USA > Colorado > History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888 > Part 35
USA > Nevada > History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888 > Part 35
USA > Wyoming > History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888 > Part 35
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16 It is related, and is probably true, that Maurice, a French trader from Detroit, built a fortification on Adobe creek in Arkansas valley in 1830, which would give him precedence in point of time. He collected a Mexican settlement, and erected 13 adobe cabins around a square or plaza, in Mexi-
HIST. NEV. 23
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DISCOVERY AND OCCUPATION.
manches, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Utes. Fort William, after which the other trading-posts were modelled, consisted of an enclosure 150 by 100 feet in extent, surrounded by an adobe wall seven feet thick and eighteen feet high. At the north-west and south- east corners stood bastions ten feet in diameter and thirty feet high, with openings for cannon and small arms. A partition wall divided the interior, two- thirds of which was devoted to the necessary shops, storehouses, and dwellings, the remaining third being a corral in which the horses and mules were secured from theft at night. In the east wall was a large gate, with heavy plank doors, opened only on certain occasions. Adjoining the wall on the west was a wagon-house, made to shelter a dozen or more large wagons used in conveying goods from and peltries to St Louis. The tops of the houses were flat and grav- elled, and served for a promenade in the evenings, like the house-tops of Egypt. There were about sixty persons employed in the affairs at Fort William, and many were the dangers they incurred and adven- tures they encountered ;17 for the region was the com- mon ground of several of the most warlike tribes of the plains. Here, too, at different times were enter- tained travellers of every description and rank for a period of more than twenty years. In 1852 Bent blew up Fort William and moved his goods down the
can fashion, one of which was used as a church. In 1838 the Sioux and Arapahoes attacked the place, and were fought by the Utes, whose assistance had been sought. The battle was a bloody one, resulting in the victory of the Utes. This Mexican settlement was not entirely broken up until 1846. Arkansas Val. Hist., 545-6. Among those earliest in the service of the fur companies were Bill Williams, John Smith, a young man of good education from Philadelphia, Ben. Ryder, C. de Bray, Metcalfe, and William Brans- ford, who later lived in Las Animas county.
17 Farnham's Travels in the Great Western Prairies, 35. The author of this book was at Fort William in 1839, and wrote accurately of what he saw. He says: 'In the months of June, August, and September there are in the neighborhood of those traders from 15,000 to 20,000 savages, ready and panting for plunder and blood. If they engage in battling out old causes of contention among themselves the Messrs Bent feel comparatively safe in their solitary fortress. But if they spare each other's property and lives there are great anxieties at Fort William; every hour of day and night is pregnant with danger.'
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FUR TRADERS.
Arkansas to the mouth of Purgatoire river, where he erected a new fort, which was leased to the govern- ment in 1859, when it was occupied by troops and called Fort Wise, after the governor of Virginia.
Another trading-post erected in 1832 was that of Louis Vasquez, five miles north-east of the site of Denver, at the junction of Vasquez fork or Clear creek with the Platte river. A nephew of Vasquez resided with him at the fort from 1832 to 1836, and was one of the first settlers in Colorado. Fort Sarpy was erected soon after the two above named, and was situated on the Platte, five miles below Vasquez's post. Five miles below Sarpy's post was another fort, whose name has been forgotten, and fifteen miles further down the river was Fort Lancaster, erected by Lupton, which in 1886 was in a good state of preservation. Fort St Vrain, ten miles below Lup- ton, at the confluence of the Cache le Poudre river with the Platte, was erected in 1838. The Bent brothers also had a post on the Platte before reaching the junction of the next stream below. So thickly clustered rival establishments in the first ten or fif- teen years of trade in the Rocky mountains. Five miles above Fort William toward the mountains was El Pueblo, a Mexican post, although owned in part by Americans, and constructed very much on the plan of Fort William. It was not, like the others, a trading establisment, but a farming settlement, intended to supply the trading-posts with grain, veg- etables, and live stock. The proprietors irrigated their farm with water from the Arkansas, and were undoubtedly the first agriculturists in this region ; but as they neglected to water their potions of alco- hol sufficiently at the same time, their enterprise did not flourish as it should, even in 1838.18
18 Stone, General View, MS., 20-21, mentions a Col Boone, who had a trading post known as Hardscrable in the Arkansas valley, contemporary with St Vrain and others. Another post was on the site of Trinidad in Las Animas county. The St Vrain mentioned here, I have no doubt, was one of the family of that name which became possessed of a grant to certain lead
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DISCOVERY AND OCCUPATION.
