About the word frontiersman there is a pretty air of romance. The very
mention of it conjures up a vision of lean, sinewy, brown-faced men, in
fur caps and moccasins and fringed buckskin, slipping through virgin
forests or pushing across sun-scorched prairies--advance-guards of
civilization. Hardy, resolute, taciturn figures, they have passed
silently across the pages of our history and we shall see their like no
more. To them we owe a debt that we can never repay--nor, indeed, have
we even publicly acknowledged it. We followed by the trails which they
had blazed for us; we built our towns in those rich valleys and pastured
our herds on those fertile hillsides which theirs were the first white
men's eyes to see. The American frontiersman was never a self-seeker.
His discoveries he left as a heritage to those who followed him. In
almost every case he died poor and, more often than not, with his boots
on. David Livingstone and Henry M. Stanley, the two Englishmen who did
more than any other men for the opening up of Africa, lie in Westminster
Abbey, and thousands of their countrymen each year stand reverently
beside their tombs. To Cecil Rhodes, another Anglo-African pioneer, a
great national memorial has been erected on the slopes of Table
Mountain. Far, far greater parts in the conquest of a wilderness, the
winning of a continent, were played by Daniel Boone, William Bowie, Kit
Carson, Davy Crockett; yet how many of those who to-day enjoy the fruits
of the perils they faced, the hardships they endured, know much more of
them than as characters in dime novels, can tell where they are buried,
can point to any statues or monuments which have been erected to their
memories?
There are two million four hundred thousand people in the State of
California, and most of them boast of it as "God's own country." They
have more State pride than any people that I know, yet I would be
willing to wager almost anything you please that you can pick a hundred
native sons of California, and put to each of them the question, "Who
was Jedediah Smith?" and not one of them would be able to answer it
correctly. The public parks of San Francisco and Los Angeles and San
Diego and Sacramento have innumerable statues of one kind and another,
but you will find none of this man with the stern old Puritan name; they
are starting a hall of fame in California, but no one has proposed
Jedediah Smith as deserving a place in it. Yet to him, perhaps more than
to any other man, is due the fact that California is American: he was
the greatest of the pathfinders; he was the real founder of the Overland
Trail; he was the man who led the way across the ranges. Had it not been
for the trail he blazed and the thousands who followed in his footsteps
the Sierra Nevadas, instead of the Rio Grande, might still mark the line
of our frontier.
The westward advance of population which took place during the first
quarter of the nineteenth century far exceeded the limits of any of the
great migrations of mankind upon the older continents. The story of the
American onset to the beckoning West is one of the wonder-tales of
history. Over the natural waterway of the great northern lakes, down the
road to Pittsburg, along the trail which skirted the Potomac, and then
down the Ohio, over the passes of the Cumberland into Tennessee, round
the end of the Alleghanies into the Gulf States, up the Missouri, and so
across the Rockies to the head waters of the Columbia, or south-westward
from St. Louis to the Spanish settlements of Santa Fe, the hardy
pioneers poured in an ever-increasing stream, carrying with them little
but axe, spade, and rifle, some scanty household effects, a small store
of provisions, a liberal supply of ammunition, and unlimited faith,
courage, and enterprise.
During that brief period the people of the United States extended their
occupation over the whole of that vast region lying between the
Alleghanies and the Rockies--a territory larger than all of Europe,
without Russia--annexed it from the wilderness, conquered, subdued,
improved, cultivated, civilized it, and all without one jot of
governmental assistance. Throughout these years, as the frontiersmen
pressed into the West, they continued to fret and strain against the
Spanish boundaries. The Spanish authorities, and after them the Mexican,
soon became seriously alarmed at this silent but resistless American
advance, and from the City of Mexico orders went out to the provincial
governors that Americans venturing within their jurisdiction should be
treated, whenever an excuse offered, with the utmost severity. But,
notwithstanding the menace of Mexican prisons, of Indian tortures, of
savage animals, of thirst and starvation in the wilderness, the pioneers
pushed westward and ever westward, until at last their further progress
was abruptly halted by the great range of the Sierra Nevada,
snow-crested, and presumably impassable, which rose like a titanic wall
before them, barring their further march.
