curled walnut stock, and my mechanical experience enabled me to
make it the handsomest gun in the corps. At guard mount it was the
adjutant's duty to select three cadets having the cleanest uniforms
and rifles for the "color guard." When the corps stacked muskets at
dress parade in the morning, these three color guards walked post in
front of these rifles for two hours only, after which they were given
freedom for the day. I frequently was detailed on this guard.
We were not allowed to go off the reservation without permission,
but on one occasion I was seized with a desire to "run it." Getting
a ferryman to take me across the Hudson to Cold Springs, I procured
a bottle of brandy. As it was contraband, I placed it under my tent
floor.
We were required to keep our brasses and other trimmings bright, but
were prohibited from using oxalic acid. Nevertheless, many of the
cadets used acid for cleaning brasses, keeping the bottle well hidden.
Unfortunately, I placed my brandy near my oxalic acid bottle. At my
suggestion my tentmate, Andrews, drew out what he supposed was the
brandy, pouring out a drink. It burned his mouth, so he spit it out,
saying, "That's not brandy."
"Of course it is. Give it to me," I said, impetuously taking a big
swallow. Immediately it began to burn. Lighting a candle, Andrews
cried, "Mills, you have taken acid." Someone called out I was
poisoned, and older cadets begged me to run to the hospital. I ran
through the sentinel's post without permission or my cap to the
surgeon's office. The German steward produced a ball of chalk about
the size of a small orange and told me to eat! It was an unsavory
meal, but I swallowed it; and the steward told me I would be all
right, which I was.
The story spread through the whole corps, even to the instructing
officers, and I never heard the last of it.
It was then the custom for cadets to settle private quarrels by
personal combat. Cadet Wesley Merritt, of my company and class, and
I, each weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds, were five feet
ten and a half inches in height, as near physically equal as any two
men could be. A question of veracity arising between us, our friends
decided we should go down by Dade's monument and settle the matter.
Merritt selected his tentmate, Alfred T. Smith, and I mine, John N.
Andrews, to act as seconds.
Although our hearts were not in it, and we were always the best of
friends afterward, we had one of the hardest fights that took place
while I was at the academy. We were finally separated by our seconds,
covered with blood, and started back to camp, when, like Roderick's
Clan Alpines in the Lady of the Lake, nearly a hundred cadets,
secretly assembled as spectators, arose from the surrounding foliage.
General Scott was a great friend of the academy and of the cadets, and
often visited us. Once when a plebe in camp, I was on post No. 1 at
the guard house. As was his habit when walking out, General Scott wore
all the gaudy uniform to which he was entitled. The corporal of the
guard called out to me: "Be careful; General Scott is approaching."
As he arrived at the proper distance, I called out, "Turn out the
guard; Commander-in-Chief of the United States forces."
General Scott halted, faced me, threw his right hand to his military
chapeau with its flaming plume, raised it high in his hand, and called
out in a very stern military manner: "Never mind the guard, sir."
He was the most formidable, handsome, and finest-looking man I have
ever seen, and carried himself with all the pomp of his high position.
Every military man admired him.
Congress had passed a law making the course at West Point five,
instead of four years, which necessitated dividing the class ahead of
mine in two parts, so that our class was more than twice as large as
either of the two classes preceding it. It may be that there was more
or less disposition to equalize the classes. However that may be, in
the February examination, I was found deficient in mathematics and
resigned. Although realizing that I had no just complaint, I was so
greatly humiliated, I was ashamed to go home.
I therefore wrote my father that, as he had favored me above the rest
of his children, I wished him to leave me out of any consideration in
the distribution of his property, but to give it exclusively to my
brothers and sisters, and that I would show the world I could make a
living for myself.
Although not a graduate, I have always had the greatest respect
for the teachings and discipline of the academy. I believe the U.
S. Military Academy has turned out the best officers known to the
world's history. Schaff says, in "The Spirit of old West Point," that
my class was not only the largest, but the most distinguished during
that period. Of this class nine became general officers, and nine were
killed in battle.
