GENERAL FREMONT AND THE MORMONS.
_John C. Fremont._
[Sidenote: 1842]
This noted explorer so prominently identified with our early Colorado
history, was educated at Charleston College. He then became a teacher
on a United States Sloop of War on board of which was detailed a young
Lieutenant who later became famous as Admiral Farragut. Afterwards,
Fremont was employed as a surveyor for a railroad in South Carolina.
In 1838 he was made a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Topographical
Corps--the same corps that gave us Major Long. He was selected to make
a trip of geographical research and observation into Iowa, Minnesota
and Dakota with a noted French Scientist named Nicollet, who had been
sent to this country by his Government. In 1840 Fremont headed an
expedition for the establishment of Military Posts in the West, and to
definitely fix the position of South Pass on the head waters of the
North Platte River, which was on the line of travel to the western
coast. He was a long time getting ready, and did not leave Washington
for St. Louis until May 2, 1842, from which point he took a public
steamer up the Missouri River. On board he met Kit Carson, with whose
personality he was so pleased that he dismissed the French trapper he
had already engaged as guide, and selected Carson instead. Carson was
then on his way back to the West, from having given his little girl
into the care of the Sisters at a Convent in St. Louis; her mother,
who was an Indian woman, having recently died. They left the steamer
at the mouth of the Kansas River, which empties into the Missouri
where Kansas City is now located. It was then a little settlement of a
few rude houses, known as Kansas Landing, and later became Westport. A
little way above was Roubidoux Landing, named for a French Fur Trapper
and Trader who operated in Colorado. This Landing afterwards became
St. Joseph. Fremont says, as they started out across the prairie to
the westward, "It was like a ship leaving the shore for a long voyage,
and carrying with her provisions against all needs in its isolation on
the ocean."
[Illustration: A Government Scout.]
They traveled northwest until they reached the Platte River where the
City of Kearney is now situated, near which a Fort was established,
called "Fort Kearney." From this point they proceeded west along the
south bank of that stream, one hundred miles to the junction of the
two Platte Rivers. Here they divided, Fremont with three others
following the South Platte, the remaining nine going by way of the
North Platte to the fur-trading station that later became Fort
Laramie, at which point the Laramie River joins the Platte. On the
way, Fremont was entertained one night by the Indians at a feast. It
was a banquet with no suggestion of fairyland, such as so often
delights us now; no subdued strains from a hidden orchestra pouring
forth its entrancing harmonies; no myriads of electric lights dazzling
with their splendid brilliancy; no wealth of roses filling the air
with their rich perfume; no polished mahogany, damask linen, glowing
glassware or priceless silver; no well groomed men or richly gowned
women, radiant in their loveliness. There were none of these
accessories, but there was princely hospitality. There was the
ushering of the guests to their places by the Chiefs, with the courtly
dignity that white men might equal but never excel. In honor of the
occasion the choicest robes were spread upon the ground for seats.
There was the rich soup of fat buffalo meat and rice, served in deep
wooden bowls, with tin spoons, by the women. There was the dog boiling
in the pot for the second course, in token of a state occasion, while
the disconsolate puppies moaned pitifully in the corner of the wigwam.
On July 10th Fremont reached Fort St. Vrain on the Platte, established
about ten miles south of where the Cache la Poudre River and the
Platte unite. He remained here a few days and then headed north to
Fort Laramie, getting too far East, however, over on Crow Creek, where
he had to travel forty miles without water--the first and only
hardship on his trip going and coming. He found the rest of the party
waiting for him, and they proceeded west up the Platte to the South
Pass, the point of his destination when he started from Washington. He
found the Pass a well-established thoroughfare, made so by the
fur-trading companies. He ascertained its height to be seven thousand
eight hundred and seventy-three feet. There was no pass anywhere about
of so low an altitude. It is about two hundred miles due west of Fort
Laramie--which is not, however, the Laramie City located on the Union
Pacific Railroad northwest of Cheyenne.
Fremont saw to the perpetuation of his name in the highest mountain
peak, about forty miles northwest of the Pass, and just east of Green
River, having an elevation of thirteen thousand seven hundred and
ninety feet. He then started on his return to St. Louis, where he
arrived October 10, 1842, his journey both ways being without special
value or interest.
Fremont's second trip was made in 1843, and seems to have been
principally for the purpose of establishing a shorter route through
the mountains than the Oregon Trail by the way of South Pass. He came
in from the east, up one of the branches of the Republican River to
Fort St. Vrain on the Platte, where he arrived July Fourth. On his way
he no doubt approached the Platte between Akron and Fort Morgan, where
there is a Butte named for him. He tried to learn from the hunters,
trappers and Indians, of a trail west through the great range of
mountains, but there was no one who could give him any information.
