The Romance of the Colorado River Part 5

The same month that Hardy sailed away from the mouth of the Colorado, August, 1826, Jedediah Smith started from Salt Lake (the 22d), pa.s.sed south by Ashley's or Utah Lake, and, keeping down the west side of the Wasatch and the High Plateaus, reached the Virgen River near the south-western corner of Utah. This he called Adams River in honour of the President of the United States. Following it south-west through the Pai Ute country for twelve days he came to its junction with what he called the Seedskeedee, knowing it to be the same stream so called in the north. This was the Colorado. Proceeding down the Colorado to the Mohaves he was kindly received by them and remained some time recuperating his stock. It may seem strange that the Mohaves should be so perverse, killing one set of trappers and treating another like old friends, but the secret of the difference on this occasion, perhaps, lay in the difference of approach. Jedediah Smith was a sort of reincarnation of the old padres, and of all the trappers the only one apparently who allowed piety or humanitarianism to sway his will. His piety was universally known. It was not an affectation, but a genuine religion which he carried about with him into the fastnesses of the mountains. Leaving the Mohaves he crossed the desert to the Californian coast, where he afterwards had trouble with the authorities, who seemed to bear a grudge against all American trappers, and who seized every opportunity to maltreat and rob them. This, however, did not prevent Smith from returning again after a visit to the northern rendezvous.

But while crossing the Colorado, the Mohaves, who had meanwhile been instigated to hara.s.s Americans by the Spaniards (so it is said), attacked the expedition, killing ten men and capturing everything. Smith escaped to be afterwards killed on the Cimarron by the Comanches.

Pattie and his father again entered the Gila country in the autumn of 1827, with permission from the governor of New Mexico to trap. After they had gone down the Gila a considerable distance the party split up, each band going in different directions, and after numerous adventures the Patties and their adherents arrived at the Colorado, where their horses were stampeded by the tribe living at the mouth of the Gila, the "Umeas." They were left without a single animal, a most serious predicament in a wild country. The elder Pattie counselled pursuit on foot to recapture the horses or die in the attempt. But the effort was fruitless. They then made their way back to their camp, devoured their last morsel of meat, placed their guns on a raft, and swam the river to annihilate the village they saw on the opposite bank. The Yumas, however, had antic.i.p.ated this move, and the trappers found there only one poor old man, whom they spared. Setting fire to every hut in the village, except that of the old man, they had the small satisfaction of watching them burn. There was now no hope either of regaining the horses or of fighting the Yumas, so they devoted their attention, to building canoes for the purpose of escaping by descending the Colorado. For this they possessed tools, trappers often having occasion to use a canoe in the prosecution of their work. They soon had finished eight, dugouts undoubtedly, though Pattie does not say so, and they already had one which Pattie had made on the Gila. Uniting these by platforms in pairs they embarked upon them with all their furs and traps, leaving their saddles hidden on the bank.

On the 9th of December (1827)* they started, probably the first navigators of this part of the river since Alarcon, 287 years before.

That night they set forty traps and were rewarded with thirty-six beaver. Such good luck decided them to travel slowly with the current, about four miles an hour, "and trap the river clear." The stream was about two hundred to three hundred yards wide, with bottoms extending back from six to ten miles, giving good camp-grounds all along. With abundance of fat beaver meat and so many pelts added to their store they forgot their misfortunes and began to count on reaching the Spanish settlements they thought existed near the mouth of the river. Sometimes their traps yielded as many as sixty beaver in a night, and finally they were obliged to halt and make another canoe. So they went slowly down, occasionally killing a couple of hostile natives, or deer, panthers, foxes, or wild-cats. One animal is described as like an African leopard, the first they had ever seen. At length they came to a tribe much shorter of stature than the Yumas, and friendly. These were probably Cocopas. Not a patch of clothing existed in the whole band, and Pattie's men gave the women some old s.h.i.+rts, intimating, as well as they could, that they ought to wear some covering. These people were well formed, and many of the women had exceptionally fine figures if the judgment of the trappers can be trusted in this respect. When a gun was fired they either fell prostrate or ran away, so little did they know about firearms. The chief had a feast of young dog prepared for his guests, who partook of it with reluctance. All communication was by signs, and when the chief imitated the beating of surf and drew a cow and a sheep in the sand, pointing west, they thought they were at last nearing the longed-for Spanish settlements, and went on their way joyfully. Little did they imagine that the settlements the chief described were far off on the Californian coast.