Somewhere between 1840 and 1844 another settle- ment was made on Adobe creek, further up the Arkansas on the south side, in what was later Fre- mont county. It was under the patronage of an association of traders, among whom were Bent, Lup- ton, St Vrain, Beaubien, and Lucien B. Maxwell, Beaubien having charge, and being the owner of a large grant of land from the Mexican government. The settlement was broken up in 1846 by the Indians.
A feature of the period to which I have just alluded was the obtaining of grants from the Mexican authorities for the purpose of colonization and devel- opment. As I have shown, success had not attended their efforts, but the grants were valid notwithstand- ing. The Vigil and St Vrain grant embraced nearly all of what is now Colorado south of the Arkansas river and east of the mountains, excepting the Nolan grant, a tract fifteen miles wide by forty miles in length, lying south of Pueblo. Under the treaty of 1848 the title to these lands was undisturbed, except that the United States government thought best to cut them down to eleven square leagues each, as enough to content republican owners. I shall have occasion to refer again to them in this history. On the Vigil and St Vrain grant James Bonney in 1842 founded the town of La Junta.
In 1841 the first immigrant wagon bound to the Pacific coast passed up the Platte valley, and taking the North fork, crossed the Rocky mountains into Oregon by the South pass ; and soon it became the usual route instead of that by the Arkansas valley, being safer from Indian depredations. But whatever route was taken, no settlers came in these days from the United States to make their homes in the Rocky mountains ; and even the hunters and trappers, whose
mines in 'upper Louisiana ' by authority of the Baron de Carandolet, sur- veyor-general of Louisiana in 1796. This was James Ceran St Vrain, and the mines were in Tennessee.
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THE MORMONS.
numbers had once been that of a respectable army, were being killed off by the Comanches or absorbed by the half civilization of the Mexican border.
The first government expedition since Long's was set on foot in 1842 under Frémont, but did not more than touch Colorado this year. Returning in 1843-4, some explorations were made of this portion of United States territory. The only persons encoun- tered in the Rocky mountains by Frémont 19 at this time were the few remaining traders and their former employés, now their colonists, who lived with their Mexican and Indian wives and half-breed children in a primitive manner of life, usually under the protec- tion of some defensive structure called a fort.20
The first American families in Colorado were a part of the Mormon battalion of 1846, who, with
19 Enough has been said about Frémont's expeditions elsewhere. He made no important discoveries in Colorado, those which he did make being noted under other heads. His expedition was very completely furnished. He left the Platte with a part of his command after reaching Fort Laramie, and fol- lowing the South fork, came in sight of Long's peak July 8, 1842. He con- tinued up the valley as far as St Vrain's fort, 17 miles east of that mountain, where he remained for three days only, returning on the 12th to rejoin his company. In 1843 he took a different route to the mountains, via the valley of the Kansas river and Republican fork, crossing thence to the Smoky Hill fork, and proceeding almost directly west to Fort St Vrain by the well-worn trails of the fur companies. From St Vrain, where he arrived July 4th, he continued up the Platte, seeing Pike's peak covered with new-fallen snow on the morning of the 10th. Crossing the divide between the Platte and Ar- kansas, he arrived on the 17th at Fontaine-qui-Bouille, or Soda Springs, near the eastern base of the peak, the same which Long had named after Capt. Bell. On the 19th he left this spot, and descending the river to the eastern fork, which was hastily surveyed, the party returned to Fort St Vrain, whence they proceeded north to Fort Laramie. Frémont mentions the fort called El Pueblo, and explains that the inhabitants were, at that time at least, a number of mountaineers, principally Americans, who had married Mexican women, and occupied themselves in farming and carrying on a desultory trade with the Indians. In 1844 he returned by a course which took him through the north-west corner of the state, through North park, which he called New park, through the South park, and to the Ar- kansas river, by which route he reached St Louis in the autumn. Explor. Exped., 116. His 3d and last expedition in 1848 was a disastrous one, in which he lost most of his men, animals, and stores in an attempt to cross the mountains to Grand river in the dead of winter.