Following the Platte from Fort St. Vrain, he reports finding a Fort
Lancaster about ten miles up the river, which was the trading post of
Mr. Lupton and had then somewhat the appearance of a farm. He passed
through a village of Arapahoe Indians, probably near the mouth of
Clear Creek, camped a little above Cherry Creek, and followed the
Platte River to its entrance into the mountains at the canon. Needing
meat, he went east on to the plains in search of buffalo; crossed
Cherry Creek and the road to Bent's Fort; reached Bijou Creek, thence
up to its head on the divide where he reported an elevation of
seventy-five hundred feet--being the same altitude as at Palmer Lake,
twenty-three miles west. Altitudinal ascertainings are taken by the
simple process of looking at a watchlike, vest-pocket instrument,
whose delicately adjusted mechanism is affected by air-pressure. From
this place, he made a sketch of Pike's Peak, and is "charmed with the
view of the valley of Fountain Creek," on which Manitou and Colorado
Springs are located, and which he reached a little north of its
junction with the Arkansas River. He speaks of finding at this point a
"Pueblo" where a settlement of mountaineers were living, married to
Spanish wives, "who had collected together and occupied themselves
with farming, and a desultory Indian trade." They had come from the
Taos Valley settlements, the Valley that was later named the Rio
Grande. "Pueblo" was the name given by the Mexicans to their civilized
villages. Taos is taken from the name of the Taos tribe of Indians.
Returning he followed up Fountain Creek to Manitou Springs, thence
north over the Divide to Fort St. Vrain.
Fremont then decided to go up the Cache la Poudre Valley and cross the
Divide to the Laramie River. He describes the buttes he saw on this
trip "with their sharp points and green colors"; the same so clearly
defined now, on the automobile road beyond Dale Creek, between Fort
Collins and Laramie City, one of the most picturesque scenes in the
whole State of Colorado. He followed the Laramie River down to the
present line of the Union Pacific Railroad, then west to the North
Platte River and beyond, where, getting tangled up in the hills, he
finally recognized the Sweetwater Mountains to the north to which he
proceeded; thence to the familiar Oregon Trail which he followed to
Salt Lake and on to California.
On his return he entered Colorado near the mouth of Green River, went
northeast and encountered some branch of the White River, possibly the
Snake River, which he followed over the Divide to the North Platte
River, and thence up into North Park. While in Middle Park, a number
of squaws came to his camp greatly excited and made known the fact
that nearby a great battle was in progress between two Indian tribes,
and they wanted him to go with his party to help their side. He
declined and hurriedly departed. He passed over into the Cripple Creek
country, where after a few days of aimless traveling he descended a
branch of the Arkansas River to Pueblo.
Fremont's memoirs are very rambling, and contain such a mass of
undigested material that it requires much reading and study to follow
him in his wanderings through Colorado. The streams, mountains and
localities had no names, and he gave them none. We can only trace his
journeyings by his camping places where he gives his latitudes and
longitudes, and which is only incidentally given and not in its
regular order. He ascertained latitude and longitude by the use of a
scientific instrument in its application to the sun, moon and fixed
stars, as the Indians often found their own locations by the study of
these same heavenly bodies, from centuries of observation without an
instrument, the knowledge being passed down from father to son,
generation after generation.
On one of his trips, as he came in sight of Bent's Fort, the three
cannon mounted on its parapets, belched forth a greeting that sounded
sweet to the ears of the trained soldier, as the reverberating music
of the booming of the guns rolled down the Valley of the Arkansas to
meet him.
A storm in the mountains is a frightful thing in winter and more than
one was encountered by General Fremont and his party. A number of the
men sacrificed their lives through the mistaken judgment of a leader,
who ordered them forward to breast the fury of those icy blasts of
snow and sleet. Oh! The terror of such a death! The awe of those cold,
bleak, snow-capped pinnacles; how cruelly they look down upon the lost
and helpless victim, prostrate at their feet, snow-bound, hopeless and
in despair! How subtly and menacingly the sharp wind moans; how it
shrieks and roars through the gulches, and how the giant pines creak,
and writhe, and groan, as they bend before the gale! How the blinding,
biting, swirling snow falls through the freezing air, burying the
trail and filling the icy gorges with ever deepening drifts! And at
last, the shivering sufferer meets his doom as he sinks in utter
exhaustion on his bed of snow, and drifts away into the stupor of
death. The inanimate form is buried deeper and deeper under its white
shroud, and heedless of the tempest raging above, sleeps the sound,
dreamless sleep of death.
