Part 10
The farther we went the more obstacles we had to encounter; difficulties beset us so thickly on every hand as we advanced that they threatened to thwart our expedition. The snow became deeper daily, and to advance was but adding dangers to difficulties. About one-third of the men were already more or less frost-bitten; every night some of the mules would freeze to death, and every day as many more would give out from exhaustion and be left on the trail.... Finally, on the 17th of December, after frequent ineffectual attempts, we found that we could force our way no farther. By our utmost endeavors with mauls and spades we could make but half a mile or a mile per day. The cold became more severe, and storms constant, so that nothing was visible at times through the thick driving snow. For days in succession we would labor to beat a trail a few hundred yards in length, but the next day the storm would leave no trace of the previous day's work. We were on the St. John Mountain, a section of the Sierra Madre and the main range of the Rocky Mountains proper. At an elevation of 11,000 feet the cold was so intense and the atmosphere so rare that respiration became difficult; the least exertion became laborious and fatiguing, and would sometimes cause the blood to start from lips and nose. The mercury in the thermometer stood 20° below zero, and the snow was here from four to thirty feet deep. When we built our camp-fires deep pits were formed by the melting of the snow, completely concealing the different messes from each other. Down in these holes we slept, spreading our blankets upon the snow, every morning crawling out from under a deep covering of snow which had fallen upon us during the night. The strong pine smoke,--for here there was no timber but pine,--together with the reflection from the snow, so affected our sight that at times we could scarcely see. The snow drifted over us continually, driven about by the violence of the chill blasts which swept over the mountains.
Besides ourselves and our mules, no vestige of animal life appeared here in this lofty and dreary solitude; not even the ravens uttered their hoarse cry, nor the wolves their hollow and dismal howl. Finally nearly the entire band of our one hundred mules had frozen to death. After remaining in this condition for five days without being able to move camp, the colonel [Frémont] determined to return as quickly as possible by a different course to the Rio Grande. There we had left game upon which we could subsist until a party, to be previously despatched, should return with relief. So on the 22d of December we commenced our move, crossing over the bleak mountain strewn with the frozen mules, and packing our baggage with us. We were more than a week moving our camp and equipage over the top of this mountain, a distance of two miles from our first camp. The day we began to move (our provisions having been all consumed, except a small portion of macaroni and sugar, reserved against hard times), we commenced to eat the carcasses of the frozen mules. It was hoped we might save the few that yet lived, but this proving impossible, we began to kill and eat the surviving ones. On Christmas Day the colonel despatched a party of four men, King, Croitzfeldt, Brackenridge, and Bill Williams, to proceed down the Rio del Norte with all possible speed to Albuquerque, where they were to procure provisions and mules to relieve us. He allowed them sixteen days to go and return. We made our Christmas and New Year's dinner on mule meat,--not the fattest, as may be judged,--and continued to feed upon it while it was within reach.... At last we reached the river, but we found no game; the deer and elk had been driven off by the deep snow. For days we had been anxiously looking for the return of King's party with relief. The time allotted him had already expired; day after day passed, but with no prospect of relief. We concluded that the party had been attacked by Indians, or that they had lost their way and had perished. The colonel, who had moved down to the river before us, waited two days longer, and then, taking just enough provision before it was all exhausted to last them along the river, himself started off with Mr. Preuss, Godey, Theodore (Godey's nephew), and Sanders, the colonel's servant-man, intending to find out what had become of the party and hasten them back, or, if our fears concerning them proved true, to push on himself to the nearest settlement and send relief. He left an order, which we scarcely knew how to interpret, to the effect that we must finish packing the baggage to the river, and hasten on down as speedily as possible to the mouth of Rabbit River where we would meet relief, and that if we wished to see him again we must be in a hurry about it, as he was going on to California.
Two days after the colonel left we had all assembled on the river. The last of our provisions had been consumed, and we had been living for several days upon parfleche. Our condition was perilous in the extreme. Starvation stared us in the face; to remain there longer was certain death. We held a consultation and determined to start down the river the next day and try to make our way to some settlement where we could get relief; in the mean time keeping as much together as possible, and hunting along as we went as our only chance of safety.