It was at about the time of this halt in our westward progress that
Captain Jedediah Smith came riding onto the scene. You must picture him
as a gaunt-faced, lean-flanked, wiry man, with nerves of iron, sinews of
rawhide, a skin like oak-tanned leather, and quick on his feet as a
catamount. He was bearded to the ears, of course, for razors formed no
part of the scanty equipment of the frontiersman, and above the beard
shone a pair of very keen, bright eyes, with the concentrated wrinkles
about their corners that come of staring across the prairies under a
blazing sun. He was sparing of his words, as are most men who dwell in
the great solitudes, and, like them, he was, in an unorthodox way,
devout, his stern and rugged features as well as his uncompromising
scriptural name betraying the grim old Puritan stock from which he
sprang. His hair was long and black, and would have covered his
shoulders had it not been tied at the back of the neck by a leather
thong. His dress was that of the Indian adapted to meet the
requirements of the adventuring white man: a hunting-shirt and trousers
of fringed buckskin, embroidered moccasins of elkhide, and a cap made
from the glossy skin of a beaver, with the tail hanging down behind. On
hot desert marches, and in camp, he took off the beaver-skin cap and
twisted about his head a bright bandanna, which, when taken with his
gaunt, unshaven face, made him look uncommonly like a pirate. These
garments were by no means fresh and gaudy, like those affected by the
near-frontiersmen who take part in the production of Wild West shows;
instead they were very soiled and much worn and greasy, and gave
evidence of having done twenty-four hours' duty a day for many months at
a stretch. Hanging on his chest was a capacious powder-horn, and in his
belt was a long, straight knife, very broad and heavy in the blade--a
first cousin of that deadly weapon to which William Bowie was in after
years to give his name; in addition he carried a rifle, with an
altogether extraordinary length of barrel, which brought death to any
living thing within a thousand yards on which its foresight rested. His
mount was a plains-bred pony, as wiry and unkempt and enduring as
himself. Everything considered, Smith could have been no gentle-looking
figure, and I rather imagine that, if he were alive and ventured into a
Western town to-day, he would probably be arrested by the local
constable as an undesirable character. I have now sketched for you, in
brief, bold outline, as good a likeness of Smith as I am able with the
somewhat scanty materials at hand, for he lived and did his pioneering
in the days when frontiersmen were as common as traffic policemen are
now, added to which the men who were familiar with his exploits were of
a sort more ready with their pistols than with their pens.
The dates of Smith's birth and death are not vital to this story, and
perhaps it is just as well that they are not, for I can find no record
of when he came into the world, and only the Indian warrior who wore his
scalp-lock at his waist could have told the exact date on which he went
out of it. It is enough to know that, just as the nineteenth century was
passing the quarter mark, Smith was the head of a firm of fur-traders,
Smith, Jackson & Soublette, which had obtained from President John
Quincy Adams permission to hunt and trade to their hearts' content in
the region lying beyond the Rocky Mountains. It would have been much
more to the point to have obtained the permission of the Mexican
governor-general of the Californias, or of the great chief of the
Comanches, for they held practically all of the territory in question
between them. Those were the days whose like we shall never know again,
when the streams were alive with beaver, when there were more elk and
antelope on the prairies than there are cattle now, and when the noise
made by the moving buffalo herds sounded like the roll of distant
thunder. They were the days when a fortune, as fortunes were then
reckoned, awaited the man with unlimited ammunition, a sure eye, and a
body inured to hardships. What the founder of the Astor fortune was
doing in the Puget Sound country, Smith and his companions purposed to
do in the Rockies; and, with this end in view, established their base
camp on the eastern shores of the Great Salt Lake, not far from where
Ogden now stands. This little band of pioneers formed the westernmost
outpost of American civilization, for between them and the nearest
settlement, at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers,
stretched thirteen hundred miles of savage wilderness. Livingstone, on
his greatest journey, did not penetrate half as far into unknown Africa
as Smith did into unknown America, and while the English explorer was at
the head of a large and well-equipped expedition, the American was
accompanied by a mere handful of men.
In August, 1826, Smith and a small party of his hunters found
themselves in the terrible Painted Desert, that God-forsaken expanse of
sand and lava where the present States of Arizona, Utah, and Nevada
meet. Water there was none, for the streams had run dry, and the horses
and pack-mules were dying of thirst and exhaustion; the game had
entirely disappeared; the supplies were all but finished--and five
hundred miles of the most inhospitable country in the world lay between
them and their camp on Great Salt Lake. The situation was perilous,
indeed, and a decision had to be made quickly if any of them were to get
out alive.
