the land. The priests and
people then called this stream "El Rio de las Animas Perditas" ("The
river of lost souls"). Years after, when the Spanish power was weakened,
and French trappers came into the country under the auspices of the
great fur companies, they adopted a more concise name; they called
the river "Le Purgatoire." Then came the Great American Bull-Whacker.
Utterly unable to twist his tongue into any such Frenchified expression,
he called the stream with its sad story "Picketwire," and by that name
it is known to all frontiersmen, trappers, and the settlers along its
banks.]
[Footnote 59: The ranch is now in charge of Mr. Harry Whigham, an English
gentleman, who keeps up the old hospitality of the famous place.]
[Footnote 60: "River of Souls." The stream is also called Le Purgatoire,
corrupted by the Americans into Picketwire.]
[Footnote 61: Pawnee Rock is no longer conspicuous. Its material has been torn
away by both the railroad and the settlers in the vicinity, to
build foundations for water-tanks, in the one instance, and for the
construction of their houses, barns, and sheds, in the other. Nothing
remains of the once famous landmark; its site is occupied as a cattle
corral by the owner of the claim in which it is included.]
[Footnote 62: The crossing of the Old Santa Fe Trail at Pawnee Fork is now
within the corporate limits of the pretty little town of Larned, the
county-seat of Pawnee County. The tourist from his car-window may look
right down upon one of the worst places for Indians that there was in
those days of the commerce of the prairies, as the road crosses the
stream at the exact spot where the Trail crossed it.]
[Footnote 63: This was a favourite expression of his whenever he referred to any
trouble with the Indians.]
[Footnote 64: Indians will risk the lives of a dozen of their best warriors to
prevent the body of any one of their number from falling into the white
man's possession. The reason for this is the belief, which prevails
among all tribes, that if a warrior loses his scalp he forfeits his hope
of ever reaching the happy hunting-ground.]
[Footnote 65: It was in this fight that the infamous Charles Bent received his
death-wound.]
[Footnote 66: The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad track runs very close
to the mound, and there is a station named for the great mesa.]
[Footnote 67: The venerable Colonel A. S. Johnson, of Topeka, Kansas, the first
white child born on the great State's soil, who related to me this
adventure of Hatcher's, knew him well. He says that he was a small man,
full of muscle, and as fearless as can be conceived.]
[Footnote 68: The place where they turned is about a hundred yards east of the
Court House Square, in the present town of Great Bend; it may be seen
from the cars.]
[Footnote 69: See Sheridan's _Memoirs_, Custer's _Life on the Plains_,
and Buffalo Bill's book, in which all the stirring events of that
campaign--nearly every fight of which was north or far south of the
Santa Fe Trail--are graphically told.]
[Footnote 70: A grandson of Alexander Hamilton; killed at the battle of the
Washita, in the charge on Black Kettle's camp under Custer.]
[Footnote 71: This ends Custer's narrative. The following fight, which occurred
a few days afterward, at the mouth of Mulberry Creek, twelve miles below
Fort Dodge, and within a stone's throw of the Old Trail, was related
to me personally by Colonel Keogh, who was killed at the Rosebud, in
Custer's disastrous battle with Sitting Bull. We were both attached to
General Sully's staff.]
[Footnote 72: It was in this fight that Colonel Keogh's celebrated horse Comanche
received his first wound. It will be remembered that Comanche and a Crow
Indian were the only survivors of that unequal contest in the valley of
the Big Horn, commonly called the battle of the Rosebud, where Custer
and his command was massacred.]
[Footnote 73: Now Kendall, a little village in Hamilton County, Kansas.]
[Footnote 74: Raton is the name given by the early Spaniards to this range,
meaning both mouse and squirrel. It had its origin either in the fact
that one of its several peaks bore a fanciful resemblance to a squirrel,
or because of the immense numbers of that little rodent always to be
found in its pine forests.]
[Footnote 75: In the beautiful language of the country's early conquerors, "Las
Cumbres Espanolas," or "Las dos Hermanas" (The Two Sisters), and in the
Ute tongue, "Wahtoya" (The Twins).]
[Footnote 76: The house was destroyed by fire two or three years ago.]