Colorado-The Bright Romance of American History Part 5

"The first gold discovered in Colorado, was in August or September, 1858, by Green Russell. He had stopped here on his way to California where he was going to mine. He came from Georgia and knew about gold mining there, and said there must be gold in Cherry Creek. He found it up at the head of that Creek at a place called "Frankstown" where the trail from Ft. Bent on the Arkansas River crossed over to Ft. Lupton.

Russell and Gregory and others came together, and Russell stayed here a year and located Russell Gulch at Central City, which became a great paying property. I did a great deal of hunting and trapping in those early days and made money until 1858, when the fur business died down, as silk had taken the place of fur. I was the first white man to visit Trappers Lake, which is about thirty miles north of Glenwood Springs and was considered inaccessible, because of the density of the fallen timber. We brought out in one season about two thousand dollars worth of furs and hides. The elk covered that country and was comparatively tame as they had not been hunted. We took Indians along for guides, and their squaws to tan the hides. This they did by boiling the brains of the animals we killed and rubbing the soft brain powder into the pores of the skin, folding the hides together, and in a week they were cured and were soft and pliable. The brains were used because of certain properties they possessed, and because of their pliant nature.

To catch the beaver we would set our steel traps in the water about seven inches below the surface so the young could swim over them and not get caught. Then just above where the trap was set, we would fasten a branch from the limb of a tree into the bank, the bark of which the beaver lives on. We would rub beaver oil into the bark of the limb, so the beaver would think others of his kind had been there ahead and found no harm; they are a very suspicious little animal. The trap would have a spring that would close on the hind legs of the beaver, as they would swim above it.

"Until 1857, the trappers recognized the claim of the Indians, that one-half of all game and hides belonged to them. It was changed in that year by Government Treaty. In dividing with them they were very insistent, and they usually got the biggest half of the meat and the largest hides. We used to take hot mud baths at Glenwood Springs which is a very pleasant sensation. I fought the Indians and fought them hard, but had many friends among them and I did them many good turns which they appreciated. I have had an eventful life, had many thrilling experiences, saw life held very cheaply, and have seen such developments as I never dreamed I should witness."

CHAPTER IX.

GENERAL FREMONT AND THE MORMONS.

_John C. Fremont._

[Sidenote: 1842]

This noted explorer so prominently identified with our early Colorado history, was educated at Charleston College. He then became a teacher on a United States Sloop of War on board of which was detailed a young Lieutenant who later became famous as Admiral Farragut. Afterwards, Fremont was employed as a surveyor for a railroad in South Carolina.

In 1838 he was made a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Topographical Corps--the same corps that gave us Major Long. He was selected to make a trip of geographical research and observation into Iowa, Minnesota and Dakota with a noted French Scientist named Nicollet, who had been sent to this country by his Government. In 1840 Fremont headed an expedition for the establishment of Military Posts in the West, and to definitely fix the position of South Pa.s.s on the head waters of the North Platte River, which was on the line of travel to the western coast. He was a long time getting ready, and did not leave Was.h.i.+ngton for St. Louis until May 2, 1842, from which point he took a public steamer up the Missouri River. On board he met Kit Carson, with whose personality he was so pleased that he dismissed the French trapper he had already engaged as guide, and selected Carson instead. Carson was then on his way back to the West, from having given his little girl into the care of the Sisters at a Convent in St. Louis; her mother, who was an Indian woman, having recently died. They left the steamer at the mouth of the Kansas River, which empties into the Missouri where Kansas City is now located. It was then a little settlement of a few rude houses, known as Kansas Landing, and later became Westport. A little way above was Roubidoux Landing, named for a French Fur Trapper and Trader who operated in Colorado. This Landing afterwards became St. Joseph. Fremont says, as they started out across the prairie to the westward, "It was like a s.h.i.+p leaving the sh.o.r.e for a long voyage, and carrying with her provisions against all needs in its isolation on the ocean."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Government Scout.]

