USA > Colorado > History of the State of Colorado, Vol. I > Part 14
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the passage of the troops. The latter charged, and, as usual, the Indians fled, but were overtaken, when a long running fight ensued. Several were slain, but the survivors took to the hills and escaped. Next day with Carson leading, as before, the trail was again discov- ered and the Indians overtaken, when a sharp action occurred in which many were killed. But the American horses being no match for the Indian ponies in this sort of work, soon gave out, when the troops returned to Fort Massachusetts for fresh animals and further supplies. After a few weeks of rest the force was divided, St. Vrain with the vol- unteers and Fauntleroy with the regulars, each taking a different direction. The latter moved along the base of the mountains to the head of the valley and thence to Poncha Pass, which is the main opening through the mountains that bound the San Luis on the north. From this point he advanced to the head waters of the Arkansas, where he struck a fresh trail which indicated the presence, farther on, of a large body of Indians. At daybreak in the morning the camp was discovered, and, as anticipated, it was a very large one. Fauntleroy moved his force quietly and as secretly as possible to within a short distance of the village, poured a deadly volley into it, and then charged. The savages, though taken by surprise, made a stout resistance for a time, and then fled, hotly pursued by the troops. The camp with all its plunder, fell into the hands of the regulars. A great many Indians were killed on the field, and many more in the pursuit. This was one of the bloodiest battles ever fought in the Rocky Mountains, and occurred near the site of the present city of Leadville. Meanwhile St. Vrain and his volunteers had been equally successful in meeting and chastising the redskins on the route of their march, and this closed the war.
Again Carson located at Taos and assumed the duties of his office. When the war of the Rebellion broke out he at once declared for the Union. At an early period, in recognition of his great serv- ices he was appointed Colonel of the First Regiment New Mexico Volunteers under command of General Canby. Kit's first battle
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occurred at Valverde against the Texans under Sibley, who were after- ward soundly thrashed by the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers. Subsequently his regiment was engaged in detached service under Gen. Carleton against the Indians, in which Kit performed valiant duty in frequent engagements with Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahoes and Navajoes. In one of his campaigns against the latter he was badly defeated, but soon turned the rout into a victory. At the head of two thousand picked men, Californians, Mexicans and his own brave mountaineers, he drove the Indians into a ravine and captured the entire force, probably the largest capture of the kind ever known. Peters places the number at ten thousand, which we are inclined to doubt. However, this put an end to Navajo wars and depredations for a long period of time. For this exploit he was breveted a Brigadier General of Volunteers, and was retained in his rank and command long after the close of the war of the Rebellion. Later, when the Sioux became very troublesome and threatened a formidable outbreak, Carson was sent to them as a Peace Commissioner, with power to negotiate a treaty, which was accomplished to the entire satisfaction of the contracting parties.
In 1864 he commanded at Fort Union, New Mexico, and in 1865-6 at Fort Garland in the San Luis Valley. In 1867 he settled with his family at Boggsville, in Bent County. At this time his health began to suffer from the prodigious strain of the life he had led, and was fatally undermined by a severe cold contracted while on a visit to Washington with a party of Ute chiefs in charge of A. C. Hunt. On reaching Denver on his return from this trip he was confined to his bed at the old Planter's House, situated on the corner of Blake and G streets (now Sixteenth), on the site of the present Witter Block. When sufficiently recovered he was taken to his home. He died May 24, 1868, his cherished wife having preceded him by only a few days. They were buried side by side in the garden of Mr. C. L. Rite, at Boggsville, but the remains were exhumed some time afterward and reinterred at Taos.
Thor Hewas
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The first number of the Pueblo "Chieftain," issued June 1, 1868, contains an eloquent eulogy of Christopher Carson, written by Judge Wilbur F. Stone, from which the following testimonial is extracted : "He stood pre-eminent among the pathfinders and founders of empire in the Great West, and his long career, ennobled by hardship and danger, is unsullied by the record of a littleness or meanness. He was nature's model of a gentleman, kindly of heart, tolerant to all men, good in virtues of disposition rather than great in qualities of mind. He has passed away-dying as through his life-long he had lived-in peace and charity with all, and leaving behind him a name and memory to be cherished by his countrymen so long as modesty, valor, unobtru- sive worth, charity and true chivalry survive among men.'
