 | Prose sketches and poems |  |
NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY IN THE PRAIRIE.
Peril he sought not, but ne'er shrank to meet:
The scene was savage, but the scene was new;
This made the ceaseless toil of travel sweet,
Beat back keen winter's cold and welcomed summer's heat.
Byron.
The world of prairie which lies at a distance of more
than three hundred miles west of the inhabited portions of
the United States, and south of the river Arkansas and its
branches, has been rarely, and parts of it never, trodden
by the foot or beheld by the eye of an Anglo-American.
Rivers rise there in the broad level waste, of which, mighty
though they become in their course, the source is unexplored.
Deserts are there, too barren of grass to support
even the hardy buffalo; and in which water, except in
here and there a hole, is never found. Ranged over by
the Comanches, the Pawnees, the Caiwas, and other
equally wandering, savage and hostile tribes, its very
name is a mystery and a terror. The Pawnees have their
villages entirely north of this part of the country; and
their war parties—always on foot—are seldom to be met
with to the south of the Canadian, except close in upon
the edges of the white and civilized Indian settlements.
Extending on the south to the Rio del Norte, on the north
to a distance unknown, eastwardly to within three or four
westwardly to the Rocky Mountains, is the range of the
Comanches. Abundantly supplied with good horses from
the immense herds of the prairie, they range, at different
times of the year, over the whole of this vast country.
Their war and hunting parties follow the buffalo continually.
In the winter they may be found in the south,
encamped along the Rio del Norte, and under the mountains;
and in the summer on the Canadian, and to the
north of it, and on the Pecos. Sometimes they haunt the
Canadian in the winter, but not so commonly as in the
summer.
It is into this great American desert that I wish to conduct
my readers—first solemnly assuring them that what I
am about to relate is perfectly the truth, and that nothing
is exaggerated or extenuated in the narration.
In the month of September, 1831, Aaron B. Lewis, residing
at the time near Fort Towson, on Red River, in
the territory of Arkansas, was induced to undertake a
journey to the province of New Mexico, allured by the
supposed immense riches in that country, and the opportunity
which he imagined there was of making a fortune
there. He looked upon New Mexico as a sort of Utopia,
a country where gold and silver were abundant and easily
obtained. In short, his ideas of it were precisely such as
the word Mexico generally suggests to the mind. Neither
has he been alone in his delusion. With a blindness
unaccountable, men still continue rushing to Santa Fe,
as if fortunes were to be had there for the asking. Men,
who by hard and incessant labor have amassed a little
money, laying that out to the last farthing, and in addition,
mortgaging perhaps their farms to obtain farther
credit, convey the goods thus obtained to Santa Fe, hoping
thus and there to gain a fortune, notwithstanding they have
seen numbers returning poor and impoverished, after starting,
as they are doing, with high hopes and full wagons.
Here and there an individual, by buying beaver or trading
to Sonora and California for mules, returns home a gainer,
but generally the case is far otherwise.[1]
Lewis, however, was far from knowing all this, and accordingly
on the 3d of Sept. 1831, with a good horse, gun,
pistols, and plenty of clothes, ammunition and blankets,
he left the United States, and bent his course to the mountains.
He left Arkansas in company with two other Americans
and eleven Cherokees, who were headed by a chief
commonly called Old Dutch, and whose object was hunting
and trapping on the Fore Washita. Besides these,
there was a young doctor by the name of Monro, and his
wife, who were to accompany Lewis to New Mexico.
Chambers, one of his companions, was a middling-sized
young man, a very good fellow on the prairie, but of very
little use there. George Andrews, the other, was a big,
obstinate, cowardly Dutchman, of no use to himself or any
one else, and of no character except a bad one. Lewis
himself is a large, very large and tall man, red faced, of
undaunted bravery, coolness, and self-possession, an excellent
hunter, and of constant good humor.
The course which they intended to pursue, was to follow
the Fore Washita to its head, and then to cross to the
Canadian, and follow it to the wagon road. As I shall
have frequent occasion to speak of these rivers, I may as
well at once give a description of them. No maps describe
the Red River and the Colorado correctly. The
Canadian fork of the Arkansas rises near the head of the
Arkansas itself, runs south to within seventy miles of Taos,
and then takes a course a little south of east. It is there
called Red River by the Spaniards and traders. The
North Fork of the Canadian heads about fifty miles to the
north-east of Taos, in two hills, which are called by the
Spaniards Las Orejas, and by the Americans the Rabbit
Ears. The North fork itself is called there Rabbit Ears'
Creek. The Fore Washita heads about three hundred
miles to the east of Taos, in some prairie hills, and a man
can travel in half a day from the head of the principal
branch of it to the Canadian, at a large bend of the letter.
Red River rises in the prairie not far south of Santa Fe,
and between one and two hundred miles east of it. The
heads of it are salt, and, as well as the Colorado, it has a
wide, sandy bed, and but little water until it reaches nearly
to the Cross Timbers, within three hundred miles of the
or the Brazos hereafter.
I have never seen the Fore Washita far above the Cross
Timbers. It is, above them, a small clear stream of water,
always running. Where I crossed it, it was perhaps one
hundred yards wide, deep, and with not very bluff banks.
Above this it is bordered by a strip of timber, generally
from one eighth to a quarter of a mile wide, and on the
outside of this, a prairie bottom, half a mile, and in some
places a mile wide, of exceedingly rich land. These bottoms
extend to the distance of more than a hundred and
fifty miles above the Cross Timbers. It is indeed the best
hunting ground of the west for deer, buffalo, and bear, and
the trees are abundantly stored with delicious honey. The
timber is chiefly oak, walnut, and pecan, and close to the
bank cottonwood and sycamore.