Now commenced a train of horrors which it is painful to force the mind to dwell upon, and which the memory shrinks from. Before we had proceeded far Manuel, a California Indian of the Cosumne tribe, who had his feet badly frozen, stopped and begged Mr. Vincent Haler to shoot him, and failing to meet death in this way turned back to the lodge at the camp we had left, there to await his fate. The same day Wise lay down on the ice and died; and the Indian boys, Joaquin and Gregorio, who came along afterward, having stopped back to get some wood for Manuel, seeing his body, covered it over with brush and snow. That night Carver, crazed by hunger, raved terribly all night, so that some in the camp with him became alarmed for their safety. He told them, if any would follow him back, he had a plan by which they might live. The next day he wandered off and we never saw him again. The next night Sorel, his system wrought upon by hunger, cold, and exhaustion, took a violent fit which lasted for some time, and to which succeeded an entire prostration of all his faculties. At the same time he was almost totally snow-blind. Poor fellow, the next day he traveled as long as his strength would allow, and then, telling us we would have to leave him, that he could go no farther, blind with snow he lay down on the river-bank to die. Moran soon joined him, and they never came up again. Late at night, arriving one by one, we all came into a camp together on the river-bank. Gloom and despondency were depicted on every face. Our condition had become perfectly desperate. We knew not what to do; the candles and parfleche had kept us alive thus far, but these were gone. Our appearance was most desolate as we sat in silence around the fires, in view of a fast approaching death by starvation, while hunger gnawed upon our vitals. Then Vincent Haler, to whom the colonel had left the charge of the camp, and whom for that reason we had allowed to have the chief direction, spoke up and told us that he then and there threw up all authority; that he could do nothing, and knew not what to advise; that he looked upon our condition as hopeless, but he would suggest, as the best advice he could give, that we break up into small parties, and, hunting along, make the best of our way down separately, each party making use of all the advantages that might fall in its way, so that if any should chance to get through to a settlement they could forward relief to the others.... It was curious to hear different men tell of the workings of the mind when they were starving. Some were constantly dreaming or imagining that they saw before them a bountiful feast, and would make selections of different dishes. Others engaged their minds with other thoughts. For my part, I kept my mind amused by entering continually into all the minutiæ of farming, or of some other systematic business which would keep up a train of thought, or by working a mental solution of mathematical problems, bringing in review the rudiments of some science, or by laying out plans for the future, all having a connection with home and after life. So in this way never allowing myself to think upon the hopelessness of our condition, yet always keeping my eyes open to every chance, I kept hope alive and never once suffered myself to despond. And to this course I greatly attribute my support, for there were stronger men who, by worrying themselves, doubtless hastened their death. Ten out of our party of thirty-three that entered the mountains had perished, and a few days more would have finished the others.
Late in the afternoon of February 9, cold, hungry, and weary, with no little joy we all at once hailed the sight of the little Pueblo of the Colorado. We raised a yell as we came in sight which made the Pueblanos stand out and gaze. In a few minutes, with their assistance, we struggled forward with them and sought the comfort which the place afforded.
In sight of Taos, and several miles to the southeast, at the mouth of a deep gorge or cañon by which the Taos River debouches from the mountains, is a walled town or pueblo, one of a great many of the same kind in this country, inhabited by the Pueblos or civilized Indians, a remnant of the race of Montezuma. They live in houses built of stone and earth, or of adobe, most of which at this place were three or four stories high, and some of which even attained the height of eleven stories, each story receding a few feet back from the front of the one below it, and each one reached by a ladder placed against the wall, communicating with the door on top, and capable of being let down or drawn up at pleasure. A high mud wall incloses the buildings, which front towards the center, and in the middle is a lofty church of the same material as the other buildings, with walls six feet thick.
At Taos we first heard with certainty of the abundance of gold in California, the first account of which had reached the States immediately before our departure, but was scarcely believed.
On the 13th of February, having laid in a supply of provisions from the quartermaster's department, being facilitated by the generous kindness of the army officers, and having hired muleteers and a train of mules to take us down to Albuquerque, we set out for Santa Fé.
KIT CARSON, LAST OF THE TRAIL-MAKERS
BY CHARLES M. HARVEY
In his various activities, Carson played many parts, including those of hunter, ranchman, and miner.
As historians and writers of Western romance picture him, Kit Carson was solely an Indian-fighter and scout. Frontier exigencies, indeed, compelled him to be these, but he was much more. He was a sagacious civic chieftain as well as intrepid leader in war, Indian, foreign and civil; a wise counselor of red men and white; a man who touched the West's wild life at more points than any other person of any day; a man who blazed trails on which great commonwealths were afterward built, and who helped to build some of them.
