USA > Kansas > A standard history of Kansas and Kansans, Volume I > Part 23
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Roll signed : John C. Griffith, Captain.
Mnster Roll, April 30 to September 28, 1848, shows station of com- pany, Independence, Missouri.
Roll signed: John C. Griffith, Captain.
Company mustered for discharge at Independence, Missouri, Septem- ber 28, 1848, and honorably discharged by E. A. Hitchcock, B. Col., U. S. A., Mustering Officer.
Company B
Captain Thomas Jones's Company B, Mounted Santa Fe Traee Bat- talion, Missouri Volunteers, War with Mexico.
Muster-in Roll, dated September 11, 1847, shows station of company at Fort Leavenworth.
Company arrived at Fort Leavenworth, September 8, 1847.
[Other entries, similar to those made on the Rolls of Company A.]
Company C
Captain William Pelzer's Company C, Artillery, Santa Fe Traee Bat- talion, Missouri Volunteers, Mexiean War.
Muster-in Roll, dated September 10, 1847.
Company arrived at Fort Leavenworth, September 8, 1847.
Term of service same as Companies A and B.
Report from Fort Mann, Middle Arkansas, "nune pro tune" owing to continned separation ; difficulty of communication between detached portions of battalion ; and absence of Paymaster.
Company discharged at Independence, Missouri, October 2, 1848.
Company D
Captain Paul Holzeheiter's Company D. Santa Fe Trace Battalion, Missouri Volunteers, Mexican War.
Muster-in Roll. dated September 18, 1847.
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
Company at Fort Mann, Middle Arkansas, same dates and same rea- sons for "nune pro tune" reports as given by Companies A and B.
Company discharged at Independence, Missouri, October 1, 1848.
Company E
Captain Napoleon Koscialowski's Company E, Santa Fe Trace Bat- talion, Missouri Volunteers, Mexican War.
Muster Roll, September 18, 1847, to April 30, 1848, shows company at Fort Mann, Middle Arkansas. The above company being on the march through the center of the Comanche country during March, April, and May, this Roll bears date in June-"nune pro tunc." W. Gilpin, Col. Comdg.
Roll signed: Napoleon Koscialowski, Captain.
Company Muster Roll, April 30, to September 30, 1848, shows com- pany at Independence, Mo.
The company left Fort Leavenworth on the 4th day of October, 1847, and ascended the Arkansas to the foot of the Rocky Mountains at Bent's Fort. From thence with the cavalry companies under the Lientenant-Colonel, crossed the Raton Mountains on the 10th of March, 1848, and descended the Canadian through the country of the Apache and' Comanche Indians during March, April, and May, to the Ante- lope Buttes, being engaged in skirmishing warfare with the Comanche and Pawnee Indians on the Middle Arkansas and Kansas until the expiration of the term of service by the peace with Mexico.
The marches have exceeded 3,000 miles in the aggregate, mostly being in the depth of winter.
Roll signed: Caleb S. Tuttle, Captain.
Company mustered for discharge at Independence, Mo., September 30, 1848, and honorably discharged (except Lieut. Colston) by E. A. Hitchcock, B. Col., U. S. A., Mustering Officer.
THE CARAVANS .
The town of Franklin, in Howard County, Missouri, was opposite the present City of Boonville. In 1828, the entire site of the town was washed into the Missouri River. It was the cradle of the Santa Fe trade, and for some years it was the eastern terminus of the Santa Fe Trail. As population spread to the westward other towns were estab- lished along the Missouri River and the headquarters of the trade followed the population. When the Trail was surveyed, in 1825, Fort Osage, on the Missouri, at Sibley, was made the starting-point. Inde- pendence, Missouri, was laid out in 1827, and it was soon the head- quarters of the Santa Fe trade. Other Missouri towns engaged in the Santa Fe trade, and even the towns of Northwest Arkansas. All these towns opened roads to the Santa Fe Trail. That is why old roads as far south as Fayetteville, Arkansas, are known locally to this day as the Santa Fe Trail. The roads all entered the real Santa Fe Trail
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
east of Council Grove, and most of them came into it east of the present town of Baldwin, in Douglas County, Kansas. One of these trails, known locally as the California Road came out of Southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas through the present Fort Scott, Kansas. It passed through what are now Miami and Franklin Counties, Kansas, crossing the Pottawatomie at the present town of Lane. That was Dutch Henry's Crossing, where John Brown and his men slew the Border- Ruffians in the old border wars. This main California Road had other and lesser "California Roads" coming into it. This statement of the different "Santa Fe Trails" and "California Roads" is intended to explain the confusion which often resulted when strangers passed over the country, in early days. In their letters the Santa Fe Trail may be spoken of as having been in Southwest Missouri, or even as leaving Fort Smith. In such instances it is always the local road of that name which was meant.
