THE LOST PERIOD.
As footprints on the sands of the ocean's beach are blotted out by
winds and waves, so a Chapter of Colorado's History has been torn from
its pages and can never be reproduced--the hunter and trapper.
Exploring parties sent out by the Government were required to make
careful observations, and a minute record of all they saw. It is by
this we can follow them through their wanderings amidst primeval
scenes, and can picture them moving slowly over the plains, solitary
or in little groups, struggling forward, often hungry, lame, sick and
desolate. But there will ever remain an untold story of those early
times; as it can never be written by the hands long stilled, nor ever
spoken by the lips long silenced. In that buried period are blended
the romance, tragedy and adventures of the hunters and trappers who
frequented Colorado in the beginning of the last century. They were
few in number, mostly of French extraction, with St. Louis as their
home. They were a type whose like will never be seen again, for the
reasons for their existing can never again be duplicated. They were
Indian Traders, who went at first to the outskirts of civilization,
exchanging inexpensive articles for the rich furs of the Indians. As
their acquaintance grew with the natives, they crowded into the
Indians' country, and following the streams, took the otter and beaver
at first hand. Because of their being so few in number, they were
rarely molested; then, too, they were a medium by which the natives
could realize on their furs, pittance though it was.
Some of these trappers would remain out on their expeditions for
several years at a time, often living with the Indians and adopting
their ways. As their clothes fell to pieces from age and use, they
would replenish from the primitive blanket costumes of the Indians,
whom in time they came to resemble. Often they would marry Indian
wives and settle down to the nomadic life of the aborigines. Sometimes
there would crowd upon them such stirring memories of the experiences
they had once enjoyed, that the wives and children would be left to
tears and loneliness, while the trapper with his face set toward the
East, with his pack on his back, would tramp to the settlements,
sometimes to remain, sometimes to return. We know some of the men who
visited the mountains and streams of Colorado; knowledge of their
presence here has floated down to us in various ways. When Major Long
came on his exploring trip in 1819, he secured as guides two French
Trappers, then living with the tribe of Pawnee Indians in southeastern
Nebraska, who had trapped in the region of the Rocky Mountains.
James Pursley was here in 1805 and traded among the Indians;
Lieutenant Pike in his report, speaks of him as the first white man
who ever crossed the plains. He made the first discovery of gold in
Colorado, which he found at the foot of Lincoln Mountain, doubtless at
Fairplay on the Platte River, where once extensive placer diggings
existed. As late as 1875, the Company operating there had a large
number of Chinamen at work. The immense grass-grown gulch, wide and
deep and long, at the edge of Fairplay, is the excavation out of which
hundreds of thousands of dollars were taken. Colorado has done well to
commemorate the name of Abraham Lincoln in one of its loftiest
mountains.
A Frenchman named La Lande was sent out by an Illinois merchant in
1804, to make an investigation of the country and report. He came
along the Platte Valley, crossed over to Santa Fe, where he concluded
to remain. There was a party of French Trappers known to have been
here about 1800 who went South into Arizona, in search of untouched
territory to ply their avocation. Philip Covington in 1827 passed up
the Cache La Poudre Valley with a pack train, on his way to Green
River with supplies. He returned in 1828 and established a colony of
trappers at La Porte, one of the oldest settlements in Colorado, and
which is located near Ft. Collins. He was in the employ of the
American Fur Company.
[Illustration: The Trapper.]
The trappers would often go alone into these vast solitudes, with pack
horses to carry their supplies in, and their furs but. Sometimes they
would die in their lonely retreats, and never be heard of again, only
as some sign of the fate that had overtaken them would be found years
later. After a time, there were wagon routes of travel along the
Arkansas River, with a trading post at Fort Bent and one at Santa Fe;
also up the South Platte River, with trading centers at Ft. St. Vrain
and at Ft. Lupton; and up the North Platte River, with the business
centering at Ft. Laramie. Sometimes trappers who were brought out in
the freighting wagons in the Spring from St. Louis by the Fur-Trading
Companies, would be left with supplies along the streams, and in the
Fall they would be picked up and taken with their peltries back to St.
Louis.
The Astor Trail was made in 1810 through South Dakota west to the
Coast. A great impetus was given to the fur business by the Lewis and
Clark Exploring Party in 1804. They opened up the first Coast to Coast
trail, and were the first white men to cross the Continent between the
British operations on the North, and the Spanish on the South. Lewis
had been President Jefferson's Private Secretary, and Captain Clark
was his friend. They traveled eighty-five hundred miles, and they
nationalized the fur business which grew to such proportions that
years after they had opened up the line of travel, we were selling in
London, alone, two million one hundred and seventy thousand furs
annually. The rich peltries then were what gold and silver were later,
and what grain, alfalfa, fruit, sugar beets and potatoes are now, and
will be as long as water, soil, and sunshine blend. Buffalo and otter
skins brought in the western market three dollars each; beaver skins
four dollars; coon and muskrat twenty-five cents; deer skins
thirty-eight cents per pound.
