The Old Santa Fe Trail: The Story of a Great Highway Part 37

[Footnote 47: Boiling Spring River.]

[Footnote 48: For some reason the Senate refused to confirm the appointment, and he had consequently no connection with the regular army.]

[Footnote 49: Point of Rocks is six hundred and forty seven miles from Independence, and was always a favourite place of resort for the Indians of the great plains; consequently it was one of the most dangerous camping-spots for the freight caravans on the Trail. It comprises a series of continuous hills, which project far out on the prairie in bold relief. They end abruptly in a ma.s.s of rocks, out of which gushes a cold, refres.h.i.+ng spring, which is, of course, the main attraction of the place. The Trail winds about near this point, and many encounters with the various tribes have occurred there.]

[Footnote 50: "Little Mountain."]

[Footnote 51: General Gatlin was a North Carolinian, and seceded with his State at the breaking out of the Rebellion, but refused to leave his native heath to fight, so indelibly was he impressed with the theory of State rights. He was willing to defend the soil of North Carolina, but declined to step across its boundary to repel invasion in other States.]

[Footnote 52: The name of "Crow," as applied to the once powerful nation of mountain Indians, is a misnomer, the fault of some early interpreter.

The proper appellation is "Sparrowhawks," but they are officially recognized as "Crows."]

[Footnote 53: Kit Carson, ten years before, when on his first journey, met with the same adventure while on post at p.a.w.nee Rock.]

[Footnote 54: The fusee was a fire-lock musket with an immense bore, from which either slugs or b.a.l.l.s could be shot, although not with any great degree of accuracy.]

[Footnote 55: The Indians always knew when the caravans were to pa.s.s certain points on the Trail, by their runners or spies probably.]

[Footnote 56: It was one of the rigid laws of Indian hospitality always to respect the person of any one who voluntarily entered their camps or temporary halting-places. As long as the stranger, red or white, remained with them, he enjoyed perfect immunity from harm; but after he had left, although he had progressed but half a mile, it was just as honourable to follow and kill him.]

[Footnote 57: In their own fights with their enemies one or two of the defeated party are always spared, and sent back to their tribe to carry the news of the slaughter.]

[Footnote 58: The story of the way in which this name became corrupted into "Picketwire," by which it is generally known in New Mexico, is this: When Spain owned all Mexico and Florida, as the vast region of the Mississippi valley was called, long before the United States had an existence as a separate government, the commanding officer at Santa Fe received an order to open communication with the country of Florida. For this purpose an infantry regiment was selected. It left Santa Fe rather late in the season, and wintered at a point on the Old Trail now known as Trinidad. In the spring, the colonel, leaving all camp-followers behind him, both men and women, marched down the stream, which flows for many miles through a magnificent canyon. Not one of the regiment returned or was ever heard of. When all hope had departed from the wives, children, and friends left behind at Trinidad, information was sent to Santa Fe, and a wail went up through the land. The priests and people then called this stream "El Rio de las Animas Perditas" ("The river of lost souls"). Years after, when the Spanish power was weakened, and French trappers came into the country under the auspices of the great fur companies, they adopted a more concise name; they called the river "Le Purgatoire." Then came the Great American Bull-Whacker.

Utterly unable to twist his tongue into any such Frenchified expression, he called the stream with its sad story "Picketwire," and by that name it is known to all frontiersmen, trappers, and the settlers along its banks.]

[Footnote 59: The ranch is now in charge of Mr. Harry Whigham, an English gentleman, who keeps up the old hospitality of the famous place.]

[Footnote 60: "River of Souls." The stream is also called Le Purgatoire, corrupted by the Americans into Picketwire.]

[Footnote 61: p.a.w.nee Rock is no longer conspicuous. Its material has been torn away by both the railroad and the settlers in the vicinity, to build foundations for water-tanks, in the one instance, and for the construction of their houses, barns, and sheds, in the other. Nothing remains of the once famous landmark; its site is occupied as a cattle corral by the owner of the claim in which it is included.]

[Footnote 62: The crossing of the Old Santa Fe Trail at p.a.w.nee Fork is now within the corporate limits of the pretty little town of Larned, the county-seat of p.a.w.nee County. The tourist from his car-window may look right down upon one of the worst places for Indians that there was in those days of the commerce of the prairies, as the road crosses the stream at the exact spot where the Trail crossed it.]

[Footnote 63: This was a favourite expression of his whenever he referred to any trouble with the Indians.]

[Footnote 64: Indians will risk the lives of a dozen of their best warriors to prevent the body of any one of their number from falling into the white man's possession. The reason for this is the belief, which prevails among all tribes, that if a warrior loses his scalp he forfeits his hope of ever reaching the happy hunting-ground.]

[Footnote 65: It was in this fight that the infamous Charles Bent received his death-wound.]

[Footnote 66: The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad track runs very close to the mound, and there is a station named for the great mesa.]

[Footnote 67: The venerable Colonel A. S. Johnson, of Topeka, Kansas, the first white child born on the great State's soil, who related to me this adventure of Hatcher's, knew him well. He says that he was a small man, full of muscle, and as fearless as can be conceived.]

[Footnote 68: The place where they turned is about a hundred yards east of the Court House Square, in the present town of Great Bend; it may be seen from the cars.]

[Footnote 69: See Sheridan's _Memoirs_, Custer's _Life on the Plains_, and Buffalo Bill's book, in which all the stirring events of that campaign--nearly every fight of which was north or far south of the Santa Fe Trail--are graphically told.]

[Footnote 70: A grandson of Alexander Hamilton; killed at the battle of the Was.h.i.+ta, in the charge on Black Kettle's camp under Custer.]

[Footnote 71: This ends Custer's narrative. The following fight, which occurred a few days afterward, at the mouth of Mulberry Creek, twelve miles below Fort Dodge, and within a stone's throw of the Old Trail, was related to me personally by Colonel Keogh, who was killed at the Rosebud, in Custer's disastrous battle with Sitting Bull. We were both attached to General Sully's staff.]

[Footnote 72: It was in this fight that Colonel Keogh's celebrated horse Comanche received his first wound. It will be remembered that Comanche and a Crow Indian were the only survivors of that unequal contest in the valley of the Big Horn, commonly called the battle of the Rosebud, where Custer and his command was ma.s.sacred.]

[Footnote 73: Now Kendall, a little village in Hamilton County, Kansas.]

[Footnote 74: Raton is the name given by the early Spaniards to this range, meaning both mouse and squirrel. It had its origin either in the fact that one of its several peaks bore a fanciful resemblance to a squirrel, or because of the immense numbers of that little rodent always to be found in its pine forests.]

[Footnote 75: In the beautiful language of the country's early conquerors, "Las c.u.mbres Espanolas," or "Las dos Hermanas" (The Two Sisters), and in the Ute tongue, "Wahtoya" (The Twins).]

[Footnote 76: The house was destroyed by fire two or three years ago.]