USA > Colorado > History of the State of Colorado, Vol. I > Part 12
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Fording the river below the fort, they passed the mouth of Tim- pas Creek and marched to the Apishpa, mistaking it for the Huerfano, and were thereby led into many errors and much needless investigation.
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From the Apishpa via the Sangre de Cristo to Robideau Pass via Cochetopa and Grand River Valley to the Blue River (Nah-un-kah- rea); thence to Green, White and San Rafael Rivers to the Wahsatch Mountains. Since but little beyond the original report which appears in the long list of government publications relating to Pacific railway surveys, is known to the majority of our people, and as this was one of the most important historic expeditions ever projected into and through the Rocky Mountains, a more extended account is thought to be desirable.
Mistaking the Apishpa for the Huerfano, which he should have followed, it was pursued some distance toward its head. Then advancing in the direction of the Spanish Peaks, he bore to the west and struck a wagon trail, leading from Fort Laramie via the Raton Pass to Santa Fé. This was followed to the Cuchara, which was forded, and the party encamped two miles above the point of crossing. Here Captain Gunnison conceived the idea of ascending the neighboring butte, obtaining from its apex a glorious view of the surrounding country, which he tersely describes as follows : "Pike's Peak to the north, the Spanish Peaks to the south, the Sierra Mojada to the west, and the plains from the Arkansas, undulating with hills along the route we have come, but sweeping up in a gentle rise where we should have come (via the Huerfano), with the valleys of the Cuchara and Huerfano, make the finest prospect it has ever fallen to my lot to have seen." This was Gunnison's first experience in the Rocky Mountains, there- fore it is not surprising that he should have risen to ecstacies over the splendors spread out before him. As his explorations proceeded the incomparable panorama unfolded with each prominent point attained impressed him and all his followers with the unspeakable grandeur of nature's work in this division of the continent.
From the encampment at the butte, which remained fixed for a time, until the neighborhood could be reconnoitered, Gunnison took a detachment and rode out in search of the settlements on the Green- horn, with the hope of obtaining an experienced guide. He passed
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west-northwest directly toward the Wet Mountains, recrossing the Cuchara at the point reached the previous day. Ten miles further on he descended from the tableland, and striking the Huerfano, crossed it and advanced to Apache Creek; thence more to the north, reaching in due course the old trail from Taos to the Greenhorn. This he fol- lowed northeasterly to a spur of the Wet Mountains, when he discov- ered the camp of a trading party en route from Fort Laramie to Santa Fé. From here he passed over another sharp ridge, descending into the Valley of the Greenhorn, "a stream two feet wide and three or four inches deep." At this point the looked for settlement was found, consisting of six Mexican families, from one of which he secured a guide named Massalino to conduct them to Fort Massachusetts in the San Luis Valley. He then returned to camp, but by a route some- what west of the one by which he came.
In his itinerary of this excursion, Gunnison recommends that the line taken by him be not followed by the proposed railway; on the contrary it should "strike up a valley or plain ten miles from the mouth of the Apishpa in a course for the Spanish Peaks, cross the Cuchara near our camp of August 5, and continue over to the Huerfano."
Following the guide Massalino, the company moved up the Huer- fano several miles along its southern bank, then crossed to the north side to the ford of the Taos trail, but instead of pursuing it over the Sangre de Cristo, they kept on up the river. They next passed along the valley between two spurs of the main chain of the Sierra Blanca, and then turned east, encamping at the head of an adjacent valley. Next day they ascended a giant mountain spur along the top of which they proceeded some distance, and thence over to Sangre de Cristo Creek. In brief terms, their route lay from Huerfano Butte to the base of the Sierra Blanca; thence to the summit of the Sangre de Cristo, down the creek of that name into the San Luis valley, encamping on Utah Creek a short distance below Fort Massachusetts, a government post situated just under the Sierra Blanca in a sheltered valley of Utah Creek, about seventeen miles from the summit of the pass. It may be
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observed in passing that this primitive fort, constructed of logs and adobe was dismantled and destroyed many years ago, and was succeeded by Fort Garland near the head of the valley, now a station on the Denver & Rio Grande railway, but long since abandoned for military purposes, the buildings which once sheltered a considerable body of troops who had many sharp conflicts with roving bands of hostile Indians in their time, being occupied by recent settlers, among them the famous Tom Tobins, whose romantic career will be given in a subsequent chap- ter, and a son of the renowned Kit Carson. The flagstaff still occupies the parade ground within the inclosure, but carries no standard except upon memorable occasions like the Fourth of July or other national holidays.