II
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CHAPTER XI.
HISTORIC SETTLEMENTS IN COLORADO BETWEEN 1826 AND 1858-ARRIVAL OF THE BENTS AND ST. VRAIN-FIRST STOCKADE ON THE ARKANSAS AND TRADING POSTS SUBSEQUENTLY ERECTED-TRAFFIC AMONG THE INDIANS-TRAGIC DEATH OF CHARLES BENT-SETTLEMENTS ON ADOBE CREEK AND THE GREENHORN-THE OLD PUEBLO FORT-INDIAN MASSACRE-FORT MASSACHUSETTS-POSTS IN NORTHERN COLORADO-VASQUEZ, LUPTON AND ST. VRAIN-INDIAN TRIBES OF THE PLAINS, THEIR ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS.
Before introducing the great epoch of modern enterprise that began with the discovery of gold, the period in which the furrows were plowed, the seeds planted and the fissures opened for the bounteous harvest which ultimately gave Colorado her enviable place in the sister- hood of the States, it is proper to collect and weave together numerous and widely scattered fragments relating to the period between 1826 and 1858. The connection will then be historically complete, and there will be little occasion to retrace our steps for further inquiry.
Undoubtedly the first human habitation erected within the limits of our State, excepting the tepees or wigwams of the aborigines, was in the form of a blockhouse or stockade built for winter quarters by Lieu- tenant Zebulon M. Pike, in 1806-7, on the Arkansas River near the present town of Cañon. The next was established in the San Luis Valley by the same officer, under the erroneous impression that in the Rio Grande he had discovered the long sought Red River of the West. Between the dates last mentioned and 1826 there is absolutely nothing on the face of the country or in recorded testimony to indicate that any white man built a fixed abode at any point in the 106,475 square miles of territory which now comprises our prosperous commonwealth.
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Pike's report created great interest for a time, as a sort of romantic story from some wonderland which he alone had penetrated, as we received the accounts of Livingston and Stanley from the myste- rious interior of Africa, but without creating a desire to enter in and occupy a land so trackless, wild and inhospitable. There were illimit- able regions of rich, fertile and abundantly-timbered lands along the great water courses between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi to be peopled and reclaimed. Emigrants came not to our shores by thou- sands annually then as now, but in small numbers, by the slow sailing vessels. Consequently the States developed gradually, attaining in half a century a growth which in the later eras under the rapid transit steamships was accomplished in a single decade. Instead of marching out to the Western prairies to wrestle with savages for no adequate reward, the pioneers of the East preferred to remain and finish the conquest of those which obstructed their progress, itself the work of several generations. In those days, too, distances were not annihilated by steam and electric forces. Hence the region remained a wilderness until the time arrived for its incorporation into the broad and compre- hensive plan of development which began in 1860.
In tracing the stream to its source, we find that in 1826, shortly after the movement of the fur trade in this direction, and the opening of our inland commerce with Santa Fe, Charles Bent, with three brothers, William, Robert and George, and Ceran St. Vrain, all hunt- ers and trappers of the class known as French Canadians, long engaged with the American Fur Company in the mountains of the Northwest, arrived on the Arkansas River and erected a stockade of long stakes or pickets driven into the ground, which, when sealed and roofed, served the purpose of a rude trading post. It was located at a point on the left or north bank of the stream, about midway between Pueblo and Cañon City, and was occupied by its builders for about two years. In 1828, finding it necessary to be in closer proximity to the richer hunting grounds of the Arkansas Valley, the Bents moved down to a point twelve miles northeast of the present town of Las Animas, and there began
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the construction of a larger and more pretentious structure of adobe or sun dried bricks. But for some reason unexplained it was not com- pleted until 1832. Meanwhile, it is assumed the founders lived in tents of skins like the natives, when shelter was required from the hot suns and storms of summer and the chilling blasts of winter. When finished the station was named " Fort William," in honor of " Colonel " or William Bent, who was the animating spirit of the enterprise, and indeed the principal trader, who took long journeys out among the Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Kiowas and Comanches, and perhaps other tribes, along the rivers far to the east and southwest, exchanging the goods he carried upon pack animals, and which the Indians eagerly coveted, for the furs and peltries they had gathered. On one of these expeditions he married a comely Cheyenne maiden, the daughter of a powerful chief.
