shaggy locks hanging over his frontlet he sees objects in a dubious
light, or not at all. He depends more on his scent than his sight; but
though he may scent a living enemy, the keenness of his organ does not
warn him of the yawning chasm that opens before him,—not till it is too
late to retire: for although he may perceive the fearful leap before
taking it, and would willingly turn on his track, and refuse it, he
finds it no longer possible to do so. In fact, he is not allowed time
for reflection. The dense crowd presses from behind, and he is left no
choice, except that of springing forward or suffering himself to be
tumbled over upon his head. In either case it is his last leap; and,
frequently, the last of a whole crowd of his companions.
With such persecutions, I need hardly say that the buffaloes are
becoming scarcer every year; and it is predicted that at no distant
period this really valuable mammal will be altogether extinct. At
present their range is greatly contracted within the wide boundaries
which it formerly occupied. Going west from the Mississippi,—at any
point below the mouth of the Missouri,—you will not meet with buffalo
for the first three hundred miles; and, though the herds formerly ranged
to the south and west of the Rio Grande, the Comanches on the banks of
that river no longer know the buffalo, except by their excursions to the
grand prairie far to the north of their country. The Great Slave Lake is
the northern terminus of the buffalo range; and westward the chain of
the Rocky Mountains; but of late years stray herds have been observed at
some points west of these,—impelled through the passes by the
hunter-pressure of the horse-Indians from the eastward. Speculators have
adopted several ingenious and plausible reasons to account for the
diminution of the numbers of the buffalo. There is but one cause worth
assigning,—a very simple one too,—the horse.
With the disappearance of the buffalo,—or perhaps with the thinning of
their numbers,—the prairie Indians may be induced to throw aside their
roving habits. This would be a happy result both for them and their
neighbors; though it is even doubtful whether it might follow from such
a circumstance. No doubt some change would be effected in their mode of
life; but unfortunately these Bedouins of the Western world can live
upon the horse, even if the buffalo were entirely extirpated. Even as it
is, whole tribes of them subsist almost exclusively upon horse-flesh,
which they esteem and relish more than any other food. But this resource
would, in time, also fail them; for they have not the economy to raise a
sufficient supply for the demand that would occur were the buffaloes
once out of the way: since the _caballadas_ of wild mustangs are by no
means so easy to capture as the “gangs” of unwieldy and lumbering
buffaloes.
It is to be hoped, however, that before the horse-Indians have been put
to this trial, the strong arm of civilization shall be extended over
them, and, withholding them from those predatory incursions, which they
annually make into the Mexican settlements, will induce them to
_dismount_, and turn peaceably to the tillage of the soil,—now so
successfully practised by numerous tribes of their race, who dwell in
fixed and flourishing homes upon the eastern border of the prairies.
At this moment, however, the Comanches are in open hostility with the
settlers of the Texan frontier. The _lex talionis_ is in active
operation while we write, and every mail brings the account of some
sanguinary massacre, or some act of terrible retaliation. The deeds of
blood and savage cruelty practised alike by both sides—whites as well as
Indians—have had their parallel, it is true, but they are not the less
revolting to read about. The colonists have suffered much from these
Ishmaelites of the West,—these lordly savages, who regard industry as a
dishonorable calling; and who fancy that their vast territory should
remain an idle hunting-ground, or rather a fortress, to which they might
betake themselves during their intervals of war and plundering. The
colonists have a clear title to the land,—that title acknowledged by all
right-thinking men, who believe the good of the majority must not be
sacrificed to the obstinacy of the individual, or the minority,—that
title which gives the right to remove the dwelling of the citizen,—his
very castle,—rather than that the public way be impeded. All admit this
right; and just such a title has the Texan colonist to the soil of the
Comanche. There may be guilt in the _mode_ of establishing the
claim,—there may have been scenes of cruelty, and blood unnecessarily
spilt,—but it is some consolation to know that there has occurred
nothing yet to parallel in cold-blooded atrocity the annals of Algiers,
or the similar acts committed in Southern Africa. The crime of
_smoke-murder_ is yet peculiar to Pellisier and Potgieter.