Fremont tells little of his last three trips; some being on secret
missions for the Government; one was for his own benefit and that of
Senator Benton of Missouri, whose daughter, Jessie Benton, he had
married--a lady of many fine womanly qualities and personal charms. On
one of his trips, William Gilpin was along, on a visit to the
settlements of Oregon. Gilpin later became Colorado's first Governor.
One expedition took him up the Rio Grande to Salt Lake and on to the
Coast.
[Illustration: Indians Watching Fremont's Force Fording the Platte.]
When representing the Government, Fremont's work was along military
lines principally, his operations leading up to the conquest of
California in 1847. The name California appears in an old Spanish
romance as an Island, where innumerable precious stones were found,
and Cortez applied the name to the Bay and to the country that is now
California which he thought was an Island. Fremont's work, however,
was not all military, for at the same time he was mapping streams,
taking altitudes, and making reports that would assist in ascertaining
facts about a country then little known or understood. Colorado has a
County named for him, of which Canon City is the County Seat. There
are Counties in Wyoming, Idaho and Iowa, similarly named. Eighteen
states of the union have towns bearing his name. "Fremont Basin"
covers the western part of Utah, all of Nevada, and a part of the
southeastern portion of California--in all, a region about four
hundred and fifty miles square. "Fremont Pass" in the Rocky Mountains
has an elevation of eleven thousand three hundred and thirteen feet
and is in the Gore Range, about ten miles northwest of Leadville.
General Fremont occupied many positions of trust under the Government.
He was Governor of California when there was much trouble that
diplomacy might have averted. He was Governor of Arizona from 1878 to
1882. His exploring trips had made him famous and he secured the
Republican nomination for the Presidency in 1856, but was defeated by
Buchanan. In 1864 his name was put in nomination for the Presidency
but Lincoln's popularity so overshadowed him that his name was
withdrawn. He was Major-General of the Army in the Civil War, with
headquarters at St. Louis, where he promulgated the unauthorized order
freeing the slaves of those in arms against the Government, which so
embarrassed the Administration that the order was repealed and he was
relieved of his authority. Later, reinstated, he refused to take part
in a battle because command of the army had been given to General Pope
whom he claimed to outrank.
Fremont journeyed all over Colorado and failed to find anything worthy
of note. While camped on the sites of Cripple Creek and Leadville, he
saw no signs of the enormous gold deposits of the greatest gold mines
in Colorado. While at North Park he did not observe the coal
outcroppings there--probably the most extensive coal fields in the
United States. While traveling through our valleys he could not look
into the future and see them groaning under a diversity of crops, the
most valuable ever raised in any country. He drank from our cool
sparkling streams, but he did not see how that wealth of water could
be supplied to the thirsty crops. He saw millions of fat buffalo on
the plains, but he failed to realize that the same nutritious grasses
would make beef equal to the corn-fed product of the East. He viewed
the most sublime scenery ever looked upon by the eyes of man, but his
reports contained no adequate description of the majestic outlines of
the mountains whose grandeur thrills the beholders from all the
countries of the world.
_The Mormons._
[Sidenote: 1847]
The Mormons as a religious body, attempting to get beyond the reach of
the power of the United States Government which they claimed was
persecuting them, sought solace in the bosom of the Dominion of
Mexico, which then owned much of our country west of the Rocky
Mountains, wrested by them from Spain in their war for freedom. At
this very time the United States was fighting Mexico, and the Mormons
had no more than gotten out of the United States before they were in
again by Mexico ceding to our Government in 1848, the very territory
which these much persecuted people had chosen for a new settlement.
The Mormons had gathered from all quarters at Florence, Nebraska, just
above Omaha, where the water works of that City are now located. They
had wintered at this point in great discomfort, with much sickness,
and so many deaths that the country seemed to be one vast grave yard.
