Fort William--its Structure, Owners, People, Animals,
Business, Adventures, and Hazards--A Division--A March--Fort
el Puebla--Trappers and Whisky--A Genius--An Adventurous
Iroquois--A Kentuckian--Horses and Servant--A Trade--A
Start--Arkansas and Country--Wolfano Mountains--Creeks--Rio
Wolfano--A Plague of Egypt--Cordilleras--James's Peak--Pike's
Peak--A Bath--The Prison of the Arkansas--Entrance of the Rocky
Mountains--A Vale.
Fort William, or Bent's Fort, on the north side of the Arkansas, eighty
miles north by east from Taos in the Mexican dominions, and about one
hundred and sixty miles from the mountains, was erected by gentlemen
owners in 1832, for purposes of trade with the Spaniards of Santa Fé
and Taos, and the Eutaw, Cheyenne and Cumanche Indians. It is in the
form of a parallelogram, the northern and southern sides of which are
about a hundred and fifty feet, and the eastern and western a hundred
feet in length. The walls are six or seven feet in thickness at the
base, and seventeen or eighteen feet in height. The fort is entered
through {174} a large gateway on the eastern side, in which swing a
pair of immense plank doors. At the north-west and south-east corners
stand two cylindrical bastions, about ten feet in diameter and thirty
feet in height.
These are properly perforated for the use of cannon and small arms;
and command the fort and the plains around it. The interior area is
divided into two parts. The one and the larger of them occupies the
north-eastern portion. It is nearly a square. A range of two-story
houses, the well, and the blacksmith's shop are on the north side; on
the west and south are ranges of one-story houses; on the east the
blacksmith's shop, the gate and the outer wall. This is the place of
business. Here the owners and their servants have their sleeping and
cooking apartments, and here are the storehouses. In this area the
Indians in the season of trade gather in large numbers and barter,
and trade, and buy, under the guardianship of the carronades of the
bastions loaded with grape, and looking upon them. From this area a
passage leads between the eastern outer wall and the one-story houses,
to the caral or cavy-yard, which occupies the remainder of the space
within the walls. This is the {175} place for the horses, mules, &c.,
to repose in safety from Indian depredations at night. Beyond the
caral to the west and adjoining the wall, is the waggon-house. It is
strongly built, and large enough to shelter twelve or fifteen of those
large vehicles which are used in conveying the peltries to St. Louis,
and goods thence to the post. The long drought of summer renders it
necessary to protect them from the sun.
The walls of the fort, its bastions and houses, are constructed
of adobies or unburnt bricks, cemented together with a mortar of
clay. The lower floors of the building are made of clay, a little
moistened and beaten hard with large wooden mallets; the upper floors
of the two-story houses and the roofs of all are made in the same
way and of the same material, and are supported by heavy transverse
timbers covered with brush. The tops of the houses being flat and
gravelled, furnish a fine promenade in the moonlight evenings of that
charming climate. The number of men employed in the business of this
establishment is supposed to be about sixty. Fifteen or twenty of
them in charge of one of the owners, are employed in taking to market
the buffalo robes, &c., which are gathered at the fort, {176} and in
bringing back with them new stocks of goods for future purchases.
Another party is employed in hunting buffalo meat in the neighbouring
plains; and another in guarding the animals while they cut their daily
food on the banks of the river. Others, under command of an experienced
trader, goes into some distant Indian camp to trade. One or more of
the owners, and one or another of these parties which chances to be at
the post, defend it and trade, keep the books of the company, &c. Each
of these parties encounters dangers and hardships, from which persons
within the borders of civilization would shrink.
The country in which the fort is situated is in a manner the common
field of several tribes, unfriendly alike to one another and the
whites. The Eutaws and Cheyennes[111] of the mountains near Santa Fé,
and the Pawnees of the great Platte, come to the Upper Arkansas to meet
the buffalo in their annual migrations to the north; and on the trail
of these animals follow up the Cumanches. And thus in the months of
June, August, and September, there are in the neighbourhood of these
traders from fifteen to twenty thousand savages ready and panting for
{177} plunder and blood. If they engage in battling out old causes of
contention among themselves, the Messrs. Bents feel comparatively safe
in their solitary fortress. But if they spare each other's property and
lives, they occasion great anxieties at Fort William; every hour of day
and night is pregnant with danger. These untameable savages may drive
beyond reach the buffalo on which the garrison subsists; may begirt the
fort with their legions, and cut off supplies; may prevent them from
feeding their animals upon the plains; may bring upon them starvation
and the gnawing their own flesh at the door of death! All these are
expectations, which as yet the ignorance alone of the Indians as to the
weakness of the post, prevents from becoming realities. But at what
moment some chieftain or white desperado may give them the requisite
knowledge, is an uncertainty which occasions at Fort William many
well-grounded fears for life and property.
Instances of the daring intrepidity of the Cumanches which occurred
just before and after my arrival here, will serve to show the hazards
and dangers of which I have spoken. About the middle of June, 1839,
a band of sixty of them, under cover of {178} night, crossed the
river, and concealed themselves among the bushes growing thickly on
the bank near the place where the animals of the establishment feed
during the day. No sentinel being on duty at the time, their presence
was unobserved; and when morning came the Mexican horse-guard mounted
his horse, and with the noise and shouting usual with that class of
servants when so employed, drove his charge out of the fort, and riding
rapidly from side to side of the rear of the band, urged them on, and
soon had them nibbling the short dry grass in a little vale within
grape-shot distance of the guns of the bastions. It is customary for a
guard of animals about these trading-posts to take his station beyond
his charge; and if they stray from each other, or attempt to stroll too
far, to drive them together, and thus keep them in the best possible
situation to be hurried hastily to the caral, should the Indians, or
other evil persons, swoop down upon them. As there is constant danger
of this, his horse is held by a long rope and grazes around him, that
he may be mounted quickly, at the first alarm, for a retreat within the
walls. The faithful guard at Bent's, on the morning of the disaster
{179} I am relating, had dismounted after driving out his animals, and
sat upon the ground, watching with the greatest fidelity for every
call of duty, when these fifty or sixty Indians sprang from their
hiding-places, ran upon the animals, yelling horribly, and attempted
to drive them across the river. The guard, however, nothing daunted,
mounted quickly, and drove his horse at full speed among them. The
mules and horses hearing his voice amidst the frightening yells of the
savages, immediately started at a lively pace for the fort; but the
Indians were on all sides, and bewildered them. The guard still pressed
them onward, and called for help; and on they rushed, despite the
efforts of the Indians to the contrary. The battlements were covered
with men. They shouted encouragement to the brave guard--"Onward!
onward!" and the injunction was obeyed. He spurred his horse to his
greatest speed from side to side, and whipped the hindermost of the
band with his leading rope. He had saved every animal; he was within
twenty yards of the open gate; he fell; three arrows from the bows
of the Cumanches had cloven his heart. Relieved of him, the lords of
the quiver gathered {180} their prey, and drove them to the borders
of Texas, without injury to life or limb. I saw this faithful guard's
grave. He had been buried a few days. The wolves had been digging into
it. Thus forty or fifty mules and horses, and their best servant's
life, were lost to the Messrs. Bents in a single day. I have been
informed also that those horses and mules, which my company had taken
great pleasure in recovering for them in the plains, were also stolen
in a similar manner soon after my departure from the post; and that
gentlemen owners were in hourly expectation of an attack upon the fort
itself.
The same liability to the loss of life and property attends the trading
expeditions to the encampments of the tribes.
An anecdote of this service was related to me. An old trapper was
sent from this fort to the Eutaw camp, with a well-assorted stock of
goods, and a body of men to guard it. After a tedious march among the
snows and swollen streams and declivities of the mountain, he came in
sight of the village. It was situated in a sunken valley, among the
hideously dark cliffs of the Eutaw mountains; and so small was it, and
so deep, that the overhanging heights {181} not only protected it from
the blasts of approaching winter, but drew to their frozen embrace the
falling snows, and left this valley its grasses and flowers, while
their own awful heads were glittering with perpetual frosts.
The traders encamped upon a small swell of land that overlooked the
smoking wigwams, and sent a deputation to the chiefs to parley for
the privilege of opening a trade with the tribe. They were received
with great haughtiness by those monarchs of the wilderness, and were
asked "why they had dared to enter the Eutaw mountains without their
permission." Being answered that they "had travelled from the fort
to that place, in order to ask their highnesses' permission to trade
with the Eutaws," the principal chief replied, that no permission
had been given to them to come there, nor to remain. The interview
ended, and the traders returned to their camp with no very pleasant
anticipations as to the result of their expedition. Their baggage was
placed about for breastworks; their animals drawn in nearer, and tied
firmly to stakes; and a patrol guard stationed, as the evening shut in.
Every preparation for the attack, which appeared determined upon on
the part of the Indians, being {182} made, they waited for the first
ray of day--a signal of dreadful havoc among all the tribes--with the
determined anxiety which fills the bosom, sharpens the sight, nerves
the arm, and opens the ear to the slightest rustle of a leaf, so
remarkably, among the grave, self-possessed, and brave traders of the
Great Prairie and Mountain Wilderness.
During the first part of the night the Indians hurrying to and fro
through the village, their war speeches and war dances, and the
painting their faces with red and black, in alternate stripes, and an
occasional scout warily approaching the camp of the whites, indicated
an appetite for a conflict that appeared to fix, with prophetic
certainty, the fate of the traders. Eight hundred Indians to fifty
whites, made fearful odds. The morning light streamed faintly up the
east at last. The traders held their rifles with the grasp of dying
men. Another and another beam kindled on the dark blue vault, and
one by one quenched the stars. The silence of the tomb rested on the
world. They breathed heavily, with teeth set in terrible resolution.
The hour--the moment--had arrived! Behind a projecting ledge, the dusky
forms of three or four hundred Eutaws undulated near the ground, like
herds {183} of bears intent on their prey. They approached the ledge,
and for an instant lay flat on their faces, and motionless. Two or
three of them gently raised their heads high enough to look over upon
the camp of the whites.