The early trappers could have been of inestimable benefit to the
Government, had they been called upon to help solve the perplexing
Indian problems that for so many years confronted us. They knew the
Indians, their languages, habits and customs; and had their knowledge
and influence with the natives been utilized, we might have peaceably
settled many of the difficulties that required the sacrifice of so
many lives and the unnecessary expenditure of so much money.
The fur industry, however, depended upon the keen perception of an
awkward, unlettered, German boy for its growth and quick development.
He came to London from Germany, with his bundle under his arm, to help
in his brother's music store. John Jacob Ashdoer was his name, which
by evolution became "Astor." With great frugality and unceasing
industry, he saved enough in two years to pay his passage on a sailing
ship to America, and there was enough left of his little hoard to buy
seven flutes of his uncle, his sole stock in trade. When he reached
this country, he traded one of his flutes for some furs; and that
particular flute, and those particular furs, made history. It turned
his attention to the fur trade, and laid the foundation for the
greatest landed estate in America. With his pack on his back, he
traveled among the Indian tribes of the Eastern States, and got their
furs in exchange for gaudy trinkets, such as beads and ribbons. He
personally took the furs to London, so as to realize the highest
possible price for them and rapidly grew rich. In 1800 when he had
only been in this country fifteen years, he was clearing fifty
thousand dollars on a single trip of one of his sailing vessels.
It was at this time that Astor founded Astoria as a fur trading point,
on the Columbia River, expecting to operate by ship, as well as
freighting overland by the way of Ft. Laramie, and thus control the
fur traffic along the tributary rivers. The destruction of Astoria by
the British kept him from realizing his dream of becoming "the richest
man in the world." Washington Irving and John Jacob Astor were
friends, and the latter placed in Irving's hands all the records of
his Company's operations, from which Irving gathered much interesting
data, and many thrilling experiences from the lives of the early
trappers and hunters. He wrote "Astoria" as a compliment to his
friend. In this book he pictures the Rocky Mountains as having an
elevation in places of twenty-five thousand feet, but frankly states
that it is only conjecture, since their altitude had never been
measured. The average height of the Rocky Mountains exceed that of the
famous Alps, a number of the noted peaks being above thirteen thousand
feet.
Some of Irving's interesting and pleasing prophecies of our country
follow:
"It is a region almost as vast and trackless as the ocean, and at the
time of which we treat, but little known, excepting through the vague
accounts of Indian hunters. A part of their route would lay across an
immense tract, stretching North and South for hundreds of miles along
the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and drained by the tributaries of the
Missouri and the Mississippi. This region, which resembles one of the
immeasurable steppes of Asia, has not inaptly been termed 'The Great
American Desert.' It spreads forth into undulating and trackless
plains and desolate sandy wastes, wearisome to the eye from their
extent and monotony, and which are supposed by geologists to have
formed the ancient floor of the ocean, countless ages since, when its
primeval waves beat against the granite bases of the Rocky Mountains.
"It is a land where no man permanently abides; for, in certain seasons
of the year, there is no food, either for the hunter or his steed. The
herbage is parched and withered; the brooks and streams are dried up;
the buffalo, the elk and the deer have wandered to distant parts,
keeping within the verge of expiring verdure, and leaving behind them
a vast uninhabited solitude, seamed by ravines, the beds of former
torrents, but now serving only to tantalize and increase the thirst of
the traveler. Such is the nature of this immense wilderness of the far
West, which apparently defies cultivation, and the habitation of
civilized life * * * Here may spring up new and mongrel races * * *
Some may gradually become pastoral hordes, like those rude and
migratory people, half shepherd, half warrior, who, with their flocks
and herds, roam the plains of Upper Asia; but, others, it is to be
apprehended, will become predatory bands, mounted on the fleet steeds
of the prairies, with the open plains for their marauding ground, and
the mountains for their retreats and lurking places. Here they may
resemble those great hordes of the North; 'Gog and Magog with their
bands,' that haunted the gloomy imaginations of the prophets, 'A great
Company and a mighty host all riding upon horses, and warring upon
those nations which were at rest, and dwelt peaceably, and had gotten
cattle and goods.'"