They traveled northwest until they reached the Platte River where the City of Kearney is now situated, near which a Fort was established, called "Fort Kearney." From this point they proceeded west along the south bank of that stream, one hundred miles to the junction of the two Platte Rivers. Here they divided, Fremont with three others following the South Platte, the remaining nine going by way of the North Platte to the fur-trading station that later became Fort Laramie, at which point the Laramie River joins the Platte. On the way, Fremont was entertained one night by the Indians at a feast. It was a banquet with no suggestion of fairyland, such as so often delights us now; no subdued strains from a hidden orchestra pouring forth its entrancing harmonies; no myriads of electric lights dazzling with their splendid brilliancy; no wealth of roses filling the air with their rich perfume; no polished mahogany, damask linen, glowing gla.s.sware or priceless silver; no well groomed men or richly gowned women, radiant in their loveliness. There were none of these accessories, but there was princely hospitality. There was the ushering of the guests to their places by the Chiefs, with the courtly dignity that white men might equal but never excel. In honor of the occasion the choicest robes were spread upon the ground for seats.

There was the rich soup of fat buffalo meat and rice, served in deep wooden bowls, with tin spoons, by the women. There was the dog boiling in the pot for the second course, in token of a state occasion, while the disconsolate puppies moaned pitifully in the corner of the wigwam.

On July 10th Fremont reached Fort St. Vrain on the Platte, established about ten miles south of where the Cache la Poudre River and the Platte unite. He remained here a few days and then headed north to Fort Laramie, getting too far East, however, over on Crow Creek, where he had to travel forty miles without water--the first and only hards.h.i.+p on his trip going and coming. He found the rest of the party waiting for him, and they proceeded west up the Platte to the South Pa.s.s, the point of his destination when he started from Was.h.i.+ngton. He found the Pa.s.s a well-established thoroughfare, made so by the fur-trading companies. He ascertained its height to be seven thousand eight hundred and seventy-three feet. There was no pa.s.s anywhere about of so low an alt.i.tude. It is about two hundred miles due west of Fort Laramie--which is not, however, the Laramie City located on the Union Pacific Railroad northwest of Cheyenne.

Fremont saw to the perpetuation of his name in the highest mountain peak, about forty miles northwest of the Pa.s.s, and just east of Green River, having an elevation of thirteen thousand seven hundred and ninety feet. He then started on his return to St. Louis, where he arrived October 10, 1842, his journey both ways being without special value or interest.

Fremont's second trip was made in 1843, and seems to have been princ.i.p.ally for the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng a shorter route through the mountains than the Oregon Trail by the way of South Pa.s.s. He came in from the east, up one of the branches of the Republican River to Fort St. Vrain on the Platte, where he arrived July Fourth. On his way he no doubt approached the Platte between Akron and Fort Morgan, where there is a b.u.t.te named for him. He tried to learn from the hunters, trappers and Indians, of a trail west through the great range of mountains, but there was no one who could give him any information.

Following the Platte from Fort St. Vrain, he reports finding a Fort Lancaster about ten miles up the river, which was the trading post of Mr. Lupton and had then somewhat the appearance of a farm. He pa.s.sed through a village of Arapahoe Indians, probably near the mouth of Clear Creek, camped a little above Cherry Creek, and followed the Platte River to its entrance into the mountains at the canon. Needing meat, he went east on to the plains in search of buffalo; crossed Cherry Creek and the road to Bent's Fort; reached Bijou Creek, thence up to its head on the divide where he reported an elevation of seventy-five hundred feet--being the same alt.i.tude as at Palmer Lake, twenty-three miles west. Alt.i.tudinal ascertainings are taken by the simple process of looking at a watchlike, vest-pocket instrument, whose delicately adjusted mechanism is affected by air-pressure. From this place, he made a sketch of Pike's Peak, and is "charmed with the view of the valley of Fountain Creek," on which Manitou and Colorado Springs are located, and which he reached a little north of its junction with the Arkansas River. He speaks of finding at this point a "Pueblo" where a settlement of mountaineers were living, married to Spanish wives, "who had collected together and occupied themselves with farming, and a desultory Indian trade." They had come from the Taos Valley settlements, the Valley that was later named the Rio Grande. "Pueblo" was the name given by the Mexicans to their civilized villages. Taos is taken from the name of the Taos tribe of Indians.