The day had broken over half the firmament; the rifles of the traders
were levelled from behind the baggage, and glistened faintly; a
crack--a whoop--a shout--a rout! The scalp of one of the peepers
over the ledge had been bored by the whistling lead from one of
the rifles--the chief warrior had fallen. The Indians retreated to
their camp, and the whites retained their position, each watching
the others movements. The position of the traders was such as could
command the country within long rifle-shot on all sides; the Indians,
therefore, declined an attack. The number of their foes, and perhaps
some prudential consideration as to having an advantageous location,
prevented the traders from making an assault. Well would it have
been for them had they continued to be careful. About nine o'clock,
the warlike appearance gave place to signs of peace. Thirty or forty
unarmed Indians, denuded of clothing and of paint, came towards the
{184} camp of the traders, singing and dancing, and bearing the Sacred
Calumet, or Great Pipe of Peace. A chief bore it who had acted as
lieutenant to the warrior that had been shot. Its red marble bowl, its
stem broad and long, and carved into hieroglyphics of various colours
and significations, and adorned with feathers of beautiful birds,
was soon recognized by the traders, and secured the bearer and his
attendants a reception into their camp. Both parties seated themselves
in a great circle; the pipe was filled with tobacco and herbs from the
venerated medicine bag; the well-kindled coal was reverently placed
upon the bowl; its sacred stem was then turned towards the heavens,
to invite the Great Spirit to the solemn assembly, and to implore his
aid; it was then turned towards the earth, to avert the influence of
malicious demons; it was then borne in a horizontal position, till
it completed a circle, to call to their help in the great smoke, the
beneficent invisible agents which live on the earth, in the waters,
and the upper air; the chief took two whiffs, and blew the smoke
first towards heaven, and then round upon the ground; and so did
others, until all had inhaled the smoke--the breath of Indian {185}
fidelity--and blown it to the earth and heaven, loaded with the pious
vows that are supposed to mingle with it while it curls among the lungs
near the heart. The chief then rose and said, in the Spanish language,
which the Eutaws east of the mountains speak well, "that he was anxious
that peace might be restored between the parties; that himself and
people were desirous that the traders should remain with them; and
that if presents were made to him to the small amount of £140, no
objection would remain to the proposed proceedings of the whites; but
on no account could they enter the Eutaw country without paying tribute
in some form. They were in the Eutaw country, the tribute was due,
they had killed a Eutaw chief, and the blood of a chief was due; but
that the latter could be compromised by a prompt compliance with his
proposition in regard to the presents."
The chief trader was explicit in his reply. "That he had come into the
country to sell goods, not to give them away; that no tribute could
be paid to him or to any other Eutaw; and that if fighting were a
desideratum with the chief and his people, he would do his part to make
{186} it sufficiently lively to be interesting." The council broke up
tumultuously. The Indians carried back the wampum belts to their camp,
held war councils, and whipt and danced around posts painted red, and
recounted their deeds of valour, and showed high in air, as they leaped
in the frenzy of mimic warfare, the store of scalps that garnished the
doors of the family lodges; and around their camp-fires the following
night were seen features distorted with the most ghastly wrath. Indeed,
the savages appeared resolved to destroy the whites. And as they were
able, by their superior numbers to do so, it was deemed advisable to
get beyond their reach, with all practicable haste.
At midnight, therefore, when the fires had smouldered low, the traders
saddled in silent haste, bound their bales upon their pack-mules, and
departed while the wolves were howling the hour; and succeeded by the
dawn of day in reaching a gorge where they had expected the Indians (if
they had discovered their departure in season to reach it) would oppose
their retreat. On reconnoitering, however, it was found clear; and
with joy they entered the defile, and beheld from its eastern opening,
the wide cold plains, and the sun rising, red and cheerful, {187} on
the distant outline of the morning sky. A few days after, they reached
the post--not a little glad that their flesh was not rotting with many
who had been less successful than themselves, in escaping death at the
hands of the Eutaws. For the insults, robberies, and murders, committed
by this and other tribes, the traders Bents have sought opportunities
to take well-measured vengeance: and liberally and bravely have
they often dealt it out. But the consequence seems to have been the
exciting of the bitterest enmity between the parties; which results in
a little more inconvenience to the traders than to the Indians; for
the latter, to gratify their propensity to steal, and their hatred to
the former, make an annual levy upon the cavy-yard of the fortress,
which, as it contains usually from eighty to one hundred horses,
mules, &c., furnishes to the men of the tomahawk a very comfortable
and satisfactory retribution for the inhibition of the owners of them
upon their immemorial right to rob and murder, in manner and form as
prescribed by the customs of their race.
The business within the walls of the post is done by clerks and
traders. The former of these are more commonly young gentlemen {188}
from the cities of the States; their duty is to keep the books of
the establishment. The traders are generally selected from among
those daring individuals who have traversed the Prairie and Mountain
Wilderness with goods or traps, and understand the best mode of dealing
with the Indians. Their duty is to weigh sugar, coffee, powder, &c., in
a Connecticut pint-cup; and measure red baize, beads, &c., and speak
the several Indian languages that have a name for beaver skins, buffalo
robes, and money. They are as fine fellows as can anywhere be found.
Fort William is owned by three brothers, by the name of Bent, from
St. Louis. Two of them were at the post when we arrived. They seemed
to be thoroughly initiated into Indian life; dressed like chiefs--in
moccasins thoroughly garnished with beads and porcupine quills; in
trousers of deer skin, with long fringes of the same extending along
the outer seam from the ankle to the hip; in the splendid hunting-shirt
of the same material, with sleeves fringed on the elbow seam from the
wrist to the shoulder, and ornamented with figures of porcupine quills
of various colours, and leathern fringe around the lower edge of the
body. And {189} chiefs they were in the authority exercised in their
wild and lonely fortress.
A trading establishment to be known must be seen. A solitary abode of
men, seeking wealth in the teeth of danger and hardship, rearing its
towers over the uncultivated wastes of nature, like an old baronial
castle that has withstood the wars and desolations of centuries; Indian
women tripping around its battlements in their glittering moccasins
and long deer skin wrappers; their children, with most perfect forms,
and the carnation of the Saxon cheek struggling through the shading
of the Indian, and chattering now Indian, and now Spanish or English;
the grave owners and their clerks and traders, seated in the shade
of the piazza, smoking the long native pipe, passing it from one to
another, drawing the precious smoke into the lungs by short hysterical
sucks till filled, and then ejecting it through the nostrils; or it may
be, seated around their rude table, spread with coffee or tea, jerked
buffalo meat, and bread made of unbolted wheaten meal from Taos; or,
after eating, laid comfortably upon their pallets of straw and Spanish
blankets, and dreaming to the sweet notes of a flute; the old trappers
withered with {190} exposure to the rending elements, the half-tamed
Indian, and half civilized Mexican servants, seated on the ground
around a large tin pan of dry meat, and a tankard of water, their only
rations, relating adventures about the shores of Hudson's Bay, on the
rivers Columbia and Mackenzie, in the Great Prairie Wilderness, and
among the snowy heights of the mountains; and delivering sage opinions
about the destination of certain bands of buffalo; of the distance to
the Blackfoot country, and whether my wounded man was hurt as badly
as Bill the mule was, when the "meal party" was fired upon by the
Cumanches--present a tolerable idea of every thing within its walls.
If we add, the opening of the gates on a winter's morning--the cautious
sliding in and out of the Indians whose tents stand around the fort,
till the whole area is filled six feet deep with their long hanging
black locks, and dark watchful flashing eyes; and traders and clerks
busy at their work; and the patrols walking the battlements with loaded
muskets; and the guards in the bastions standing with burning matches
by the carronades; and when the sun sets, the Indians retiring again to
their camp outside, to talk over their newly purchased blankets {191}
and beads, and to sing and drink and dance; and the night sentinel on
the fort that treads his weary watch away; we shall present a tolerable
view of this post in the season of business.
It was summer time with man and beast when I was there. The fine days
spent in the enjoyment of its hospitalities were of great service to
ourselves, and in recruiting our jaded animals. The man, too, who had
been wounded on the Santa Fé trade, recovered astonishingly.
The mutineers, on the 11th of July, started for Bent's Fort, on the
Platte;[112] and myself, with three sound and good men, and one
wounded and bad one, strode our animals and took trail again for the
mountains and Oregon Territory. Five miles above Fort William, we
came to Fort El Puebla. It is constructed of adobies, and consists
of a series of one-story houses built around a quadrangle, in the
general style of those at Fort William. It belongs to a company of
American and Mexican trappers, who, wearied with the service, have
retired to this spot to spend the remainder of their days in raising
grain, vegetables, horses, mules, &c., for the various {192} trading
establishments in these regions. And as the Arkansas, some four miles
above the post, can be turned from its course over large tracts of rich
land, these individuals might realize the happiest results from their
industry;--for, as it is impossible, from the looseness of the soil and
the scarcity of rain, to raise any thing thereabout without irrigation;
and, as this is the only spot, for a long distance up and down the
Arkansas, where any considerable tracts of land can be watered,
they could supply the market with these articles without any fear of
competition.[113]
But these, like the results of many honest intentions, are wholly
crippled by want of capital and a superabundance of whisky. The
proprietors are poor, and when the keg is on tap, dream away their
existence under its dangerous fascinations. Hence it is that these
men, destitute of the means to carry out their designs in regard to
farming, have found themselves not wholly unemployed in drunkenness;
a substitute which many other individuals have before been known to
prefer. They have, however, a small stock; consisting of horses and
mules, cattle, sheep, and goats; and still maintain their original
intention of irrigating and cultivating {193} the land in the vicinity
of their establishment.
We arrived here about four o'clock in the afternoon; and, being
desirous of purchasing a horse for one of the men, and making some
farther arrangements for my journey, I determined to stop for the
night. At this place I found a number of independent trappers, who
after the spring-hunt had come down from the mountains, taken rooms
free of rent, stored their fur, and opened a trade for whisky. One
skin, valued at four dollars, buys in that market one pint of whisky;
no more, no less. Unless, indeed, some theorists in the vanity of their
dogmas, may consider it less, when plentifully mollified with water; a
process that increases in value, as the faucet falters in the energy
of its action; for the seller knows, that if the pure liquid should
so mollify the whisky, as to delay the hopes of merriment too long,
another beaver-skin will be taken from the jolly trapper's pack, and
another quantity of the joyful mixture obtained. Thus matters will
proceed, until the stores of furs, the hardships of the hunt, the
toils and exposures of trapping, the icy streams of the wilderness,
the bloody fight, foot to foot, with the knife and tomahawk, {194} and
the long days and nights of thirst and starvation are satisfactorily
cancelled in the dreamy felicity which whisky, rum, gin, brandy and
ipecacuanha, if properly administered, are accustomed to produce.
