USA > Colorado > History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888 > Part 70
USA > Nevada > History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888 > Part 70
USA > Wyoming > History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888 > Part 70
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Entering the territory from the northeast, we en- counter the Black hills, lying across the boundary line, chiefly in Dakota, a group of low, timbered mountains, embraced between the north and south branch of the Cheyenne river. Other ranges, pro- jecting from the headwaters of the Little Missouri and other streams, roughen this northeast region, which is also not without its remarkable features, the most noticeable of which is an immense porphyry up- heaval, resembling in shape the tepees of the aboriginal
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inhabitants of the plains. The mass, which stands upon a pedestal of milk-white clay, fifteen hundred feet in diameter and five hundred feet high, on the bank of the North fork, is itself nine hundred feet in diameter where it joins the base, and three hundred feet at the summit, which is 1,126 feet above the level of the river. It consists of seventy-six columns, com- pactly placed, of a gray, porphyrytic rock resembling granite with the mica left out, the columns being the result of crystallization. Standing alone in a plain, several miles from any other elevation, the effect is that of one of the pyramids of Egypt dropped down in this not un-Egyptian landscape.
West of the short ranges, just referred to, lie the valleys of the Powder river and its branches, occupying from 50 to 100 miles in breadth. Still west of those plains rises the magnificent Big Horn range, covering an area 50 by 150 miles in extent, and shooting up a dozen peaks from 9,000 tonearly 14,000 feet. Through an extensive basin of broken country, beyond these mountains, flows the Bighorn river on its way to the Yellowstone, receiving numerous tributaries both from the Bighorn range on the east and the Shoshone range on the west. The southern boundary of the Big- horn basin is Owl Creek range, connecting with the Wind River mountains, a line of needle peaks, which trend northwest from the divide north of the Sweetwater, and join the Shoshone range. Still further west, on the border of Idaho, is the Teton range, with some high and inaccessible peaks, bounded on the south by the upper canon of Snake river, and between this and the Shoshone range are the lakes which form the sources of the Snake and Yellowstone rivers. South of the Teton range and Snake River cañon is a chaos of mountains, of no great elevation above the surrounding country, in divides or groups, and covering a considerable extent of country. On the tops of some are plateaux from which innumer- able streams flow east, west, and south to larger rivers.
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One of these principal streams is Green river, which heads in Wind River mountains, and runs south with a slight bend toward the west. In this semicircular valley lies 16,500 square miles of territory, irregularly shaped, bounded on the south by the Uinta range in Utah, and having a general elevation of 7,000 feet. This plateau reaches south-east to that long east- and-west plateau before mentioned as the Pacific highway, and both have been named Red desert, or Colorado desert, from the brick-red color of the soil, and the scarcity of vegetation. I reject this nomen- clature as that of ignorance; for the detritus of the mountains about it, which forms its soil, and the sub- stances deposited by the seas and fresh water lakes which once covered all the country between the Mis- souri and Rocky range and the range itself, is not a barren sand, but contains all the elements of unusual fertility, and lacks only moisture sufficient to quicken it.
Geologically, the mountain masses are of different periods of upheaval. The lower elevations are com- posed of sedimentary rocks, from the carboniferous limestone to the most recent tertiary beds, jumbled with the oldest formations, which have been thrust up through them. In general, the crests of the higher ranges are of feldspathic granite, syenite and gneiss, while lower down their slopes occur silu- rian, devonian, carboniferous, triassic, jurassic, and cretaceous rocks, appearing according to the extent of upheaval or the amount of erosive action. The ele- vated plateaux are mostly cretaceous, overlaid by ter- tiary sandstone, and with gravel and drift showing the action of water. The story of the creative and destructive forces of the globe is laid open where the narrative is most interesting, showing us at one point on the great highway all the rock formations, from the granite foundations of our world to the latest creta- ceous deposits. In the lower valleys dark loams pre- vail, on the plateaux sandy loams. Beneath the sur-
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face lie extensive coal measures, chiefly in the southern portion of the territory, but also in the valleys of the Powder, Bighorn, and Wind rivers, and in the Lar- amie mountains and plains. Shales, bearing petroleum, are abundant. Iron, limestone, building-stone, beds of soda several feet in thickness, mountains of sul- phur, mica, copper, lead, silver, and gold crop-up from plains or project from mountain sides. For the most part the country appears treeless, the timber being confined to the mountains, the principal ranges of which are clothed in pine, spruce, fir, hemlock and cedar.