20 Captain Gunnison in 1853 noticed a small settlement in the Culebra valley, and on the banks of the Costilla, where he found a little farming, wheat, corn, beans, and watermelons being among the productions. Six Mexican families were settled on the Greenhorn river, and at Sangre de Cristo pass an American named Williams was herding some stock. Beckwith in Pac. R. R. Rept, ii. ch. iii
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DISCOVERY AND OCCUPATION.
their wives and children, resided at Pueblo from Sep- tember to the spring and summer of the following year, when they joined the Mormon migration to Salt Lake. A number of persons later living in Utah were born at Pueblo in 1846-7.21
A number of houses 22 were erected by them for
21 See Hist. Cal. and Hist. Utah, this series. From Tyler's Mormon Bat- talion, 126, I take the following names of persons who were quartered at Pueblo during this period: Gilbert Hunt, Dimick B. Huntington, Montgom- ery Button, John Tippets, Milton Kelley, Nicholas Kelley, Norman Sharp, James Brown, Harley Morey, Thomas Woolsey, S. C. Shelton, Joseph W. Richards, James T. S. Allred, Reuben W. Allred, Marvin S. Blanchard, James W. Calkins, David Garner, James H. Glines, Schuyler Hulett, Elijah E. Holden, Charles A. Jackson, Barnabas Lake, Melcher Oyler, Caratat C. Roe, John Sessions, John P. Wriston, Elam Ludington, John D. Chase, Franklin Allen, Erastus Bingham, William Bird, Philip Garner, Harmon D. Persons, Lyman Stephens, Dexter Stillman, William Walker, Charles Wright, Orson B. Adams, Alexander Brown, Jesse J. Brown, William E. Beckstead, William H. Carpenter, Isaac Carpenter, John Calvert, Francillo Durphy, Samuel Gould, John C. Gould, Jarvis Johnson, Thurston Larson, Jabez Nowlan, Judson A. Persons, Richard Smith, Milton Smith, Andrew J. Shupe, James Shupe, Joel J. Terrill, Solomon Tindall, David Wilkin, Da- vid Perkins, John Perkins, Thomas S. Williams, Arnold Stephens, Joshua Abbott, Jonathan Averett, William Costo, Abner Chase, James Davis, Ralph Douglas, William B. Gifford, James Hirous, Lorin E. Kenney, Lisbon Lamb, David S. Laughlin, Peter J. Meeseck, James Oakley, William Rowe, John Steel, Abel M. Sargent, William Gribble, Benjamin Roberts, Henry W. Sanderson, Albert Sharp, Clark Stillman, John G. Smith, Myron Tanner, Almon Whiting, Edmund Whiting, Ebenezer Hanks, Samuel Clark, George Cummings, Luther W. Glazier, J. W. Hess, Charles Hopkins, Thomas Kar- ren, David Miller, William A. Park, Jonathan Pugmire, Jr, Roswell Steph- ens, Bailey Jacobs. These were detached and sent to Pueblo on account of sickness; first detachment from the crossing of the Arkansas, and a second one from Santa Fé. Those who had families were ordered to send them to Pueblo, except such as were retained for laundresses; bnt as their names are given but once, and that before the division, it is impossible to give the num- ber of women who wintered in Colorado. There were 34 married women with the battalion, with children of all ages, to the number of 60 or 70. There were also several men, not enlisted, with the families, as John Bosco, David Black, James P. Brown, and others. Milton Kelley, Joseph W. Richards, John Perkins, Norman Sharp, Arnold Stephens, M. S. Blanchard, Milton Smith, Scott, and Abner Chase, died in Pueblo, or on the road to that place. The first white American born in Colorado was Malinda Cather- ine Kelley, daughter of Milton and Malinda Kelley, in Nov., soon after the death of her father, whose first child she was. Subsequently Mrs Fanny M. Huntington, wife of Captain Dimick B. Huntington, gave birth to a child, which died in a few hours. Eunice, wife of James P. Brown, bore a son, John; Mrs Norman Sharp a daughter; Albina, wife of Thomas S. Williams, a daughter, Phebe. A child of Capt. Jefferson Hunt, by his wife, Celia, died and was buried at Pueblo, and probably others, whose names have been forgotten; but from this record it is easy to imagine the remainder of a sad story of privation, death, and burial in a savage land, and children born to sorrow.