One of these trappers was from New Hampshire; he had been educated at
Dartmouth College, and was altogether one of the most remarkable men
I ever knew. A splendid gentleman, a finished scholar, a critic on
English and Roman literature, a politician, a trapper, an Indian! His
stature was something more than six feet; his shoulders and chest were
broad, and his arms and lower limbs well formed, and very muscular. His
forehead was high and expansive; Causality, Comparison, Eventuality,
and all the perceptive organs, (to use a phrenological description),
remarkably large. Locality was, however, larger than any other organ
in the frontal region. Benevolence, Wonder, Ideality, Secretiveness,
Destructiveness, and Adhesiveness, Combativeness, Self-Esteem and Hope
were very high. The remaining organs were low. His head was clothed
with hair as black as jet, two and a half feet in length, smoothly
combed, and hanging down his back. He {195} was dressed in a deer-skin
frock, leggings and moccasins; not a shred of cloth about his person.
On my first interview with him, he addressed me with the stiff, cold
formality of one conscious of his own importance; and, in a manner
that he thought unobserved, scrutinized the movement of every muscle
of my face, and every word which I uttered. When any thing was said of
political events in the States or Europe, he gave silent and intense
attention.
I left him without any very good impressions of his character; for I
had induced him to open his compressed mouth but once, and then to make
the no very agreeable inquiries, "When do you start?" and "What route
do you take?" At my second interview, he was more familiar. Having
ascertained that he was proud of his learning, I approached him through
that medium. He seemed pleased at this compliment to his superiority
over those around him, and at once became easy and talkative. His "Alma
Mater" was described and redescribed; all the fields, and walks, and
rivulets, the beautiful Connecticut, the evergreen primitive ridges
lying along its banks, which, he said, "had smiled for a thousand
ages on the march of decay;" were successive {196} themes of his vast
imagination. His descriptions were minute and exquisite. He saw in
every thing all that Science sees, together with all that his capacious
intellect, instructed and imbued with the wild fancyings and legends
of his race, could see. I inquired the reason of his leaving civilized
life for a precarious livelihood in the wilderness. "For reasons found
in the nature of my race," he replied. "The Indian's eye cannot be
satisfied with a description of things, how beautiful soever may be
the style, or the harmonies of verse in which it is conveyed. For
neither the periods of burning eloquence, nor the mighty and beautiful
creations of the imagination, can unbosom the treasures and realities
as they live in their own native magnificence on the eternal mountains,
and in the secret, untrodden vale.
"As soon as you thrust the ploughshare under the earth, it teems with
worms and useless weeds. It increases population to an unnatural
extent; creates the necessity of penal enactments, builds the jail,
erects the gallows, spreads over the human face a mask of deception
and selfishness, and substitutes villany, love of wealth and power,
and the slaughter of millions for the gratification {197} of some
individual instead of the single-minded honesty, the hospitality, the
honour and the purity of the natural state. Hence, wherever Agriculture
appears, the increase of moral and physical wretchedness induces the
thousands of necessities, as they are termed, for abridging human
liberty; for fettering down the mind to the principles of right,
derived, not from nature, but from a restrained and forced condition
of existence. And hence my race, with mental and physical habits as
free as the waters which flow from the hills, become restive under the
rules of civilized life; dwindle to their graves under the control of
laws, customs, and forms, which have grown out of the endless vices,
and the factitious virtue of another race. Red men often acquire and
love the Sciences. But with the nature which the Great Spirit has given
them, what are all their truths to them? Would an Indian ever measure
the height of a mountain that he could climb? No, never. The legends of
his tribe tell him nothing about quadrants, and base lines and angles.
Their old braves, however, have for ages watched from the cliffs, the
green life in the spring, and the yellow death in the autumn, of their
holy forests. Why should he ever calculate an eclipse? He {198} always
knew such occurrences to be the doings of the Great Spirit.
"Science, it is true, can tell the times and seasons of their coming;
but the Indian, when they do occur, looks through nature, without the
aid of science, up to its cause. Of what use is a Lunar to him? His
swift canoe has the green embowered shores, and well-known headlands,
to guide its course. In fine, what are the arts of peace, of war,
of agriculture, or any thing civilized, to him? His nature and its
elements, like the pine which shadows its wigwam, are too mighty, too
grand, of too strong a fibre, to form a stock on which to engraft the
rose or the violet of polished life. No. I must range the hills, I
must always be able to out-travel my horses, I must always be able to
strip my own wardrobe from the backs of the deer and buffalo, and to
feed upon their rich loins; I must always be able to punish my enemy
with my own hand, or I am no longer an Indian. And if I am any thing
else, I am a mere imitation of an ape."
The enthusiasm with which these sentiments were uttered impressed me
with an awe I had never previously felt for the unborrowed dignity and
independence of the genuine, original character {199} of the American
Indians. Enfeebled, and reduced to a state of dependence by disease and
the crowding hosts of civilized men, we find among them still, too much
of their own, to adopt the character of another race, too much bravery
to feel like a conquered people, and a preference of annihilation to
the abandonment of that course of life, consecrated by a thousand
generations of venerated ancestors.
This Indian has been trapping among the Rocky Mountains for seventeen
years. During that time, he has been often employed as an express to
carry news from one trading post to another, and from the mountains to
Missouri. In these journeys he has been remarkable for the directness
of his courses, and the exceedingly short space of time required to
accomplish them. Mountains which neither Indian nor white man dared
attempt to scale, if opposing his right-line track, he has crossed.
Angry streams, heavy and cold from the snows, and plunging and roaring
among the girding caverns of the hills, he has swum; he has met the
tempest as it groaned over the plains, and hung upon the trembling
towers of the everlasting hills; and without a horse, or even a dog,
traversed often the terrible and boundless wastes of mountains, {200}
and plains, and desert valleys, through which I am travelling; and the
ruder the blast, the larger the bolts, and the louder the peals of the
dreadful tempest, when the earth and the sky seem joined by a moving
cataract of flood and flame driven by the wind, the more was it like
himself, a free, unmarred manifestation of the sublime energies of
nature. He says that he never intends again to visit the States, or any
other part of the earth "which has been torn and spoiled by the slaves
of agriculture." "I shall live," said he, "and die in the wilderness."
And assuredly he should thus live and die. The music of the rushing
waters should be his requiem, and the Great Wilderness his tomb.
Another of these peculiar men was an Iroquois from Canada; a stout,
old man, with a flat nose, broad face, small twinkling black eyes,
a swarthy, dirty complexion, a mouth that laughed from ear to ear.
He was always relating some wonderful tale of a trapper's life, and
was particularly fond of describing his escapes from the Sioux and
Blackfeet, while in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. On one
occasion he had separated from his fellow-trappers and travelled far
up the Missouri {201} into a particularly beautiful valley. It was the
very spot he had sought in all his wanderings, as a retreat for himself
and his squaw to live in till they should die. It appeared to him like
the gateway to the Isles of the Blest. The lower mountains were covered
with tall pines, and above and around, except in the east, where the
morning sun sent in his rays, the bright glittering ridges rose high
against the sky, decked in the garniture of perpetual frosts. Along the
valley lay a clear, pure lake, in the centre of which played a number
of fountains, that threw their waters many feet above its surface,
and sending tiny waves rippling away to the pebbly shores, made the
mountains and groves that were reflected from its rich bosom seem to
leap and clap their hands for joy, at the sacred quiet that reigned
among them.
The old Indian pitched his skin tent on the shore, in a little copse
of hemlock, and set his traps. Having done this, he explored carefully
every part of the neighbouring mountains for ingress and egress,
"signs," &c. His object in this was to ascertain if the valley were
frequented by human beings; and if there were places of escape, should
it be entered by hostile persons {202} through the pass that led
himself to it. He found no other pass, except one for the waters of the
lake through a deep chasm of the mountain; and this was such that no
one could descend it alive to the lower valleys. For as he waded and
swam by turns down its still waters, he soon found himself drawn by an
increasing current, which sufficiently indicated to him the cause of
the deep roar that resounded from the caverns beyond. He accordingly
made the shore, and climbed along among the projecting rocks till he
overlooked an abyss of fallen rocks, into which the stream poured and
foamed and was lost in the mist. He returned to his camp satisfied. He
had found an undiscovered valley, stored with beaver and trout, and
grass for his horses, where he could trap and fish and dream awhile in
safety. And every morning, for three delightful weeks, did he draw the
beaver from the deep pools into which they had plunged when the quick
trap had seized them, and stringing them two and two together over
his pack-horse, bore them to his camp; and with his long side-knife
stripped off the skins of fur, pinned them to the ground to dry, and
in his camp kettle cooked the much-prized tails for his mid-day {203}
repast. "Was it not a fine hunt that?" asked he; "beaver as thick as
musquitoes, trout as plenty as water. But the ungodly Blackfeet!"
The sun had thrown a few bright rays upon the rim of the eastern
firmament, when the Blackfeet war-whoop rang around his tent--a direful
"whoop-ah-hooh," ending with a yell, piercing harsh and shrill, through
the clenched teeth. He had but one means of escape--the lake. Into it
he plunged, beneath a shower of poisoned arrows--plunged deeply--and
swam under while he could endure the absence of air; he rose, he was in
the midst of his foes swimming and shouting around him; down again, up
to breathe, and on he swam with long and powerful sweeps. The pursuit
was long, but at last our man entered the chasm he had explored,
plunged along the cascade as near as he dared, clung to a shrub that
grew from the crevice of the rock, and lay under water for the approach
of his pursuers. On they came, they passed, they shrieked and plunged
for ever into the abyss of mist.
Another individual of these veteran trappers was my guide, Kelly, a
blacksmith by trade, from Kentucky. He left his native State about
twelve years ago, and entered {204} the service of the American Fur
Company. Since that time, he has been in the States but once, and that
for a few weeks only. In his opinion, every thing was so dull and
tiresome that he was compelled to fly to the mountains again. The food,
too, had well nigh killed him: "The villanous pies and cake, bacon
and beef, and the nicknacks that one is obliged to eat among cousins,
would destroy the constitution of an ostrich." And if he could eat such
stuff, he said he had been so long away from civilization that he could
never again enjoy it. As long as he could get good buffalo cows to eat,
the fine water of the snowy hills to drink, and good buckskins to wear,
he was satisfied. The mountaineers were free; he could go and come when
he chose, with only his own will for law.
My intercourse with him, however, led me afterwards to assign another
cause for his abandonment of home. There were times when we were
encamped at night on the cold mountains about a blazing fire, that he
related anecdotes of his younger days with an intensity of feeling
which discovered that a deep fountain of emotion was still open in his
bosom, never to be sealed till he slumber under the sands of the desert.