The business of ontfitting traders made Independence a thriving town. There were dealers in wagons, flour, bacon, oxen, mules, guns, ammuni- tion, ropes, chains and all kinds of hardware, aud of the groceries of those days, ineluding whiskey. In the spring when the caravans were getting under way the town presented a busy appearance; and there was almost as stirring times, when, after having completed the tour of the Plains, they drove into the great publie square upon their return.
The supplies for one person from Independence to Santa Fe eon- sisted usually of fifty pounds of flour, fifty pounds of bacon, ten pounds of eoffee, twenty pounds of sugar, some beans, and some salt. Each man carried a gun, usually a Hawkins rifle, made at St. Louis, and a supply of powder and lead.
The wagons first used in the Santa Fe trade were such as could be obtained at the local towns in Missouri. Some of them were made, no doubt, by local meehanies. As the trade assumed volume the necessity for uniform and strong wagons attraeted the attention of manufacturers. Those in use when the trade was at full tide, and even after, were made at Pittsburg, Pa. The pioneer wagon first used had the high eurved bed, but those used later had but a slightly curved bed,-only enough to hold the bales and boxes from sliding in going up or down hills or grades. All the wagons had covers of heavy eloth stretehed upon bows fixed over the wagon-beds. The deviee for loeking or "putting on brakes" in descend- ing steep places consisted of a ehain attached to each side of the bed with which to "chain" or "lock" the hind-wheels. There was a multiplicity of chains used about the equipment of these wagons, the rattling and clanking of which could be heard at considerable distance.
In the beginning of the trade the merchandise was carried on pack- horses. The first wagons used were drawn by mules. After the eseort of 1829, when Major Riley used oxen to draw his baggage wagons, oxen eame to be used as much as mules. They drew heavier loads, but did not bear the trip so well after the country of the buffalo grass was reached. The continual traveling of the oxen over a grass-covered country wore their hoofs smooth and tender, making it difficult for them to travel in the lat-
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
ter stages of the journey. In that day few knew how to properly shoe oxen with iron, and they were sometimes shod with raw buffalo-skin- often an exeellent makeshift.
As the trade was conducted through the Indian country, and, from the Arkansas River, through a foreign country as well, it was necessary for the wagons to form a single body or caravan. This organization way effeeted at the Council Grove, now the town of Council Grove, Kansas. Any early arrivals there awaited the coming of the others. The time was spent in resting and grazing the animals, in the final overhauling of the lading, in the repair of harness, yokes, and wagons, and cutting and pre- paring timbers to be used in case a breakdown should occur on the road beyond. For there was no substantial timber to be had after passing that point.
When the traders had all arrived at Conneil Grove a meeting was held for the purpose of effeeting a quasi-military organization for the remain- der of the journey to Santa Fe. There was elected a Captain of the Cara- van, whose duty it was to direet the order of travel and select the camp- ing-plaees. The caravan was separated into divisions, the number depending on its size. For each division a lieutenant was selected. His duties were to ride in advance and inspect the road and the crossings, to look ont for bad points on the trail and give notice of the same, and to superintend the forming of the encampments at night. The encampment was formed by parking the wagons and making an enclosure. The first wagon was halted at an angle. The second wagon was driven by it to the same angle, halting with its "near" hind wheel against the "off" front- wheel of the first wagon. This process was continued until the enclosure was completed. It was sometimes in the form of a square-one division to each side if the caravan was composed of four divisions. But it was as often in a circle or an oval. The wheels were frequently chained and loeked solidly together. Thus was construeted a sort of temporary fort or stockade. In case of attaek it afforded a defense, and the animals were sometimes driven into it. The eneampment was made where wood and water were to be had, if possible,-and where the grass was sufficient for the animals of the caravan. Guards were always set at night, and every man was expected to take his turn at guard-duty. Sometimes a second lieutenant was elected for each. division, as well as a chaplain, and eourt, composed of three members, for the caravan.