22 See Stone's Gen. View, MS .; Byers' Hist. Colo, MS. The detachment sent from Santa Fé built 18 rooms 14 feet square, of timbers cut in the . woods. Tyler's Hist. Mormon Battalion, 171. The first detachment may have built others.
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winter quarters, and here were born, married,23 and buried a number of their people. Driven out of Illinois at the point of the bayonet, seeking homes on the western side of the continent, they had accepted service under the government, which had failed to protect them in their direst need, for the sake of being provisioned and having their families transported across the continent. Of their strange history the winter in Pueblo was but an incident.24 Another portion of General Kearny's army, under Colonel Price and Major Emory, travelled up the Arkansas as far as Bent's fort, where it turned off to Santa Fé by the Raton pass. This force consisted of 1,658 men, including Doniphan's 1st regiment of Missouri mounted volunteers.
Meanwhile there were no real military establish- ments in the whole region west and north-west of Fort Leavenworth ; although, to protect the Oregon immi- gration, a chain of posts across the continent had been much talked of in congress ; and it had been announced that Frémont's explorations were ordered with the design of establishing a permanent overland route, and selecting the sites for the posts which were to guard and render it safe. I have shown in my history of Oregon that this was not actually done before 1849, the intervention of the war with Mexico diverting the army to that quarter. But measures were taken early in March 1847 to select locations for two United States forts between the Missouri and the Rocky mountains, the sites selected being those now occupied by Kearney City and Fort Laramine, the latter being
23 Almira, daughter of Capt. Nelson Higgins, was married to John Chase at Pueblo.
24 I have noticed some erroneous statements concerning the Mormon bat- talion in my Colorado manuscripts. It was commanded in the first place by a regular officer, Col James Allen, Ist dragoons, though it was an in- fantry force. He died soon after the battalion left Leavenworth, and the command was taken by Lieut A. J. Smith, who reported to Col Doniphan at Santa Fé, the whole being under the command of Gen. Kearny. From Santa Fé to Los Angeles Col P. St George Cook commanded the battalion. See Hist. Cal. and Hist. Utah, this series.
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DISCOVERY AND OCCUPATION.