{205} We passed the night of the 11th of July at the Puebla. One of
my companions who had, previously to the division of my company, used
horses belonging to an individual who left us for Santa Fé, and the
excellent Mr. Blair, were without riding animals. It became, therefore,
an object for them to purchase here; and the more so, as there would
be no other opportunity to do so for some hundreds of miles. But these
individuals had no money nor goods that the owners of the horses would
receive in exchange. They wanted clothing or cash, and as I had a
surplus quantity of linen, I began to bargain for one of the animals.
The first price charged was enormous. A little bantering, however,
brought the owner to his proper senses; and the articles of payment
were overhauled. In doing this, my whole wardrobe was exposed, and
the vendor of horses became extremely enamoured of my dress-coat,
the only one remaining, not out at the elbows. This he determined to
have. I assured him it was impossible for me to part with it; the
only one I possessed. But he, with quite as much coolness, assured
me that it would then be impossible for him to part with his horse.
These two {206} impossibilities having met, all prospects of a trade
were suspended, till one or the other of them should yield. After a
little, the idea of walking cast such evident dissatisfaction over the
countenances of my friends, that the coat was yielded, and then the
pants and overcoat, and all my shirts save four, and various other
articles to the value of three such animals in the States. The horse
was then transferred to our keeping. And such a horse! The biography
of her mischief, would fill a volume! and that of the vexations
arising therefrom to us poor mortals? Would it not fill two volumes of
"Pencillings by the Way," whose only deficiency would be the want of
a love incident? Another horse was still necessary; but in this, as in
the other case, a coat was a "sine quâ non;" and there being no other
article of the kind to dispose of among us, no bargain could be made.
The night came on amidst these our little preparations. The owners
of the horses and mules belonging to El Puebla, drove their animals
into the court or quadrangle, around which their houses were built. We
gathered our goods and chattels into a pile, in a corner of the most
comfortable room we could obtain, and so {207} arranged our blankets
and bodies, that it would be difficult for any one to make depredations
upon them during the night, without awaking us. After conversing with
my Dartmouth friend concerning the mountainous country through which
we were to travel, and the incidents of feasting and battle which had
befallen him during his trapping excursions, we retired to our couches.
At eight o'clock on the 12th, we were harnessed and on route again for
the mountains. It was a fine mellow morning. The snowy peaks of the
Wolfano mountains, one hundred and seventy miles to the south-west,
rose high and clear in view.[114] The atmosphere was bland like that
of the Indian summer in New England. Five miles' travel brought us to
the encampment of Kelly's servant, who had been sent abroad the night
before to find grass for his horses. Here another horse was purchased
of a Mexican, who had followed us from Puebla. But on adjusting our
baggage, it appeared that three animals were required for transporting
it over the broken country which lay before us. Messrs. Blair and Wood
would, therefore, still have but a single saddle horse for their joint
use. {208} This was felt to be a great misfortune, both on account
of the hardships of such a journey on foot, as well as the delay it
would necessarily cause in the prosecution of it. But these men felt no
such obstacle to be insurmountable, and declared, that while the plain
and the mountains were before them, and they could walk, they would
conquer every difficulty that lay between them and Oregon. After we had
eaten, Kelly's horses were rigged, and we moved on four or five miles
up the river, where we halted for the night. Our provisions consisted
of a small quantity of wheat meal, a little salt and pepper, and a few
pounds of sugar and coffee. For meat we depended on our rifles. But as
no game appeared during the day, we spent the evening in attempting
to take cat-fish from the Arkansas. One weighing a pound, after much
practical angling, was caught--a small consolation surely to the keen
appetites of seven men! But this, and porridge made of wheat meal and
water, constituted our supper that night and breakfast next morning.
July 13th, fifteen miles along the banks of the Arkansas; the soil
composed of sand slightly intermixed with clay, too loose to {209}
retain moisture, and too little impregnated with the nutritive salts
to produce any thing save a spare and stinted growth of bunch grass
and sun-flowers. Occasional bluffs of sand and limestone bordered the
valley of the stream. In the afternoon, the range of low mountains that
lie at the eastern base of the Great Cordilleras and Long's ranges
became visible; and even these, though pigmies in the mountain race,
were, in midsummer, partially covered with snow. Pike's peak in the
south-west, and James' peak in the north-west, at sunset showed their
hoary heads above the clouds which hung around them.[115]
On the 14th, made twenty miles. Kelly relieved his servant by
surrendering to him his riding horse for short distances; and
others relieved Blair and Wood in a similar manner. The face of the
plain became more broken as we approached the mountains. The waters
descending from the lower hills, have cut what was once a plain into
isolated bluffs three or four hundred feet in height, surmounted and
surrounded with columnar and pyramidal rocks. In the distance they
resemble immense fortresses, with towers and bastions as skilfully
arranged as they could have been by the best suggestions of {210}
art--embattlements raised by the commotions of warring elements--by the
storms that have gathered and marshalled their armies on the heights in
view, and poured their desolating power over these devoted plains!
The Arkansas, since we left Fort William, had preserved a medium width
of a quarter of a mile, the waters still turbid; its general course
east south-east; soil on either side as far as the eye could reach,
light sand and clayey loam, almost destitute of vegetation.
On the 15th travelled about eighteen miles over a soil so light that
our animals sunk over their fetlocks at every step. During the forenoon
we kept along the bottom lands of the river. An occasional willow or
cotton-wood tree, ragged and grey with age, or a willow bush trembling,
it almost seemed, at the tale of desolation that the winds told in
passing, were the only relieving features of the general dearth. The
usual colour of the soil was a greyish blue. At twelve o'clock we
stopped on a plat of low ground which the waters of the river moistened
by filtration through the sand, and baited our horses. Here were
forty or fifty decrepid old willows, so poor and shrivelled that one
felt, after enjoying {211} their shade in the heat of that sultry day,
like bestowing alms upon them. At twelve o'clock we mounted and struck
out across the plain to avoid a southward bend in the river of twenty
miles in length. Near the centre of this bend in the mouth of the river
Fontequebouir, which the trappers who have traversed it for beaver say,
rises in James' Peak eighty miles to the north-west by north.[116]
We came upon the banks of this stream at sunset. Kelly had informed
us that we might expect to find deer in the groves which border its
banks. And, like a true hunter, as soon as we halted at the place of
encampment, he sought them before they should hear or scent us. He
traversed the groves, however, in vain. The beautiful innocents had,
as it afterwards appeared, been lately hunted by a party of Delaware
trappers and in consideration of the ill usage received from these
gentlemen in red, had forsaken their old retreat for a less desirable
but safer one among the distant hills in the north. So that our
expectations of game and meat subsided in a supper of 'tole'--plain
water porridge. As our appetites were keen, we all relished it well,
except the Mexican {212} servant, who declared upon his veracity that
'tole was no bueno.' Our guide was, if possible, as happy at our
evening fire as some one else was when he "shouldered his crutch and
told how fields were won;" and very much for the same reasons. For,
during the afternoon's tramp, much of his old hunting ground had loomed
in sight. Pike's and James' peaks showed their bald, cold, shining
heads as the sun set; and the mountains on each side of the upper river
began to show the irregularities of their surfaces. So that as we rode
along gazing at these stupendous piles of rocks and earth and ice, he
would often direct his attention to the outlines of chasms, faintly
traced on the shadings of the cliffs, through which various streams
on which he had trapped, tumbled into the plains. I was particularly
interested by his account of Rio Wolfano, a branch of the Arkansas on
the Mexican side, the mouth of which is twelve miles below that of the
Fontequebouir. It has two principal branches. The one originates in
Pike's peak, seventy or eighty miles in the south; the other rises far
in the west among the Eutaw mountains, and has a course of about two
hundred miles, nearly parallel with the Arkansas.[117]
{213} We travelled twenty-eight miles on the 16th over broken barren
hills sparsely covered with shrub cedars and pines. The foliage of
these trees is a very dark green. They cover, more or less, all the low
hills that lie along the roots of the mountains from the Arkansas north
to the Missouri. Hence the name "Black Hills" is given to that portion
of them which lie between the Sweetwater and the mouth of the Little
Missouri. The soil of our track to-day was a grey barren loam, gravel
knolls and bluffs of sand and limestone.
About four o'clock, P. M., we met an unheard of annoyance. We were
crossing a small plain of red sand, gazing at the mountains as they
opened their outlines of rock and snow, when, in an instant, we were
enveloped in a cloud of flying ants with greyish wings and dark bodies.
They fixed upon our horses' heads, necks, and shoulders, in such
numbers as to cover them as bees do the sides of a hive when about to
swarm. They flew around our own heads too, and covered our hats and
faces. Our eyes seemed special objects of their attention. We tried
to wipe them off; but while the hand was passing from one side of the
face to the other, the part that was left bare was {214} instantly
covered as thickly as before with these creeping, hovering, nauseous
insects. Our animals were so much annoyed by their pertinacity, that
they stopped in their tracks; and finding it impossible to urge them
along, guide them and keep our faces clear of the insects at the same
time, we dismounted and led them. Having by this means the free use of
our hands and feet, we were able in the course of half an hour to pass
the infested sands, and once more see and breathe.
We dined at the mouth of Kelly's Creek, another stream that has its
source in James' peak. Encamped at the mouth of Oakley's creek,
another branch of the Arkansas.[118] It rises in the hills which lie
thirty-five miles to the north. It is a clear, cool little brook, with
a pebbly bottom, and banks clothed with shrub cedars and pines. We
had a pleasant evening here, a cloudless sky, a cold breeze from the
snow-clad mountains, a blazing cedar-wood fire, a song from our merry
Joe, a dish of 'tole' and a fine couch of sand. Who wants more comforts
than we enjoyed? My debilitated system had begun to thrive under the
bracing influence of the mountain air; my companions were well and
happy; our {215} horses and mules were grazing upon a plat of rich
grass; we were almost within touch of those stupendous ridges of rock
and snow which stay or send forth the tempest in its course, and gather
in their rugged embrace the noblest rivers of the world.