* The reader may think I introduce too many year-dates but I have found most books so lacking in this regard that I prefer to err on the other side.

The new year, 1828, came in and still they were going down the river, taking many beaver. As a New Year's greeting a shower of arrows from a new tribe, the Pipis, fell amongst them. The trappers killed six of them at one volley, and the rest ran away, leaving twenty-three beautiful longbows behind. The only clothing the dead men had on was snail-sh.e.l.ls fastened to the ends of their long locks of hair. The trappers now began to seek more anxiously for the mythical settlements. "A great many times each day," says Pattie, "we bring our crafts to the sh.o.r.e and go out to see if we cannot discover the tracks of horses and cattle." On the 18th they thought some inundated river entering was the cause of a slackening of the current, and finally they began to rig oars, thinking they would now be obliged to work to get on down-stream, but presently, to their surprise, the current doubled its rate and they were going along at six miles an hour. None of them had ever had any experience with tides, and they therefore failed to fathom the real cause of these singular changes of speed. Suddenly, as they were descending, people of the same tribe they had fired on stood on the sh.o.r.e and shouted, making signs for them to land, that their boats would be capsized, but, thinking it a scheme for robbery and murder, they kept on, though they refrained from shooting. Late in the evening they landed, making their camp on a low point where the canoes with their rich cargoes were tied to some trees.

Pattie's father took the first watch, and in the night, hearing a roaring noise that he thought indicated a sudden storm, he roused his companions, and all was prepared for a heavy rain, when, instead, to their great consternation, the camp was inundated by "a high ridge of water over which came the sea current combing down like water over a mill-dam." The canoes were almost capsized, but this catastrophe was averted by rapid and good management. Even in the darkness, in the face of a danger unexpected and unknown, the trappers never for an instant lost their coolness and quick judgment, which was so often their salvation. Paddling the canoes under the trees, they clung to the branches, but when the tide went out the boats were all high and dry.

At last the day dawned bright and fair, enabling them to see what had happened, and when the tide once more returned, they got the canoes out of the trap. They now proceeded with the ebb tide, stopping with the beginning of the flood, constantly on the lookout for the Spanish settlements, and not till the 28th, when they saw before them such a commotion of waters that their small craft would be instantly engulfed, and wide sandy stretches, perfectly barren, all round, did they realise what a mistake they had made.

"The fierce billows," says Pattie, "shut us in from below, the river current from above, and murderous savages on either hand on the sh.o.r.e.

We had a rich cargo of furs, a little independence for each one of us could we have disposed of them among the Spanish people whom we expected to have found here. There were no such settlements. Every side on which we looked offered an array of danger, famine, or death. In this predicament what were furs to us." In order to escape they worked their way back up the river as far as they could by rowing, poling, and towing, but on February 10th they met a great rise which put a stop to progress. They now abandoned the canoes, buried the furs in deep pits, and headed for the coast settlements of California. After many vicissitudes, which I am unable to relate here, they finally arrived, completely worn out, at the Spanish mission of St. Catherine. Now they believed their troubles were over, and that after recuperating they could go back, bring in their furs, dispose of them handsomely, and reap the reward of all their privation and toil. Not so, however. Indeed, the worst of their trials was now to come. Before they comprehended the intention the Spanish official had seized their rifles and the men were locked up with only the commonest fare to relieve their suffering.

Cruelty followed cruelty, but they believed it was the mistake of the minor officers, and appealed to the general in charge at San Diego, expecting an order from him for release. Instead of this they were marched under guard to San Diego, where each was confined in a separate room, frustrating their plan to recapture their arms and fight their way out. Pattie's father presently became ill, and no amount of entreaty was sufficient to gain permission for the son to see him even for a moment.

He died in his cell. After much argument and the intercession of some of the minor officers, Pattie was permitted liberty long enough to attend the funeral. At last the men were allowed to go back for the furs, which no doubt the wily general intended to confiscate, Pattie himself being retained as a hostage. But the furs had been ruined by a rise of the river. Smallpox then began to rage on the coast, and through this fact Pattie finally gained his freedom. Having with him a quant.i.ty of vaccine virus, he was able to barter skill in vaccinating the populace for liberty, though it was tardily and grudgingly granted. He was able, at length, to get away from California, and returned, broken in health and penniless, by way of the City of Mexico, to his old home near Cincinnati, after six years of extraordinary travel through the wildest portions of the Rocky Mountain region and the extreme Southwest.