In January, 1847, Brigham Young started West with one hundred and
forty-two in his party to find a location to which the rest should
follow. They had seventy-three wagons which moved two abreast for
protection, and they had a cannon and were well armed. They reported
seeing hundreds of thousands of buffalo grazing along the Platte
Valley, and were obliged to send outriders ahead to make a way through
the herds for their caravan. They traveled on the north side of the
Platte River so as to have an exclusive trail of their own, and it
became known as the "Mormon Trail"; the fur traders having made their
trail along the south side of that river. When they reached Fort
Laramie, they ferried across to the south side of the river where the
Government Post had been located; the change from the north to the
south side being necessary because of the physical difficulties on the
side of the river where they had been traveling. Here on June 1, 1847,
they were joined by a party of Mormons who had started from
Mississippi and Illinois; had wintered where Pueblo now is; had passed
north through Colorado, and doubtless over the ground occupied by
Denver following the Platte River to Greeley where they would travel
almost due north to Fort Laramie. These Mormons at Pueblo were the
very beginning of anything approaching white citizenship in Colorado,
for no other white families had ever spent so long a time within the
present limits of our State.
General Fremont had passed by Salt Lake in 1843 on one of his
expeditions, and doubtless the Mormons knew of that Valley from his
report as well as of other points of the West. But the Mormons did not
know where they were going to settle, and had started north-westerly
from South Pass in search of a location and then turned to the south
to Salt Lake Valley. Upon their arrival there, the first day, they
planted six acres of potatoes because of the necessity of having food
for the vast numbers who were to follow them. The rest of the people
started from Florence July 4, 1847, and consisted of nearly two
thousand persons, about six hundred wagons, over two thousand oxen,
and many horses, cows, sheep, hogs and chickens. Following later, came
hundreds with push carts, who started too late to get through before
winter set in. Their suffering, starving, sickness, and the death of
nearly a quarter of their number on the way is a sad story, and is the
toll exacted in the settling of a new country.
For many months, the Mormon Trail was lined with the traffic of
thousands of emigrants from all parts of the United States and Europe.
There were wagon trains hauling supplies of all kinds, such as
merchandise, machinery, seed and building materials. There were the
two-wheeled carts into which food and a small allowance of necessary
apparel were placed for the trip; and those carts were pushed all the
way across the plains by both old and young. It was said that every
step of the way was marked by a grave. No such sight and no such
suffering has ever been witnessed before in the settlement of any part
of the world.
Ten years afterwards, the Church, grown arrogant, defied the power of
the United States Government and proposed war. General Albert Sidney
Johnson was sent on an expedition against them. Starting too late to
cross the mountains, the army became storm bound and was compelled to
winter at Fort Bridger in the southwest corner of Wyoming, at a
tremendous loss of lives, both of men and horses. They were short of
supplies, and an expedition was sent to New Mexico for food. It was
successful, and returned north through Colorado, skirting the eastern
base of the mountains and, no doubt, passed through the site of Denver
just before the gold excitement broke out in Colorado. They doubtless
followed the trail taken by Fremont to Fort Laramie in 1842, and by
the Mormons in 1847.
[Sidenote: 1849]
The rush for the new gold discoveries in California began in 1849 and
in a year it became a panic, so great was the hurry to reach there
from the East. It is estimated that seventeen thousand persons passed
Fort Laramie in June, 1848, coming up the Platte from Omaha; while
from Kansas City, Leavenworth and St. Joseph, many thousands passed
through southeastern Colorado on the Santa Fe Trail, and thence to
Salt Lake where the Mormons grew rich in their trade with these
excited gold seekers. Nothing has ever been seen resembling the gold
developments of California. Fortunes were made in a day when a
treasure house was unlocked, and poverty claimed the affluent in a
night, when a pocket pinched out. The wealth that was poured into the
laps of the fortunate prospectors was fabulous. The Comstock Mine
alone, named for the man who opened it up and lost it, yielded a solid
mass of treasure, amounting to one hundred and eight million dollars
to the four fortunate owners. It sent to the United States Senate,
Fair, Stewart and Jones, three of the partners, and gave the Atlantic
Cable Line to Mackey, the fourth, whose son still controls it.
So, having been discovered by General Coronado and his army with their
brilliant cavalcade and martial music; by the two black-robed Friars
with their noiseless followers; by Lieutenant Pike and his loyal band;
by Major Long and his associates; and last, by General Fremont with
his five exploring parties; while the tidal wave of travel and
excitement is sweeping by us to its destiny on the sunny western
slope, and we are left in solitude, awaiting the bright awakening ten
years hence; let us take an introspective view of the people whose
history is forever interwoven with ours, whose race is nearly run,
while ours is just begun.
[Illustration:
Ventura, Historian of the Tribe of Taos Indians, Garbed in His
White Buffalo Robe--Made White by Tanning.
Indian History was Transmitted Orally to the Youth, the
Brightest of Whom Became in Turn the Historian.]