USA > California > A history of California: the American period > Part 7
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The voyage down the river from the Yuma villages for a time was delightfully free from hardship and the whims of misfortune. Day after day the little band floated along the circuitous channel of the lower Colorado, setting their traps nightly, and sometimes taking as many as sixty beaver between sunset and sunrise. So successful were these operations that the trappers soon found it necessary to build additional canoes to take care of their growing supply of furs. The Indians with whom they came in contact were simple hearted, friendly beings, who had never before seen an American or known the use of firearms.
At length, as the journey continued, the river ran through a low, marshy country, where the beaver skins were of poor quality and had almost no value. Here, also, the little
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company, only one of whom had ever before been within sight of salt water, had its first experience with the Gulf tide. This, sweeping up the river, one night inundated the low-lying ground where the hunters had pitched their camp. A few days later the voyagers found the tide too strong and the waters too rough for further travel down stream, and so turned back up the river. This was early in February, when the Colorado had already begun to rise, and by the tenth of the month further progress against the current became impossible.
Since they could now neither go up nor down the Colorado, the only way of escape for the trappers was to abandon the canoes, bury the furs, and strike overland for the Spanish settlements on the coast. The weary journey across the Lower California desert began February 16, 1827. Each man carried his rifle, two blankets, and a considerable quantity of dried beaver meat. The loose, hot sand and lack of water soon reduced the company to very deplorable straits, a condition which was fortunately relieved by the discovery of an Indian village and a plentiful supply of fresh water.
After leaving this hospitable spot, the sufferings of the Americans were again renewed. The most desperate expedi- ents were resorted to relieve the terrible desert thirst. Two of the company, with swollen tongues and ghastly, shrunken eyes, lay down in the shade of a little bush to die. The air seemed to sear and scorch the tissues of the lungs, and the dazzling sand caused a temporary blindness not unlike that produced by the glare of northern snows. A few hours more and none of the party could have survived. But at this critical moment, when Sylvester Pattie and an elderly com- panion had already been left to perish, the remainder of the company reached the edge of the mountains and found a clear running stream of water.
Saved from death by this discovery, the company, with the help of Indian guides, came at length to the Dominican Mission of Santa Catalina on the headwaters of the San Quentin River in Lower California. The authorities of this
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mission were suspicious of the Americans and accorded them but shabby hospitality.
At length, word having been sent to the governor of Alta California of the presence of the Americans in the province, they were ordered to report under guard to San Diego. Here, after having been relieved of their arms, the trappers were brought before the governor-the selfsame Echeandia with whom Smith had had his dealings only a few months before. Doubtless the arrival of this second party of foreigners, following so closely upon the heels of Smith's two expeditions, caused Echeandia much genuine alarm for the safety of California. He had also reason to fear a severe reprimand from his superiors in Mexico un- less he employed harsh measures against the intruders.
So, without much ado, the governor, making the absurd charge that the Americans were spies of old Spain, clapped the entire company into the miserable San Diego jail, and proceeded to deal out to them the ill-usage ordinarily accorded Mexican prisoners from that day to this.
"My prison," wrote the younger Pattie, "was a cell eight or ten feet square, with walls and floor of stone. A door with iron bars an inch square crossed over each other, like the bars of window sashes, and it grated on iron hinges as it opened to receive me. Over the external front of this prison was inscribed in capital letters Destinacion de la Cattivo. . . . A soldier came, and handed me in something to eat. It proved to be dried beans and corn cooked with rancid tallow! The contents were about a pint. I took it up and brought it within reach of my nostrils and sat it down in unconquerable loathing. When the soldier returned in the evening to bring me more, I handed him my ration untasted and just as it was. He asked me in a gruff tone why I had not eaten it? I told him the smell of it was enough, and that I could not eat it. He threw the contents of the dish in my face, mutter- ing something which amounted to saying that it was good enough for such a brute as I was. To this, I answered that if being a brute gave claims upon that dish, I thought he had best eat it himself."