The teamsters, or drivers, beeame expert in their duties. The wagons were usually drawn by eight mules or the same number of oxen-four spans of mules, or four yoke of oxen. The driver of a mule-team rode the "near" wheel mule-that is, the mule on the left-hand side of the span hitehed next to the wheels of the wagons. He carried a heavy leather whip with a short flexible handle, and he held in his hands lines for the guidanee of the spans of mules hitehed ahead of him. The driver of an ox-team walked on the left-hand side of his team. He did not use lines to guide his oxen, but depended on his commands, delivered in a loud voice, and reinforeed by a long plaited leather whip having a handle or staff of such length as he might choose, usually a little better than four
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
feet. This staff was made of second-growth hickory, tough and flexible, tapering from a heavy butt to the diameter of half an inch at the end where the whip was attached. This whip was always pointed with a buckskin "cracker" fifteen inches in length. It was a cruel implement, but the good driver rarely struck an ox with the full force of it. In the hands of an expert it would lay open the side of an ox for several inches at each stroke. Many teamsters boasted of having driven to Santa Fe and return without "cutting the blood" from any ox on his team. The ox is an intelligent animal, and he soon knew whether he or the teamster was to be master. If he had a poor driver he would "lag in the yoke" and not pull his part of the load unless closely watched and sometimes punished. On the other hand, if he recognized in his driver a master, he "pulled up in the yoke" and did his part. The Americans always yoked their oxen by attaching the yoke by a bow around the neck. This method enabled the ox to throw his whole weight and all his strength against the yoke pulling his load instead of having to push it when the yoke was bound upon his horns, as was the Spanish and Mexican custom.
The whip used for driving oxen in America has not been entirely neglected in literature. In that masterpiece of Ingalls-Blue Grass- there is a crucifixion of the Border-Ruffians of Missouri, the redemption of whose country he submits a plan for :
Seed the country down to blue grass and the reformation would begin. Such a change must be gradual. One generation would not witness it, but three would see it accomplished. The first symptom would be an undefined uneasiness along the creeks, in the rotten erup- tion of cottonwood hovels near the grist mill and the blacksmith's shop at the fork of the roads, followed by a "toting" of plunder into the "bow-dark" wagon and an exodus for "outwest." A sore-back mule geared to a spavined sorrel, or a dwarfish yoke of stunted steers, drag the creaking wain along the muddy roads, accelerated by the long- drawn "Whoo-hoop-a-Haw-aw-aw" of "Dad" in butternut-colored homespun, as he walks beside, cracking a black-snake with a detonation like a Derringer.
Gregg compiled a table showing the extent of the Santa Fe trade for a number of years. It is the best authority on the subject and is appended :
Years.
Amt. Mdse.
W'gs.
Mon.
Pros.
T'n to Cha*
Remarks.
1822
15,000
. .
70
60
9,000
1823
12,000
..
50
30
3,000
Peck-animals only used.
1824
35,000
26
100
80
3,000
Pack-animals and wagons.
1625
65,000
37
130
90
5,000
1826
90,000
60
100
70
7,000
1827
$5,000
55
90
50
8,000
1828
150,000
100
200
80
20,00 )
1829
60,000
30
30
20
5,000
1830
120.000
70
140
80
20,000
1831
25 .000
130
320
80
80,0 0
1832
140,000
150
40
50,000
1833
180,000
105
185
60
80.000
1834
150,000
80
100
50
70,000
1835
140,000
140
40
70,000
1836
130,000
20
135
35
50,000
1837
150,000
80
160
35
80.000
1838
90,000
50
100
20
80,000
1839
250.000
130
230
40
100,000
1840
50,000
30
5
10,000
1841
150,000
63
100
12
80,000
1842
160.000
7
120
15
90,00)
1843
450.000
230
820
30
300.000
Pack-animals and wagons.
Wagons only henceforth.
3 men killed, being the first.
1st U. S. Es .- 1 trader killed. First oxen used by traders.
Two men killed.
Party defeated on Canadian.
2 men killed. 3 perished. 2nd U. S. Escort.
Arkansas Expedition.
Chihuahua Expedition. Texan Santa Fe Expediti n.
3d U. S. Fa-Ports closed.
Pack-animals only used.
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
BENT'S FORT
One of the most important stations on the Santa Fe Trail, as originally located, was Bent's Fort. It was situated on the Arkansas River in what is now Bent County, Colorado. It is deemed necessary to give some ac- count of it because of the fact that it was the largest post on the trail and exerted a considerable influence on the trade of the Plains. In some form and in different locations it persisted until a very late day.