Having completed his preliminary examinations of the mountains south of the Spanish Peaks, by ascending Gold Branch from its junc- tion with the Sangre de Cristo, and having obtained from people familiar with the region much valuable information respecting the cli- mate in winter, the amount of snow fall and other important data, Captain Gunnison went directly to Taos, then the headquarters of expe- rienced mountaineers and guides. In the course of his investigations in and about the San Luis valley he visited Costilla, then a new settle- ment just developing into an excellent farming community; the Rio Colorado, or Red River of the Rio Grande, where he found another large settlement, and many other localities. At Taos he secured a noted guide named Antoine Leroux; after examining Cochetopa, Mosca, Gunnison and Robideau passes, Poncha Creek, and the section and river which now bear his name, he proceeded to the valley of the Arkansas. Here he found, like all his predecessors in that country, a number of heavy Indian trails, "attesting the frequent use made of Poncha Pass in going to the South Park and to the Wet Mountain valley, and back to the Rio Grande and Cochetopa." A short descrip- tion of his route may be given thus: From Robideau Pass, via the Cochetopa to the Blue (now Gunnison) River, and from the Blue cross-
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ing to Green, White and San Rafael Rivers to the eastern foot of the Wahsatch range, thence to Sevier River and Sevier Lake.
We have now to relate the shocking details attending the fate of this brave and accomplished engineer of the first railway route estab- lished in and through this portion of the Rocky Mountains. Much of the region over which he passed is now traversed by one of the most prosperous railway systems in the world, and occupied by tens of thou- sands of thrifty and industrious people. Though nearly thirty years in advance of the need, it is none the less true that the engineers who came after to lay the routes of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, and the Denver and Rio Grande railways, derived material advantage from the knowledge which he imparted.
On the 26th of October, 1853, Captain Gunnison, with eleven men from his military escort, left their camp on Sevier River, Utah, for the purpose of exploring the neighborhood of Sevier Lake, understood to be something over sixteen miles distant. What befel him in this ill- timed expedition, is related by his faithful Lieutenant, E. G. Beckwith. The next morning Beckwith's party who remained in camp and were conducting explorations in other directions, "were met by a man weak and exhausted, reeling breathless into camp, barely able to communi- cate by a few broken sentences, as he sank into a seat, the painful intel- ligence that Captain Gunnison's party had been surprised in their camp by a large party of Indians, and he thought, all but himself massacred. Orders were instantly given by Captain Morris, and promptly obeyed by all the men remaining with him of his escort, to replenish their ammunition; and having saddled up their horses, in thirty minutes they were moving rapidly toward the scene of that fatal disaster, hoping to rescue all who might yet survive, and perform the last mournful duties of humanity to those who were known to have fallen. Cap- tain Gunnison had encamped early in the afternoon while the wind and storm were yet fresh, and doubtless feeling the security which men come to indulge after passing long periods of time surrounded by sav- ages without actually encountering them. The abundant grass and
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fuel of the little nook in the river bottom, sheltered by the high sec- ond bank of the river on one side, and thick willows distant scarcely thirty yards on two of the others, with the river in front, offered a tempting place of comfort and utility, which was perhaps accepted with- out even a thought of danger. It was known to the party that a band of Indians was near them, for we had seen their fires daily since entering the valley; but an unusual feeling of security against them was felt, as Capt. Gunnison had learned that a recent quarrel, resulting in several deaths, which they had had with emigrants had terminated, and that, notwithstanding this difficulty, they had remained at peace with the neighboring settlers, which had been confirmed and guaranteed for the future in a 'talk' held with some of the Indians of this band by an agent of the Governor of the Territory, during our stay near Fillmore. This information Captain Gunnison told me before leaving, relieved him from any apprehension he might otherwise have felt regarding this band, and was the reason for his having asked for so small an escort to accompany him, which he, as well as his guide, an experienced citizen of the Territory, deemed sufficient.