The monotony and confinement of prison life, augmented by ill-usage and poor fare, chafed the spirits of even the har-
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diest of the American trappers. In the case of Sylvester Pattie, whose health had already been undermined by the sufferings experienced on the desert, the additional hard- ships of captivity wasted away his strength and brought on a fatal illness. In this extremity the younger Pattie was denied access to his father, and the latter died alone and unattended in his prison cell.
Following this tragedy there was some relaxation in the prisoners' treatment, and James Ohio found occasional relief in serving as an interpreter for Governor Echeandía. He also made the acquaintance of one of the California women, a young lady, as he describes her, of beauty and charm, whose kindness and attention added something of romance to his prison experience. From the captains of three or four American vessels then at anchor in the harbor, Pattie also received much assistance. One of these was Captain Cunningham, who had aided Jedediah Smith a few months before. John Bradshaw, of the ship Franklin, was another willing friend of the prisoners, but as luck would have it, Bradshaw himself was under a cloud with the Cali- fornia governor, and so was not able to secure Pattie's release, as Cunningham had done for Smith.
A chance for freedom appeared, however, when Echean- dia was prevailed upon to grant the Americans permission to return to the Colorado and secure their buried store of furs. But this hope was soon extinguished by the announce- ment that Pattie would be held in San Diego to insure the return of his companions. The rest of the trappers, how- ever, set out upon the expedition. Upon reaching the Col- orado, they found that an overflow of the river had ruined the buried furs, leaving only the traps to pay for the expense and pains of the undertaking. Two of the trappers, having had enough of California, left their companions at the Col- orado and made their way back to New Mexico. The remainder, in accordance with their promise to Echeandia returned to San Diego, where they were once more impris- oned.
An unusual situation, however, soon afterwards brought
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about the release of the prisoners. A severe epidemic of small pox at that time was sweeping over the northern part of the province, carrying off Indians and Mexicans alike. As the disease spread farther and farther south, and the Californians found themselves unable to check its progress, the governor appealed to Pattie for assistance. The latter had in his possession a small quantity of vaccine, which his father had brought from the Santa Rita copper mines, and this Pattie agreed to give in return for the liberation of himself and his companions on a year's parole.2
In fulfillment of this agreement, and with the understand- ing that Pattie should also receive a monetary reward for his services, the Americans were given their freedom and Pattie began the novel and rather stupendous task of vac- cinating all the Mission Indians and the other inhabitants of the province. A thousand persons were treated at San Diego, nearly four thousand at San Luis Rey, six hundred at San Juan Capistrano, more than nine hundred at San Gabriel, twenty-five hundred at the pueblo of Los Angeles, and a larger or smaller number at each of the missions, pueblos, and presidios as far north as San Francisco. Altogether Pattie claims to have innoculated a total of twenty-two thou- sand persons during his short career as an amateur surgeon. Surely medical annals contain no other record quite so unique! And just as surely, never have there been so many arms swelling and itching in unison from San Diego to Sonoma as during this itinerary of James Ohio Pattie, fur hunter and sometime surgeon extraordinary to his Excel- lency, the Governor of California!
From San Francisco Pattie made a short visit to the Rus- sian post at Bodega, where he received a hundred dollars for medical services rendered to the colonists there. Upon his return to San Francisco, where he expected to be paid by the Franciscans for vaccinating the Indians of the various missions, Pattie was offered a thousand head of cattle, together with the necessary land for pasturage, on condi-
2 Pattie's supply was of course augmented by virus from innoculated patients.
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tion that he accept the Catholic faith. This offer Pattie indignantly refused and soon left San Francisco for Monterey.
Here he came in contact with a number of Americans, most of whom were connected with ships in the harbor. After several months spent in coastwise voyages and sea otter hunting on one of these vessels, Pattie returned to Monterey, where he found the country in the throes of one of its frequent revolutions. The leader of the movement, which was directed against Governor Echeandía, was a man of some military ability, named Solís, who had been ban- ished to California from Mexico a few years before because of his extreme cruelty. The details of this insurrection are unimportant, except to note that Pattie, together with most of the American and English residents about Monterey, became involved in it. At first taking the side of the revo- lutionary party, they later became alarmed at the attitude shown by Solís toward the foreigners and turned against him. This brought about his defeat, a proceeding in which a barrel of rum, generously dealt out to his supporters by the Americans, played fully as large a part as powder and balls.