"What few supplies we have left will be used up before we get a quarter
way back to the camp," said Smith. "Our only chance--and I might as well
tell you it's a mighty slim one, boys--is in pushing on to California."
"But California's a good four hundred miles away," expostulated his
companions, "and the Sierras lie between, and no one has ever crossed
them."
"Then I'll be the first man to do it," said Smith. "Besides, I've always
had a hankering to learn what lies on the other side of those ranges.
Now's my chance to find out."
"I reckon there ain't much chance of our ever seeing Salt Lake or
California either," grumbled one of the hunters, "and even if we do
reach the coast the Mexicans 'll clap us into prison."
"Well, so fur's I'm concerned," said Smith decisively, "I'd rather be
alive and in a Greaser prison than to be dead in the desert. I'm going
to California or die on the way."
History chronicles few such marches. Westward pressed the little troop
of pioneers, across the sun-baked lava beds of southwestern Utah, over
the arid deserts and the barren ranges of southern Nevada, and so to the
foot-hills of that great Sierran range which rears itself ten thousand
feet skyward, forming a barrier which had theretofore separated the
fertile lands of the Pacific slope from the rest of the continent more
effectually than an ocean. The lava beds gave way to sand wastes dotted
with clumps of sage-brush and cactus, and the cactus changed to stunted
pines, and the pines ran out in rocks, and the rocks became covered with
snow, and still Smith and his hunters struggled on, emaciated, tattered,
almost barefooted, lamed by the cactus spines on the desert, and the
stones on the mountain slopes, until at last they stood upon the very
summit of the range and, like that other band of pioneers in an earlier
age, looked down on the promised land after their wanderings in the
wilderness. No explorer in the history of the world, not Columbus, nor
Pizarro, nor Champlain, nor De Soto, ever gazed upon a land so fertile
and so full of beauty. The mysterious, the jealously guarded, the
storied land of California lay spread before them like a map in
bas-relief. Then the descent of the western slope began, the transition
from snow-clad mountain peaks to hillsides clothed with subtropical
vegetation amazing the Americans by its suddenness. Imagine how like a
dream come true it must have been to these men, whose lives had been
spent in the less kindly climate and amid the comparatively scanty
vegetation of the Middle West, to suddenly find themselves in this
fairyland of fruit and flowers!
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1906, by P.F. Collier & Son._
Westward pressed the little troop of pioneers, across the sun-baked lava
beds of southwestern Utah.]
"It is, indeed, a white man's country," said Smith prophetically, as,
leaning on his long rifle, he gazed upon the wonderful panorama which
unrolled itself before him. "Though it is Mexican just now, sooner or
later it must and shall be ours."
Heartened by the sight of this wonderful new country, and by the
knowledge that they must be approaching some of the Mexican settlements,
but with bodies sadly weakened from exposure, hunger, and exhaustion,
the Americans slowly made their way down the slope, crossed those
fertile lowlands which are now covered with groves of orange and lemon,
and so, guided by some friendly Indians whom they met, came at last to
the mission station of San Gabriel, one of that remarkable chain of
outposts of the church founded by the indefatigable Franciscan, Father
Junipero Serra. The little company of worn and weary men sighted the
red-tiled roof of the mission just at sunset, and though Smith and his
followers came from stern New England stock which prided itself on
having no truck with Papists, I rather imagine that as the sweet, clear
mission bells chimed out the angelus they lifted their hats and stood
with bowed heads in silent thanksgiving for their preservation.
I doubt if there was a more astonished community between the oceans than
was the monastic one of San Gabriel when this band of ragged strangers
suddenly appeared from nowhere and asked for food and shelter.
"You come from the South--from Mexico?" queried the father superior,
staring, half-awed, at these gaunt, fierce-faced, bearded men who spoke
in a strange tongue.
"No, padre," answered Smith, calling to his aid the broken Spanish he
had picked up in his trading expeditions to Santa Fe, "we come from the
East, from the country beyond the great mountains, from the United
States. We are Americans," he added a little proudly.
"They say they come from the East," the brown-robed monks whispered to
each other. "It is impossible. No one has ever come from that direction.