July 17. We made twenty miles to-day among the deep gullies and
natural fortresses of this great gateway to the mountains. All around
gave evidence that the agents of nature have struggled here in their
mightiest wrath, not the volcano, but the floods of ages. Ravines
hundreds of feet in depth; vast insular mounds of earth towering in all
directions, sometimes surmounted by fragments of mountains, at others,
with stratified rocks, the whole range of vision was a flowerless,
bladeless desolation! Our encampment for the night was at the mouth of
Wood's creek, five miles from the debouchure of the Arkansas from the
mountains.[119] The ridges on the south of the river, as viewed from
this place, presented an embankment of congregated hills, piled one
above another to the region of snow, and scored into deep and irregular
chasms, frowning precipices, tottering rocks, and black glistening
strata, whose recent fractures indicated that they were continually
{216} sending upon the humble hills below weighty testimony of their
own superior height and might. Nothing could be more perfectly wild.
The summits were capped with ice. The ravines which radiated from their
apices were filled with snow far down their course; and so utterly
rough was the whole mass, that there did not appear to be a foot of
plain surface upon it. Eternal, sublime confusion!
This range runs down the Arkansas, bearing a little south of a
parallel with it, the distance of about fifty miles, and then turning
southward, bears off to Taos and Santa Fé. At the back of this ridge
to the westward, and connected with it, is said to be a very extensive
tract of mountains which embrace the sources of the Rio Bravo del
Norte, the Wolfano, and other branches of the Arkansas; and a number
of streams that fall into Rio Colorado of the West, and the Gulf of
California.[120] Among these heights live the East and West bands of
the Eutaws. The valleys in which they reside are said to be overlooked
by mountains of shining glaciers, and in every other respect to
resemble the valleys of Switzerland. They are a brave, treacherous
race, and said to number about eight thousand souls. They {217}
raise mules, horses, and sheep, and cultivate corn and beans, trap
the beaver, manufacture woollen blankets with a darning-needle, and
intermarry with the Mexican Spaniards.
Sixty miles east of these mountains, and fifty south of the Arkansas,
stands (isolated on the plain), Pike's Peak, and the lesser ones that
cluster around it.[121] This Peak is covered with perpetual snow and
ice down one-third its height. The subordinate peaks rise near to
the line of perpetual congelation, and stand out upon the sky like
giant watchmen, as if to protect the vestal snows above them from the
polluting tread of man. On the north side of the river a range of
mountains, or hills, as they have been called by those who are in the
habit of looking on the Great Main Ridges, rise about two thousand feet
above the plain. They resemble, in their general characteristics, those
on the south. Like them, they are dark and broken; like them, sparsely
covered on their sides with shrub pines and cedars. They diverge also
from the river as they descend: and after descending it forty miles,
turn to the north, and lose themselves in the heights which congregate
around James' Peak.
{218} On the morning of the 18th we rose early, made our simple repast
of tole, and prepared to enter the mountains. A joyful occasion this.
The storms, the mud, the swollen streams, the bleakness and barrenness
of the Great Prairie Wilderness, in an hour's ride, would be behind us;
and the deep, rich vales, the cool streams and breezes, and transparent
atmosphere of the more elevated regions, were to be entered.
Wood's Creek, on which we had passed the night, is a cold, heavy
torrent, from the northern hills. At the ford, it was about three
feet deep, and seven yards wide. But the current was so strong as
to bear away two of our saddle-horses. One of these was my Puebla
animal. She entered the stream with all the caution necessary for the
result. Stepping alternately back, forward, and sidewise, and examining
the effect of every rolling stone upon the laws of her own gravity,
she finally gathered her ugly form upon one of sufficient size and
mobility to plunge herself and rider into the stream. She floated
down a few yards, and, contrary to my most fervent desire, came upon
her feet again, and made the land. By dint of wading, and partially
drowning, and other like agreeable ablutions, we found ourselves at
{219} last on the right side of the water: and having bestowed upon
it sundry commendatory epithets of long and approved use under like
circumstances, we remounted; and shivering in the freezing winds from
the neighbouring snows, trotted on at a pace so merry and fast, that
three-quarters of an hour brought us to the buttress of the cliffs,
where the Arkansas leaps foaming from them.
This river runs two hundred miles among the mountains. The first half
of the distance is among a series of charming valleys, stocked with an
endless number of deer and elk, which, in the summer, live upon the
nutritious wild grass of the vales, and in the winter, upon the buds,
twigs, and bark of trees. The hundred miles of its course next below,
is among perpendicular cliffs rising on both sides hundreds, and
sometimes thousands, of feet in height. Through this dismal channel,
with a rapid current down lofty precipices, and through compressed
passes, it plunges and roars to this point, where it escapes nobly and
gleefully, as if glad at having fled some fearful edict of nature,
consigning it to perpetual imprisonment in those dismal caverns.[122]
Here we entered the Rocky Mountains {220} through a deep gorge at the
right, formed by the waters of a little brook which comes down from
the north.[123] It is a sweet stream. It babbles so delightfully upon
the ear, like those that flowed by one's home, when youth was dreaming
of the hopes of coming years in the shade of the hemlock by the family
spring. On its banks grew the dandelion, the angelica, the elder, the
alder and birch, and the mountain-flax. The pebbles, too, seemed old
acquaintances, they were so like those which I had often gathered,
with a lovely sister long since dead, who would teach me to select
the prettiest and best. The very mountains were dark and mighty, and
overhanging, and striped with the departing snows, like those that
I viewed in the first years of remembrance, as I frolicked with my
brothers on the mossy rocks.
We soon lost sight of the Arkansas among the small pines and cedars of
the valley, and this we were sorry to do. The good old stream had given
us many a fine cat-fish, and many a bumper of delicious water while we
travelled wearily along its parched banks. It was like parting with an
old companion that had ministered to our wants, and stood with us in
anxious, dangerous times. It was, therefore, pleasant to hear its voice
come {221} up from the caverns like a sacred farewell while we wound
our way up the valley.
This gorge, or valley, runs about ten miles in a northwardly direction
from the debouchure of the Arkansas, to the dividing ridge between the
waters of that river and those of the southern head-waters of the south
fork of the Great Platte.
About midway its length, the trail, or Indian track, divides: the one
branch makes a circuit among the heights to the westward, terminates
in the great valley of the south fork of the Platte, within the
mountains, commonly called "Boyou Salade;" and the other and shorter
leads northwardly up the gorge to the same point.[124] Our guide
carefully examined both trails at the diverging point, and finding the
more western one most travelled, and believing, for this reason, the
eastward one the least likely to be occupied by the Indians, he led
us up to the foot of the mountain which separates it from the vales
beyond. We arrived at a little open spot at the base of the height
about twelve o'clock. The steepest part of the trail up the declivity
was a loose, moving surface of sand and pebbles, constantly falling
under its own weight. Other portions were precipitous, lying along
overhanging {222} cliffs and the brinks of deep ravines strewn with
fallen rocks. To ascend it seemed impossible; but our old Kentuckian
was of a different opinion.
In his hunting expeditions he had often ascended and descended worse
steeps with packs of beaver, traps, &c. So, after a description of
others of a much more difficult nature, which he had made with worse
animals and heavier packs, through storms of hail and heaps of snow;
and after the assurance that the Eutaw village of tents, and women, and
children, had passed this not many moons ago, we felt nettled at our
own ignorance of possibilities in these regions, and drove off to the
task. Our worthy guide led the way with his saddle-horse following him;
the pack animals, each under the encouraging guardianship of a vigorous
goad, and the men and myself leading our riding animals, brought up the
rear. Now for a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull not all together,
but each leg on its own account. Five or six rods of zigzag clambering,
and slipping, and gathering, and tugging, advanced us one on the
ascent; and then a halt for breath and strength for a new effort. The
puffing and blowing over, a general shout, "go on, go on," started
the cavalcade {223} again. The pack animals, with each one hundred
and fifty pounds weight, struggled and floundered, as step after step
gave way in the sliding sand; but they laboured madly, and advanced at
intervals of a few yards, resting and then on again, till they arrived
at the rocky surface, about midway the ascent. Here a short pause upon
the declivity was interrupted by a call of "onward" from our guide;
and again we climbed. The track wound around a beetling cliff, which
crowded the animals upon the edge of a frightful precipice. In the most
dangerous part of it, my Puebla mare ran her pack against a projecting
rock, and for an instant reeled over an abyss three hundred feet in
depth. But her fortune favoured her; she blundered away from her grave,
and lived to make a deeper plunge farther along the journey.
The upper half, though less steep, proved to be the worst part of the
ascent. It was a bed of rocks, at one place small and rolling, at
another large and fixed, with deep openings between them; so that our
animals were constantly falling, and tottering upon the brink of the
cliffs, as they rose again and made their way among them. An hour and a
half of this most dangerous and tiresome {224} clambering deposited us
in a grove of yellow pines, near the summit. Our animals were covered
with sweat and dirt, and trembled as if at that instant from the race
track. Nor were their masters free from every ill of weariness. Our
knees smote each other with fatigue, as Belshazzar's did with fear.
Many of the pines on this ridge were two feet in diameter, and a
hundred feet high, with small clusters of limbs around the tops. Others
were low, and clothed with strong limbs quite near the ground. Under a
number of these latter, we had seated ourselves, holding the reins of
our riding horses, when a storm arose with the rapidity of a whirlwind,
and poured upon us hail, rain, and snow with all imaginable liberality.
It was a most remarkable tempest. Unlike those whose monotonous groans
are heard among the Green Mountains for days before they assemble
their fury around you, it came in its strength at once, and rocked the
stately pines to their most distant roots. Unlike those long "blows,"
which, generated in the frozen zone of the Atlantic seas, bring down
the frosty blasts of Greenland upon the warmer climes of the States,
it was the meeting {225} of different currents of the aërial seas,
lashed and torn by the live thunder, among the sounding mountains.
One portion of it had gathered its electricity and mist around James'
Peak in the east; another among the white heights north-west; and a
third among the snowy pyramids of the Eutaws in the south-west; and,
marshalling their hosts, met over this connecting ridge between the
eastern and central ranges, as if by general battle to settle a vexed
question as to the better right to the Pass; and it was sublimely
fought. The opposing storms met nearly at the zenith, and fiercely
rolled together their angry masses. As if to carry out the simile I
have here attempted, at the moment of their junction, the electricity
of each leaped upon its antagonist transversely across the heavens, and
in some instances fell in immense bolts upon the trembling cliffs; and
then instantly came a volley of hail as large as grape-shot, sufficient
to whiten all the towers of this horrid war. It lasted an hour. I never
before, not even on the plains, saw such a movement of the elements.
If anything had been wanting to establish the theory, this exhibition
sufficed to convince those who saw its {226} movements, and felt its
power, that these mountains are the great laboratory of mist, wind, and
electricity, which, formed into storms, are sent in such awful fury
upon the great plains or prairies that stretch away from their bases to
the States, and, that here alone may be witnessed the extreme power of
the warring elements.