Of the early part of his route—that is, from Fort Towson
to the Cross Timbers—Lewis can give but a vague
and confused account. Most of the time he was sick, and
in addition to this, the Cherokees, whose purpose was
hunting, loitered along so slowly—killing deer as they
went—and accommodated their course so constantly to
this pursuit, that there could be but little possibility of remembering
the route distinctly. What I know about it is
derived rather from my own passage through the same
part of the country, than from that of Lewis. Leaving
Fort Towson, as before stated, on the 3d of September,
they took the road, which, crossing the Kiamesia, goes on
to the ford of Boggy—a branch of Red River—running
into it below the Washita. The country is beautifully diversified—hills
covered with oak and hickory, rolling praries
with their tall swarthy grass waving in the wind, and
here and there creek bottoms, flush with greenness. In
parts, however, the country has a bleak and barren appearance,
which becomes much more marked when the
sun scorches up the prairies, and the hot fire runs over
them, leaving only bleak, black and barren wastes, undulating
in gloomy loneliness, and here and there spotted
with a clump of trees, leafless, gray and gnarled, perhaps
scorched with the fire which has gone over the prairie.
As they proceeded farther to the west, the prairies became
larger, and bore in a greater degree that look of stern
silence which hardly ever fails to impress itself on any one
who at first enters a plain to which he can see no bounds.
Crossing Boggy at the ford below the Forks, just beyond
which the road lost itself in the prairie, they kept on to the
ford of the creek called Blue, or Blue-water—crossed it,
and in a few days entered the hills of the Fausse on Fore
Washita, on the north side of that river—high, broken,
and precipitous elevations, in which they were entangled
for the space of two or three days. Where I afterward
passed through these hills, they are devoid of timber; but
where Lewis went through on his outward trip, they were,
generally, thickly covered with low shrub oaks and briers,
forming, as it seemed, a portion of the Cross Timbers into
which they entered as soon as they left the hills. Passing
through the Cross Timbers—in width, there, about fifteen
miles—they struck, for the first time, the Fore Washita.
These Cross Timbers are a belt of timber, extending from
the Canadian, or a little further north, to an unknown distance
south of Red River. The belt is in width from
fifteen to fifty miles, composed of black-jack and post
oak, with a thick undergrowth of small bushy oak and
briers, in places absolutely impervious. About this time
Lewis lost his horse, which wandered off one night, and was
never found again. He was now, like Andrews and
Chambers, on foot. Just beyond the Cross Timbers, Monro
and his wife left him and returned to the white settlements,
weary of the journey. It was well that they did so.[2]
Fifty miles above the Cross Timbers, upon the Washita,
and on the morning of the twelfth of October, Lewis and
his two companions parted from the Cherokees, though
with the utmost reluctance on the part of the latter, who
were urgent for them to remain and trap with them. Thus
far there had been to them, and there is to any man, but little
danger. The Pawnees are sometimes, but very seldom,
found below the Cross Timbers—the Comanches never.
Now, however, commenced the danger. The heads of
the Washita and the western part of the Canadian are the
of either Lewis or Chambers to fear, and they, encumbered
by Andrews, pushed on boldly up the river. The
country was now changed. On each side of the river, after
leaving the bottom, there was the high, level and dry
prairie, where grass grows only to the height of two or
three inches, and, by the month of October, is scorched,
curled, and gray, affording little or no sustenance to anything
but the buffalo.
No man can form an idea of the prairie, from anything
which he sees to the east of the Cross Timbers. Broad,
level, gray, and barren, the immense desert which extends
thence westwardly almost to the shadow of the mountains,
is too grand and too sublime to be imaged by the narrowcontracted,
undulating plains to be found nearer the
bounds of civilization.
Imagine yourself, kind reader, standing in a plain to
which your eye can see no bounds. Not a tree, not a
bush, not a shrub, not a tall weed lifts its head above the
barren grandeur of the desert; not a stone is to be seen on
its hard beaten surface; no undulation, no abruptness, no
break to relieve the monotony; nothing, save here and
there a deep narrow track worn into the hard plain by the
constant hoof of the buffalo. Imagine then countless
herds of buffalo, showing their unwieldy, dark shapes in
every direction, as far as the eye can reach, and approaching
at times to within forty steps of you; or a herd of wild
horses feeding in the distance or hurrying away from the
hateful smell of man, with their manes floating, and a
trampling like thunder. Imagine here and there a solitary
antelope, or, perhaps, a whole herd, fleeting off in the distance,
like the scattering of white clouds. Imagine bands
of white, snow-like wolves prowling about, accompanied by
the little gray collotes or prairie wolves, who are as rapacious
and as noisy as their bigger brethren. Imagine, also,
here and there a lonely tiger-cat, lying crouched in some
little hollow, or bounding off in triumph, bearing some
luckless little prairie-dog whom it has caught straggling
about at a distance from his hole. If to all this you add a
band of Comanches, mounted on noble swift horses, with
their long lances, their quiver at the back, their bow,
with feathers and red cloth, and round as Norval's, or as
the full moon; if you imagine them hovering about in the
prairie, chasing the buffalo or attacking an enemy, you
have an image of the prairie, such as no book ever described
adequately to me.
I have seen the prairie under all its diversities, and in
all its appearances, from those which I have described to
the uneven, bushy prairies which lie south of Red River,
and to the illimitable Stake Prarie which lies from almost
under the shadow of the mountains to the heads of the
Brazos and of Red River, and in which neither buffaloes
nor horses are to be found. I have seen the prairie, and
lived in it, in summer and in winter. I have seen it with
the sun rising calmly from its breast, like a sudden fire
kindled in the dim distance; and with the sunset flushing
in its sky with quiet and sublime beauty. There is less of
the gorgeous and grand character, however, belonging to
them, than that which accompanies the rise and set of the
sun upon the ocean or upon the mountains; but there is
beauty and sublimity enough in them to attract the attention
and interest the mind.