It is not to be supposed that this high and some- what bare region is deficient in watercourses. On the contrary few countries have so many. It might be appropriately named Fontana, as its neighbor was Montana, from the great number of rivers and river sources. The Platte has not less than forty small tributaries. The Sweetwater, Green, and Bighorn rivers all rise in the Wind River mountains, every neighboring range sending down feeders. Cheyenne, Powder, and Tongue rivers rise in a divide in the north-east corner of the territory; the Yellowstone and the Snake in the north-west corner.
This north-west portion is a rolling plain, of a mean elevation of 8,000 feet, with short ridges and occa- sional peaks reaching a height of 10,000 feet. A dense forest covers the greater portion of the land. A little south of the centre is a lake twenty by fifteen miles in area, irregular in form, giving a lengthened shore-line, dotted with wooded islands, bordered by beaches radiant with sparkling pebbles, reflecting in its clear depths pictures of the gray cliffs and green woods which surround it. Out of the north end of the lake flows, very gently for a few miles, the Yellow- stone river, which gradually becomes more hurried, forming impetuous rapids, and firally shooting in a sheet of snowy foam over a precipice 140 feet in height, the whole body of water in its haste clearing
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the brink and falling fifteen feet beyond the base of the cliffs. The river here enters a cañon from 200 to 400 feet in depth, and for half a mile foams and sparkles, leaps and plunges among the rocks to a second fall of 397 feet perpendicular, where it enters the grand cañon from 1,000 to 2,000 feet in depth, where in darkness, and with sighs and groans unheard at the surface, it rushes through twenty miles of rocky fissure before it again emerges into light and freedom. Lesser cañons and falls occur on tributary streams, but none to rival the Yellowstone cataracts and cañons. Beauty as well as grandeur enters into the effect. The walls of the basin into which the river first plunges are composed of rock and conglomerate, held together with clays dyed in vivid tints of yellow, red, green, and purple, by the percolation of mineralized waters. Fantastic shapes, resulting from the wearing away of friable material, some grand, some mirth- provoking, abound on every hand. Towers, spires, buttresses, and other architectural effects suggest ruins of man's creations, rather than the decay of an older world builded by God himself. Fostered by spray from the cataracts, dainty plants and mosses flourish greenly in their vicinity, decorating as for an eternal festival every lofty archway, mimic hall, and simulated chapel, and floating their emerald streamers from every gaily-painted obelisk and tower.
Yellowstone lake, as I have said, has a lengthened shore line. It is, in fact, a collection of narrow inlets with a common centre, shaped much like an enormous tuber, with projecting knobs on every side. Into the southeast one of these bays flows the upper Yellow- stone, which rises in the Shoshone range. It is the only feeder of the lake of any size, and has a small fork to the southwest called Atlantic creek. Heading in the same mountains is a feeder of Snake river known as Pacific creek, and these two creeks, starting from neighboring sources, but taking opposite direc- tions, furnish a pass which is known as Two-ocean
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pass, leading from Snake river below Jackson lake to the Yellowstone lake, via the upper Yellowstone river. Pacific creek is not, however, the source of the sinuous Serpent river whose rocky channel through Idaho has been described, Shoshone lake, or as it should be named, De Lacy lake, being the fountain head. Joined to this lake by a wide neck is a second, called Lewis lake, and not far east, at the foot of Mount Sheridan, a third, named Heart lake, which also sends a stream to Snake river. Twenty miles below these head- waters, on the western slope of the continental divide, the Snake forms Jackson lake, which is larger than the former, and has an island of some size in the southern end. A little way south of Jackson are Leigh and Jenny lakes, connected by a creek and tributary to the river. A park-like basin extends along the Snake from the first lake to the upper cañon, named by early trappers Jackson hole. The canon, a narrow defile twenty miles in length, through which the river foams and tosses frantically, is still passable by following a trail clinging to the precipi- tous side about a hundred feet above the stream. From these topographical features it will be seen that travel from other parts of the before described terri- tory to this northwest corner should be difficult. Walled away from the remainder by the high Sho- shone range, and stopped by cañons from approach by river, it is nearly inaccessible. As to mountain passes, there is the Toowotee, at the head of Wind river, which leads to the head of Black Rock creek, a trib- utary of the Snake, through Buffalo fork; and south of this, in the Wind river range, Union pass, at the head of Gros Ventre, another branch of Snake river; east of Yellowstone lake is Stinking river pass, at the head of the north fork of that river, itself a trib- utary of the Bighorn, none of which breaking in the chain of environing mountains is available for ordinary travel. To come to Yellowstone lake we must ap- proach from the north, and by the Madison fork of