EARLY DAYS IN TEXAS
I went to Texas, then a small State, _via_ the Ohio and Mississippi
rivers from Cincinnati to New Orleans, thence up the Red River to
Shreveport, and from there to McKinney, Colin County, on foot,
arriving in April, 1857.
Here I made the acquaintance of Judge R. L. Waddell, the judge of that
district, formerly a member of Congress from Kentucky. He offered to
get me a school, stating that he had five children who ought to be
taught, and gave me the privilege of studying law with him. As I had
nothing else to do, I commenced teaching a class of sixty scholars,
studying and reciting law to him meanwhile.
Judge Waddell had a plantation near the town and, in his absence
on the circuit, placed me in charge of his affairs, including the
management of the plantation and his thirty slaves. A strong Union
man and earnestly opposed to slavery, Judge Waddell often told me
that if his slaves could make a living for themselves he would freely
manumit them. But they could not, and he was justified in holding them
for their own sakes as long as he could. It was here that I became
acquainted with the negro character, its childish simplicity and
numerous admirable traits.
The judge was a remarkable man and a most worthy character, unselfish
and law abiding. I have often heard him refuse cases because he could
not defend clients believing them guilty. He treated me as a son,
giving me much good advice. He never entered a saloon and advised me
not to, which advice I practically have followed all my life.
At McKinney I met Sam Houston, a personal friend of Judge Waddell.
Although then an old man and I a very young one, he took quite an
interest in me, and we took many walks together in Trinity Bottom,
where, one day, he cut a stick of osage orange (bois d'arc) which he
fashioned into a cane and presented to me, and which I have to this
day.
In teaching school at McKinney, I adopted Charlie Naylor's methods
of avoiding corporal punishment, but there was a surly rowdy about
eighteen years old, as large as I was, who often made trouble with the
other scholars, even after I threatened to punish him if he did not
change. One afternoon, a little boy ran up to me, saying: "Master, you
better look out for Tom Shane; he's got a pistol, and he's going to
shoot you."
Tom, as usual, was late. When I saw him coming, I placed myself just
inside the door. As he entered I seized him by the collar, saying,
"Tom, give me that pistol!" He was so overcome by surprise that he
handed it to me without a word.
I took it to Tom's father, a blacksmith. Young Shane probably received
a more severe punishment that night than I could have given him. After
that, I had no more trouble.
At this time there was great excitement between North and South,
caused principally by the troubles resulting from the settlement of
Kansas and the many conflicts between those who were taking slaves
there and those who were determined it should be a free State. The
negroes became so excited the legislature passed a law making it a
felony for any person to teach a negro how to read or write. The new
statute also prohibited free negroes from living in the State, and set
a date on which all free negroes who had failed to choose a master
would be sold into slavery.
One Sunday, a large free negro blacksmith about twenty-eight or thirty
years old came into Judge Waddell's office and asked me if it were
true that he would have to choose a master or be sold into slavery.
I told him it was. He then asked me to be his master, that he might
avoid being sold to another. For many reasons I declined, though I
could have sold him for a thousand dollars. As he had means, I advised
him to go where he would not be sold. I never knew what became of him.
During the winter there were four or five times as many fires in
adjacent counties as there had ever been before. It was generally
believed that Northern abolition influence had been communicated to
the negroes, and that they were trying to terrorize their masters.
Consequently, a law was passed forbidding negroes to remain out at
night, and authorizing anyone to arrest and take to jail more than two
negroes found together.
I remained in McKinney about a year, when the Butterfield Overland
Mail was chartered from St. Louis to San Francisco, an eighteen-day
journey, with daily service each way. El Paso was a promising Mexican
settlement, and would probably be the half-way house, and eventually
a place of some importance. I therefore bid Judge Waddell good-bye
and started for El Paso. Before going, however, I visited my father,
going with a Mr. Ditto of Kentucky through the Cherokee Nation, where
we bought a small drove of very beautiful little Indian ponies, and
drove them to St. Louis and sold them. I remained a month or so with
my father and, upon returning to Texas, on my father's advice, took my
brother Will to McKinney, and he took up school teaching where I left
off.