After the violence of the tempest had abated, we travelled up the
remainder of the ascent, and halted a few minutes on the summit to
view the scene around us.[125] Behind was the valley up which we had
travelled, covered with evergreen shrubs. On the east of this, rose a
precipitous wall of stratified rock, two thousand or three thousand
feet high, stretching off towards the Arkansas, and dotted here and
there with the small shrub pine, struggling from the crevices of the
rocks. In the south-west the mountains, less precipitous, rose one
above another in a distance, till their blue tops faded into the
semblance of the sky. To the east of our position, there was nothing in
sight but piles of mountains, whose dark and ragged masses increased
in height and magnitude, till they towered in naked grandeur around
James' Peak. From that frozen height ran off to the north {227} that
secondary range of mountains that lie between the head-waters of the
South Fork of the Platte and the plains. This is a range of brown,
barren, and broken ridges, destitute alike of earth and shrub, with an
average height of three thousand feet above the plain. On the western
side of it, and north of the place where we were viewing them, hills
of a constantly decreasing height fall off for fifty miles to the
north-west, till they sink in the beautiful valley of Boyou Salade, and
then rising again, tower higher and higher in the west, until lost in
the haze about the base of the Anahuac range; a vast waste of undusted
rocks, without a flower or leaf to adorn it, save those that hide their
sweetness from its eternal winters in the glens down which we were to
travel.
The Anahuac ridge of the snowy range was visible for at least one
hundred miles of latitude; and the nearest point was so far distant
that the dip of the horizon concealed all that portion of it below
the line of perpetual congelation. The whole mass was purely white.
The principal irregularity perceptible was a slight undulation on
the upper edge. There was, however, perceptible shading on the lower
edge, produced, perhaps, by great lateral swells protruding {228} from
the general outline. But the mass, at least ninety miles distant, as
white as milk, the home of the frosts of all ages, stretching away to
the north by west full a hundred miles, unscaled by any living thing,
except perhaps by the bold bird of our national arms,
"Broad, high, eternal, and sublime,
The mock of ages and the twin of time,"
is an object of amazing grandeur, unequalled probably on the face of
the globe.
We left this interesting panorama, and travelled down five miles to the
side of a little stream running north, and encamped.[126] We were wet
from head to foot, and shivering with cold. The day had indeed been
one of much discomfort; yet we had been well repaid for all this by the
absorbing freshness and sublimity that hung around us. The lightning
bounding on the crags; the thunder breaking the slumber of the
mountains; a cooler climate, and the noble pine again; a view of the
Great Main snowy range of the "Rocky," "Stone," or "Shining" mountains,
south of the Great Gap, from a height never before trodden by a
civilized tourist, the sight of the endless assemblage of rocky peaks,
among which {229} our weary feet were yet to tread along unexplored
waters, were the delights which lay upon the track of the day, and made
us happy at our evening fire. Our supper of water porridge being eaten,
we tried to sleep. But the cold wind from the snow soon drove us from
our blankets to our fire, where we turned ourselves like Christmas
turkeys, till morning. The mountain flax grew around our encampment.
Every stalk was stiffened by the frosts of the night; and the waters
of the brooks were barred with ice. This is the birth-place of the
Plattes. From these gorges its floods receive existence, among the
sturdy, solemn pines and nursing tempests, twelve miles north of the
Arkansas's debouchement from the mountains, and forty miles due west
from James' Peak.
On the 19th we travelled in a northward course down the little streams
bursting from the hills, and babbling among the bushes. We were upon
an Indian trail, full of sharp gravel, that annoyed our animals
exceedingly. The pines were often difficult to pass, so thick were
they. But the right course was easily discovered among them, even when
the soil was so hard as to have received no impression from previous
{230} travelling, by small stones which the Eutaws had placed among
the branches. About mid-day we saw scattering spears of the wild
flax again, and a few small shrubs of the black birch near the water
courses. The endless climbing and ascending of hills prevented our
making much progress. At two o'clock we judged ourselves but ten miles
from the last night's encampment. A cloud of hail then beginning to
pelt and chill us, we took shelter in a small grove of pines. But as
the hail had fallen two inches in depth, over the whole adjoining
country, every movement of the atmosphere was like a blast of December.
Too cold to sleep, we therefore built fires and dried our packs, &c.,
till the howl of the wolves gave notice of the approach of morning.
Tole for breakfast. It had been our only food for nine days. It seemed
strange that we should have travelled one hundred and eighty miles, in
a country like that we had passed through since leaving Fort William,
without killing an animal. But it ceased to appear so, when our worthy
guide informed us that no individual had ever come from the Arkansas,
in the region of the Fort, to the mountains, with as little suffering
as we had. "It is," said he, "a starving {231} country; never any game
found in it. The buffalo come into these valleys from the north through
the Bull Pen, and go out there when the storms of the autumn warn them
to fly to the south for warm winter quarters. But that valley off
there, (pointing to a low smooth spot in the horizon), looks mighty
like Boyou Salade, my old stamping ground. If it should be, we will
have meat before the sun is behind the snow."[127]
We were well pleased with this prospect. Our Mexican servant cried, at
the top of his voice, "Esta muy bueno, Señor Kelly, si, muy bueno, este
Boyou Salade; mucho carne por nosotros." And the poor fellow had some
reasons for this expression of joy, for the tole regimen had been to
him what the water gruel of the Mudfog workhouse was to Oliver Twist,
except that its excellent flavour had never induced the Mexican "to ask
for more." He had, on previous occasions, in company with Kelly, gnawed
the ribs of many a fat cow in Boyou Salade; and the instincts of his
stomach put him in such a frenzy at the recollection, that although he
could only understand the words "Boyou Salade," these were sufficient
to induce him to cross {232} himself from the fore-step to the abdomen,
and to swear by Santa Gaudaloupe that tole was not food for a Christian
mouth.
On the 20th we were early on our way. The small prairie wolf which
had howled us to sleep every evening, and howled us awake every
morning since we left Independence, was continually greeting us with
an ill-natured growl, as we rode along among his hiding places. The
streams that were mere rivulets twenty miles back, having received
a thousand tributaries, were now heavy and deep torrents. The peaks
and mountain swells were clad with hail and snow. Every thing, even
ourselves, shivering in our blankets, gave evidence that we were
traversing the realms of winter. Still many of the grasses and flowers
which usually flourish in high latitudes and elevated places were
growing along the radices of the hills, and aided much in giving the
whole scene an unusually singular aspect. We were in fine spirits, and
in the enjoyment of a voracious appetite. Our expectations of having a
shot soon at a buffalo, were perhaps an accessory cause of this last.
But be that as it may, we dodged along among the pines and spruce
and hemlock and firs {233} about ten miles, and rose over a swell of
land covered with small trees in full view of a quiet little band of
buffalo. Ye deities who presided of old over the trencher and goblet,
did not our palates leap for a tender loin? A halt--our famous old
Kentuckian creeps away around a copse of wood--we hear the crack of
his deadly rifle--witness the writhing of the buffalo! He lays himself
gently down. All is now silent, intense anxiety to observe whether
he will rise again and run, as buffalo often do under the smart of a
wound, beyond our reach among the hills. No! he curls his tail as in
the last agony; he choaks; he is ours! he is ours!
Our knives are quickly hauled from their sheaths--he is rolled upon his
brisket--his hide is slit along the spine, and pealed down midrib; one
side of it is cut off and spread upon the sand to receive the meat;
the flesh on each side of the spine is pared off; the mouth is opened,
and the tongue removed from his jaws; the axe is laid to his rib; the
heart--the fat--the tender loins--the blood, are taken out--his legs
are rifled of their generous marrow bones; all wrapped in the green
hide, and loaded on animals, and off to camp in a charming {234} grove
of white pine by a cold stream of water under a woody hill!
Who that had seen us stirring our fires that night in the starlight of
bright skies among the mountain forests; who that had seen the buffalo
ribs propped up before the crackling blaze--the brisket boiling in
our camp-kettles; who that had seen us with open countenances yield
to these well cooked invitations to "drive dull care away," will not
believe that we accepted them, and swallowed against time, and hunger,
and tole? Indeed, we ate that night till there was a reasonable
presumption that we had eaten enough; and when we had spent a half-hour
in this agreeable employment, that presumption was supported by a
pile of bones, which if put together by Buffon in his best style,
would have supported not only that but another presumption to the like
effect. Our hearty old Kentuckian was at home, and we were his guests.
He sat at the head of his own board, and claimed to dictate the number
of courses with which we should be served. "No, no," said he, as we
strode away from the bare ribs which lay round us, to our couches of
pine leaves, "no, no, I have eaten with you, fared well, and now you
{235} must take courage while you eat with me; no, no, not done yet;
mighty good eating to come. Take a rest upon it, if you like, while I
cook another turn; but I'll insure you to eat till day peeps. Our meat
here in the mountains never pains one. Nothing harms here but pills and
lead; many's the time that I have starved six and eight days, and when
I have found meat, ate all night; that's the custom of the country. We
never borrow trouble from hunger or thirst, and when we have a plenty,
we eat the best pieces first, for fear of being killed by some brat of
an Indian before we have enjoyed them. You may eat as much as you can;
my word for it, this wild meat never hurts one. But your chickens and
bacon, &c., in the settlements, it came right near shoving me into the
Kenyon when I was down there last."
While the excellent man was giving vent to these kind feelings, he was
busy making preparations for another course. The marrow bones were
undergoing a severe flagellation; the blows of the old hunter's hatchet
were cracking them in pieces, and laying bare the rolls of "trapper's
butter" within them. A pound of marrow was {236} thus extracted, and
put into a gallon of water heated nearly to the boiling point. The
blood which he had dipped from the cavity of the buffalo was then
stirred in till the mass became of the consistency of rice soup. A
little salt and black pepper finished the preparation. It was a fine
dish; too rich, perhaps, for some of my esteemed acquaintances, whose
digestive organs partake of the general laziness of their habits; but
to us who had so long desired a healthful portion of bodily exercise in
that quarter, it was the very marrow and life-blood of whatsoever is
good and wholesome for famished carnivorous animals like ourselves. It
was excellent, most excellent. It was better than our father's foaming
ale. For while it loosed our tongues and warmed our hearts towards one
another, it had the additional effect of Aaron's oil; it made our faces
to shine with grease and gladness. But the remembrance of the palate
pleasures of the next course, will not allow me to dwell longer upon
this. The crowning gratification was yet in store for us.