" The usual precaution of a camp guard had been taken, each of the party-including the commander-in turn having performed that duty during the night. At the break of day all arose, and at once engaged in the usual duties of a camp preparatory to an early start to reach that day the most distant point of exploration the present season. The sun had not risen, most of the party being at breakfast, when the surrounding quietness and silence of the vast plain was broken by the discharge of a volley of rifles and a shower of arrows through that devoted camp, mingled with the savage yells of a large band of Pah- Utah Indians almost in the midst of the camp, for under cover of the thick bushes they had approached undiscovered to within twenty-five yards of the camp fire. The surprise was complete. At the first dis- charge the call to 'Seize your arms' had little effect. All was confusion. Capt. Gunnison stepping from his tent, called to his savage murderers that he was their friend, but this had no effect. They rushed into camp
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and only those escaped who succeeded in mounting their horses, and even they were pursued for many miles. Capt. Gunnison fell, pierced with fifteen arrows. The bodies of the slain were not all found at dark, and hope still lingered, as a bright fire was built to assure any survivors of safety. But the long weary night, rendered hideous by the howling of wolves, wore away, as this little band of armed men, barely larger than that which had already been sacrificed lay near the fatal spot, and day dawned only to discover the mutilated remains of their recent com- rades, none of them being scalped. Some of their arms were, however, cut off at the elbows, and entrails cut open."
It was reported at the time and widely believed that the Mormons, bitterly opposed to further encroachments upon the solitude of their set- tlement at Salt Lake, and apprehending that a survey might be followed by a railroad, and the consequent incursion of a great horde of elements hostile to their particular institution, had instigated the Indians to this attack upon Gunnison's party, but Lieutenant Beckwith stoutly opposes this theory and places the animating spirit of the massacre where it belongs-to the inherent hostility of the Indians, who, discovering an opportunity to butcher a defenseless party without danger to themselves, yielded to it.
By order of the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, Lieutenant Beckwith completed the survey to the Pacific coast and rendered the report, including notes taken by Capt. Gunnison.
What may be termed the historic period, years anterior to the rise of the Pike's Peak gold fever, is replete with tales of suffering endured by those who from choice made their homes in the mountains, or who from other reasons were compelled to traverse them when the valleys were buried in snow and the lofty ranges swept by fierce gales which froze the blood of such as were so unfortunate as to encounter them. These incidents of the days which broke and bruised the strong men who blazed the trails and marked the highways for the aftermath of a surging tide of immigration that now occupies the Great American Sahara, richly merit a place in the history of its progress. We make
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no apology for introducing them, because no true record of the State we are proud to call our own can be framed without them. And the writer, a relic of a later but still primitive epoch, feels that he would be recreant to his trust, if they were omitted .*
Among them was the march of Captain (afterward General) Randolph B. Marcy, which is scarcely excelled in thrilling adventures by the account heretofore given of the marvelous escape of John C. Fremont from the midwinter clutch of the Sangre de Cristo in 1849, or of Major Gilpin in the mountains of the San Juan. Moreover, we shall discover as the story proceeds, the immediate origin of the rush which brought our pioneers to Denver and the gold regions a year or so later.
While stationed at Fort Bridger in November, 1857, there came to Captain Marcy an order to move his company across the mountains by the most direct route into New Mexico, with the object of procuring supplies for General Joseph E. Johnston's army, and thereby enabling him to prosecute his designs against the Mormons of Salt Lake then in rebellion against the authority of the United States. The Mormons harassed his march by intercepting his trains so that before reaching Salt Lake his stock of animals and provisions were sadly in need of replenishment.