Born in Kentucky ten months later than Lincoln, and seventy-five miles east of Lincoln's birthplace, Kit Carson, at an early age, was carried to Missouri by his parents. He received little school education, but learned to ride, to handle a rifle, and to trap bear and beaver on that borderline of civilization. He was set to work at a trade which had no attractions for him; and his imagination was fired by the tales of the strange and stirring scenes and deeds in the vast expanse off toward the sunset that came to him through passing hunters and traders. The _Missouri Intelligencer_, a weekly newspaper published in Franklin, on the Missouri River, in its issue of October 12, 1826, tells the sequel:
Notice is hereby given to all persons that Christopher Carson, a boy about sixteen years old, small for his age, but thick-set, with light hair, ran away from the subscriber, living in Franklin, Howard County, Missouri, to whom he had been bound to learn the saddler's trade, on or about the 1st of September last. He is supposed to have made his way to the upper part of the state. All persons are notified not to harbor, support, or assist said boy, under penalty of the law. One cent reward will be given to any person who will bring back the said boy.
DAVID WORKMAN.
Six years earlier than this, on the banks of the Missouri, and a hundred miles east of Franklin, died Daniel Boone. In the retrospect, Carson's name naturally associates itself with Boone's. On a broader field, in the face of obstacles and perils equally formidable, with a greater variety of resources, and with a far readier adaptability to rapidly changing conditions, Carson continued the rôle of empire-builder which Boone had begun.
In 1826, the only States west of the Mississippi were Missouri and Louisiana, and these, with the Territory of Arkansas, contained not much more than a third as many inhabitants as a single city of that region, St. Louis, has in 1910. Our present Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California, with parts of Colorado and Wyoming, belonged to Mexico, and, with Mexico, had just broken away from Spain. Oregon, Washington and Idaho, with large portions of Wyoming and Montana, were in controversy between the United States and England, and were to remain in that condition for twenty years longer. West and southwest of the Missouri, and on its upper waters for hundreds of miles east of that river, roamed some of the most warlike and powerful Indian tribes of North America. Except that, in the interval, the capital of the southwest territory had swung from Madrid, Spain, to Mexico, no perceptible change had taken place on the western frontier since the days, twenty years earlier, when Lewis and Clark explored the region from the mouth of the Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia; or since Captain Zebulon M. Pike, seeking the sources of the Red River, entered Spanish territory unawares, in the southern part of the present Colorado, and was carried a prisoner before Charles IV's governor-general at Santa Fé. In no age or land did adventure ever offer a more attractive field to daring and enterprise than that which spread itself out before young Carson at the moment when, fleeing from the little saddler's shop, he plunged into the current of the stirring life off to the westward.
First as a teamster on the Santa Fé Trail, of which Franklin was then the eastern terminus, then as a worker at the copper mines on the Gila, and afterward as a hunter, trapper, and guide across the West's wide spaces, Carson traversed a large part of the region from the Missouri to the Sacramento, from the Gulf of California to the upper reaches of the Columbia, and, as exigencies demanded, alternately fighting, fleeing from, or affiliating with Comanches, Apaches, Sioux, Pawnees, and Blackfeet. Thus he was thrown into active association with St. Vrain, the Bents, Ewing Young, Fitzpatrick, Bill Williams, Jim Bridger, the Sublettes, and other well-known plainsmen and mountaineers of the middle third of the nineteenth century, and won a reputation for initiative, versatility, and daring which made him a marked figure among the frontier leaders of his day. Moreover, in the midst of his exciting activities he found time to marry, to establish a home, and to practise the civic virtues which, refusing to lend themselves to picturesque treatment, have eluded the writers of romance.
At this time, May, 1842, Lieutenant John C. Frémont, on his way up the Mississippi with the first of his exploration parties, fell in with Carson and induced him to enter the government service as the official guide of the expedition. He afterward wrote:
On the boat I met Kit Carson. He was returning from putting his little daughter in a convent school in St. Louis. I was pleased with him and his manner of address at this first meeting. He was a man of medium height, broad-shouldered and deep-chested, with a clear, steady blue eye and frank speech and manner--quiet and unassuming.
Carson, then a little less than thirty-three years of age, was already a national character. The association which began at that time lasted to the end of the Mexican War.
Washington, a city which saw many strange spectacles, had a novel sight on the June day of 1847 when Kit Carson entered it with letters from Frémont. In various phrase, this is the substance of what the newspapers of Washington, New York, and Boston said: Here is the man who has blazed paths for the Pathfinder from the mouth of the Missouri to the Golden Gate; who, in 1846, guided General Stephen W. Kearny's column of the Army of the West through New Mexico to the Pacific; who, when Kearny was surrounded and besieged by the Mexicans, brought Commodore Stockton's forces to the rescue; and who has just ridden from Los Angeles, nearly 4,000 miles, with a military escort for the first 1200 miles of the way, eluding or fighting Mexicans and Indians, as circumstances dictated, carrying to President Polk and to War Secretary Marcy the story of the conquest of California and of the raising of the Stars and Stripes along the Pacific coast.