Silas Bent was born in Massachusetts, in 1744, and it is said that he was one of the party who threw the British tea into Boston harbor. He married Mary Carter, by whom he had seven children, the eldest being Silas. This son was born in 1768, and in 1788 he went to Ohio, where he practiced law and held various offices. In 1806 he was appointed by Albert Gallatin a deputy surveyor of Upper Louisiana, and moved to . St. Louis. He held numerous offices there and died in 1827. By his intermarriage with a Virginia lady, Martha Kerr, he had eleven children, -Charles, Julia Ann, John, Lucy, Dorcas, William, Mary, George, Rob- ert, Edward and Silas. Charles was appointed Governor of New Mexico by General Kearny. The Bent brothers were engaged in the fur trade, those best known in that connection being William and Charles. Asso- ciated with them was Ceran St. Vrain, of Canadian-French extraction ; the firm was at one time known as Bent, St. Vrain & Co. They built a fort on the Arkansas River above the present city of Pueblo, at the mouth of Fountain Creek, in 1826. This proved a poor location, and in 1828 they abandoned the place and went down the river, and in 1829 completed Fort William, so called for William Bent. This fort was long known as Bent's Fort, and in later years was spoken of as Bent's "old" fort. It was one of the most important posts in the West, being situated at the point of the Santa Fe Trail where the travel north and south from the Platte country to Santa Fe crossed it. The walls were of adobe, six feet thick at the base and four feet at the top; the floor was of clay, and the roofs of the covered portions were of clay and gravel supported on poles. At the northwest and southwest corners were round towers thirty feet high and ten feet clear on the inside, and loopholed for artillery and musketry. The entrance was on the east, and was closed by a heavy gate of wood. Inside the fort were two divisions-one for offices, living-rooms, and store-rooms; the other for yards for wagons, stock, etc. The dimen- sions of the fort were about as given by Hughes, though other author- ities vary from these figures slightly. In 1852 William Bent destroyed the fort, burning the combustible portions and blowing up the walls with gunpowder. In 1853 he built Bent's "new" fort, about thirty-five miles lower down the Arkansas and on the same (north) side. It seems that he had long contemplated this removal, as the following quotation from the work of Emory will show :
About 35 miles before reaching Bent's Fort is found what is called the "big timber." Here the valley of the river widens, and the banks on either side fall towards it in gentle slopes. The "big timber" is a thinly scattered growth of large cottonwoods not more than three- quarters of a mile wide and three or four miles long. It is here the
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
Cheyennes, Araphoes, and the Kioways sometimes winter, to avail them- selves of the scanty supply of wood for fuel, and to let their animals browse on the twigs and bark of the cottonwood. The buffaloes are sometimes driven by the severity of the winter which is here intense for the latitude, to the same place to feed upon the cottonwood. To this point, which has been indicated to the Government as a suitable one for a military post, Mr. Bent thinks of moving his establishment.
Bent transaeted business at the new location until 1859, when the fort was leased to the Government. In the winter of 1859-60 Bent moved up to the mouth of the Purgatoire. The name of the fort was changed to Fort Wise in 1860, and in 1861 again changed, this time to Fort Lyon, in honor of General Nathaniel Lyon, the hero of Wilson Creek. Beeanse of the encroachments of the river on its walls the fort was moved twenty miles lower down the river in 1866, but it served as a stage station for some years longer.
Francis Parkman arrived at Bent's Fort shortly after the "Army of the West" had passed, and thus describes it :
Bent's Fort stands on the river. about seventy-five miles below Pueblo. At noon of the third day we arrived within three or four miles of it, pitched our tent under a tree, hung our looking-glasses against its trunk, and having made our primitive toilet, rode towards the fort. We soon came in sight of it, for it is visible for a considerable distance, standing with its high clay walls in the midst of the scorching plains. It seemed as if a swarm of locusts had invaded the country. The grass for miles around was cropped close by the horses of General Kearny's soldiery. When we came to the fort we found that not only had the horses eaten up in the grass, but their owners had made way with the stores of the little trading-post, so that we had great difficulty in procuring the few articles which we required for our homeward journey. The army was gone, the life and bustle passed away, and the fort was a scene of dull and lazy tranquillity. A few invalid officers and soldiers sauntered about the area, which was oppressively hot ; for the glaring sun was refleeted down upon it from the high white walls around .- Oregon Trail, pp. 306, 307.
William Bent was married to a Cheyenne woman.