purchased from the American Fur company.2 The work of constructing and garrisoning these forts pro- gressed slowly,26 and it was not until some months after the close of the Mexican war that troops were stationed at them, although in 1847-8 there was a con- siderable force kept moving on the plains. In 1850 Fort Massachusetts was erected on Ute creek, at the west base of the main chain of the Rocky mountains, near Sangre de Cristo pass; the site being chosen the better to intercept the raiding bands of Utes, and was occupied, although the situation proved unhealthful, until 1857, when the present Fort Garland was sub- stituted.27
In 1853 congress passed an act authorizing a sur- vey of railroad routes from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean, that between the 38th and 39th parallels being entrusted to Captain J. W. Gunnison, of the Topographical engineers. Captain Gunnison began his survey at the mouth of the Kansas river, proceeded westward to Bent's fort, up the Arkansas to the Apishapa and Huerfano affluents, through Sangre de Cristo pass into San Luis park, the Saguache valley, and Cochetopa pass, down the Gun- nison branch of the Colorado to its junction with Grand river, thence westward across the Wasatch range, in Utah, as far as the valley of Sevier lake and river, where he, with several of his party, was murdered October 26th 28 by Pah Utes. Gunnison's
25 Fort Laramie was sometimes called Fort John. Byrse in his Hist. Colo, MS,, 66, says it was St John, and that the government changed its name to Laramie. But. it was known to travellers as Laramie a number of years be- fore the purchase; and in Bonneville's Adventures it is called Fort William, probably after William Sublette, who built it in 1834, in conjunction with Robert Campbell. They sold it the following year to Milton Sublette and James Bridger, who went into partnership with the American Fur Company. There is a more complete account of Fort Laramie in my History of Wyoming, this vol. Hastings, in his Or. and Cal., 136, mentions F't John as being one mile south of Fort Laramie.
26 Rept of W. L. Marcy, sec. war, in Niles' Reg., Dec. 13, 1848.
27 Fort Garland is located in latitude 27° 35' north; longitude 27° 20' west; with an altitude of 7,805 feet. The reservation comprises 4 square miles, and lies between Sangre de Cristo and Ute creeks in San Luis park. Surgeon- gen. Circ., 1870-4, 257; Beckwith, in Pac R. R. Rept, ii. 38.
28 Gunnison had an escort of a dozen mounted riflemen, Co. A, under Capt. Morris. On the morning of Oct. 25th Gunnison, with F. Creutzfeldt
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ROUTES AND EXPEDITIONS.
survey of the mountain passes of Colorado rendered it conclusive that there was no route equal to that travelled by the immigration through the great depression about the 42d parallel;" although the apprehension of obstruction from snow in this lati- tude continued to govern the views of those in authority, and in spite of the survey of the Northern Pacific railroad line, until the civil war forced the abandonment of the more southern routes.
botanist, R. H. Kern topographer, William Potter guide, John Bellows, and a corporal and 6 men, left camp to explore the vicinity of Sevier lake. On the next morning, most of the party being at breakfast, the Indians fired upon them from a thicket, and stampeding the horses, prevented their es- cape. Only 4 out of the 12 survived the attack. The corporal, who was able to mount, gave the first information to Capt. Morris, and the escort ar- rived on the scene of the massacre that evening too late to collect the re- mains of the murdered, which had been mangled by the savages, though not scalped, and torn and almost devoured by wolves during the night. Beck- with in Pac R. R. Rept, ii. 73-4; Olympia Wash. Pioneer, Jan. 21, 1854. See Hist. Utah, this series.
29 See Hist. Northwest Coast, this series. The other government expedi- tions which have surveyed Colorado have been those military reconnoissances connected with railroads and mail routes. In 1854 Steptoe, on his way to Oregon with 300 troops, surveyed the country from New Mexico to Salt Lake City, and expended $25,000 in improving the route from that place to the southern California coast by the way of the Rio Virgen and Muddy river and the Cajon pass. U. S. Ex. Doc., 34th cong. Ist sess., i. pt 2, 504-7. The overland mail was carried over this route for several years, or until the war with the south compelled the adoption of the central route. In 1857 the government sent out an expedition under William M. Magraw to locate a wagon-road through the South pass. It was accompanied by a corps of sci- entific men, who made collections of the plants, minerals, and animals of the country. Smithsonian Rept, 1858, 50. Congress had at different times made appropriations for the exploration of the Rocky mts in the interest of science, and especially of geology. An expedition to the lower Yellowstone, under the command of G. K. Warren, of the U. S. Eng. corps, as early as 1856, was the first to become interested in the marvellous reports of the Yellow- stone country through the medium of the fur-traders. James Bridger offered to guide the command to the head of the river, but the undertaking was not entered upon at that time. Warren had planned an expedition to Yellow- stone lake for the years of 1859-60, but was superseded in command by Col Reynolds of his corps. Prof. F. V. Hayden was connected with the expedi- tion of 1856, and had charge of the geological department in 1859-60; but Reynolds failed to make the passage of the Wind River mts, from which side he made his approach. At the same time a small party under Cook and Folsom, by approaching by the valley of the Yellowstone, crossed the divide into the geyser basin of the Madison river, but not until after W. W. De Lacy, as I have shown in my History of Montana, had penetrated to that spot from the head of Snake river, in 1863. In 1870 the sur .- gen. of Montana, Henry D Washburne, with a party of settlers reached the upper geyser basin, at the head of the Yellowstone, and N. P. Langford, one of the party, published an account of the discoveries made by the expedition in the May and June numbers of Scribner's Magazine for 1871. An army officer who accompanied the excursion in command of a small escort-Lieut G. C. Doane, 2d cav. - made an official report to Gen. Hancock, who forwarded it to the
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DISCOVERY AND OCCUPATION.