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the Missouri. Here are revealed some of the least common processes of nature in giving the finishing touches to the work of world-making, not quite com- pleted in this region. Let us approach, then, by the Madison river, passing through an eight-mile labyrinth, not gloomy, or even difficult, but opening out in some parts to the width of half a mile, forming parks adorned with miniature forests, and having grassy glades furnished with frequent springs of ice-cold water, in other parts contracting to a few yards of space, but always beautiful and cheerful, as if gaily conducting us to a glorious spectacle beyond. As we emerge from this seductive path we come into a valley of no great extent, clothed in vegetation, at the upper end of which unite the streams which constitute the headwaters of the Madison river. The name given to this verdant vale by those men of simple and strong speech who, in our time, at least, first invaded its soli- tude, was Fire hole, and to the principal stream enter- ing it Fire-hole river. Their reason for this appellation was the unmistakable evidences, visible in the soil and rocks, of the agency of fire in giving character to it. Probably at that time, too, these appearances were even more striking than at present, being less con- cealed by vegetation. Following up Firehole river, which comes leaping joyfully down from the heights in a succession of noisy cascades, we find the banks lined with moisture-loving trees, aspens, cottonwoods, and willows, coming finally to a pine forest, out of which we emerge rather suddenly into a region so suggestive of a lake of fire and brimstone that the discoverers above referred to did not hesitate to call it hell. Having begun to liken things hereabout to the infernal regions, they named one of the most im- petuous and noisy of the affluents of the Yellowstone Hellroaring river, which appellation, with all its oblo- quy, still clings to this stream.
Over a tract of country many miles in extent vol- canic forces are still at work. Instead of frightful
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eruptions of molten lava, which in the remote ages poured down the sharp ridges of the Shoshone range; instead of mountains being thrust up in one place and sunken in another when their fiery contents had been belched forth, we have now on the site of former spectacles of indescribable grandeur the milder sugges- tion of this past offered by ten thousand hot springs and geysers, divided between two principal geyser basins. Intermittent in action, and differing in char- acter and power, the display is infinite in variety, and wonderful as varied. Hot steam, which roars and hisses as it escapes, loud rumblings, discharges like parks of artillery from the explosion of gases, and nauseous odors from the minerals held in solution in the vast cauldron whose outlets are these springs, imply a region below which even the souls of Dante and Virgil would have shrunk from exploring.
Yet this region is most attractive. It contains the largest spouting geysers in the world, each with dis- tinctive features. The Mud volcano plays regularly once in six hours; Grand geyser, in Firehole basin, throws a column of clear hot water twenty-five feet in thickness at the base two hundred and fifty feet into the air for twenty minutes at a time; its neigh- bor, the Fan geyser, discharges in five radiating jets to a height of sixty feet for an hour. In another place the Giant plays, with a diameter of seven and a height of 140 feet, lasting three hours; the Giantess, with a diameter of eighteen and a height of 250 feet, lasting twenty minutes; the Beehive, with a diameter of twenty and a height of 219 feet, lasting twenty minutes; Old Faithful, with a diameter of six and a height of 200 feet, lasting twenty minutes; Grotto, with a diameter of four and a height of sixty feet, lasting thirty minutes; Castle, with a diameter of five and a height of 100 feet, lasting from ten to thirty minutes. Their names have been suggested by the forms of the concretions about them. The geysers, and many of the hot springs, deposit a sediment ac-
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cording to the minerals held in solution, which builds up fantastic or beautifully formed and often brilliantly colored basins. Some of the dead geysers have left behind huge paint-pots, the residuum of long periods of activity. Here and there stand quaint forms carved by wind and weather out of decaying volcanic matter. Such are Devil's Hoof and Liberty Cap. White Dome, The Castle, Circe's Boudoir, The Pyramid, and the Punch-bowl are the curious shapes taken by the same material about the still active geysers. In one place is a soda, and in another a sulphur fountain still hot at a depth of two feet from the surface; in another an alum spring, or a chalk vat; and in still another a pitch-stone plateau. At intervals are groves of pines. Springs of pure cold water are frequent, and contain trout, which the angler may drop into a boiling fountain without changing his position, and catch and cook his dinner at once. The air is full of singular sounds, rumblings, roarings, hissings, explo- sions. Millions of diamonds are thrown off sparkling from the lofty shafts of water constantly shivering into drops; curling clouds of steam float in and out among them, and countless broken rainbows hang on nothing. It is not easy to depict a scene like this; it is too grand, too shifting, too altogether unusual.