I have seen the mirage, too, painting lakes and fires
and groves on the grassy ridges near the bounds of Missouri,
in the still autumn afternoon, and cheating the traveller
by its splendid deceptions. I have seen the prairie,
and stood long and weary guard in it, by moonlight and
starlight and storm. It strikes me as the most magnificent,
stern, and terribly grand scene on earth—a storm in
the prairie. It is like a storm at sea, except in one respect—and
in that it seems to me to be superior. The
stillness of the desert and illimitable plain, while the snow
is raging over its surface, is always more fearful to me than
the wild roll of the waves; and it seems unnatural—this
dead quiet, while the upper elements are so fiercely disturbed;
it seems as if there ought to be the roll and the
roar of the waves. The sea, the woods, the mountains,
all suffer in comparison with the prairie—that is, on the
whole—although in particular circumstances either of them
is superior. We may speak of the incessant motion and tumult
of the waves, the unbounded greenness and dimness,
the precipitous grandeur, and the summer snow of
the glittering cones of the mountains: but still, the prairie
has a stronger hold upon the soul, and a more powerful, if
not so vivid an impression upon the feelings. Its sublimity
arises from its unbounded extent, its barren monotony and
desolation, its still, unmoved, calm, stern, almost self-confident
grandeur, its strange power of deception, its want of
echo, and, in fine, its power of throwing a man back upon
himself and giving him a feeling of lone helplessness,
strangely mingled at the same time with a feeling of liberty
and freedom from restraint. It is particularly sublime,
as you draw nigh to the Rocky Mountains, and see them
shot up in the west, with their lofty tops looking like
white clouds resting upon their summits. Nothing ever
equalled the intense feeling of delight with which I first
saw the eternal mountains marking the western edge of
the desert. But let us return to Lewis.
After leaving the Cherokees, he and his companions
kept up the Washita for eight days, until it became so
small that they could step across it, and branched out into
a number of small heads, coming down from different parts
of the prairie. In these eight days they traveled two
hundred and fifty miles. Lewis was loaded with his heavy
gun, his saddle-bags full of clothes, and generally from ten
to forty pounds of buffalo meat. Game was abundant thus
far, and they suffered nothing but fatigue.
Oct. 20.—On this day, in the morning, they left the
main Washita, now very small, and struck a course nearly
west, two degrees north, through the prairie. After traveling
in a treeless and broken prairie until midnight, they
came upon a deep hollow, near the head of it, in which
water was running towards the main Washita, and encamped
under a big elm.
21.—Started again, and traveled all day directly towards
the dividing land between them and the waters of the Canadian,
and at midnight came to the head of another hollow
similar to the one of the night before. This Lewis
takes to be the head of the longest branch of the Fore
Washita. From this head of the Washita to the Cross
Timbers is probably three hundred and forty miles, not cal
straight.
22.—This morning they left the head waters of the
Washita, and, after traveling about twenty miles in a
course west, two degrees north, they came upon a hollow
from which a little branch ran to the Canadian. All this
day it rained. The country between the head waters of
the Washita and this part of the Canadian, is a high,
broken, uneven prairie. Here they killed a bear, cut up the
meat, and built a fire under it to dry and preserve it. This
day I was traveling upon Semaron, a branch of the Arkansas
to the south, between it and the Canadian. I was
in a company of thirty men guarding ten wagons.[3]
23.—This morning the adventures left their camp and
kept their course for about four miles, when they struck
the Canadian and crossed it, and in the evening, thinking
that they would obtain no water, they altered their course,
turned to the south-west, and, crossing the river again to
the south, encamped on the bank. Lewis computes this
day's travel at eighteen miles.
24.—Left camp and traveled about six miles up the
Canadian on the south side, then crossed it to the north,
and left it, keeping their regular course west, two degrees
north. They soon came into high sand hills, and encamped
at night, finding no water. About midnight Lewis insisted
on starting and finding water, and they did so, and in
the morning came upon a large creek running into the
Canadian.
25.—After staying an hour or two at the water, left it
and kept their course all day, and at night, owing to a
large bend in the Canadian, they came upon it again, and
encamped on the river. It had snowed all day, but ceased
at sunset. This day our company reached the middle
spring of the Semaron, and the last watch this night, of
eight hours, belonged to me. Stood it without fire for
three hours, and then built me a fire of the buffalo ordure
which we had gathered for mess fuel. During my watch
a horse froze to death.
26.—They traveled all day again, and encamped at night
on a small creek half a mile from the main river. The
towards night. Country, as before, broken, uneven prairie,
covered with oak bushes about a foot and a half high.
27.—They traveled all day, and encamped in the prairie,
and melted snow in a tin kettle, which Chambers carried.
Still kept their course west, two degrees north.
28.—Traveled all day, and encamped again in the prairie,
at a hole where buffalo had been rolling, called by hunters
a buffalo wallow, and containing water.
29.—Traveled all day, and encamped on a little fork of
clear water running to the north—a branch, probably, of
the Semaron, or, perhaps, of the north fork of the Canadian.
30.—Traveled all day, and at night encamped on another
little fork running north.
31.—Traveled all day in a high, barren, undulating
prairie; found water once or twice during the day; but at
night slept in the prairie without a drop. This is the beginning
of what Lewis calls the water scrape.
Nov. I.—Started in the morning early, and traveled
all day without water; likewise traveled all night without
rest or cessation.
2.—High, barren prairie; all day no water. They
traveled constantly and eagerly until about two of the afternoon
on their course, and then changed it and traveled
a due south course. Night came, but did not delay them,
and it was not till the morning star rose, that, weary and
tormented with thirst, they lay down and slept.
3.—Towards day they arose, and started again in a
course still due south. About ten in the morning, Lewis
threw away his saddle-bags, pistols, blankets, and about
forty weight of buffalo meat. Chambers had thrown his
meat down the evening before, and Lewis had added it to
his load. Early in the morning Chambers went ahead,
promising to keep the course, and whenever he reached
water to return with a bucket full to Lewis and Andrews.
After leaving them he saw an antelope, and went out of
his course to kill it for the sake of drinking the blood. He
thus lost the course and his companions. Towards evening
Lewis killed an antelope and drank the blood. It
drank like new milk, but increased the thirst ten fold.
water, till about two hours before day, when they lay down
and slept. Lewis had now become so weak as to be unable
to shoulder his gun except by placing one end on the
ground and getting under it; and he went staggering
along through the prairie like one who had long been sick.
4.—Started again at daylight, and proceeded slowly
along the plain, and about the middle of the forenoon descried
the high, broken country of the Canadian. About
two of the afternoon they reached the river, almost exhausted.
As Lewis drank he forced himself to vomit, and
the water came from his stomach as cold as it entered it.
He tells me that he is certain of having drunken at least
three gallons of water. This day, after seeing the river,
they fired the prairie as a signal to Chambers. He saw it,
but supposing it to proceed from Indians, was afraid to approach
it. He struck the river early in the morning,
about ten miles above the place where Lewis and Andrews
came upon it.