EL PASO EXPERIENCES
The journey to El Paso, where I arrived on the eighth of May, 1858,
was through the most desolate country, with Indians on all sides, some
hostile and some friendly. Coyotes and other wild animals abounded,
but most interesting were the numerous buffalo east of the Pecos.
There were literally millions. I have seen the plains black with them
and, when moving, which they did at a kind of lope or gallop, I have
felt the earth tremble under the impress of their heavy shoulders.
When we encountered one of these moving herds, so impetuous in its
advance no obstacle could resist it, we would turn the coach horses in
the direction of its flight and the passengers would dismount and fire
their guns to scare the buffalo away.
At a station, near the Pecos River, that had been robbed by the
Indians, we had to remain two or three days, until we received fresh
horses. The Indians had carried off all the eatables, except some
corn and sugar, and we parched and ground the corn into meal with the
coffee mill and boiled it with sugar to keep us alive until relief
came.
Save for this one delay, we made this distressing journey without
stopping night or day except for meals. If I gave up my seat at a
station there was no certainty that I would get a place in the next
coach, so we all stuck to our seats, although passengers sometimes
became crazed for want of sleep, and one or two had dashed into the
desert and been lost.
After seven days' and nights' travel, when I arrived at the bluffs
overlooking the valley of the Rio Grande, I thought it was the most
pleasant sight I had ever seen. When we drove into the town, which
consisted of a ranch of some hundred and fifty acres in cultivation
in beautiful grape, apple, apricot, pear, and peach orchards,
watermelons, grain, wheat and corn, it seemed still more beautiful,
especially when, under the shade of the large cottonwood trees along
the acequias (canals for irrigation), we saw Mexican girls selling
fruits of all kinds grown on the opposite side of the river at what
was known as Paso del Norte, a city of thirteen thousand people,
controlled by well-to-do and educated Spaniards.
The town on the American side was simply a ranch owned by "Uncle
Billy" Smith, an illiterate Kentuckian. One Franklin Coontz asked to
be made postmaster, and when the Post Office Department informed him
he would first have to name the office, he named it after himself,
"Franklin."
Mr. Smith was generous, but unbusiness-like. He had given or sold
small parcels of land to many who built without any survey having
been made. Two or three hundred people lived here, mostly Mexicans
and their families, engaged in cultivating the ranch. There were
three wholesale stores which sold goods brought up by mule trains
from Kansas City via Santa Fe to supply the needs of Paso del Norte,
Chihuahua City and other towns in Chihuahua. The Butterfield Overland
Mail established a headquarters with many employees and made Franklin
somewhat of a money center. The Mexican disposition to gamble and
the wild and lawless character of the times brought perhaps twenty
professional gamblers to Franklin.
The Texan war with Mexico for independence, in 1836, and the war
between the United States and Mexico, in 1847, together with the
hostile Indians on the north of the Rio Grande during the early
Spanish settlement, forced most of the population and wealth to the
Mexican side of the Rio Grande. Few towns on the American side were
of any importance. The county seat of El Paso County was then San
Elisario, twenty miles below Franklin, with about twelve hundred
inhabitants. When I arrived in El Paso it was dangerous to go far from
the village. Mesquite root gatherers were attacked, the men killed and
the animals driven off within a half-mile from the village.
But on the Mexican side were large, wealthy towns, with good society
and well ordered governments. After the Doniphan expedition to
Chihuahua, our government had established Fort Bliss, a mile and a
half below El Paso, with seven companies of infantry and mounted
rifles. I made the acquaintance of the officers, finding several who
had been cadets with me at the academy, among them a classmate, Will
Jones, the adjutant. Through them I got an earlier standing among the
people than would otherwise have been possible for me to do.
The act of annexation of Texas to the United States provided that
Texas retain her public lands. The El Paso and Presidio land district
included all territory west of the Pecos River (El Paso and Presidio
Counties), an area larger than New Jersey.
With the recommendation of the army officers and Judge Crosby of
that judicial district, I was appointed surveyor for that district
by the State government. Immediately I had plenty of work on pending
locations for two hundred miles below Franklin, many tracts embracing
five thousand acres each, and also the reservations leased by the War
Department for the posts of Quitman, Davis, Stockton, and Fort Bliss.