Volcanic action is mainly confined to two basins east of the summit of the Rocky mountains, and a little northwest of Yellowstone lake, among the high- est feeders of the Madison river. Far east of these, however, on the Stinkingwater fork of Bighorn river, is Colter hell, where similar phenomenon is ex- hibited on a lesser scale. Immediately about the geyser basins, and to the east, especially east of Yel- lowstone lake, the forest is nearly continuous, and is the home of a variety of game. The lakes and streams abound in several kinds of fish, while their shores are the nesting-places of numerous water-fowls. The altitude of this region is but little more than that of the remainder of the territory, whose mean elevation
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is 6,400. But two peaks in all this vast region of mountainous country equal the height of hundreds south of that elevated, broken plain which we traversed a few pages back. This greater uniformity of level has its effect on the climate, which is also proportion- ately uniform. The mean temperature of the geyser basins in the extreme northwest differs from that of a point in the extreme southeast but a few degrees, the altitude being 1,325 feet greater in the former, the influences of which elevation and the vicinity of the snow-peaks being overcome by the moderating effect of the geysers. Other local causes produce slight variations from the changes resulting from dif- ferences in altitude ; but aside from these, the ordinary summer heat is about seventy degrees, and the mean winter temperature above twenty degrees. On the higher ranges the snowfall is heavy, on the plains light. About once each winter there are a few days when a wave of cold sweeps over the whole east slope of the Rocky mountains, and a blinding storm of snow as dry as sand obscures the country for hundreds of miles. Spring comes late and winter early, but the dry atmosphere exhilarates like wine. There is, indeed, on a clear morning, following a still, cold night, a brilliant dawn followed by a mirage, which has the effect to elevate and bring into view large tracts of country not ordinarily visible, being cut off by inter- vening objects. As the sun rises the refraction ceases, and the distant objects which had been pictured upon the air sink out of sight.
The creator does not seem to have designed this region particularly for the use of those worthy men who cause two blades of grass to grow where he planted but one; yet it has not been left sterile to any disproportionate degree. Wherever the altitude does not exceed seven thousand feet the grains which sup- port life may be grown. Those who handle the plough not being here, the plains, valleys, and even the mountain sides, were set with the richest of grasses
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for the fattening of innumerable bison, that the red men might have food, and the mighty beast suffer. Darting across the hunter's path, herds of the lithe gazelle added their grace of movement to the immense panorama. Deer, sheltering in the enclosed vales and glades, fed together in families. In the deep woods bears of several species had their habitat, and found roots for food. Beasts of prey sent their angry cries through the forest, famished by the thirst for blood. Wolves howled like dogs to be fed. Mountain sheep climbed the seemingly inaccessible ridges, and kept their sentinels on the loftiest peaks. Moose peered over the edges of cliffs and elk pastured themselves in the high valleys. Tiny creatures of a hundred form sdarted from woody coverts, or out of subter- ranean homes, with the busy air of intelligent com- munities. The cunning beaver labored to impede the rapid mountain torrents with dams that have with- stood the freshets of centuries, delighting in this land of numerous watercourses. Game birds and song birds had here their favorite feeding-grounds. Bugs and butterflies made populous the dust and the air. Even the serpent, emblem at once of eternal life and voluntary evil, was not absent, taking up his residence in the underground habitation of the prairie-dog, to escape the blistering heat of the sands, where he sometimes met that strange inmate, the owl, also hid- ing from the intense sunshine of the plains. So did this region abound with life in ages when the white man, to the knowledge of the red man, was not.