Returning he followed up Fountain Creek to Manitou Springs, thence north over the Divide to Fort St. Vrain.

Fremont then decided to go up the Cache la Poudre Valley and cross the Divide to the Laramie River. He describes the b.u.t.tes he saw on this trip "with their sharp points and green colors"; the same so clearly defined now, on the automobile road beyond Dale Creek, between Fort Collins and Laramie City, one of the most picturesque scenes in the whole State of Colorado. He followed the Laramie River down to the present line of the Union Pacific Railroad, then west to the North Platte River and beyond, where, getting tangled up in the hills, he finally recognized the Sweet.w.a.ter Mountains to the north to which he proceeded; thence to the familiar Oregon Trail which he followed to Salt Lake and on to California.

On his return he entered Colorado near the mouth of Green River, went northeast and encountered some branch of the White River, possibly the Snake River, which he followed over the Divide to the North Platte River, and thence up into North Park. While in Middle Park, a number of squaws came to his camp greatly excited and made known the fact that nearby a great battle was in progress between two Indian tribes, and they wanted him to go with his party to help their side. He declined and hurriedly departed. He pa.s.sed over into the Cripple Creek country, where after a few days of aimless traveling he descended a branch of the Arkansas River to Pueblo.

Fremont's memoirs are very rambling, and contain such a ma.s.s of undigested material that it requires much reading and study to follow him in his wanderings through Colorado. The streams, mountains and localities had no names, and he gave them none. We can only trace his journeyings by his camping places where he gives his lat.i.tudes and longitudes, and which is only incidentally given and not in its regular order. He ascertained lat.i.tude and longitude by the use of a scientific instrument in its application to the sun, moon and fixed stars, as the Indians often found their own locations by the study of these same heavenly bodies, from centuries of observation without an instrument, the knowledge being pa.s.sed down from father to son, generation after generation.

On one of his trips, as he came in sight of Bent's Fort, the three cannon mounted on its parapets, belched forth a greeting that sounded sweet to the ears of the trained soldier, as the reverberating music of the booming of the guns rolled down the Valley of the Arkansas to meet him.

A storm in the mountains is a frightful thing in winter and more than one was encountered by General Fremont and his party. A number of the men sacrificed their lives through the mistaken judgment of a leader, who ordered them forward to breast the fury of those icy blasts of snow and sleet. Oh! The terror of such a death! The awe of those cold, bleak, snow-capped pinnacles; how cruelly they look down upon the lost and helpless victim, prostrate at their feet, snow-bound, hopeless and in despair! How subtly and menacingly the sharp wind moans; how it shrieks and roars through the gulches, and how the giant pines creak, and writhe, and groan, as they bend before the gale! How the blinding, biting, swirling snow falls through the freezing air, burying the trail and filling the icy gorges with ever deepening drifts! And at last, the s.h.i.+vering sufferer meets his doom as he sinks in utter exhaustion on his bed of snow, and drifts away into the stupor of death. The inanimate form is buried deeper and deeper under its white shroud, and heedless of the tempest raging above, sleeps the sound, dreamless sleep of death.

Fremont tells little of his last three trips; some being on secret missions for the Government; one was for his own benefit and that of Senator Benton of Missouri, whose daughter, Jessie Benton, he had married--a lady of many fine womanly qualities and personal charms. On one of his trips, William Gilpin was along, on a visit to the settlements of Oregon. Gilpin later became Colorado's first Governor.

One expedition took him up the Rio Grande to Salt Lake and on to the Coast.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Indians Watching Fremont's Force Fording the Platte.]