In their present outbreak, the Comanches have exhibited but a poor,
short-sighted policy. They will find they have committed a grand error
in mistaking the courageous colonists of Texas for the weak
Mexicans,—with whom they have long been at war, and whom they have
almost invariably conquered. The result is easily told: much blood may
be shed on both sides, but it is sure to end as all such contests do;
and the Comanche, like the Caffre, must “go to the wall.” Perhaps it is
better that things should be brought to a climax,—it will certainly be
better for the wretched remnant of the Spano-Americans dwelling along
the Comanche frontiers,—a race who for a hundred years have not known
peace.
As this long-standing hostility with the Mexican nation has been a
predominant feature in the history of the Comanche Indian, it is
necessary to give some account of how it is usually carried on. There
was a time when the Spanish nation entertained the hope of
_Christianizing_ these rude savages,—that is, taming and training them
to something of the condition to which they have brought the Aztec
descendants of Montezuma,—a condition scarce differing from slavery
itself. As no gold or silver mines had been discovered in Texas, it was
not their intention to make mine-laborers of them; but rather _peons_,
or field-laborers, and tenders of cattle,—precisely as they had done,
and were still doing, with the tribes of California. The soldier and the
sword had proved a failure,—as in many other parts of Spanish
America,—in fact, everywhere, except among the degenerated remnants of
monarchical misrule found in Mexico, Bogota, and Peru. In these
countries was encountered the _débris_ of a declining civilization, and
not, as is generally believed, the children of a progressive
development; and of course they gave way,—as the people of all corrupted
monarchies must in the end.
It was different with the “Indios bravos,” or warrior tribes, still free
and independent,—the so-called _savages_. Against these the soldier and
the sword proved a complete failure; and it therefore became necessary
to use the other kind of conquering power,—the monk and his cross. Among
the Comanches this kind of conquest had attained a certain amount of
success. Mission-houses sprung up through the whole province of
Texas,—the Comanche country,—though the new neophytes were not
altogether Comanches, but rather Indians of other tribes who were less
warlike. Many Comanches, however, became converts; and some of the
“missiones” became establishments on a grand scale,—each having,
according to Spanish missionary-fashion, its “presidio,” or garrison of
troops, to keep the new believers within sound of the bell, and to hunt
and bring them back whenever they endeavored to escape from that
Christian vassalage for which they had too rashly exchanged their pagan
freedom.
All went well, so long as Spain was a power upon the earth, and the
Mexican viceroyalty was rich enough to keep the presidios stocked with
troopers. The monks led as jolly a life as their prototypes of “Bolton
Abbey in the olden time.” The neophytes were simply their slaves,
receiving, in exchange for the sweat of their brow, baptism, absolution,
little pewter crucifixes, and various like valuable commodities.
But there came a time when they grew tired of the exchange, and longed
for their old life of roving freedom. Their brethren had obtained the
horse; and this was an additional attraction which a prairie life
presented. They grew tired of the petty tricks of the Christian
superstition,—to their view less rational than their own,—they grew
tired of the toil of constant work, the childlike chastisements
inflicted, and sick of the sound of that ever-clanging clapper,—the
bell. In fine, they made one desperate effort, and freed themselves
forever.
The grand establishment of San Saba, on the river of the same name, fell
first. The troops were abroad on some convert-hunting expedition. The
Comanches entered the fort,—their tomahawks and war-clubs hidden under
their great robes of buffalo-hide: the attack commenced, and ended only
with the annihilation of the settlement.
One monk alone escaped the slaughter,—a man renowned for his holy zeal.