5 and 6.—Lay by at the same place, in order to gather
strength for traveling. Killed a fat cow.
7.—They made preparations for going back to find the
articles which they had thrown away. Lewis took four
gallons and a half of water in a cased deer skin, which he
had been carrying, and as Andrews insisted on going
ahead and keeping the course, he allowed him to do so.
In the afternoon, finding that they had lost their course,
they returned to their camp again.
8.—Started again this morning, Lewis going ahead and
bearing the water. They traveled all day, and at night
encamped in the prairie, with no water except what they
bore with them.
9.—Traveled still north until about noon, when, despairing
of finding their property, and fearing to suffer
again from thirst, they turned their course to the south
west, and at night encamped on the head of a large creek
running toward the main Canadian.
10.—Followed the creek down for about ten miles, and
encamped in a grove of cottonwood, on the same creek.
11.—Left the creek and traveled west all day, until late
in the evening; they struck the Canadian again, and saw
him to be dead.
From this to the sixteenth they kept up the river slowly,
and Lewis has but a confused remembrance of this part of
the trip. On the sixteenth it commenced raining in the
morning, and towards night they crossed the Canadian by
wading, and found a cave in the bluff bank, in which they
could be sheltered, and, rolling a large pine root to the
mouth of it, they were very comfortable all night, though
but poorly clad, and with no blankets. Lewis's dress consisted
of a pair of thin linen pantaloons and a shirt, with a
pair of deerskin moccasins. It hailed towards night severely,
and about midnight cleared off very cold.
17.—Started very late, and went down the creek about
half a mile, and encamped again in a cottonwood grove,
where Andrews killed, for the first time, something to eat,
viz. a little `puck.' All this day the cold was intense.
18.—Started in the morning in a snow storm, and traveled
nearly all day. In the evening they encamped in a bleak
place, and made a fire with cedar, which was thinly scattered
about on the bluff banks of the river. The snow
round the fire melted, and the mud was soon knee-deep.
When, during a lull in the storm, Lewis saw up the river
about half a mile a grove of cottonwood, and proposed
going and camping there, George answered that, `py Cot,
it was petter here as there, and he would not co.' `Stay,
then,' was the answer of Lewis, and taking his gun and
a brand of fire, he went on, but had not proceeded more
than a hundred yards, when, looking back, he saw Andrews
puffing along behind him. They soon made a large
fire, raked away the snow, and sat out the night by their
fire—comfortable—as Lewis says.
I met this storm at the Point of Rocks, about sixteen
miles to the north east of the Canadian, at the crossing of
the wagon road under the mountain. This Point of
Rocks is a high ridge of mountain which, dividing at this
place and jutting out into the prairie in three spurs, ends
abruptly, making a high and imposing appearance in the
boundless plain in which they stand. Between these three
points two cañons ran up into the bosom of the ridge—(by
which word cañon the Spaniards express a deep, narrow
eighteenth, after the first storm, and seeing indications of
another approaching, we encamped early, running our wagons
in a straight line across the mouth of the northern cañon.
Our mess pitched our tent on the south end of the line—
fronting the line—and we then employed ourselves all the
afternoon in cutting and bringing from the sides of the
mountain the small rough cedars, which grow there in
abundance; and we soon gathered huge piles on the outside
of the wagons. Our oxen and the one or two horses
yet left, were driven far up the hollow, and about ten of
the evening I ascended the side of the hollow and stood
guard two hours—which standing guard consisted in
wrapping myself in a blanket and lying down under the
lee of a rock. When my guard was off, Schench and myself
retired to our tent, and I slept out the night under
two buffalo robes and two blankets. He, poor fellow! is
since dead.
Two or three hours before daylight the storm commenced
with terrific violence, and I never saw a wilder or more
terrible sight than was presented to us when day came.
The wind swept fiercely out of the cañon, driving the
snow horizontally against the wagons, and sweeping onward
into the wide prairie, in which a sea of snow seemed
raging. Objects were not visible at a distance of twenty
feet, and when now and then the lull of the wind permitted
us to look further out in the plain, it only gave us a
wider view of the dim desolation of the tempest. There
was small comfort at the fires, immense though they were;
for as gust after gust struck the wagons, the snow blew
under them and piled around us, while the cold seemed
every moment to increase in intensity. For some time in
the morning we were crowded together in our tent, but
while eating our breakfast in it, the pins gave way, and
we were covered with snow. We then pitched it again
in the lee of the wagons, with its mouth to the prairie. In
the evening we all turned out, although the cold was hardly
supportable, and cut and carried wood to a sheltered
place on the side of mountain, where our sapient captain
had directed us to stand guard. We then stuffed boughs
of cedar under the wagon, in the lee of which our messfire
the wagon, and managed to enjoy some small degree of
comfort.
19.—We left the Point of Rocks in spite of the deep
snow and the intense cold, leaving also some six or eight
oxen frozen to death, and although I ran backward and
forward in the track of the wagons all day, still I froze my
feet before I stopped at night. Such was the weather in
which Lewis and Andrews lay without a blanket or a coat
by a fire in the open air. There is but small comfort in
the prairie in such a storm, even when a man has blankets
and clothes in abundance; but when he is nearly naked,
and sits all the long night shivering by the fire which is
the only barrier between him and death, it requires the
greatest fortitude to bear the feelings of utter misery and
desolation which throug upon the heart.
Lewis and Andrews traveled this morning four or five
miles, and stopped in a grove of cottonwood. After making
a fire, Andrews shot a turkey, and called to Lewis to
run to catch it. Lewis did so, and was hotly engaged
in the chase of the turkey, when he came upon an old
buck, and shot him. Andrews, however, was enraged,
and `would rather have his turkey as fifty pucks.”
20.—This day Lewis left the Canadian, and followed a
small southern branch of it which heads within five miles
of the junction of the Demora and Sepellote, (branches
likewise of the Canadian,) which junction takes place on
the wagon road within fifty miles of San Miguel, and within
fifteen miles of the Galimas branch of the Pecos, which
is itself a branch of the Del Norte.
The progress of Lewis was now slow, owing to Andrews,
who pretended great fatigue and incapability of walking.
They traveled this day about six miles, and encamped in a
cliff of rocks on the creek.