While enjoying the soup, which I have just described, we believed the
bumper of our pleasures to be sparkling to the brim; {237} and if our
excellent old trapper had not been there, we never should have desired
more. But how true is that philosophy which teaches, that to be capable
of happiness, we must be conscious of wants! Our friend Kelly was in
this a practical as well as theoretical Epicurean. "No giving up the
beaver so," said he; "another bait and we will sleep."
Saying this, he seized the intestines of the buffalo, which had been
properly cleaned for the purpose, turned them inside out, and as
he proceeded stuffed them with strips of well salted and peppered
tender loin. Our "_boudies_" thus made, were stuck upon sticks before
the fire, and roasted till they were thoroughly cooked and brown.
The sticks were then taken from their roasting position and stuck
in position for eating; that is to say, each of us with as fine
an appetite as ever blessed a New England boy at his grandsire's
Thanksgiving dinner, seized a stick pit, stuck it in the earth near
our couches, and sitting upon our haunches, ate our last course--the
desert of a mountain host's entertainment. These wilderness sausages
would have gratified the appetite of {238} those who had been deprived
of meat a less time than we had been. The envelopes preserve the juices
with which while cooking, the adhering fat, turned within, mingles and
forms a gravy of the finest flavour. Such is a feast in the mountains.
Since leaving Fort William we had been occasionally crossing the trails
of the Eutaw war parties, and had felt some solicitude for the safety
of our little band. An overwhelming number of them might fall upon us
at night and annihilate us at a blow. But we had thus far selected such
encampments, and had such confidence in our rifles and in our dog,
who never failed to give us notice of the least movement of a wolf or
panther at night, that we had not stationed a guard since leaving that
post.
Our guide too sanctioned this course; always saying when the subject
was introduced that the dawn of day was the time for Indian attacks,
and that they would rise early to find his eyes shut after the howl of
the wolf on the hills had announced the approach of light. We however
took the precaution to encamp at night in a deep woody glen, which
concealed the light of our fire, and slept with our equipments {239}
upon us, and our well primed rifles across our breasts.
On the morning of the 21st we were awakened at sunrise, by our servant
who had thus early been in search of our animals. The sun rose over
the eastern mountains brilliantly, and gave promise of a fine day. Our
route lay among vast swelling hills, the sides of which were covered
with groves of the large yellow pine and aspen. These latter trees
exclude every other from their society. They stand so closely that not
the half of their number live until they are five inches in diameter.
Those also that grow on the borders of the groves are generally
destroyed, being deprived of their bark seven or eight feet up, by
the elk which resort to them yearly to rub off the annual growth of
their horns. The snow on the tops of the hills was melting, and along
the lower edge of it, where the grass was green and tender, herds of
buffalo were grazing. So far distant were they from the vales through
which we travelled, that they appeared a vast collection of dark specks
on the line of the sky.
By the side of the pebbly brooks, grew many beautiful plants. A species
of convolvulus and honeysuckle, two species of {240} wild hops and the
mountain flax, were among them. Fruits were also beginning to appear;
as wild plums, currants, yellow and black; the latter like those of
the same colour in the gardens, the former larger than either the red
or black, but of an unpleasant astringent flavour.--We had not, since
entering the mountains, seen any indication of volcanic action. The
rocky strata and the soil appeared to be of primary formation. We made
fifteen miles to-day in a general course of north by west.
On the 22nd we travelled eight miles through a country similar to
that we had passed the day before. We were still on the waters of
the Platte; but seldom in sight of the main stream. Numerous noisy
brooks ran among the hills over which we rode. During the early part
of the morning buffalo bulls were often seen crossing our path: they
were however so poor and undesirable, that we shot none of them.
About ten o'clock we came upon a fresh trail, distinctly marked by
hoofs and dragging lodge poles. Kelly judged these "signs" to be not
more than twenty four hours old, and to have been made by a party of
Eutaws which had passed into {241} Boyou Salade to hunt the buffalo.
Hostile Indians in our immediate neighbourhood was by no means an
agreeable circumstance to us. We could not contend with any hope of
success against one hundred and fifty tomahawks and an equal number
of muskets and bows and arrows. They would also frighten the buffalo
back to the bull pen, and thus prevent us from laying in a stock of
meat farther along to support us across the desert in advance. We
therefore determined to kill the next bull that we should meet, cure
the best pieces for packing, and thus prepare ourselves for a siege or
a retreat, as circumstances might dictate; or if the Indians should
prevent our obtaining other and better meat, and yet not interrupt us
by any hostile demonstration in pursuing our journey, we might, by an
economical use of what we could pack from this point, be able to reach,
before we should perish with hunger, the game which we hoped to find on
tributaries of Grand River.
We, therefore, moved on with great caution; and at about two o'clock
killed a fine young bull. He fell in a glen through which a little
brook murmured along to a copse just below. The bulls in considerable
{242} number were manifesting their surplus wrath on the other side of
the little wood with as much apparent complacency as certain animals
with fewer legs and horns often do, when there is not likely to be any
thing in particular to oppose them. But fortunately for the reputation
of their pretensions, as sometimes happens to their biped brethren,
a circumstance chanced to occur, when their courage seemed waxing to
the bursting state, on which it could expend its energies. The blood
of their slaughtered companions scented the breeze, and on they came,
twenty or more, tail in air, to take proper vengeance.
We dropped our butcher knives, mounted quickly, and were about to
accommodate them with the contents of our rifles, when, like many
perpendicular bellowers, as certain danger comes, they fled as bravely
as they had approached. Away they racked, for buffalo never trot,
over the brown barren hills in the north-east, looking neither to
the right nor left, for the long hair around the head does not permit
such aberrations of their optics; but onward gloriously did they roll
their massive bulks--now sinking in the vales and now blowing up the
ascents; stopping {243} not an instant in their career until they
looked like creeping insects on the brow of the distant mountain.
Having thus vanquished, by the most consummate generalship and a stern
patriotism in the ranks never surpassed by Jew or Gentile, these
"abandoned rebels," we butchered our meat, and as one of the works of
returning peace, loaded it upon our animals, and travelled in search
of quaking-asp wood wherewithal to dry it. The traders and trappers
always prefer this wood for such purposes, because, when dry, it is
more inodorous than any other; and consequently does not so sensibly
change the flavour of the meat dried over a fire made of it. Half an
hour's ride brought us to a grove of this timber, where we encamped for
the night--dried our meat, and Eutaws near or far, slept soundly. In
this remark I should except, perhaps, the largest piece of human nature
among us, who had, as his custom was, curled down hard-by our brave
old guide and slept at intervals, only an eye at a time, for fear of
Indians.
23rd. Eighteen miles to-day among rough precipices, overhanging crags,
and roaring torrents. There were, however, between the declivities
and among the copses of {244} cotton-wood, quaking-asp and fir, and
yellow pine, some open glades and beautiful valleys of green verdure,
watered by the rivulets gushing from the stony hills, and sparkling
with beautiful flowers. Five or six miles from our last encampment,
we came upon the brow of a woody hill that overlooked the valley,
where the waters on which we were travelling unite with others that
come down from the mountains in the north, and from what is properly
called the south fork of the Great Platte, within the mountains. Here
we found fresh Indian tracks; and on that account deemed it prudent
to take to the timbered heights, bordering the valley on the west, in
order to ascertain the position of the Indians, their numbers, &c.,
before venturing within their reach. We accordingly, for three hours,
wound our way in silence among fallen timber and thickset cotton-wood;
climbed every neighbouring height, and examined the depressions in the
plain, which could not be seen from the lower hills.
Having searched the valley thoroughly in this manner, and, perceiving
from the peaceable and careless bearing of the small bands of buffalo
around its borders, {245} that if there were Indians within it they
were at some distance from our trail, we descended from the heights,
and struck through a deep ravine across it, to the junction of the
northern and southern waters of the stream.
We found the river at this place a hundred and fifty yards wide, and of
an average depth of about six feet, with a current of five miles the
hour. Its course hence is E. N. E. about one hundred miles, where it
rushes through a magnificent kenyon[128] or chasm in the eastern range
of the Rocky Mountains to the plains of the Great Prairie Wilderness.
This valley is a congeries or collection of valleys. That is, along the
banks of the main and tributary streams a vale extends a few rods or
miles, nearly or quite separated from a similar one beyond, by a rocky
ridge or bute or a rounded hill covered with grass or timber, which
protrudes from the height towards the stream. This is a bird's-eye view
of Boyou Salade, so named from the circumstance that native rock salt
is found in some parts of it. We were in the central portion of it. To
the north, and south, and west, its isolated plains rise one above
the other, always beautiful, and covered {246} with verdure during the
months of spring and summer. But when the storms of autumn and winter
come, they are the receptacles of vast bodies of snow, which fall or
are drifted there from the Anahuac Ridge, on its western horizon. A
sweet spot this, for the romance of the future as well as the present
and past. The buffalo have for ages resorted here about the last days
of July, from the arid plains of the Arkansas and the Platte; and
thither the Eutaws and Cheyennes from the mountains around the Santa
Fé, and the Shoshonies or Snakes and Arrapahoes from the west, and
the Blackfeet, Crows and Sioux from the north, have for ages met, and
hunted, and fought, and loved. And when their battles and hunts were
interrupted by the chills and snows of November, they have separated
for their several winter resorts. How wild and beautiful the past as it
comes up fledged with the plumage of the imagination!
These vales, studded with a thousand villages of conical skin wigwams,
with their thousands of fires blazing on the starry brow of night! I
see the dusky forms crouching around the glowing piles of ignited logs,
in family groups whispering {247} the dreams of their rude love; or
gathered around the stalwart form of some noble chief at the hour of
midnight, listening to the harangue of vengeance or the whoop of war,
that is to cast the deadly arrow with the first gleam of morning light.