He fled towards San Antonio, pursued by a savage band. A large river
coursed across the route it was necessary for him to take; but this did
not intercept him: its waters opened for a moment, till the bottom was
bare from bank to bank. He crossed without wetting his feet. The waves
closed immediately behind him, offering an impassable barrier to his
pursuers, who could only vent their fury in idle curses. But the monk
could curse too. He had, perhaps, taken some lessons at the Vatican;
and, turning round, he anathematized every “mother’s son” of the
red-skinned savages. The wholesale excommunication produced a wonderful
effect. Every one of the accursed fell back where he stood, and lay face
upward upon the plain, dead as a post! The monk, after baptizing the
river “Brazos de Dios” (arm of God), continued his flight, and reached
San Antonio in safety,—where he duly detailed his miraculous adventure
to the credulous converts of Bejar, and the other missions.
Such is the supposed origin of the name Brazos de Dios, which the second
river in Texas bears to this day. It is to be remarked, however, that
the river crossed by the monk was the present Colorado, not the Brazos:
for, by a curious error of the colonists, the two rivers have made an
exchange of titles!
The Comanches—freed from missionary rule, and now equal to their
adversaries by possession of the horse—forthwith commenced their
plundering expeditions; and, with short intervals of truce,—periods _en
paz_,—have continued them to the present hour. All Northern and Western
Texas they soon recovered; but they were not content with territory:
they wanted horses and cattle and chattels, and white wives and slaves;
and it would scarce be credited, were I to state the number of these
they have taken within the last half-century. Nearly every year they
have been in the habit of making an expedition to the Mexican
settlements of the provinces Tamaulipas, New Leon, and Chihuahua,—every
expedition a fresh conquest over their feeble and corrupt adversaries.
On every occasion they have returned with booty, consisting of horses,
cattle, sheep, household utensils, and, sad to relate, human captives.
Women and children only do they bring back,—the men they kill upon
sight. The children may be either male or female,—it matters not which,
as these are to be adopted into their tribe, to become future warriors;
and, strange to relate, many of these, when grown up, not only refuse to
return to the land of their birth, but prove the most bitter and
dangerous foes to the people from whom they have sprung! Even the girls
and women, after a period, become reconciled to their new home, and no
longer desire to leave it. Some, when afterwards discovered and ransomed
by their kindred, have refused to accept the conditions, but prefer to
continue the savage career into which misfortune has introduced them!
Many a heart-rending scene has been the consequence of such apparently
unnatural predilections.
You would wonder why such a state of things has been so long submitted
to by a civilized people; but it is not so much to be wondered at. The
selfishness that springs from constant revolutions has destroyed almost
every sentiment of patriotism in the Mexican national heart; and,
indeed, many of these captives are perhaps not much worse off under the
guardianship of the brave Comanches than they would have been, exposed
to the petty tyranny and robber-rule that has so long existed in Mexico.
Besides, it is doubtful whether the Mexican government, with all her
united strength, could retake them. The Comanche country is as
inaccessible to a regular army as the territory of Timbuctoo; and it
will give even the powerful republic of the north no small trouble to
reduce these red freebooters to subjection. Mexico had quite despaired
of being able to make an effort; and in the last treaty made between her
and the United States, one of the articles was a special agreement on
the part of the latter to restrain the Comanches from future forays into
the Mexican states, and also cause them to deliver up the Mexican
captives then in the hands of the Indians!
It was computed that their number at the time amounted to four thousand!
It is with regret I have to add, that these unfortunates are still held
in bondage. The great republic, too busy with its own concerns, has not
carried out the stipulations of the treaty; and the present Comanche war
is but the result of this criminal negligence. Had energetic measures
been adopted at the close of the Mexico-American war, the Comanche would
not now be harrying the settlers of Texas.
To prove the incapacity of the Mexicans to deal with this warlike race,
it only needs to consider the present condition of the northern Mexican
states. One half the territory in that extensive region has returned to
the condition of a desert. The isolated “ranchos” have been long since
abandoned,—the fields are overgrown with weeds,—and the cattle have run
wild, or been carried off by the Comanches. Only the stronger
settlements and large fortified haciendas any longer exist; and many of
these, too, have been deserted. Where children once played in the
security of innocence,—where gayly-dressed cavaliers and elegant ladies
amused themselves in the pleasant _dia de campo_, such scenes are no
longer witnessed. The rancho is in ruins,—the door hangs upon its hinge,
broken and battered, or has been torn off to feed the camp-fire of the
savage; the dwelling is empty and silent, except when the howling wolf
or coyote wakes up the echoes of its walls.