The share which Pattie had in thus reducing the revolt at once placed him high in Governor Echeandía's favor. But the offers which the latter made were not well received by Pattie, who was resolved to lay his claims in person before the Mexican government. Accordingly he embarked for the west coast of Mexico on the same vessel that carried the prisoners taken by Echeandia in the Solis revolt. Most of the Americans who had come with him from New Mexico, however, remained as permanent residents of California.
From San Blas, where the ship anchored, Pattie went overland to Mexico City. Here he presented his claims to Anthony Butler, then American chargé d'affaires, and also laid his case before President Bustamante. From the latter Pattie received sympathy, but nothing else; and after a brief stay in the Mexican capital he continued his journey to Vera Cruz and thence came, by way of New Orleans, to
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his birthplace in Kentucky. This he reached the last of August, 1830, a man broken in spirits and in fortune, after six years of incredible hardships and desperate adventures.
The increase made by James Ohio Pattie and his father to the knowledge of the great southwest cannot be over- magnified. Among other contributions their explorations opened one of the chief overland routes to California and prepared the way for the development of the important St. Louis-Santa Fé-Los Angeles trade. "Brave, honest, God-fearing, vigorous in mind and body, dependent on their own resources the Patties belonged to that class of Americans who conquered the wilderness, and yearly pushed the frontier westward." Such is the tribute paid by Rueben G. Thwaites, one of the greatest of western historians, to these two Kentucky pioneers, and in this judgement every Californian will concur.
Of James Ohio Pattie's later history almost nothing is known, except that he returned to California during the gold rush and set out for the mines. What became of him after that, no one can say. As his life was filled with adventure, so his death is shrouded in mystery. It is fitting that this should be so.
The principal source for this chapter is:
Pattie, James Ohio, Personal narrative of a voyage to the Pacific and in Mexico, 1824-1830 (Cleveland, 1905. Or. ed. Cincinnati. 1831), in Early Western Travels, ed. by Rueben G. Thwaites, XVIII.
CHAPTER VII
THE SUCCESSORS OF SMITH AND PATTIE
THE arrival of the Smith and Pattie companies ushered in a decade of singular importance in California history. Ill-equipped and insignificant in size as these expeditions were, they not only presaged the great overland advance of American settlers, which culminated in the riotous days of '49, but also forecast, with equal certainty, the end of Mexican control and the annexation of California to the United States.
It was some years, however, after the coming of these first explorers that organized immigration, with the object of per- manent settlement, actually began. In the meantime nu- merous trapping expeditions, most of them larger than either the Smith or Pattie companies, found their way across the mountains into the valleys of the interior or to the settle- ments along the coast.
To give here a detailed account of each of these parties is manifestly impossible. Not only does lack of space forbid such an attempt, but the very nature of the men who made up these expeditions also adds to the difficulty of the task. The fur hunter, like most pioneers, was a man of action rather than a chronicler of events, and seldom left behind a written account of his itinerary or achievements. One may catch an occasional glimpse of him, now here, now there, as he wanders through the mountain fastnesses and great inland valleys of California, or approaches some coast settle- ment for the purchase of supplies. But for the most part his goings and comings are hidden in obscurity, and the knowledge we have of his activities in California is disap- pointingly meager.
Fortunately, however, the fur hunters of those early days
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did not confine their operations to any one region. The whole west was their habitat, from the Platte, the Missouri, the Arkansas, and the Red River to the Pacific; and from the Canadian line as far south as the Rio Grande and the Gila, and even beyond those streams into Chihuahua and Sonora. Whether in the Rocky Mountains or the Sierra Nevadas, the fur trader's manner of life, his methods of trapping, and the organization of his companies were virtu- ally the same. A brief description of the industry as a whole will therefore serve to explain something of its nature as it was carried on in California.