sec of war, Belknap. These revelations of the wonders of the Rocky mts greatly stimulated research. Under the direction of the sec. of the int., Delano, the geological survey was resumed in 1871 in the mountain regions, Prof. Hayden being in charge. He proceeded from Odgen to Fort Hall, and thence to Fort Ellis, Montana, where he obtained an escort and made the long-contemplated visit to the geyser basin, of which there is a description in his report for 1871, being the 5th of the series. In the following year Hayden, with his photographer, W. H. Jackson, made a tour through a part of Colorado, and in his report for 1872 gave a brief general sketch of the scenery and the geological features, with analyses of the mineral springs; but his explorations were confined principally to the country north of the 41st parallel. In 1873 and 1874 the survey of Colorado was prosecuted with zeal. The headquarters of the company was at Denver, but it was separated into 7 divisions to prosecute specifically the work of the topographical, geo- logical, botanical, zoological, archæological, paleontological, and photo- graphical branches of the service, which in all respects was of great value to the country and to science at large. Hayden's report for 1874 contains, besides the strictly scientific history of the state, many interesting observ- ations on the conditions of the country and its development at this date. All of his reports are written in a popular style, which enables the least studious reader to find some churm in them. Daly's Address Am. Geog. Soc., 1873, 9-12, 55-6. In 1880 Hayden published a volume of general and scientific information concerning the intramontane states and territories which he called The Great West, containing over 500 pages, and made up of selected matter from other sources, with some descriptive matter from his own, in which 75 pages are devoted to Colorado. In 1873 an expedition was thrown into the field by the war department, under the general charge of Lieut George M. Wheeler, the primary object being to discover the most available routes for the transport of troops and wagons between interior posts, and incidentally to conduct researches in geology, zoology, botany, archæology, and other special branches of science. The expedition was in the field three years, and a part of it in Colorado most of the time. The force for 1875 was divided into two sections, one under the immediate direction of Wheeler, to start from Los Angeles for the survey of southern Cal. and Arizona, and another under Lieut William L. Marshall, to start from Pueblo for the survey of the southern part of Colo. and New Mex. I have referred in my History of Nevada to Wheeler's work in that state. Marshall's route from Pueblo meandered the sage plains east of the mountains, rounded the base of Pike's peak, through the Sangre de Cristo pass to Conejos, on the Conejas branch of the Rio Grande del Norte, where the real work of the expedition for Colo. began. The topography of the whole country west of the 100th meridian and between the parallels was secured by triangulation, and a series of maps made which omitted no faintest trail or smallest stream. Wheeler's publi- cations consist of reports, maps, and photographs, and are of great geogra- phical value. In 1867 the government ordered the geological survey of the 40th parallel, and the explorations were placed in charge of Clarence King, a man of many attainments, to whose work and that of his party I have re- ferred in my History of Nevada. A large octavo volume published in 1870 at Washington on mining industry contains chapters on gold and silver min- ing in Colorado, by James D. Hague, with general and particular histories of the most noted mines and mineral districts, with illustrations, the whole being of much interest and value.
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