About ten years ago, the proud governor of the state of Chihuahua—one of
the most energetic soldiers of the Mexican republic—had a son taken
captive by the Comanches. Powerful though this man was, he knew it was
idle to appeal to arms; and was only too contented to recover his child
by paying a large ransom! This fact, more than a volume of words, will
illustrate the condition of unhappy Mexico.
The Comanche leads a gay, merry life,—he is far from being the Indian of
Cooper’s description. In scarcely any respect does he resemble the
sombre son of the forest. He is lively, talkative, and ever ready for a
laugh. His butt is the Mexican presidio soldier, whom he holds in too
just contempt. He is rarely without a meal. If the buffalo fails him, he
can draw a steak from his spare horses, of which he possesses a large
herd: besides, there are the wild mustangs, which he can capture on
occasions. He has no work to do except war and hunting: at all other
times he has slaves to wait upon him, and perform the domestic drudgery.
When idle, he sometimes bestows great pains upon his dress,—which is the
usual deer-skin tunic of the prairie Indian, with moccasons and fringed
leggings. Sometimes a head-dress of plumes is worn; sometimes one of the
skin of the buffalo’s skull, with the horns left on! The robe of buffalo
pelt hangs from his shoulders, with all the grandeur of a toga; but when
he proceeds on a plundering expedition, all these fripperies are thrown
aside, and his body appears naked from the waist to the ears. Then only
the breech-clout is worn, with leggings and moccasons on his legs and
feet. A coat of scarlet paint takes the place of the hunting-shirt,—in
order to render his presence more terrific in the eyes of his enemy. It
needs not this. Without any disguise, the sight of him is sufficiently
horrifying,—sufficiently suggestive of “blood and murder.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PEHUENCHES, OR PAMPAS INDIANS.
The vast plain known as the “Pampas” is one of the largest tracts of
level country upon the face of the earth. East and west it stretches
from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata to the foot-hills of the Andes
mountains. It is interrupted on the north by a series of mountains and
hill country, that cross from the Andes to the Paraguay River, forming
the Sierras of Mendoza, San Luis, and Cordova; while its southern
boundary is not so definitely marked, though it may be regarded as
ending at the Rio Negro, where it meets, coming up from the south, the
desert plains of Patagonia.
Geologically, the Pampas (or plains, as the word signifies, in the
language of the Peruvian Indians) is an alluvial formation,—the bed of
an ancient sea—upheaved by some unknown cause to its present elevation,
which is not much above the ocean-level. It is not, therefore, a
_plateau_ or “table-land,” but a vast natural meadow. The soil is in
general of a red color, argillaceous in character, and at all points
filled with marine shells and other testimonies that the sea once rolled
over it. It is in the Pampas formation that many of the fossil monsters
have been found,—the gigantic _megatherium_, the colossal _mylodon_, and
the giant armadillo (_glyptodon_), with many other creatures, of such
dimensions as to make it a subject of speculation how the earth could
have produced food enough for their maintenance.
In giving to the Pampas the designation of a _vast meadow_, do not
suffer yourself to be misled by this phrase,—which is here and elsewhere
used in rather a loose and indefinite manner. Many large tracts in the
Pampas country would correspond well enough to this definition,—both as
regards their appearance and the character of the herbage which covers
them; but there are other parts which bear not the slightest resemblance
to a meadow. There are vast tracts thickly covered with tall
thistles,—so tall as to reach to the head of a man mounted on horseback,
and so thickly set, that neither man nor horse could enter them without
a path being first cleared for them.