21.—This day they ascended the first bench of mountain,
and came into prairie again; traveled about ten
miles in the whole, and found water in a hollow rock.
22.—They started, aiming to go to a long mountain
covered with timber, which lay in the course. In the afternoon
Lewis saw a piece of timber to the left, and thinking
it impossible to reach the timbered hill, proposed going
Lewis expressed it, `for fooling along and killing antelope.'
They held a long confab, and at length Andrews agreed
to go to it. But after turning towards the timber and proceeding
a short distance, they saw a smoke in it, and
Andrews again refused to go thither, alleging that it was
Indians; and Lewis, enraged, went on without him,
saying that he would go thither if there were five hundred
Indians in the timber. Andrews followed. On arriving
at the edge of the timber, Lewis stopped, primed
his gun anew, and picked the flint. Andrews by this
time had come up, and observed, with some surprise,
`that Lewis did allow to fight.' A little further, and they
saw a track. It was that of Chambers. They were within
five steps of him before he knew it. He had always supposed
them dead, but they had seen his track along at intervals,
and even that day, going to the right of them.
Reader, you can imagine their joy at meeting.
Chambers, as Lewis says, `never expected to get no
place, and had only concluded to keep going until he died.'
He had killed a panther that night—after being encamped
here a day or two—and all the three now feasted on panther
meat.
23.—Lay by, in a snow storm.
24.—Moved camp about half a mile to better timber,
and encamped again. Our wagons, in the mean time, had
crossed the Canadian, and were encamped about twenty
miles beyond, in a grove of pine timber, within seventeen
miles of the foot of the first high mountain on the road to
Taos.
25.—The storm ceased, and the weather was intensely
cold. This day Lewis and his small party moved two
miles, and stopped for fear of freezing; encamping on the
same little creek which I have mentioned before. This
day a party of us left the wagons and went into Taos.
The blue mist hung about the mountains, and gathered
into icicles on our beards and blankets; and the snow was
knee-deep. The climate in which I was born is cold
enough, but I never experienced anything equal to the
cold of this day. All of our party except one or two froze
their feet. This was the kind of weather in which Lewis
on his breast with the hair in, and one on his back
with the hair out, and a pair of thin moccasins. We this
day traveled twenty-five miles, a part of which was up one
of the highest mountains to be seen around us, and encamped
in a grove of hemlock and pine, which the reader will
hereafter find mentioned as the encamping ground of Lewis.
There were two pack mules ahead of us, and we walked
all day in their steps, which was the only path. It was
no strange thing that Lewis could not travel.
26.—Lewis this day traveled about four miles, and
encamped in the snow on the head of a hollow in pine timber.
27.—Our adventurers traveled this day about nine
miles, and came upon the waters of the Demora, that is,
upon a small branch running towards this creek. This
day our party from the wagons reached the foot of the last
mountain on the road to Taos.
28.—Lewis this day traveled all day, and gained about
four miles; in the evening they killed an old buffalo, and,
finding his flesh too poor to be eaten, they cleansed and
ate the entrails; encamping at night on the same branch of
the Demora. This day about ten in the evening our party
reached the still house in the valley, within three miles of
Taos.
29.—This day they traveled about eight miles, and in
the middle of the afternoon stopped on the main Demora,
where, in a few minutes, Lewis killed two black-tailed
deer. I have often mentioned these deer. They are
larger than the deer which are found in the United States,
and in fact their skin sometimes is so large that it might
be mistaken for an elk-skin. They are of a darker color
than our deer, more clumsily made, and not so fleet;
neither is their flesh so good, but their skins are much
better.
30.—This day they lay by.
Dec. 1.—Directly after starting, they came upon the
road at the junction of the Demora and Sepellote, which
the reader will find mentioned hereafter, as the place
whence I went into San Miguel. Had Lewis continued
up the Demora to the old village, and thence through the
and would have gone in with much more ease. He wished
to do so; Andrews, however, who had been in Taos
before, and in fact had a wife there, assured him that they
could not go in that way for the snow, but that they must
go to a timbered hill which lay to the right, and can be
seen from the junction of the roads; and that beyond this
they would find a mule-path leading from the ford of the
Canadian to San Fernandez. They accordingly traveled
three or four miles in the direction of the timbered hill, and
encamped.
2.—Traveled this day three or four miles, and encamped
on the timbered hill.
3.—Traveled this day about the same distance upon the
hill, and encamped on it again in a deep cañon. While sitting
in camp this morning, ready to start, two deer came
running up towards them, and stopped. Lewis shot and
brought one down, and was followed by Andrews, who
killed the other. Chambers and Andrews then insisted
upon stopping and eating, to the great anger of Lewis, who
hated losing time.
4.—Traveled all day and encamped at night on the upper
end of the mountain.
5.—This morning Lewis issued the last meat, being a
piece for each man about as large as his two fingers. The
reader will remember that though they killed two deer,
they were too weak to pack much of it. Andrews this
morning alleged that he could carry his gun no further,
and that they must stop till he could rest a day or two and
gain strength. What was to be done? Lewis was forced
to lay by and starve, or carry his own gun and that of Andrews
likewise. Either gun is extremely heavy. Andrews
had long been burdensome by delaying his companions,
and once Lewis had threatened to throw him into the fire,
and would have done so had he not, as Lewis calls it,
`backed out.' This day they reached a small creek within
six miles of the foot of the mountain, which I have said
we ascended on the twenty-fifth. The road goes by the
creek, but the snow which had fallen after we went in,
had erased the tracks completely, and there was no vestige
of a road.
6.—Left Cache Creek, and traveled toward the mountain.
After ascending it about half way, and coming upon
a small platform on the side of it, Andrews insisted on encamping,
and they did so. A fire was made, and they
were standing by it, when Lewis observed that he still had
a great mind to go on. `I wish that you would,' said
Andrews, `for then you could tell them to send for
me.' A word was enough for Lewis, and, shouldering his
gun and taking a brand of fire, he went on up the mountain
alone. He had a day or two before given his thin
moccasins to Andrews, who complained bitterly of his feet,
and he was himself now equiped with a pair made of the
raw hide of a buffalo.