CHAPTER II.
EARLY EXPLORATIONS.
1650-1850.
UNFOUNDED RUMORS OF SPANISH OCCUPATION-PRE-HISTORIC ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS -- WESTWARD EXPLORATION-VERENDRYE, LEWIS AND CLARKE, LISA, AND WILLIAMS-MISSOURI FUR COMPANY-HENRY FORT -- LONG'S EXPEDITION-ASHLEY ON UTAH LAKE-OTHER TRAPPERS AND TRADERS-FORT BRIDGER-MISSIONARIES OF OREGON-THE GALLANT PATHFINDER-BATTALION OF MOUNTED VOLUNTEERS-FORTS LEAVEN- WORTH, KEARNY, AND LARAMIE-SCOTT AND HIS BLUFFS-THE PATHWAY OF THE NATIONS.
IT has been claimed by certain Spanish authorities that previous to 1650 their countrymen had penetrated into the territory south of, but not quite to, the Mis- souri river, where they found gold, and made settle- ments, opening canals for mining purposes, constructing arastras, and building houses of stone, and where for twenty-five years they carried on mining and fur- hunting, sending richly-laden trains to New Mexico. About 1650 the natives, they say, arose and killed them all. There is nothing true in this statement.1 Some coloring has been given to the story by the discovery, in 1865, of what appeared to be the stone
The Spaniards had all they could do to hold their own in New Mexico during the 17th century, without venturing 800 miles into the wilderness among the Indians. There were no such expeditions as represented, although in order to secure grants of land or patents of nobility Spanish adventurers related such stories to the king. In the ISth century there were not infre- quent expeditions after Indians who made forays into New Mexico. Such were those of Valverde, in 1719, with 105 Spaniards, 30 pueblo Indians, and a company of Apaches, under Carlana, captain, which went further north than any previous one; and the expedition of Capt. Villazur the same year, on a similar errand. It is doubtful if they went farther north than the Arkansas river. Valverde y Coces, Diario y Derrotero, 1719, by his secretary, Alonzo Ruel de Aguilar,
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foundations of houses, and what might pass for an ancient arastra, on the headwaters of Powder river, and about Smet lake.
But if we explore the past critically, we shall find that at some period anterior to the history of the ex- isting aboriginal races in the country, and perhaps contemporaneous with the cliff-dwellers of Colorado, a people to whom the present tribes of red men were as little known as the Caucasian was at a later period to these, had their habitations here. Of their pres- ence the traces are distinct, their relics being found chiefly in the country about the head of the Yellow- stone, and in the Bighorn and Wind river valleys. They consist of steatite vessels, bowl-shaped, and neatly finished, stone lance-heads, knives, and scrapers, and sinkers for fishing-lines made of volcanic sand- stone, or of a green-veined marble. The workmanship of these articles is different from any found on the Pacific or Atlantic coasts, and unlike any in use among the present native tribes? inhabiting Montana and Wyoming. Other remains point to a scarcity of tim- ber in the past in that part of the mountains where timber is now plentiful, the driveways for game being constructed of stone instead of wood, and the occur- rence of small, circular enclosures of stone seeming to indicate that, if not the foundations of houses, they were used for covers from which to shoot game. Heaps of bones, tools, ornaments, weapons, burial cairns, and mining shafts are among the proofs of their presence. At what period they disappeared and recent tribes took their place is among the secrets
2 I find drawings of these articles in the Fifth Annual Report of P. W. Norris, Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park, 1881, pp. 32-8. There is mention of these prehistoric remains in The Reconnaissance of Northwestern Wyoming, by W. A. Jones, U. S. engineers, 1875, a scientific report upon the geography, meteorology, geology, thermal waters, botany, and entomology of Wyoming. His remarks occupy pp. 259 to 270. Recent discoveries in the valley of Santa Lucia, N. M., point to a prehistoric race of which the Wyoming stone-workers were perhaps a branch. Metcalf, of Denver, has a collection of their stone axes and hammers, breast-plates, carvings, etc., found in a cavern. Cotton batting and thread were found among the other relics.
HIST. NEV. 43
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which the past refuses to disclose. The débris of ages covers the silent witnesses of their existence, which patient research is only now bringing to light,3 and to them I should refer the stone ruins credited to Spanish occupation.
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