Or may we not see them gathered, a circle of braves around an aged
tree, surrounded each by the musty trophies of half a century's daring
deeds. The eldest and richest in scalps, rises from the centre of the
ring and advances to the tree. Hear him:
"Fifty winters ago, when the seventh moon's first horn hung over the
green forests of the Eutaw hills, myself and five others erected a
lodge for the Great Spirit, on the snows of the White Bute, and
carried there our wampum and skins and the hide of a white buffalo. We
hung them in the Great Spirit's lodge, and seated ourselves in silence
till the moon had descended the western mountain, and thought of the
blood of our fathers that the Cumanches had killed when the moon was
round and lay on the eastern plain. My own father was scalped, and
the fathers of five others were scalped, and their bloody heads were
gnawed by the wolf. We could not live while our fathers' lodges were
empty, {248} and the scalps of their murderers were not in the lodges
of our mothers. Our hearts told us to make these offerings to the Great
Spirit who had fostered them on the mountains; and when the moon was
down, and the shadows of the White Bute were as dark as the hair of a
bear, we said to the Great Spirit, 'No man can war with the arrows from
the quiver of thy storms; no man's word can be heard when thy voice
is among the clouds; no man's hand is strong when thy hand lets loose
its winds. The wolf gnawed the heads of our fathers, and the scalps of
their murderers hang not in the lodges of our mothers. Great father
spirit, send not thine anger out; hold in thy hand the winds; let not
thy great voice drown the death-yell while we hunt the murderers of our
fathers.' I and the five others then built in the middle of the lodge a
fire, and in its bright light the Great Spirit saw the wampum, and the
skin, and the white buffalo hide. Five days and nights, I and the five
others danced and smoked the medicine, and beat the board with sticks,
and chanted away the power of the great Medicine, that they might not
be evil to us, and bring sickness into our bones. Then when the stars
were shining {249} in the clear sky, we swore (I must not tell what,
for it was in the ear of the Great Spirit) and went out of the lodge
with our bosoms full of anger against the murderers of our fathers,
whose bones were in the jaws of the wolf, and went for their scalps to
hang them in the lodges of our mothers. See him strike the aged tree
with his war club again, again, nine times. So many Cumanches did I
slay, the murderers of my father, before the moon was round again, and
lay upon the eastern plain."
This is not merely an imagined scene in former times in Boyou Salade.
All the essential incidents related, happened yearly in that and
other hunting grounds, whenever the old braves assembled to celebrate
the valorous deeds of their younger days. When these exciting
relations were finished, the young men of the tribe, who had not yet
distinguished themselves, were exhorted to seek glory in a similar way.
Woe to him who passed his manhood without ornamenting the door of his
lodge with the scalps of his enemies!
This valley is still frequented by some of these tribes as a summer
haunt, when the heat of the plains renders them uncomfortable. The
Eutaws were scouring it when we {250} passed. We therefore crossed the
river to its northern bank, and followed up its northern branch eight
miles,[129] with every eye keenly searching for the appearance of foes;
and made our encampment for the night in a deep chasm, overhung by
the long branches of a grove of white pines. We built our fire in the
dry bed of a mountain torrent, shaded by bushes on the side towards
the valley, and above, by a dense mass of boughs, so effectually, as
not only to conceal the blaze from any one in the valley, but also to
prevent the reflection from gilding too high the conspicuous foliage of
the neighbouring trees. After our horses had fed themselves, we tied
them close to our couches, that they might not, in case of an attack,
be driven away before we had an opportunity of defending them; and
when we retired, threw water upon our fire that it might not guide the
Indians in a search for us; put new caps upon our arms, and trusting to
our dog and mule, the latter in such cases always the most skilful to
scent their approach, tried to sleep. But we were too near the snows.
Chilling winds sucked down the vale, and drove us from our blankets
to a shivering watch during the remainder of the night. Not a cap,
however, was burst. Alas! for {251} our brave intentions, they ended in
an ague fit.
Our guide informed us, that the Eutaws reside on both sides of the
Eutaw or Anahuac mountains; that they are continually migrating from
one side to the other; that they speak the Spanish language; that some
few half breeds have embraced the Catholic faith; that the remainder
yet hold the simple and sublime faith of their forefathers, in the
existence of one great creating and sustaining cause, mingled with a
belief in the ghostly visitations of their deceased Medicine men or
diviners; and that they number a thousand families. He also stated that
the Cheyennes are a band of renegadoes from the Eutaws and Cumanches;
and that they are less brave and more thievish than any other tribe
living in the plains south of Arkansas.[130]
We started at seven o'clock in the morning of the 24th, travelled eight
miles in a north by west direction, killed another buffalo, and went
into camp to jerk the meat. Again we were among the frosts and snows
and storms of another dividing ridge. Our camp was on the height of
land between the waters of the Platte and those of Grand River, the
largest southern {252} branch of the Colorado of the west.[131]
From this eminence we had a fine view of Boyou Salade, and also of
the Anahuac range, which we had before seen from the ridge between the
Arkansas and the southern waters of the Platte. To the south-east, one
hundred and sixty miles, towered the bald head of James' Peak; to the
east, one hundred miles distant, were the broken and frowning cliffs
through which the south fork of the Platte, after having gathered all
its mountain tributaries, forces its roaring cascade course to the
plains. To the north, the low, timbered and grassy hills, some tipped
with snow, and others crowned with lofty pines, faded into a smooth,
dim, and regular horizon.
FOOTNOTES:
[111] For the Ute (Eutaws) see De Smet's _Letters_ in our volume xxvii,
p. 165, note 35. The Cheyenne are noted in our volume v, p. 140, note
88.--ED.
[112] Bent's Fort, on the South Platte, is usually spoken of as St.
Vrain's, being in charge of one of the brothers by that name, who
were partners of the Bents. It was situated on the right bank of the
river near the easterly bend of the stream, about opposite the mouth
of St. Vrain's Creek, and some seventeen miles east of Longs Peak. The
site is still a landmark, being near the present Platteville, Weld
County. Frémont visited this fort on his journeys of 1842 and 1843,
and was hospitably entertained. Shortess, who went with what Farnham
calls the "mutineers," says they were detained six weeks at Fort St.
Vrain, awaiting a party bound for Green River. At this fort Dr. F.
Adolph Wislizenus found them September 3, 1839, on his return journey
from the mountains; see his _Ein Ausflug nach den Felsen-Gebirgen_
(St. Louis, 1840), a somewhat rare but interesting narrative of his
journey, written in German. He speaks of the fort as Penn's (Bents) and
Savory's, and found two other rival posts in the vicinity. This post
was also known as Fort George.--ED.
[113] This was a temporary fort, being maintained but a few years.
Wislizenus speaks of it as being four miles above St. Vrain's, and
occupied by French-Canadian and Mexican trappers. Farnham's observation
of the irrigable capacity of this region was correct. Storage
reservoirs now hold the water, and the valley is especially adapted to
fruit raising.--ED.
[114] Farnham intends the Huerfano, now known as Wet Mountains, a range
that leaves the great central system south of Pike's Peak and trends
south-eastwardly to Huerfano River.--ED.
[115] By James's Peak Farnham intends the present Pike's Peak; see
_ante_, p. 111, note 50. What he here calls Pike's was one of the
Spanish Peaks, which would be in a south-western direction from
his camping ground. In recent years the name James Peak has been
transferred to a mountain not far from Central City, on the borders of
Gilpin, Clear Creek, and Grand counties Colorado.--ED.
[116] For Fountain Creek (_Fontaine qui bouit_), which enters the
Arkansas at the present city of Pueblo, see our volume xvi, p. 25, note
10. It derives its name from the present Manitou Springs at the eastern
base of Pike's Peak.--ED.
[117] For this stream (Huerfano) see our volume xvi, p. 53, note 35.
Its two branches are the Cuchara, which rises near the Spanish Peaks,
and the main Huerfano.--ED.
[118] The names of these two creeks appear to have been local titles
applied by Farnham's guide, and named in honor of roving trappers.
Kelly's was probably Turkey Creek, flowing into the Arkansas from the
north, in north-west Pueblo County; Oakley's would therefore be the
present Beaver Creek, in eastern Fremont County--see our volume xvi, p.
44, note 27, for another appellation of this stream.--ED.
[119] From Farnham's location of this stream it would seem to be Field
Creek, down which a branch of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway comes
to join the main line at Florence--ED.
[120] The first range is the Wet Mountains, for which see _ante_, p.
183, note 110. The extensive tract of western mountains is the Sangre
de Cristo range.--ED.
[121] For Farnham's "Pike's Peak" see _ante_, p. 184, note 111. Pike
did not approach these elevations within many miles.--ED.
[122] Farnham was at the entrance of the Grand Cañon (or Royal Gorge)
of the Arkansas--a chasm much of which was formerly impassable even
to travellers on foot; but it is now threaded by the Denver and Rio
Grande Railway, over a roadbed blasted and hewn from the solid rock, at
one narrow point the track being carried on steel rafters bridging the
chasm.--ED.
[123] Probably Oil Creek, by which Pike made his way over to South
Park; see our volume xvi, p. 34, note 14.--ED.
[124] See Coues's description of the two passes, in _Pike's
Expeditions_, p. 465, note 7. The westernmost goes by way of West Oil
or Ten Mile Creek; the eastern, nearly straight north over the divide
between the waters of the Arkansas and the Platte, by what is known as
Twin Creek Pass.--ED.
[125] The divide at this point has an altitude above sea level of over
nine thousand feet.--ED.
[126] The upper waters of Twin Creek, which is an eastern affluent of
the South Platte.--ED.
[127] Bayou Salade, now known as South Park, received its earlier name
from the salt springs and a slough found therein, which attracted
buffalo and other game. It is a high valley forty miles long by thirty
wide, with undulating, park-like surface, and an area of 1,200,000
acres, at an elevation of from 8,000 to 10,000 feet. It was well known
to early hunters for whom it remained a game paradise as late as 1865.
Pike explored its southern portion in 1806-07. Frémont crossed it on
his return in 1844, and witnessed an Indian battle there. Gold was
discovered on its borders in the early days of the Colorado mining
excitement. To-day it is traversed by several railways and is much
frequented by tourists. See our volume xv, p. 292, note 141.--ED.
[128] For an engraving of Platte Cañon see our volume xv, p. 283. It is
now traversed by the Denver, Leadville, and Gunnison Railway.--ED.
[129] Farnham's topographical descriptions lack data for determining
the exact places en route; but this northern branch was probably
Crooked Trail Creek, up which the Denver, Leadville, and Gunnison
(South Park) railway line proceeds to Breckenridge or Boreas Pass. The
travellers were here not far from the foothills of Mount Lincoln.--ED.
[130] This information with regard to tribal affinities is
incorrect--the Ute and Comanche are of Shoshonean stock, while the
Cheyenne are an outlying branch of the Algonquian family. See our
volume v, p. 140, note 88.--ED.
[131] This is the divide known as Boreas (or Breckenridge) Pass, which
has an over-sea elevation of 11,470 feet at the summit; it is now
traversed by the railway mentioned in note 125, _ante_.--ED.