AUTHORITIES
The supreme authority on the Santa Fe Trail and the trade developed over it is The Commerce of the Prairies, by Dr. Josiah Gregg. It is the foundation of every work on the subject since its appearance. It was published in 1844 in New York, and London. Dr. Gregg was born in Overton County. Tennessee. July 19, 1806. llis father moved to Missouri in time to have his family interned in the blockhouse in Boone's Lick settlement in the war of 1812. After that war he settled in Jackson County, Missouri, just north of Independence, where he grew up, as he says, "on the frontier." He was far above the ordinary in intelligence. Ile graduated from the Philadelphia Medical College. and was a successful physician until his health failed. Then he took to the Plains, making eight trips from Independence to Santa Fe and beyond-sometimes to Chihuahua. For a biographieal sketch of Dr. Gregg, see pages 162 et seq Connelley's Doniphan's Expedition.
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
The American Fur Trade of the Far West, by H. M. Chittenden, New York, Francis P. Harper, 1902. This work has much concerning the Santa Fe Trail.
Doniphan's Expedition, by John T. Hughes, is a work which has much about the Santa Fe Trail. The edition edited by Connelley con- tains many valuable notes, portraits, and biographies.
There are many documents, clippings, minor works, and articles on the Santa Fe Trail in the Library of the Kansas State Historical Society.
CHAPTER IX
THE OREGON TRAIL
The origin of the Oregon Trail was exactly the same as that of the Santa Fe Trail. It was the most direet route from the mouth of the Kan- sas River to the Northwest, which when taken to apply to a region beyond the present Kansas, embraces all the country to the Pacific Ocean, above the State of California. From the mouth of the Kansas River, the route which came to be known as the Oregon Trail was the shortest road to the Platte Valley. The Kansas River does not rise in the Rocky Mountains, the Platte on the north and the Arkansas on the south interlocking in those elevations beyond the head waters of the Kansas. As the Kansas River led to no gaps, passes nor depressions in the great mountain chain, it was not followed to its source by traders, trappers or explorers until its sister rivers had been some years freely traversed. But both the Santa Fe and Oregon trails began in the vicinity of the mouth of the Kansas, and both followed up that stream in their first stages. It was nature, the eonformation of the physical features of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain region, which made this necessary. Up the Kansas and its northern tributaries was the shortest routes to the great Platte Valley from the Big Bend of the Missouri, at the mouth of the Kansas, just as up this stream and its southern tributaries led most quickly to the valley of the Arkansas. And both the Platte and the Arkansas led up to passes in the Rocky Mountains. These physical features gave Kansas the first reaches of the two great trails from the Missouri to the Pacific Ocean.
The first paths from the mouth of the Kansas River into the Platte Valley were made by the wild denizens of those regions before the appear- anee of even the Indian. These pathis were not continuous the whole dis- tance, but led from valley to valley at many places. When savage man had dispersed himself over the land the most direet of the old animal roads were uneonseiously eonneeted and identified as paths from village to village, from tribe to tribe. So were the foundations of the Oregon Trail laid in savagery in the early history of human progress.
When the white man eame into these western wilds he, of necessity, followed in the ways of the savage predecessors. And when the white man first came into these Plains and the Mountains beyond no one can now tell. In the subjection of every wilderness there is a preliminary period of individual and largely irresponsible exploration of which no record is ever made. Frenehmen, individuals, and in small parties, wandered, traveled, hunted, traded-all in a petty and insignificant man- Vol. 1-10
145
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KANSAS AND KANSANS
ner- long before the despatch from any settlement or fort of authorized expeditions. They were long previous to Bourgmont or Du Tisne or Pike or Long. Pike notes their presence at the village of the Republican Paw- nees. And so, the pioneer white men to thread the mazes of the Plains by the primitive paths which became the Oregon Trail, are swallowed up in obscurity-never to be known.
The love of property has long been the dominating motive and ruling passion of mankind. It is now the instinct of the individual and the policy of the nation to trade. And the development of trade with the savage inhabitants was the motive of the first excursions into the wilder- ness of the West of which accounts have been preserved. These excur- sions assumed sufficient proportions to attract public attention immedi- ately after the return of Lewis and Clark from their famous exploration. St. Louis was the head and center of all commercial enterprise for the Missouri River region of that time. Mannel Lisa organized an expedition in 1807 to fix trading stations about the head waters of the Missouri. On his way up that river on this purpose he met John Colter, one of the expedition of Lewis and Clark. That intrepid backwoodsman was in- duced to enter Lisa's service and return to the mountains as guide to the party. He led Lisa up the Yellowstone to the mouth of the Bighorn River, where the first trading-post of his venture was established. This point was in the country of the Crows, and the fixing of the post there angered the Blackfeet-a matter which troubled the traders and trappers much thereafter.
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