In his report for 1858 the Secretary of War in referring to this expedition, says: "It may be safely affirmed that in the whole catalogue of hazardous expeditions scattered so thickly through the history of our border warfare, filled as many of them are with appalling tales of priva- tion, hardship and suffering, not one surpasses this, and in some par- ticulars has not been equaled by any. Capt. Marcy departed from Fort Bridger on the 24th day of November with forty enlisted men and
*The author was informed by Col. Chas. Page, Surgeon General U. S. A. who visited Denver in September, 1888, that he was attached to Colonel Sanborn's corps of mounted rifles which in I852 was sent to the Rocky Mountains to chastise the Comanche Indians. The command marched from Leavenworth along the Santa Fé trail to the Arkansas River, thence to the old Pueblo fort and up the Fountaine-qui-bouille to the Springs where it encamped. From that point it crossed the divide to Cherry Creek and encamped on the present site of Denver, whence it passed on to Laramie by the usual route.
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twenty-five mounted men, besides packers and guides. Their course lay through an almost trackless wilderness over lofty and rugged mount- ains, without a pathway or human habitation to guide or direct, in the very depth of winter through snows, for many miles together reaching to the depth of five feet. Their beasts of burden very rapidly perished until few were left; their supplies gave out; their luggage was aban- doned; they were driven to subsist upon the carcasses of their dead horses and mules; all the men became greatly emaciated; some were frostbitten, yet not one murmur of discontent escaped the lips of a single man. Their mission was one of extreme importance to the movements of the army, and great disaster might befall the command if these devoted men failed to bring succor to the camp."
This terrible march, extending to Fort Massachusetts in the San Luis valley, thence to Taos and Fort Union, was accomplished in fifty- one days, but might have been completed in twenty days at a more favorable season.
When they left Bridger there was very little snow. The command passed down Henry's Fork to Green River, which was forded, and on the opposite side struck a trail leading to the foot of the range which divides the Green from the Grand. Here Marcy engaged a Digger Ute Indian as guide, and ascended to the summit of the range. Jim Baker, a character well known to early settlers in this region, had been brought from the fort as interpreter, but evidently not as guide. During the first night the Indian, after stealing everything he could lay his hands upon without detection, disappeared, and was seen no more. The next advance took them along the elevated tableland bor- dering the Valley of the Grand, and two thousand feet above it. Baker was directed to find the trail leading down into the valley, and suc- ceeded. After great difficulty the animals were brought down to the level of the river, where the grass was green and no evidence of winter except upon the surrounding slopes. The point indicated was undoubt- edly a portion of the beautiful valley below the junction of the Eagle River, as Marcy speaks of moving up the Eagle en route to the San
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Luis. Ascending the mountains again, they struggled along under the guidance of a Mexican who professed to understand the route, and after many days reached the Valley of the Rio del Norte, when the guide, pointing to a mountain which seemed one hundred miles away, said that was near Fort Massachusetts. The snow became so deep in places that progress could only be made by those in the advance falling upon their hands and knees, and literally plowing their way through the drifts. Everything that could be spared had been cast away to lighten the burdens of the men and animals. Their provisions being exhausted, the mules were killed and their flesh eaten raw; their clothing was torn to shreds; their shoes gone, and their places filled with wrappings of cloth, hides, sacking, anything that would protect them from the bitter cold. On reaching the Rio Grande, Marcy sent forward his Mexican guide, with one companion, mounted on the only mules left to the command, with a letter to the officer in charge of Fort Massa- chusetts stating his condition, and imploring immediate assistance. Meanwhile his force continued its labored march as best it could, half starved, and well nigh perishing with the hardships undergone. At the close of the eleventh day they observed two horsemen at a great dis- tance approaching their camp. They proved to be the couriers sent for supplies. In a short time they arrived and spread the glad tidings of abundant stores on the road fifty miles back, and which would soon reach them. The men shouted, danced, and cried for joy. Captain Marcy declares that he had not slept half an hour at a time for twenty days and nights, and was reduced in the interim from one hundred and seventy to one hundred and thirty-one pounds. He at once turned the guide back toward the train with orders to the teamsters to drive day and night. Next day they met the train, when a scene ensued which no pen can portray. Among the stores were several bottles of brandy, from which the captain served to the men moderate doses of the fiery liquor, but taken upon stomachs long empty of nourishing food, they all became intoxicated. Their chief felt that after all they had under- gone they were entitled to this indulgence, and made no effort to
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restrain them. Four days later they reached the fort, where they were gladly welcomed, and all their wants supplied. The officer in charge at first mistook them for a band of Indians, as may well be imagined from their appearance, for Marcy says, "Not more than half the men had any caps, and but few had any remains of trousers below the knees. Their feet were tied up with mule hides, pieces of blankets, coat tails, etc. As for myself, I am confident my own wife would not have recognized me."