A remarkable man in his day was William Bent, not perhaps according to the æsthetic standard, but in the estimation of his fellows and of the red men, where his iron firmness yet kindly manners, his integrity, truthfulness and courage, not only compelled admiration, but endeared him to them. As a consequence, no such harvests as he gath- ered were open to his competitors in the traffic, and when his heavily laden trains reached St. Louis, bearing the fruits of his enterprise, they came like ships bearing coveted cargoes from foreign lands.
The post which bore his name, and prospered under his subtle man- agement-for both Charles and St. Vrain resided mainly in Taos,- became the popular resort of mountaineers and plainsmen, and was generally surrounded by large encampments of Indians. It was destroyed in 1852 under the following circumstances:
It appears that the Federal government by whom it had been used as an interior base of supplies for General Kearney's troops in the conquest of New Mexico, began negotiations for its purchase. Col. Bent had but one price-$16,000. The representatives of the govern- ment offered $12,000, which he refused. Wearying of the controversy, the Colonel while in a passion removed all his goods except some kegs
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of gunpowder, and then set fire to the old landmark. When the flames reached the powder there was an explosion which shattered and threw down portions of the walls, but did not wholly destroy them. The remains of this once noted structure stand to this day, melancholy relics of an epoch that marks the primordial settlement of white men upon this division of the continent.
In 1852 the site of a third and much more imposing station was selected by the indomitable Colonel, forty miles above or west of the one just considered, on the same side of the Arkansas, at a point then known as "Big Timbers." Respecting this venture Judge R. M. Moore of Las Animas, a son-in-law of William Bent, writes the author as follows: "Leaving ten men in camp to get out stone for the new post, Col. Bent took a part of his outfit and went to a Kiowa village about two hundred miles southwest, and remained there all winter, trading with the Kiowas and Comanches. In the spring of 1853 he returned to Big Timbers, when the construction of the new post was begun, and the work continued until completed in the summer of 1854; and it was used as a trading post until the owner leased it to the government in the autumn of 1859. Col. Sedgwick* had been sent out to fight the Kiowas that year, and in the fall a large quantity of commissary stores had been sent to him. Col. Bent then moved up the river to a point just above the mouth of the Purg- atoire, and built several rooms of cottonwood pickets and there spent the winter. In the spring of 1860 Col. Sedgwick began the construc- tion of officers' buildings, company quarters, corrals and stables, all of stone, and named the place Fort Wise, in honor of Gov. Wise of Virginia. In 1861 the name was changed to Fort Lyon, in honor of Gen. Lyon, who was killed at the battle of Wilson's Creek, Missouri."
In the spring of 1866 the Arkansas River overflowed its banks, swept up into the fort, and undermining the walls, rendered it unten- able for military purposes. The camp was moved to a point twenty miles below, and new Fort Lyon erected. The old post was repaired
*The lamented General Sedgwick, killed at Spottsylvania, Va., May 2, 1864.
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and used as a stage station by Barlow, Sanderson & Co., who ran a mail, express and passenger line between Kansas City and Santa Fé, with a branch from Pueblo.
When Gen. Kearney occupied Santa Fé in 1846, he appointed Charles Bent civil Governor of New Mexico. In the latter part of December, 1847, after the departure of Col. Doniphan from the Ter- ritory, a conspiracy was hatched by Mexicans and certain Pueblo Indians of Taos to recapture the country from the Americans. But the plot was discovered, and a number of the leaders arrested and imprisoned. This, it was believed, would put an end to the contem- plated uprising, but the embers of revolt soon broke out afresh. Gov- ernor Bent,* "supposing all danger past, left the capital on January 14, IS48, to visit his home and family at Taos. He was accompanied by five persons, including the Sheriff, Prefect of the County, and the Cir- cuit Attorney. On the night of the 19th a large body of men, partly Mexicans and partly Pueblo Indians, attacked his residence and suc- ceeded not only in killing the Governor, but also the Sheriff of the county, Stephen Lee; J. W. Leal, the Circuit Attorney ; Cornelio Vijil, the Prefect; Narcisso Baubien, a son of Judge Baubien, and Pablo Jaramillo."