The few days' journey which are left now, I shall give
in his own words; that is, as far as the words of an uneducated
man can be written without giving the world
cause for supposing that one is aiming at burlesque. If I
retain his own peculiar phrases, it will be because he can
express himself by them more forcibly than I can by any
language of my own. Henceforward, then, the reader will
understand him as speaking in the first person, and any
remark which I have to make for the purpose of explanation
will be placed in parenthesis.
After reaching the top of the mountain, I saw before
me the wide prairie through which I had to travel about
six miles to timber. My thin pantaloons were torn into
strips everywhere, and there was hardly a place where you
could put your finger down without touching flesh. Added
to this, about ten inches of my legs above my moccasins
were entirely bare. The snow through the prairie
was generally about to my middle, and whenever I missed
the road, which was beaten hard underneath, though covered
with soft snow above, then I took it plump to my
neck, and had all sorts of kicking to get out of it at all.
The air kept growing colder as I went, and I thought that
the timber receded. I was sure that some power or other
was holding back my feet. My heart leaped when I got
into the timber and heard the tall trees singing above me.
I turned in and blowed up my chunk of fire, packed big
logs and made a pretty good fire. Then I took off one of
my raw deer-skin, spread it out and sat down upon it, and
side of me would get to freezing. I had nothing else to
do but to watch the stars, whenever the snow ceased blowing
on me from the mountains, except making the old
pines and hemlocks smoke.
7.—Just after daylight the wind began to blow. It
knows exactly how to blow, and where to hit to cut deepest.
But it was death or victory, and I was obliged to
start any how. I gathered my chunk, looked at my fire
awhile, and started. I used to hate to leave my fire in the
morning, not knowing where the next fire was to be.
After traveling about three hundred yards, I came upon a
little hollow, where I could see mule sign. (They had
been out to our wagons.) I could see where they had
sunk to their bellies, and as they raised their knees, had
pushed up the big pieces of crusted snow on end. But
I was glad to see any sign of the road, for I never
knew whether I was in it or out of it. Andrews had given
me all the directions he could about the road, but he could
not find the way in himself, much less tell me. I had not
got fifteen steps across the hollow, when I came to a big
hemlock, which was lying in the edge of a thicket of
mountain cottonwood and hemlock. I found I was freezing
to death, and had to stop. I tumbled old brindle (his
gun) to the ground, and tried to drop my chunk, but I
could not do so for some time, my fingers were so froze.
I got it down at last, and tried to straighten out my fingers
by rubbing them up and down my legs, but I could not do
it, and had to pick up chunks between my two fists, and
pack them to my fire along side of the hemlock. There
like to have been no calling of the dogs that time. I laid
here till I got thawed out a little, and then moved further
down among the hemlock, where I made me a real comfortable
place to stay in all day. I had not been there
long before I shot a white wolf, intending to eat him, but
he went tumbling over and over, till he got out of the way.
I did not care much about it, though, for I was not hungry
at all. I had other things to think of than getting hungry.
It clouded up towards morning, and just after the sun rose
it began to snow.
8.—I was right glad to see it turn warm enough for
snow to fall; so I shouldered old brindle, gathered a
chunk and started. In traveling about eight miles I came
to the edge of what Andrews had described to me as the
Black Lake. It is a hollow prairie, where water is sometimes.
I do not know how far it is across it, for I took no
notice of the distance. When I got into it I never expected
to see any other place. It heads all cold places I
ever saw, at any rate; and I think it is about six miles
across it. Just as I entered it, I found I was freezing,
and stopped in a cliff of rocks, and made a little fire of
choke-cherry bushes. I could have put the whole of it in
my hat. I pulled off my moccasins, and began to thaw
them; but before they were half thawed, my feet began to
swell, and I was obliged to put on my hard moccasins
again. I stayed here about an hour, and then I took a
few sprigs of choke-cherries and lighted them. It was
snowing violently. I had got so as not to care much about
life now, and I did not take any particular pains to keep
my sprigs alive as I walked, and had they gone out, I
never should have struck fire again. I had not gone more
than half a mile, when I reached a clump of eight or ten
pine trees, and determined on stopping here. I gathered
a few pieces of pine, and blowed up my sprigs, now almost
extinguished. After setting my pieces of wood afire, I
had ten minds not to put anything more to it, where I had
one to do so. All that I could see about me was two big
logs on the side of the little rise, and I concluded to give
them a try. I carried my fire to the side of the lower one,
and then turned in to rolling the upper one down along
side of it. I made half-a-dozen trials, and then gave it up.
I did not believe then that half-a-dozen oxen could have
stirred it. I went and laid my gun on a high stump, so
that Andrews and Chambers might see it, and sat down
by the fire again. I would have died then, willingly.
After a while, I thought that I would take another try,
and went to the log again. I gave one lift, but it was in
vain. Rage and despair urged me on again, and I lifted
with a strength which seems astonishing to me now—and
I felt it move. I tried again, and out it came; and as I
raised this last time, I saw the fire flash out of my eyes,
down along side of the other, and they made a most glorious
fire, which was burning when Chambers and Andrews
came by, the next day. Here I lay, that is to say, sat up
on a deer-skin, about as big as the brim of a hat, all night.
It cleared off in the night, but did not grow so much colder
as I expected.
9.—This morning I took my chunk of fire, and put out
again. I had not taken my moccasins off here, for fear of
never getting them on again; and in half an hour they
were froze stiff again. I thought, just after starting, that
I never would get across the Black Lake, and turned back
and went half a mile, intending to lay at my fire until
Chambers and Andrews came up; for there was no kind
of a track in the lake, and I did not know whether I was
going right or wrong. I again summed up resolution, and
turned my face to Taos again, and by good luck kept the
right course. I made three fires this day before I stopped
at night, and after all, came nigh giving up the ghost several
times. I wished heartily to die, but hated to kill myself,
and so kept moving. When I got into the narrow
cañon, beyond the Black Lake, I saw a mule-track or two
again, and again thought I might get some place. After
leaving the cañon, I encamped on the head of a spring,
not many miles this side of the last mountain, and was
more comfortable here than anywhere in the mountains.
There was an old pine fallen, and I stripped some big
pieces of the bark off, put one under me, one edgeways by
my back, and one at my head, as well as one at my feet,
and laid down. This was luxury. Still I felt no hunger,
and still I kept my moccasins on.