All of them I surveyed within the next year.
The Overland Mail Company also employed me to build a station covering
almost an entire block.
At my suggestion, Judge J. F. Crosby, J. S. and H. S. Gillett, W. J.
Morton, and V. St. Vrain formed a company with Mr. Smith, the owner
of the Ponce grant, on which Franklin was located, employing me to
lay out a town, as Freemont's projected Memphis, El Paso & Pacific
Railroad, the advent of the Overland Mail and westward immigration
made it necessary to enlarge the village.
I made a survey and a plan of the town. As the houses had been built
at random, without a survey, on plots given by Mr. Smith, the few
streets were neither parallel nor at right angles. I had difficulty in
making a plan agreeable to the then owners. I made several different
sketches before I produced one that all six proprietors adopted and
signed. All these original sketches, together with a copy of the
first map, are still preserved in the El Paso Public Library. (Cut,
56, 57.)
The work, which I was glad to get, occupied me two months. My pay was
one hundred dollars and four lots--Nos. 116, 117, 134 and 137--valued
at fifty dollars each.
Franklin Coontz turned out an undesirable citizen, and it was
suggested that I rename the city. As this was not only the north
and south pass of the Rio Grande through the Rocky Mountains but
also the only feasible route from east to west crossing that river,
for hundreds of miles, I suggested that El Paso would indicate the
importance of the location. It was decided to so name it.
According to an act of Congress, approved June 5, 1858, a commission
to establish the boundary between Texas and the Territory of New
Mexico was organized. John H. Clark was appointed United States
Commissioner and Major William R. Scurry, Texas Commissioner. After
they established the initial point near what is now called Anthony,
there was a disagreement, and the Texas Commission surveyor resigned.
Major Scurry appointed me in his place.
The commission, with its escort of two companies of the Seventh
Infantry, Lieutenant Lazelle commanding, was a very pleasant
organization aside from the quarrel between the commissioners. Major
Scurry was a most genial companion. Mr. Clark was ambitious in his
assumption of highly scientific attainments and overbearing to those
he deemed not his equal in such acquirements.
Major Scurry, like Judge Waddell, took quite an interest in me. The
three army officers and one or two members of the commission often
played poker for stakes. The bets were not large, but Major Scurry,
observing that I generally lost, said to me one day: "Mr. Mills, you
ought never to play poker. You are not qualified for it. A poker
player has to be a cold-blooded man. I can look into your face every
time you draw a hand and tell just about what you have drawn. I
advise you never to play another game, for you will never succeed in
it." And I never did.
The disagreements between the United States and Texas commissioners
became acute. As I thought Mr. Clark was mostly to blame, when Major
Scurry finally resigned, I did also.
I never saw Major Scurry again, but learned that he raised a
Confederate regiment and was killed at the head of his troops in a
battle with Banks' Expedition on the upper Red River.
On returning to El Paso, I wrote to my brother, W. W., whose school
term had expired, that I had secured him a position as clerk in the
sutler's store at Fort Fillmore. He held this position a year, and
then joined me in El Paso. He had enough money to buy a lot, on which
I built him a house, costing about a thousand dollars.
W. W. and I then sent for our brother Emmett, and we three built a
ranch eighteen miles above El Paso, called "Los Tres Hermanos." Emmett
occupied this ranch, which was made into a Santa Fe mail station.
Previously I lived on lot No. 116 in a tent, doing my own cooking.
I built myself a nice adobe house, doing much of the work myself.
Mexican peons made the bricks from a mixture of adobe soil and straw.
They were two feet by one foot, four inches thick, and dried in the
sun. These were very substantial, withstood the rain and made a house
cool in the daytime and warm at night. The house was on the bank of a
ditch supplying running water to the farm and under many cottonwood
trees. In summer I often slept on the adobe earth roof. Strange to
say, even in the hardest rains the water would seldom go through the
roof, which was about eight inches thick.
At the same time I built my house, I superintended building houses for
many others.
[Illustration:
PLAT
OF THE
TOWN OF ELPASO.
DIMENSIONS
BLOCKS 160 FEET SQUARE.
LOTS 86 FEET 8 INCHES BY 120 FEET.