When representing the Government, Fremont's work was along military lines princ.i.p.ally, his operations leading up to the conquest of California in 1847. The name California appears in an old Spanish romance as an Island, where innumerable precious stones were found, and Cortez applied the name to the Bay and to the country that is now California which he thought was an Island. Fremont's work, however, was not all military, for at the same time he was mapping streams, taking alt.i.tudes, and making reports that would a.s.sist in ascertaining facts about a country then little known or understood. Colorado has a County named for him, of which Canon City is the County Seat. There are Counties in Wyoming, Idaho and Iowa, similarly named. Eighteen states of the union have towns bearing his name. "Fremont Basin"

covers the western part of Utah, all of Nevada, and a part of the southeastern portion of California--in all, a region about four hundred and fifty miles square. "Fremont Pa.s.s" in the Rocky Mountains has an elevation of eleven thousand three hundred and thirteen feet and is in the Gore Range, about ten miles northwest of Leadville.

General Fremont occupied many positions of trust under the Government.

He was Governor of California when there was much trouble that diplomacy might have averted. He was Governor of Arizona from 1878 to 1882. His exploring trips had made him famous and he secured the Republican nomination for the Presidency in 1856, but was defeated by Buchanan. In 1864 his name was put in nomination for the Presidency but Lincoln's popularity so overshadowed him that his name was withdrawn. He was Major-General of the Army in the Civil War, with headquarters at St. Louis, where he promulgated the unauthorized order freeing the slaves of those in arms against the Government, which so embarra.s.sed the Administration that the order was repealed and he was relieved of his authority. Later, reinstated, he refused to take part in a battle because command of the army had been given to General Pope whom he claimed to outrank.

Fremont journeyed all over Colorado and failed to find anything worthy of note. While camped on the sites of Cripple Creek and Leadville, he saw no signs of the enormous gold deposits of the greatest gold mines in Colorado. While at North Park he did not observe the coal outcroppings there--probably the most extensive coal fields in the United States. While traveling through our valleys he could not look into the future and see them groaning under a diversity of crops, the most valuable ever raised in any country. He drank from our cool sparkling streams, but he did not see how that wealth of water could be supplied to the thirsty crops. He saw millions of fat buffalo on the plains, but he failed to realize that the same nutritious gra.s.ses would make beef equal to the corn-fed product of the East. He viewed the most sublime scenery ever looked upon by the eyes of man, but his reports contained no adequate description of the majestic outlines of the mountains whose grandeur thrills the beholders from all the countries of the world.

_The Mormons._

[Sidenote: 1847]

The Mormons as a religious body, attempting to get beyond the reach of the power of the United States Government which they claimed was persecuting them, sought solace in the bosom of the Dominion of Mexico, which then owned much of our country west of the Rocky Mountains, wrested by them from Spain in their war for freedom. At this very time the United States was fighting Mexico, and the Mormons had no more than gotten out of the United States before they were in again by Mexico ceding to our Government in 1848, the very territory which these much persecuted people had chosen for a new settlement.

The Mormons had gathered from all quarters at Florence, Nebraska, just above Omaha, where the water works of that City are now located. They had wintered at this point in great discomfort, with much sickness, and so many deaths that the country seemed to be one vast grave yard.

In January, 1847, Brigham Young started West with one hundred and forty-two in his party to find a location to which the rest should follow. They had seventy-three wagons which moved two abreast for protection, and they had a cannon and were well armed. They reported seeing hundreds of thousands of buffalo grazing along the Platte Valley, and were obliged to send outriders ahead to make a way through the herds for their caravan. They traveled on the north side of the Platte River so as to have an exclusive trail of their own, and it became known as the "Mormon Trail"; the fur traders having made their trail along the south side of that river. When they reached Fort Laramie, they ferried across to the south side of the river where the Government Post had been located; the change from the north to the south side being necessary because of the physical difficulties on the side of the river where they had been traveling. Here on June 1, 1847, they were joined by a party of Mormons who had started from Mississippi and Illinois; had wintered where Pueblo now is; had pa.s.sed north through Colorado, and doubtless over the ground occupied by Denver following the Platte River to Greeley where they would travel almost due north to Fort Laramie. These Mormons at Pueblo were the very beginning of anything approaching white citizens.h.i.+p in Colorado, for no other white families had ever spent so long a time within the present limits of our State.