From an historical sketch of Fremont County by Hon. B. F. Rockafellow, we find that a French trader named Maurice, who came west from Detroit, established a trading post at Adobe Creek in that county about the year 1830. A small party of Mexicans followed, and . engaged in farming. In 1838 the Mexicans, affrighted at the approach of a war party of Sioux and Arapahoes, took refuge in Maurice's fort. The Indians came to demand of Maurice a Ute squaw who was living at the post. The trader put them off with parleys for delay until he could dispatch a swift messenger to a large band of Utes encamped in the Wet Mountain Valley. They came at once in response to the summons, and met their old antagonists in a long and bloody battle, in which the Utes were victorious.
* Prince, History of New Mexico.
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According to the same authority Charles Bent, Lupton, St. Vrain, Baubien and Lucien Maxwell founded an American settlement on Adobe Creek in 1840, which remained until 1846 and then disappeared. There were a few Mexican settlers, with American hunters and trap- pers, on the Greenhorn and Huerfano about the same period.
The Pueblo fort, from which the second city in our State derived its name, is said to have been built about the year 1842 by George Simpson and two associates named Barclay and Doyle. Ruxton, who stopped there in 1847, en route from Mexico to the States, says at that time it was " a small square fort of adobe with circular bastions at the corners, no part of the walls being more than eight feet high, and round the inside of the yard or corral are built some half dozen little rooms inhabited by as many Indian traders and mountain men. They live entirely upon game, and the greater part of the year without even bread, since but little maize is cultivated. As soon as their supply of meat is exhausted, they start to the mountains with two or three pack animals and bring them back in two or three days loaded with buffalo or venison. In the immediate vicinity of the fort game is very scarce, and the buffalo have within a few years deserted the neighboring prai- ries, but they are always found in the mountain valleys, particularly in one called Bayou Salado (South Park). which abounds in every species of game, including elk, bears, deer, big horns or Rocky Moun- tain sheep, buffalo, antelope, etc."
Further research into the origin of Pueblo leads to the belief that it was established in 1840, and Hardscrabble, thirty miles above on the Arkansas, about 1843. Indian agent Fitzpatrick, one of the most exper- ienced of Western trappers, writes from Bent's Fort in 1847, "About seventy-five miles above this place, and immediately on the Arkansas River, there is a small settlement, the principal part of which is composed of old trappers and hunters; the male part of it are mostly Americans, Missouri French, Canadians and Mexicans. They have a tolerable sup- ply of cattle, horses, mules, etc., and I am informed that this year they have raised a good crop of wheat, corn, beans, pumpkins and other veg-
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etables. They number about one hundred and fifty souls, and of this number, about sixty men, nearly all have wives and some have two. These wives are of various Indian tribes as follows, viz: Blackfeet, Assi- niboines, Arickarees, Sioux, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Snake, Simpitch (from west of the Great Lake) Chinock (from the mouth of the Colum- bia) Mexicans and Americans. The American women are Mormons, a party of Mormons having wintered there, and on their departure for California left behind them two families. These people are living in two separate establishments, near each other, one called "Punble" (Pueblo) and the other Hardscrabble. Both villages are fortified by a wall twelve feet high, composed of adobe. These villages are becoming the resort of all idlers and loafers. They are also becoming depots for the smug- glers of liquors from New Mexico into this country."*
In addition to the settlements, if they may be so dignified, of Bent's Fort and Pueblo, we have Fort Massachusetts, established on the west bank of Utah Creek, eighty-five miles north of Taos, in what is now the San Luis Valley, June 22, 1852. The fort was dismantled June 24, 1858, and a new post built and called Fort Garland. The first was con- structed of logs, the latter of adobe. Both were important military stations in their day, and the troops stationed there had many a fierce contest with roving bands of Indians. Here ends for the present the earlier annals of Southern and Southwestern Colorado.
Let us now cross the divide to the northward and discover the origin of settlement along the now rich and well populated valley of the Platte, which, with its tributaries, has been converted into the agricultural gar- den of the State.