Have not the Indians told us many times that there is no food, no water
in that direction, and that, moreover, there is no way to cross the
mountains? It is, indeed, a strange and incredible tale that these men
tell. But we will offer them our hospitality in the name of the blessed
St. Francis, for that we withhold from no man; but it is the part of
wisdom to despatch a messenger to San Diego to acquaint the governor of
their coming, for it may well be that they mean no good to the people of
this land."
Had the good monks been able to look forward a few-score years, perhaps
they would not have been so ready to offer Smith and his companions the
shelter of the mission roof. But how were they to know that these ragged
strangers, begging for food at their mission door, were the skirmishers
for a mighty host which would one day pour over those mountain ranges to
the eastward as the water pours over the falls at Niagara; that within
rifle-shot of where their mission stood a city of half a million souls
would spread itself across the hills; that down the dusty Camino Real,
which the founder of their mission had trudged so often in his sandals
and woollen robe, would whirl strange horseless, panting vehicles,
putting a mile a minute behind their flying wheels; that twin lines of
steel would bring their southernmost station at San Diego within twenty
hours, instead of twenty days, of their northernmost outpost at Sonoma;
and that over this new land would fly, not the red-white-and-green
standard of Mexico, but an alien banner of stripes and stars?
The four years which intervened between the collapse of Spanish rule in
Mexico and the arrival of Jedediah Smith at San Gabriel were marked by
political chaos in the Californias. When a governor of Alta California
rose in the morning he did not know whether he was the representative of
an emperor, a king, a president, or a dictator. As a result of these
perennial disorders, the Mexican officials ascribed sinister motives to
the most innocent episodes. No sooner, therefore, did Governor Echeandia
learn of the arrival in his province of a mysterious party of Americans
than he ordered them brought under escort to San Diego for examination.
Though those present probably did not appreciate it, the meeting of
Smith and Echeandia in the palace at San Diego was a peculiarly
significant one. There sat at his ease in his great chair of state the
saturnine Mexican governor, arrogant and haughty, beruffled and
gold-laced, his high-crowned sombrero and his velvet jacket heavy with
bullion, while in front of him stood the American frontiersman, gaunt,
unshaven, and ragged, but as cool and self-possessed as though he was at
the head of a conquering army instead of a forlorn hope. The one was as
truly the representative of a passing as the other was of a coming race.
Small wonder that Echeandia, as he observed the hardy figures and
determined faces of the Americans, thought to himself how small would be
Mexico's chance of holding California if others of their countrymen
began to follow in their footsteps. He and his officials cross-examined
Smith as closely as though the frontiersman was a prisoner on trial for
his life, as, in a sense, he was, for almost any fate might befall him
and his companions in that remote corner of the continent without any
one being called to account for it. Smith described the series of
misfortunes which had led him to cross the ranges; he asserted that he
desired nothing so much as to get back into American territory again,
and he earnestly begged the governor to provide him with the necessary
provisions and permit him to depart. His story was so frank and
plausible that Echeandia, with characteristic Spanish suspicion,
promptly disbelieved every word of it, for why, he argued, should any
sane man make so hazardous a journey unless he were a spy and well paid
to risk his life? For even in those early days, remember, the Mexicans
had begun to fear the ambitions of the young republic to the eastward.
So, despite their protests, he ordered the Americans to be
imprisoned--and no one knew better than they did that, once within the
walls of a Mexican prison, there was small chance of their seeing the
outside world again. Fortunately for the explorers, however, it so
happened that there were three American trading-schooners lying in San
Diego harbor at the time, and their captains, determined to see the
rights of their fellow countrymen respected, joined in a vigorous and
energetic protest to the governor against this high-handed and
unjustified action. This seems to have frightened Echeandia, for he
reluctantly gave orders for the release of Smith and his companions, but
ordered them to leave the country at once, and by the same route by
which they had come.
When the year 1827 was but a few days old, therefore, the Americans
turned their faces northward, but instead of retracing their steps in
accordance with Echeandia's orders, they crossed the coast range,
probably through the Tejon Pass, and kept on through the fertile region
now known as the San Joaquin Valley, in the hope that by crossing the
Sierra farther to the northward they would escape the terrible rigors of
the Colorado desert. When some three hundred miles north of San Gabriel
they attempted to recross the ranges, but a feat that had been hazardous
in midsummer was impossible in midwinter, and the entire expedition
nearly perished in the attempt. Several of the men and all the horses
died of cold and hunger, and it was only by incredible exertions that
Smith and his few remaining companions, terribly frozen and totally
exhausted, managed to reach the Santa Clara Valley and Mission San Jose.