10.—This morning I gathered me a chunk and started,
concluding that this would be the last day I could hold
out. I soon reached the foot of the mountain, and in the
way, and during the ascent, I sat down several times,
never intending to rise again. It seems a pretty bold
thing to say, and hard to believe, but so it is. The
thoughts of turning coward would raise me again, and I
kept on until I reached the top of the mountain. You
know what a dark, black-looking place it is on the other
side, away down, down, in the depth of the valley. When
the thought flashed into my mind that this must be the
Black Lake. No man in the world can express the feelings
which came over me then. I still kept moving down
the mountain, and when about half way down, I threw
away my chunk of fire, and gave myself up to die; still,
however, resolving to move as long as I had life. I had
sat by my fire and wept at night, and had prayers in my
heart, though I did not utter them; but I shed not a tear
now. I kept on through the cañon, and towards noon
reached the forks of the cañon, which I knew to be twelve
miles from the still house. I knew where I was now, and
I found mule-tracks here. Now I determined to go in or
die; and in fact, as I had thrown away my fire, I had no
other chance, for I could not have made fire. I could not
use my hands a bit. I had gone but a little way in the
cañon, when I found a beaten track, and soon got to the
places where wood had been cut. My feet were now all
cut to pieces by my hard moccasins, and I could hear the
blood splash in them as I walked, as though they were full
of water, while the snow would gather in the heels of them
until the hinder part of my foot would be four inches,
sometimes, from the moccasin. After a while, I saw a
cow: it was the pleasantest sight I ever saw in my life;
and just as I had concluded not to walk more than half
an hour longer, and as I went staggering along, so sleepy
that I could hardly move, I heard a chicken crow. How
it waked me up!—and I soon after came in sight of the
old mud still house. I went round to the lower end of it,
and two or three dogs came out and began upon me. In
a minute, I could see two men looking through the hole
in the door. I could have shot both their eyes out with
one bullet. `Hallo!' said I; and they pushed the door
partly open, and stood looking at me. They took me, as
they said afterwards, to be a Comanche, who had come in
ahead of a party, to take the still house,—and no wonder!
for the pine smoke had made me as black as you please,
and my hair was perfect jet. Long was the best soldier,
and he stepped out and walked round me, keeping a good
distance though, and with his eye fixed upon the door.
The dogs were still baying me; and I, at length enraged,
will put a bullet through one of them.' Hearing me speak,
they soon drove away their dogs, and told me to come in.
I did so, sat down by the fire, and after thawing out my
hands, began ripping open my moccasins with my knife.
In the mean time Conn and Long, who are both the best
fellows in the world, began to recover the power of speech.
They stood and looked at me awhile, and then Conn inquired—`Where,
in the name of Heaven, are you from?'
`From the United States.'
`What company did you come with?'
`I came with a company of my own—of three men.'
`Where are they?'
`Behind, in the mountains.'
`Are these all the clothes you have got?'
`Yes, they are so.'
`What! and have you no blankets?'
`No, not one.'
`Have you eaten anything to-day?'
`No, not for five days.'
`What! are you not hungry?'
`No.'
They drew me about half a pint of whiskey, which I
barely tasted, and then Conn brought me a bit of meat,
about as big as my two fingers, and a like bit of bread.
In vain I told them that I would not thank them for that
little, and begged for more. When it touched my stomach,
my hunger became ravenous; but finding I could get
no more, I submitted, and turned in to ripping my moccasins
again. In ten minutes after the moccasins were off,
my feet were swelled as big as four feet ought to be. I
could have cried with the pain; and while I sat bearing it
as well as I could, an old Spaniard came in—old Senor
San Juan. The old fellow started back when he saw me,
lifted up his hands with a stare of terror and surprise on
his dried-up face, and uttered the ejaculation, Adios!
In two minutes, he had half a bushel of onions in the
ashes, and as soon as they were roasted, he swathed my
feet up with a parcel of them. I could not have lifted one
of my feet with both hands. They were bigger than a
bull's head. The old man stayed with me all night,
no doubt that it was old Mr. St. John who saved my feet
for me. During the night Conn gave me a little bit of
meat and bread at intervals, and in the morning he was
about serving me the same way; but I uptripped him this
time, and declared my resolution of eating breakfast with
him and Long. I ate all I could get, though it was not
half enough, and during the day I ate about fifteen times.
I thought while I was there, that I never would get out
of the sound of a chicken's voice again. This day I sent
word to Kincaid and old Chambers, that Andrews was in
the mountains, and they informed his father-in-law, who
immediately went out for him, and found him and Chambers
at the forks of the cañon. They were both better
dressed than I, and had thin moccasins; in consequence
they froze their feet but very little. In fact, Andrews said
that `he pelieved he could have cone in petter as I.' And
sure enough; the rascal had only been possumming
the whole time, and was better able to travel than I was,
but wanted me to break the way and pack his gun.
Lewis lay at the still house six weeks before he was
able to go to San Fernandez, a distance of three miles.
While there, he was visited frequently by the Indians of
the Pueblo of Taos, and presented by them with cakes,
dried fruit, &c. They wished to convey him to their village,
but he could not go. At length, at the expiration of
six weeks, he was lifted on a horse and taken to the Rio
Hondo, as it is called, a little settlement four or five miles
from San Fernandez, in the same valley of Taos. In the
mean time, the skin had peeled off from the whole of his
body, and the flesh had come from parts of his feet, so that
the bones and leaders were bare. He was soon after attacked
with the pleurisy; and, to use his own expression,
the thing was near dead out with him. He recovered,
however, although it was not until April that he became
perfectly well. After that he was the terror of the Spaniards,
for he could have demolished them rapidly with his
powerful arm, had they ever given him cause. He is not
quarrelsome, however, even when he gets caught in what
they call in the West, `a spree.'
In the month of May, Lewis joined himself to a party of
five men, including himself, headed by Tom Smith, the
`Bald Hornet,' for the purpose of trapping in the mountains
to the north of Taos. They went out to the north-west,
directly to the Elk Mountain, between the forks of
Grand River, that is, the Colorado of California, and there
commenced trapping. The first night that Lewis set his
traps, he had entered a little narrow cañon, which had
never been trapped, because a man could not ride up it.