*From Gen. R. M. Stevenson's sketch of the early history of Pueblo County, we condense the details of a tragic event as related to him by Charley Autobees, a French trapper and mountaineer. On Christmas Day, 1854, the Pueblo fort was occupied by seventeen trappers and hunters who assem- bled to celebrate the winter holiday, having obtained a quantity of Mexican whisky known as "Taos lightning." While engaged in feasting and drinking, a band of Mountain Utes came along and were invited to join the festivities, which they eagerly accepted. In due course all became furiously drunk, and in the riotous proceedings which followed, the Indians killed every white man on the premises. Such as escaped were followed and shot. One of the party, and the only one who survived to tell the tale, was a teamster who, in the morning of the fatal day had gone to St. Charles for supplies, and returning in the evening, discovered the mutilated bodies of his comrades.
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In this valley we have the record of four conspicuous stations, the first built by Louis Vasquez in 1832, opposite the mouth of the Vasquez Fork (Clear Creek) four miles below Denver. It was formed of cotton- wood logs and, like all its contemporaries, garrisoned by hunters and trappers. The second was named Fort Lancaster, and situated on the east side of the Platte six miles above the station on the Burlington and Missouri Railway known as Lupton; the third Fort Lupton, and the fourth St. Vrains, the latter founded about the year 1840. With the lapse and decay of time, all save Lupton have disappeared. There was a distinctly marked business method in the location and dates of the respective posts. At first the buffalo and other quadruped game made their feeding grounds along the bases of the mountains near the run- ning streams. Being constantly pursued by the tireless hunters they crossed the Platte and fled to the verdant plains to the eastward, where new posts near the newer ranges became a necessity.
It seems eminently proper to submit at this time a brief statement relating to such of the Indian tribes-the aboriginal owners of the Terri- tory lying between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, as may have a bearing upon the prehistoric annals of the country. To attempt anything like a history of all the tribes would lead us too far from the general purpose of this work, besides occupying space that may be more profitably devoted to other matters. But the subject is at least one well worthy of passing consideration. The enlightened emigrant of 1858-and his followers in subsequent years, given to close observation, naturally expended some earnest thought upon the natives he encoun- tered, and, naturally enough, wondered how and when they came, or, if they had always roamed up and down the country spending their time in war and the chase. He met the remnants of once numerous and power- ful nations, now decimated and degraded to mere fragments, stripped of power, and reduced to beggary. What were they in the zenith of their strength? Their destiny was already manifest, requiring no prophetic vision to foretell the closing scene. Overborne by the surging tide of an irresistible movement, there could be but one result-their extinction.
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If men sow not, neither shall they reap. These red men stubbornly refused to accept the conditions held out to them by modern law, so they were plowed under and forgotten. The whirlwind of civilized force swept over and blotted them out.
Though renowned in war with their own species, they became helpless as babes before the resistless tor- rent. Humanitarians call it harsh, barbarous and cruel, but it was pre- destined. The march of progress from Plymouth Rock to the West- ern rivers had been marked by trails of fire and blood. The Christian fathers carried their guns, and torches as we ours, and aimed to kill. There was no middle course. The crusade begun from the anchorage of the Mayflower was not ordained to stop until it had mastered the con- tinent. We could not halt at the Mississippi or the Missouri and declare that all east of that line should belong to the white man, and all west of it to the Red; that half of the continent should be devoted to the pur- suits of civilization, and the balance permitted to continue unimproved and under the rule of savages who would neither toil nor spin. And so the sanguinary procession advanced, the white man took possession, and the barbarian disappeared.
We learn from the veteran Schoolcraft that west of the Mississippi there were two generic stocks of great importance, the Dakotas or Sioux, and the Shoshones, and that they occupied an immense territory-that is to say, claimed it as a hereditary right, hunted over it, and fought all trespassers upon it. Of these the Sioux were numerically, intellectually and, as a rule, physically superior to the Shoshones. It is believed that they originated in the South, and embraced the Arkansas, Quappas, Cad- does, Wichitas, Osages, Kansas, Pawnees, Iowas, Otoes, Poncas, Omahas, Missouris, Arickarees, Minnetarees, Tetons, Yanktons and others, including the Crows and the Mandans.
On the other hand, the Shoshones or Snakes and their various tribal divisions, from the remotest times occupied the plateaus and parks of the Rocky Mountains, until driven out by the present generation of settlers. In Texas they are Comanches, in Colorado Utes. The range of this group covered all the country now embraced in Texas, Colorado,
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