STREETS 70 FEET WIDE.
ALLEYS 20.
PROPRIETORS.
J.S. GILLETT, H.S. GILLETT,
J.F. CROSBY, W.J. MORTON,
V. ST. VRAIN, W.T. SMITH,
ANSON MILLS,
FEB. 28, 1859. SURVEYOR.
SCALE 200 FEET TO THE INCH
PROPERTY SOLD AND IMPROVED BEFORE THE TOWN WAS LAID OFF INDICATED BY
BROKEN LINES
_J. McKITTRICK & CO. LITH. 36 M. MAIN ST._]
I early learned the ways of the roaming Indians, and in my surveying
expeditions took only a burro for my pack and two Mexicans for chain
carriers. I wore a buckskin suit made by myself, and carried a single
change of underclothing. We moved from tract to tract, camping without
a tent under the mesquite trees, our provisions consisting only of
coffee, hard bread and bacon, and occasionally some fresh meat we
could kill. Although Indians undoubtedly saw us, they never attacked
us during the three years in which I did surveying. The risk of being
killed to secure only one animal and a small amount of provisions was
not worth while.
My principal employer was Mr. Samuel A. Maverick, of San Antonio,
formerly from South Carolina. A run-away boy, he had joined an
expedition of about twenty men, which invaded Mexico at the town of
Mier prior to the Mexican war. The party was captured. The Mexicans
put ten white beans in a bag with ten black ones, ordering them to
draw a bean each. Those who got the black beans were immediately shot.
Maverick began locating land soon after the war and became the largest
land-holder in Texas, if not in the United States.
He owned more cattle on the free public range than any other man in
Texas. In 1861 nearly all the people went into the war. Maverick's
cattle ran wild on the range, and, when the war closed there were
tens of thousands of cattle bred during the four years. Maverick was
the greatest claimant to these wild cattle, and marked them with his
brand wherever caught. Other owners, and even men who had never owned
cattle, would brand with their own marks such cattle as they caught
unbranded. It thus became the custom among cattle owners using the
free range to stamp as their own any unbranded cattle they found
during the "round up," and to this day these stray cattle are known as
"Mavericks."
Maverick accompanied me on every surveying expedition I made,
following my tracings and examining my notes. He expressed the
greatest patriotism as a Unionist, was bitterly opposed to the then
proposed secession, as were most Texans, including Governor Houston.
When placer and quartz gold was discovered in the Penos Altos range
of mountains in Arizona, near the present Silver City, Maverick
requested me to find how valuable these mines were. With a gambler
(Conklin) I bought a good two-horse team and traveled the hundred and
fifty miles to reach these mines.
At Penos Altos I met James R. Sipes, a clerk for Postmaster Dowell. I
said, "Hello, Sipes, how is it; is there plenty of gold here?"
He laughed and answered, "Mills, there is the greatest quantity of
gold here, but there is too damned much dirt mixed with it!" which I
found to be true.
Locating a claim, I worked a month, 8,000 feet above sea level,
where in the day it was scorching hot and at night freezing cold,
and discovered that by hard work I could make about three dollars
a day. Fortunately, I had brought my surveying instruments, so I
abandoned mining and laid out the town of Penos Altos. I also surveyed
many claims, about which there were constant disputes. But I soon
returned to El Paso, reporting to Maverick that the mines were not of
sufficient importance to interest him.
At this time slavery agitation became very violent, creating unrest
in Texas, especially among the New England emigrants, who became the
most rabid secessionists of all. Some of my friends in the North wrote
me what would today be called treasonable literature, sending me the
New York Tribune with the most violent abolition articles marked.
Postmaster Ben Dowell was induced to open my mail, and later refused
to deliver any to me, forming a committee to burn it publicly!
When my term as district surveyor expired, I was the only candidate
for election, being the only person in the county competent to survey
land. But several political enemies publicly stated that I was an
abolitionist, and that it would be unpatriotic to vote for me. As I
had always been a Democrat, voting for Sam Houston and Stephen A.
Douglas, and never sympathized at all with the abolition movement, I
posted the following notice on a tree:
_Notice_