So slow was their progress that the news of their approach preceded them
and caused considerable disquietude to the monks. Learning from the
Indians that he and his tatterdemalion followers were objects of
suspicion, Smith sent a letter to the father superior, in which he gave
an account of his arrival at San Gabriel, of his interview with the
governor, of his disaster in the Sierras, and of his present pitiable
condition. "I am a long way from home," this pathetic missive
concludes, "and am anxious to get there as soon as the nature of the
case will permit. Our situation is quite unpleasant, being destitute of
clothing and most of the necessaries of life, wild meat being our
principal subsistence. I am, reverend father, your strange but real
friend and Christian brother, Jedediah Smith." As a result of this
appeal, the hospitality of the mission was somewhat grudgingly extended
to the Americans, who were by this time in the most desperate condition.
Hardships that would kill ordinary men were but unpleasant incidents in
the lives of the pioneers, however, and in a few weeks they were as fit
as ever to resume their journey. But, upon thinking the matter over,
Smith decided that he would never be content if he went back without
having found out what lay still farther to the northward, for in him was
the insatiable curiosity and the indomitable spirit of the born
explorer. But as his force, as well as his resources, had become sadly
depleted, he felt it imperative that he should first return to Salt Lake
and bring on the men, horses, and provisions he had left there.
Accordingly, leaving most of his party in camp at San Jose, he set out
with only two companions, recrossed the Sierra at one of its highest
points (the place he crossed is where the railway comes through to-day)
and after several uncomfortably narrow escapes from landslides and from
Indians, eventually reached the camp on Great Salt Lake, where he found
that his people had long since given him and his companions up for dead.
Breaking camp on a July morning, in 1827, Smith, with eighteen men and
two women, turned his face once more toward California. To avoid the
snows of the high Sierras, he chose the route he had taken on his first
journey, reaching the desert country to the north of the Colorado River
in early August. It was not until the party had penetrated too far into
the desert to retreat that they found that the whole country was burnt
up. For several days they pushed on in the hope of finding water. Across
the yellow sand wastes they would sight the sparkle of a crystal lake,
and would hasten toward it as fast as their jaded animals could carry
them, only to find that it was a mirage. Then the horrors preliminary to
death by thirst began: the animals, their blackened tongues protruding
from their mouths, staggered and fell, and rose no more; the women grew
delirious and babbled incoherent nothings; even the hardiest of the men
stumbled as they marched, or tried to frighten away by shouts and
gestures the fantastic shapes which danced before them. At last there
came a morning when they could go no farther. Such of them as still
retained their faculties felt that it was the end--that is, all but
Jedediah Smith. He was of the breed which does not know the meaning of
defeat, because they are never defeated until they are dead. Loading
himself with the empty water-bottles, he set out alone into the desert,
determined to follow one of the numerous buffalo trails, for he knew
that sooner or later it must lead him to water of some sort, even if to
nothing more than a buffalo-wallow. Racked with the fever of thirst, his
legs shaking from exhaustion, he plodded on, under the pitiless sun,
mile after mile, hour after hour, until, struggling to the summit of a
low divide, he saw the channel of a stream in the valley beneath him.