General Fremont had pa.s.sed by Salt Lake in 1843 on one of his expeditions, and doubtless the Mormons knew of that Valley from his report as well as of other points of the West. But the Mormons did not know where they were going to settle, and had started north-westerly from South Pa.s.s in search of a location and then turned to the south to Salt Lake Valley. Upon their arrival there, the first day, they planted six acres of potatoes because of the necessity of having food for the vast numbers who were to follow them. The rest of the people started from Florence July 4, 1847, and consisted of nearly two thousand persons, about six hundred wagons, over two thousand oxen, and many horses, cows, sheep, hogs and chickens. Following later, came hundreds with push carts, who started too late to get through before winter set in. Their suffering, starving, sickness, and the death of nearly a quarter of their number on the way is a sad story, and is the toll exacted in the settling of a new country.

For many months, the Mormon Trail was lined with the traffic of thousands of emigrants from all parts of the United States and Europe.

There were wagon trains hauling supplies of all kinds, such as merchandise, machinery, seed and building materials. There were the two-wheeled carts into which food and a small allowance of necessary apparel were placed for the trip; and those carts were pushed all the way across the plains by both old and young. It was said that every step of the way was marked by a grave. No such sight and no such suffering has ever been witnessed before in the settlement of any part of the world.

Ten years afterwards, the Church, grown arrogant, defied the power of the United States Government and proposed war. General Albert Sidney Johnson was sent on an expedition against them. Starting too late to cross the mountains, the army became storm bound and was compelled to winter at Fort Bridger in the southwest corner of Wyoming, at a tremendous loss of lives, both of men and horses. They were short of supplies, and an expedition was sent to New Mexico for food. It was successful, and returned north through Colorado, skirting the eastern base of the mountains and, no doubt, pa.s.sed through the site of Denver just before the gold excitement broke out in Colorado. They doubtless followed the trail taken by Fremont to Fort Laramie in 1842, and by the Mormons in 1847.

[Sidenote: 1849]

The rush for the new gold discoveries in California began in 1849 and in a year it became a panic, so great was the hurry to reach there from the East. It is estimated that seventeen thousand persons pa.s.sed Fort Laramie in June, 1848, coming up the Platte from Omaha; while from Kansas City, Leavenworth and St. Joseph, many thousands pa.s.sed through southeastern Colorado on the Santa Fe Trail, and thence to Salt Lake where the Mormons grew rich in their trade with these excited gold seekers. Nothing has ever been seen resembling the gold developments of California. Fortunes were made in a day when a treasure house was unlocked, and poverty claimed the affluent in a night, when a pocket pinched out. The wealth that was poured into the laps of the fortunate prospectors was fabulous. The Comstock Mine alone, named for the man who opened it up and lost it, yielded a solid ma.s.s of treasure, amounting to one hundred and eight million dollars to the four fortunate owners. It sent to the United States Senate, Fair, Stewart and Jones, three of the partners, and gave the Atlantic Cable Line to Mackey, the fourth, whose son still controls it.

So, having been discovered by General Coronado and his army with their brilliant cavalcade and martial music; by the two black-robed Friars with their noiseless followers; by Lieutenant Pike and his loyal band; by Major Long and his a.s.sociates; and last, by General Fremont with his five exploring parties; while the tidal wave of travel and excitement is sweeping by us to its destiny on the sunny western slope, and we are left in solitude, awaiting the bright awakening ten years hence; let us take an introspective view of the people whose history is forever interwoven with ours, whose race is nearly run, while ours is just begun.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

Ventura, Historian of the Tribe of Taos Indians, Garbed in His White Buffalo Robe--Made White by Tanning.

Indian History was Transmitted Orally to the Youth, the Brightest of Whom Became in Turn the Historian.]

CHAPTER X.

OPPORTUNITY.

"Master of human destinies am I, Fame, love and fortune on my footsteps wait, Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate Deserts and seas remote, and, pa.s.sing by Hovel, and mart, and palace, soon or late I knock unbidden once at every gate!

If sleeping, wake--if feasting, rise before I turn away. It is the hour of fate And they who follow me reach every state Mortals desire, and conquer every foe Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate, Condemned to failure, penury and woe, Seek me in vain and uselessly implore-- I answer not, and I return no more."

--_Ingalls._

_A Fortune Won and Lost._