The fur traders were divided into two classes-the en- gagés, or regular company employees, and the independent hunters, or free trappers. The former, well illustrated by Jedediah Smith's expedition, were bound by definite con- tract to the company's service for a specified period, usually of a year's duration. They received, together with food and equipment, a stipulated wage, ordinarily amounting to $150 a year. Often this was paid in beaver fur at a price per pound agreed upon when the contract was entered into. The discipline maintained in expeditions of this kind was necessarily of military strictness. Throughout the regions where the fur business was carried on, conditions were not particularly favorable to the enforcement of law or the devel- opment of courts. Consequently, custom and usage, main- tained when in dispute by the individual, took the place of statutes, judges, juries, and sheriffs.
A handful of men, carrying with them articles greatly coveted by the Indians, or laden with the profits of a sea- son's hunt, travelling through a perilous country, perhaps a thousand miles from any base of supplies, could not long survive unless all were subject to a single leader, whose orders were executed by direct and forcible means whenever necessary. If unrestrained by some such rigid discipline, a few quarrelsome or evilly disposed men, either through desertion, broils among themselves, or unnecessary provo- cation of the Indians, might easily involve the entire expe- dition in ruin. To preserve order and obedience among
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a company of reckless, semi-lawless trappers, particularly when dissatisfaction prevailed because of continued hard- ship, or opportunity for insubordination offered itself, was no child's play. At the San Gabriel Mission, for instance, Smith was compelled to flog one of his men to correct a con- firmed tendency to mischief making. The Pattie party, as already told, broke up on the Gila with disastrous conse- quences because the malcontents could not be held to their obligations. Later, the inability of Joseph Walker to con- trol his company when encamped near Monterey, resulted in the financial ruin of the expedition. To lead a trapping party successfully, required not only the nominal power to enforce discipline, but also tact, unwavering firmness, resourcefulness, and a consummate ability to handle men. Whenever these qualities were lacking in a leader-and not infrequently even when they were present-an expedition came to grief.
Even more picturesque than the engagés, both in appear- ance and manner of life, was the free trapper. Bound by no obligations, owing no allegiance to any company, in everything his own master, the free trapper relied upon his own resources, provided his own equipment, and trapped when and where he pleased. His reckless nature and char- acteristic garb were thus described by Captain Bonneville, the friend of Washington Irving:
"It is a matter of vanity and ambition with the free trapper to discard everything that may bear the stamp of civilized life, and to adopt the manners, habits, dress, gesture, and even walk of the Indian. You can not pay a free trapper a greater compliment, than to persuade him that you have mistaken him for an Indian; and, in truth, the counterfeit is complete. His hair, suffered to attain a great length, is carefully combed out, and either left to fall care- lessly over his shoulders, or plaited neatly and tied up in otter skins, or parti-colored ribbons. A hunting shirt of ruffled calico of bright dyes, or of ornamental leather, falls to his knees; below which, curiously fashioned leggins, ornamented with strings, fringes, and a profusion of hawks' bills, reach to a costly pair of moccasins, of the finest Indian fabric, richly embroidered with
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beads. A blanket of scarlet, or some other bright color, hangs from his shoulders, and is girt round his waist with a red sash, in which he bestows his pistols, knife, and the stem of his Indian pipe. His gun is lavishly decorated with brass tacks and vermilion, and provided with a fringed cover, occasionally of buck skin, ornamented here and there with a feather. His horse is capari- soned in the most dashing and fantastic style; the bridals and crup- per are weightily embossed with beads and cocades; and head, mane, and tail are interwoven with an abundance of eagles' plumes, which flutter in the wind. To complete this grotesque equipment, the animal is bestreaked and bespotted with vermil- ion, or with white clay."
In the decade from 1830 to 1840 both engagés and free trappers came into California, the latter probably in some- what larger numbers than the former. Several of the expedi- tions were also composed of both types; for the free trappers not infrequently joined themselves temporarily, for pur- poses of protection or other advantage, to a regularly organ- ized party. In such cases special arrangements were made to cover the matter of equipment and wages.