Other extensive tracts are grown over with tall grass so rank as to
resemble reeds or rushes more than grass; and an equally extensive
surface is timbered with small trees, standing thinly and without
underwood, like the fruit-trees in an orchard. Again, there are wide
morasses and extensive lakes, many of them brackish, and some as salt
as the sea itself. In addition to these, there are “salinas,” or
plains of salt,—the produce of salt lakes, whose waters have
evaporated, leaving a stratum of pure salt often over a foot in
thickness, and covering their beds to an extent of many square
leagues. There are some parts, too, where the Pampas country assumes a
sterile and stony character,—corresponding to that of the great desert
of Patagonia. It is not correct, therefore, to regard the Pampas as
one unbroken tract of _meadow_. In one character alone is it uniform
in being a country without mountains,—or any considerable elevations
in the way of ridges or hills,—though a few scattered sierras are
found both on its northern and southern edges.
The _Thistle Pampas_, as we take the liberty of naming them, constitute
perhaps the most curious section of this great plain; and not the less
so that the “weed” which covers them is supposed not to be an indigenous
production, but to have been carried there by the early colonists. About
this, however, there is a difference of opinion. No matter whence
sprung, the thistles have flourished luxuriantly, and at this day
constitute a marked feature in the scenery of the Pampas. Their position
is upon the eastern edge of the great plain, contiguous to the banks of
the La Plata; but from this river they extend backwards into the
interior, at some points to the distance of nearly two hundred miles.
Over this vast surface they grow so thickly that, as already mentioned,
it is not possible for either man or horse to make way through them.
They can only be traversed by devious paths—already formed by constant
use, and leading through narrow lanes or glades, where, for some reason,
the thistles do not choose to grow. Otherwise they cannot be entered
even by cattle. These will not, unless compelled, attempt penetrating
such an impervious thicket; and if a herd driven along the paths should
chance to be “stampeded” by any object of terror, and driven to take to
the thistles, scarce a head of the whole flock can ever afterwards be
recovered. Even the instincts of the dumb animals do not enable them to
find their way out again; and they usually perish, either from thirst,
or by the claws of the fierce pumas and jaguars, which alone find
themselves at home in the labyrinthine “_cardonales_.” The little
_viscacha_ contrives to make its burrow among them, and must find
subsistence by feeding upon their leaves and seed, since there is no
other herbage upon the ground,—the well-armed thistle usurping the soil,
and hindering the growth of any other plants. It may be proper to
remark, however, that there are two kinds of these plants, both of which
cover large tracts of the plain. One is a true thistle, while the other
is a weed of the artichoke family, called by the Spanish Americans
“cardoon.” It is a species of _Cardunculus_. The two do not mingle their
stalks, though both form thickets in a similar manner and often in the
same tract of country. The cardoon is not so tall as the thistle; and,
being without spines, its “beds” are more easily penetrated; though even
among these, it would be easy enough to get entangled and lost.
It is proper to remark here, that these thistle-thickets do not shut up
the country all the year round. Only for a season,—from the time they
have grown up and “shoot,” till their tall ripened stalks wither and
fall back to the earth, where they soon moulder into decay. The plains
are then open and free to all creatures,—man among the rest,—and the
Gaucho, with his herds of horses, horned cattle, and sheep, or the
troops of roving Indians, spread over and take possession of them.
The young thistles now present the appearance of a vast field of
turnips; and their leaves, still tender, are greedily devoured by both
cattle and sheep. In this condition the Pampas thistles remain during
their short winter; but as spring returns, they once more “bristle” up,
till, growing taller and stouter, they present a _chevaux-de-frise_ that
at length expels all intruders from their domain.
On the western selvage of this thistle tract lies the grass-covered
section of the Pampas. It is much more extensive than that of the
“cardonales,”—having an average width of three hundred miles, and
running longitudinally throughout the whole northern and southern
extension of the Pampas. Its chief characteristic is a covering of
coarse grass,—which at different seasons of the year is short or tall,
green, brown, or yellowish, according to the different degrees of
ripeness. When dry, it is sometimes fired,—either by design or
accident,—as are also the withered stems of the thistles; and on these
occasions a conflagration occurs, stupendous in its effects,—often
extending over vast tracts, and reducing everything to black ashes.
Nothing can be more melancholy to the eye than the aspect of a burnt
pampa.