From Fort Massachusetts they went to Taos, and thence to Fort Union, procuring the animals and supplies which were the objects of the expedition, and on the 15th of March returned via Pueblo and the Fountaine-qui-bouille to the vicinity of Pike's Peak, where Marcy received an order to halt and await reinforcements from New Mexico, as it was apprehended that the Mormons would intercept and destroy his small force while in the mountains. Therefore the command went into camp at Manitou Springs, where it remained about thirty days, passing the time in hunting elk, mountain sheep and black-tailed deer, all of which were very numerous in the neighborhood. At one time from the door of his tent Captain Marcy discovered a herd of at least five hundred elk, "drawn up in line like a troop of cavalry horses, with their heads all turned in the same direction, and from the crest of a high projecting cliff looking in apparent wonder and bewilderment directly down upon us."
Reinforcements having arrived, on the 30th of April the march to Utah was resumed over the divide and down the Platte to the mouth of Cherry Creek. The spring flood had swollen the river to an extent which prevented fording, so they constructed rafts and pushed them over to the opposite shore. "There was not at that time," writes Marcy, " but one white man living within one hundred and fifty miles of the place, and he was an Indian trader named Jack Audeby* upon the Arkansas." In treating the local history of Pueblo we shall have
*Charles Autobees, a half-breed French trapper of St. Louis. Capt. Marcy was misinformed as to the first name, and misspelled the last.
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occasion to meet Mr. Autobees again, and to relate his connection therewith.
Continuing his narrative, Marcy says : " While our 'ferry boat' was being constructed, one of our citizen employes washed from the sands of Cherry Creek a small amount of gold dust which he showed to me. Soon afterward he was discharged and went to St. Louis, and in a short time the miners commenced flocking to the locality and laid out a town which has continued to flourish ever since, and at this time (1866), con- tains several thousand inhabitants. It is called Denver City, and I feel confident that the representations made by our discharged teamster in St. Louis and other places were the origin of the location and the establishment of a new city and Territory." We shall have occasion to correct this error in a subsequent chapter. The command proceeded from the then unoccupied site of the future "Queen City of the Plains," to the Cache la Poudre, and reached Fort Bridger without further memorable incident.
IO
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4
CHAPTER X.
LIVES OF THE HUNTERS AND TRAPPERS-THEIR PART IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY-BRIDGER, BAKER, GOODALE, SUBLETTE AND FITZPATRICK -SIR GEORGE GORE AND HIS MIGHTY RETINUE-BAKER'S FIGHT WITH GRIZZLIES-TORN BY A REPEATING RIFLE-KIT CARSON'S WONDERFUL CAREER-EPITOME OF HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER.
The lives and exploits of the hunters and trappers, idealized and presented with elaborate displays of rhetorical fireworks, have perhaps too large a place in the literature of the land. As a matter of fact, they were to the last degree practical and real, most of them coarse and brutal. All the romance and most of the poetry are the creation of highly imaginative people who knew very little about them. Nevertheless, these characters were in their time essential features of our State and National development. The history of every State, and of every Ter. ritory has its beginning with the conflicts engendered between the rightful owners of the soil, and those who came with force of arms to dispossess them. The record of the tountry west of the Mississippi originating with the agents and employes of the various fur companies, amounts in the abstract to this and nothing more,-that they marked the trails by constant tramping, and stripped the face of nature of all animals whose hides were valuable in the great marts of trade. They robbed the beaver to furnish the heads of men and the shoulders of women with fashionable apparel. They built nothing, founded nothing, and with the exception of a trading post here and there, left no trace that could lead to the betterment of mankind, save their ability to guide those whose cultivated intelligence fitted them for the higher aim of advanc-
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