Most trapping companies were divided into messes of six men each. One member of each mess served as cook for the other five, and in return received his proportionate share of the furs taken by his companions. Each trapper, besides his saddle horse, had at least two pack animals to carry his equipment and furs. His arms consisted of a rifle, one or more pistols, a hunting knife, and generally a small ax or tomahawk. The rifle usually carried resembled the famous Kentucky squirrel rifle, but was of a somewhat larger bore.
The fur chiefly sought after, from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, was that of the beaver. These skins sold in the mountains for an average price of five or six dollars each. So universal, indeed, was their use that they served as an accepted medium of exchange in place of money throughout the west. They were carried in bundles, or "packs," weighing from eighty to a hundred pounds apiece.
Frequently trappers were compelled to cache their surplus
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provisions, equipment, or furs, because of some threatened danger or exigency of the route. When such an emergency arose, a pit was secretly dug in a dry and sheltered place and the sides and bottom lined with branches, canvas, or even stones. After the articles had been carefully stored away, a covering, as nearly water-proof as possible, was placed over the cache. Every trace of labor was then removed and the ground made to look as though it had never been disturbed.
In spite of the most skillful precautions, however, and especially when the cache was made under the stress of danger or in urgent haste, marauding Indians, wild beasts, or unexpected floods frequently destroyed the buried stores, thus causing serious financial loss and not infrequently bringing the unfortunate trappers face to face with starva- tion. It will be recalled that the Patties, along with many other disasters, suffered at least twice in this regard-once when the Indians rifled their cache on the Gila and again when high water ruined the furs they had buried on the banks of the Colorado.
In addition to the furs taken by members of an expedi- tion through their own trapping operations, large numbers of skins were also obtained by trade from the Indians. To meet the demands of this Indian trade, as well as to supply the personal needs of the trappers themselves, every well equipped expedition carried with it a wide variety of mer- chandise, of which the following list adapted from Chit- tenden, furnishes a typical illustration. The prices were those prevailing in the mountains:
Gunpowder at a dollar and a half a pound (payable in beaver skins); scarlet cloth at six dollars a yard; beaver traps at nine dollars each; finger rings at five dollars a gross; copper kettles at three dollars a pound; tobacco, blankets, files, coffee, dried fruit, washing soap, sugar, handkerchiefs, awls, horse-shoes, buttons, cotton goods, calicoes, axes, beads, looking glasses and a dozen similar articles at corresponding prices. Not least in the catalogue -whether in the estimate of the Indians and trappers, or in the profits which it brought, or the demoralization it accomplished-
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was a liberal supply of rum. This was always of remarkable potency and sold at a minimum price of thirteen dollars a gallon.
A majority of the western trappers came from Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and had behind them an ances- try and early training which fitted them thoroughly for the peculiar and dangerous work of their profession. For the most part they were a rough, reckless lot, if judged by the present day standards of society; but among them could also be found men of education, refinement, and high moral character. Drunkeness and gambling were the chief vices, indulged in so freely when the trappers met at the annual rendezvous that the entire proceeds of a year's hard work were usually squandered in a few days of riotous and unre- strained debauch.
Naturally, with such men the accepted standards of mor- ality did not obtain. Shut off from women of their own race, they formed connections with Indian squaws (sometimes, but not often, dignified by the tribal marriage ceremony); or, in the extreme southwest, found the free and easy virtue of the Mexican women in natural keeping with their own desires.
The life, as a whole, was full of hardship, loneliness, and an almost unbelievable element of risk. Danger was everywhere, and death usually came in unexpected and violent forms. Trappers died in brawls among themselves, and from starvation, thirst, snowslide, flood, and accidents of many kinds. They were mangled beyond recognition by grizzly bears or crushed under the hoofs of buffalo herds. They were killed by Indians, sometimes in pitched battle; sometimes in sudden surprise attack as they lay sleeping under the open sky. Often they fought their last grim fight in some lonely cañon or upon the banks of a quiet stream, single handed against hopeless odds; or, most fearful of all, faced fire and torture at the hands of their Indian captors.
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