He took it on foot, with his six traps on his back, obtained
a set for all of them, and went back to camp, about fifteen
miles. He there borrowed all the spare traps, returned the
next morning, and, finding four beaver in his traps, set the
ten which he had brought, and went back to camp again
with four beaver. On returning again the next morning
with a companion, he found eight more beaver in his traps,
and was sure of making, as he says, an independent fortune.
The whole party, of five, then moved there, and
trapped the creek. I am almost afraid to describe the
manner of catching this animal, but it may be new to some
of my readers. You find the place where the animal
comes out of the water, that is, if you can, and set your
trap in his path, about four inches under water, fastening
your chain to a stake, which you put as far out in the
water as its length will allow; sometimes you put your
trap behind a bank, sometimes you cover it with moss or
something else. This depends on the nature of the settlement
of the beaver, whether it has been often trapped or
not. You then dip a little twig in your bait, (that is, in
dissolved castor,) and stick this twig sometimes within the
jaws of the trap, and sometimes just outside of them. The
beaver goes to the smell of the castor, and is generally
caught by the fore feet, and, flouncing over, is drowned in
the water. If the place has been long trapped, they are
too old to be caught by bait. Lewis once set his traps five
nights for an old beaver, and for four nights the old fellow
took away his bait-stick without springing the trap. On
the fifth night, Lewis placed his trap still deeper under the
water, and covered it with moss, placing no bait-stick.
He then washed away all trace of himself, and in the
morning he had the beaver. He was an immense old fellow,
and shaking the water. Lewis laid down his gun and
pistols, and then creeping up to him, caught him by the
hind leg. The beaver tried to bite him, but was unable
to do it, until Lewis, putting his knee on the trap, loosened
his paw from it, and dashed his brains out with it.
It is no uncommon thing to see trees, three and four
feet in diameter, cut down by these animals, cut up into
lengths of about eight feet, and taken lengthways to their
dam.
They had only caught about forty beaver in this mountain,
when the Eutaws came upon them, in number about
three hundred, and wished to rob them. They are in the
habit of doing so to the Mexicans; but they, to use another
western phrase, `barked up the wrong tree,' when they
got hold of Tom Smith. The Bald Hornet is not easily
frightened, if he has a wooden leg. The old chief sat
down in their camp, and after various threats, shot his
gun at the ground, as a sign that they would kill all the
party immediately. Tom was undaunted: he told the
chief that he might kill them, but could not rob them;
that his heart was big as the sky, and defied the old chief
to attack them. All this time, he was keeping Lewis off,
who had drawn his pistol when the chief shot his gun into
the ground, and would have killed him, had not Tom interfered.
The consequence of their boldness was, that
the Eutaws went off without molesting or robbing them.
They then immediately moved camp.
While upon the Elk mountain, they killed several
mountain sheep and white bear. The former animal is
larger than a deer, and is like a common sheep in appearance—of
a dirty light color—very fleet, and a great lover
of rocks and precipices, in which, as well as in its speed
and faculty of smell, it equals the chamois. Their horns
are like those of the domestic sheep, but much larger and
stronger. They will often fall thirty or forty feet, strike
upon their horns, and rise and go off, as if nothing had
happened to them. You may see them standing with all
their feet together, and that in a place where they scarcely
have foothold. Lewis was out, after leaving the Elk
mountain, in company with Alexander, one of his companions,
flock of perhaps sixty or seventy of these sheep. Lewis
shot, struck one, and he fell. Alexander likewise fired,
but missed entirely. They then ran about thirty yards
further and stopped again. Being now about one hundred
and seventy yards from them, Alexander was for creeping
nearer, but Lewis determined to shoot from the place
in which they were. `Shoot, then,' said Alexander, `I
cannot hit one at this distance.' `Do you see that bunch
of heads together?' said Lewis; `I will shoot at the upper
head.' He did so, and the sheep fell, and lay kicking.
Alexander ran and cut his throat, and then went to the
first one which Lewis had shot, and was busy doing the
same office for him, when the former rose and made off
over the rocks. Alexander rose also, and was hardly off
the other sheep, when it likewise rose and followed its
companion, and they lost both. The party laughed heartily
at Alexander, for acting the doctor, and bleeding
mountain sheep. The meat of these animals is excellent,
and their skins are thin, when dressed, and soft as velvet.
From the Elk mountain they crossed to the main branch
of Grand River, and came within a few days' journey of
the heads of the Columbia. They then left this branch,
after trapping a time upon it, and crossed to the head of
Smith's fork of the same river, and thence to the heads of
the Arkansas, where they trapped again, and then crossed
to the heads of the Del Norte, and came in to Santa Fe.
The last forty days they had only one bag of dried meat to
live upon, and it was during this time that they shot and
lost the two sheep. They killed nothing at all in that
time. They bought a dog or two in the time from the
Eutaws, and ate them. Grand River, on which they mostly
trapped, has been, and still is, excellent hunting ground.
It has been supposed that there is much beaver below the
place where Lewis trapped, and in a cañon through which
the river runs for a distance of two or three hundred miles.
I think that the trappers compute the length of the cañon
at three hundred. The river, where it emerges, is half a
mile wide, and yet you may stand on the edge of the fissure
in the solid rock which forms the cañon, and the
river, a hundred feet below, looks like a thread. It is a
the lower end of it. Some Spaniards unwittingly entered
it once in a canoe, and were carried violently down it
about forty miles. There they fortunately reached an
eddy, produced by a bend in the sides of the cañon, stopped
the canoe, and climbed up the sides of the cañon,
which were there less precipitous than usual, leaving canoe,
beaver, guns, &c. all in the cañon to find a way
through it.
It was on the heads of the Del Norte, that General Pike,
then a lieutenant, was taken by the Mexicans. Has it
ever been satisfactorily known why he was there? I think
not. He could not have been mistaken in the river. He
knew it not to be the Arkansas, and he knew himself to
be in the Mexican territory. Was he not seeking a place
for the army of Aaron Burr to enter and subdue Mexico?
He was no traitor, I know; and neither, in my opinion,
was Burr. Neither ever aimed to raise a hand against
our own country. I find some proof of Pike's intentions
in his book.
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