The expedition was saved. Stumbling and sliding down the slope in his
haste to quench his intolerable thirst, he came to a sudden halt on the
river-bank. It was nothing but an empty watercourse into which he was
staring--the river had run dry! The shock of such a disappointment would
have driven most men stark, staring mad. Only for a moment, however, was
the veteran frontiersman staggered; he knew the character of many
streams in the West--that often their waters run underground a few feet
below the surface, and in a moment he was on his knees digging
frantically in the soft sand. Soon the sand began to grow moist, and
then the coveted water slowly began to filter upward into the little
excavation he had hollowed. Throwing himself flat on the ground, he
buried his burning face in the muddy water--and as he did so a shower of
arrows whistled about him. A war-party of Comanches, unobserved, had
followed and surrounded him. He had but exchanged the danger of death by
thirst for the far more dreadful fate of death by torture. Though struck
by several of the arrows, he held the Indians off until he had filled
his water-bottles; then, retreating slowly, taking advantage of every
particle of cover, as only a veteran plainsman can, blazing away with
his unerring rifle whenever an Indian was incautious enough to show a
portion of his figure, Smith succeeded in getting back to his companions
with the precious water. With their dead animals for breastworks, the
pioneers succeeded in holding the Indians at bay for six-and-thirty
hours, but on the second night the redskins, heavily reinforced, rushed
them in the night, ten of the men and the two women being killed in the
hand-to-hand fight which ensued, and the few horses which remained alive
being stampeded. I rather imagine that the women were shot by their own
husbands, for the women of the frontier always preferred death to
capture by these fiends in paint and feathers.
How Smith, calling all his craft and experience as a plainsman to his
assistance, managed to lead his eight surviving companions through the
encircling Indians by night, and how, wounded, horseless, and
provisionless as they were, he succeeded in guiding them across the
ranges to San Bernardino, is but another example of this forgotten
hero's courage and resource. Having lost everything that he possessed,
for the whole of his scanty savings had been invested in the ill-fated
expedition, Smith, with such of his men as were strong enough to
accompany him, set out to rejoin the party he had left some months
previously at Mission San Jose. Scarcely had he set foot within that
settlement, however, before he was arrested and taken under escort to
Monterey, where he was taken before the governor, who, he found to his
surprise and dismay, was no other than his old enemy of San Diego, Don
Jose Echeandia. This time nothing would convince Echeandia that Smith
was not the leader of an expedition which had territorial designs on
California, and he promptly ordered him to be taken to prison and kept
in solitary confinement as a dangerous conspirator. Thereupon Smith
resorted to the same expedient he had used so successfully, and begged
the captains of the American vessels in the harbor of Monterey for
protection. So forcible were their representations that Echeandia
finally agreed to release Smith on his swearing to leave California for
good and all. To this proposal Smith willingly agreed and took the oath
required of him, but, upon being released from prison, was astounded to
learn that the governor had given orders that he must set out
alone--that his hunters would not be permitted to accompany him. His and
their protestations were disregarded. Smith must start at once and
unaccompanied. He was given a horse and saddle, provisions, blankets, a
rifle--and nothing more. It was a sentence of death which Echeandia had
had pronounced on this American frontiersman, and both he and Smith knew
it. Without having committed any crime--unless it was a crime to be an
American--Jedediah Smith was driven out of the territory of a supposedly
friendly nation, and told that he was at perfect liberty to make his way
across two thousand miles of wilderness to the nearest American
outpost--if he could.
Striking back into that range of the Sierras which lies southeast of
Fresno, Smith succeeded in crossing them for a fourth time, evidently
intending to make his way back to his old stamping-ground on the Great
Salt Lake. Our knowledge of what occurred after he had crossed the
ranges for the last time is confined to tales told to the settlers in
later years by the Indians. While emerging from the terrible Death
Valley, where hundreds of emigrants were to lose their lives during the
rush to the gold-fields a quarter of a century later, he was attacked at
a water-hole by a band of Indians. For many years afterward the
Comanches were wont to tell with admiration how this lone pale-face,
coming from out of the setting sun, had knelt behind his dead horse and
held them off with his deadly rifle all through one scorching summer's
day. But when nightfall came they crept up very silently under cover of
the darkness and rushed him. His scalp was very highly valued, for it
had cost the lives of twelve Comanche braves.
But Jedediah Smith did not die in vain. Tales of the rich and virgin
country which he had found beyond the ranges flew as though with wings
across the land; soon other pioneers made their way over the mountains
by the trails which he had blazed; long wagon-trains crawled westward
by the routes which he had taken; strange bands of horsemen pitched
their tents in the valleys where he had camped. The mission bells grew
silent; the monk in his woollen robe and the _caballero_ in his
gold-laced jacket passed away; settlements of hardy, energetic,
nasal-voiced folk from beyond the Sierras sprang up everywhere. Then one
day a new flag floated over the presidio in Monterey--a flag that was
not to be pulled down. The American republic had reached the western
ocean, and thus was fulfilled the dream of Jedediah Smith, the man who
showed the way.