A little knowledge of history, coupled with even a smaller amount of historical imagination, will enable us to picture the sensation which Carson and his story caused at the Capital. Polk, Webster, Clay, and the other statesmen who met him were impressed with his quiet dignity, his candor and the absence of swagger in his demeanor. No longer could Congress listen with the old-time seriousness to the tales of the alleged Sahara barrenness of the western plains, for Frémont's story, just published in its first instalment, told of streams, of occasional tracts of timber, and of vast herds of buffalo. And here in Washington was the man who had piloted Frémont on his expeditions. From this time dates the decline of the myth of the Great American Desert, which the reports of Pike and of Long and Irving's chronicle of the overland march of the Astorians projected across the map of the second quarter of the nineteenth century from the western border of Missouri to the Sierra Nevada. With their imperialist notions, Senators Benton, Cass, and Douglas saw in Carson the advance courier of manifest destiny.
With the modesty which was one of his characteristics, Carson declined to accept himself at the appraisement which Washington gave him. As he viewed them, his achievements were merely part of his day's work, for the performance of which he deserved no special credit. Accordingly he left the Capital gladly with the despatches which Polk gave him for the military commander in California, and then, after another journey back to Washington, he returned, in 1848, to Taos, and resumed the life of a ranchman, which had been interrupted six years earlier.
Once more now, in Carson's case, we see the initiative, the versatility, and the resourcefulness which the frontier conditions of the older day demanded. In their widely different fields, Crockett, Sam Houston, and Lincoln disclosed these qualities. Appointed in 1853 Indian agent for the district of New Mexico and vicinity by President Pierce,--a post which he held till his death, except for the interlude of the Civil War, in which he rose to the rank of a brigadier-general,--he entered a sphere in which he gained a new distinction. The most formidable Indian-fighter of his age, he was equally successful as a counselor and conciliator of Indians. His administration stands guiltless of any complicity in the "century of dishonor."
As a peacemaker between red men and white and between red men and red, Carson was more effective than a regiment of cavalry. This was because he knew the Indian's nature, talked his tongue, took pains to learn his specific grievances, and could look at things from his point of view. The Indian had confidence in Carson in a larger degree than in any other agent of the older day except General William Clark, Lewis's old partner in the exploration of 1804-06, who, from Monroe's days in the Presidency to Van Buren's, was superintendent of Indian affairs, with headquarters at St. Louis. Except Clark, he was more active in treaty-making between the Government and the red man than any other agent down to his time.
Socially as well as physically Carson was a path-blazer. With the Dawes severalty act of 1887 began a revolution in our methods of dealing with the red men. Many years before that statute was dreamed of, Carson recommended that the Indians be taught to cultivate the soil, that allotments of land be given to them as they become capable of using them, that they be trained to become self-supporting, and that they be prepared to merge themselves into the mass of the country's citizenship. In a crude and general way our Indian policy for the last quarter of a century has proceeded along these lines.
More than any other Indian agent of his day or earlier, Carson exerted influence with the national authorities to induce them to listen to the appeals of the country's wards, to remove their grievances, as far as practicable, to deal with them as individuals, and to arouse in them an ambition to rise to the industrial status of their white neighbors.
Although more than forty-two years have passed since Carson's death many of his acquaintances are still living in various parts of the West. In talks which I have had with some of them in the past year or two they revealed him on a side which the historical and fiction writers never disclosed. As a youth on the plains I caught a glimpse of him in the last year of his life, and as he had always been a hero to me as a boy beyond any other frontier character, I was surprised at the absence in his appearance of everything traditionally associated with the aspect of an Indian fighter. Although he was still alert and resolute, his face had the kindly look which reminded me of Father De Smet, the head of the mission among the Flatheads on the Bitter Root River, in Montana, whom I had met shortly before that time.
"One of my most vivid recollections of Carson," says Major Rafael Chacon, of Trinidad, Colorado, who was an officer in his company of scouts in the campaign of 1855 against the Utes and Apaches, and who was a captain and later on a major in the First Regiment of New Mexican Volunteers in the Civil War, of which Carson was the colonel, "was of one day in 1862 in Albuquerque, when I saw him lying on an Indian blanket in front of his quarters, with his children gleefully crawling all over him and taking from his pockets the candy and the lumps of sugar which he had purchased for them. Their mother, his second wife, Dona Josefa Jaamillo, to whom he was ardently devoted, he called by the pet name of Chipita."