In the year 1826, an afterwards famous personage appeared in the valley of the Colorado, on the Gila branch, being no less than Kit Carson,*

one of the greatest scouts and trappers of all. At this time he was but seventeen years old, though in sagacity, knowledge, and skill soon the equal of any trapper in the field. In 1827, Ewing Young, another noted trapper, having been driven away from the Gila by the natives, organised a company of forty men to go back and punish them, which meant to kill all they could see, innocent or guilty. Carson was one of this party.

They succeeded in killing fifteen of the offenders, after which slight diversion they went on down the stream, trapping it as they went, but finally, running short of provisions, they had to eat horses. Arriving among the Mohaves, they obtained food from them, and proceeded across to San Gabriel Mission, to which place after trapping up the Sacramento Valley, they again returned, in season to a.s.sist the Spaniards to reduce the natives around the settlement to submission. This was accomplished by the simple method of killing one-third of them.

* Life of Kit Carson, by Charles Burdett. There are several Lives by other biographers.

Limited s.p.a.ce prohibits my recounting the exploits of even the smaller part of the trappers of this period, but with what follows I believe the reader will possess a sufficient picture of the life of the Rocky Mountain Trapper at this time.* A trail from Santa Fe to California was opened by way of what is now Gunnison Valley on Green River, and thence west by about the same route that Jedediah Smith followed, that is, down the Virgen River, by William Wolfskill who went out by this route to Los Angeles, in 1830.** There were trappers now in every part of the wilderness, excepting always the canyons of the Green and Colorado, which were given a wide berth as their forbidding character became better known; and as time went on the stories of those who had here and there looked into the angry depths, or had essayed a tilt with the furious rapids at one or two northern points, were enlarged upon, and, like all unknown things, the terrors became magnified.

* The reader is referred for exact details to the admirable work by H. M. Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West.

** H. H. Bancroft says 1831-2.

It was in 1832 that Captain Bonneville entered Green River Valley, but as his exploits belong more properly to the valley of the Columbia, I shall not attempt to mention any of them here, referring the reader to the delightful account by Was.h.i.+ngton Irving.

In May, 1839, a traveller who was a careful observer, Thomas J. Farnham, went from New Mexico across the mountains to Brown's Hole en route for Oregon, and a portion of his narrative* is of deep interest in this connection, because his guide, Kelly, gave him some account of the Green and Colorado, which reflects the amount of real knowledge then possessed concerning the canyon-river.

* Travels in the Great Western Prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains, and in the Oregon Territory, by Thomas J. Farnham. There is a copy in the library of Columbia University, New York.

"The Grand unites with the Seedskeedee or Green River to form the Colorado of the West. From the junction of these branches the Colorado has a general course from the north-east to the south-west of seven hundred miles to the head of the Gulf of California. Four hundred of this seven hundred miles is an almost unbroken chasm of kenyon, with perpendicular sides hundreds of feet in height, at the bottom of which the waters rush over continuous cascades. This kenyon terminates thirty [should be three hundred] miles above the gulf. To this point the river is navigable. The country on each side of its whole course is a rolling desert of loose brown earth, on which the rains and the dews never fall.

A few years since, two Catholic missionaries and their servants on their way from the mountains to California, attempted to descend the Colorado.

They have never been seen since the morning they commenced their fatal undertaking.

"A party of trappers and others made a strong boat and manned it well with the determination of floating down the river to take beaver that they supposed lived along its banks. But they found themselves in such danger after entering the kenyon that with might and main they thrust their trembling boat ash.o.r.e and succeeded in leaping upon the crags and lightening it before it was swallowed in the das.h.i.+ng torrent."

They had a difficult time in getting out of the canyon, but finally, by means of ropes and by digging steps with their rifle barrels, they reached the open country and made their way back to the starting-point.

This was, possibly, the expedition which was wrecked in Lodore, after Ashley's Red Canyon trip. I have not succeeded in finding any other account that would fit that place. Arriving at Fort Davy Crockett, in Brown's Park, he describes it as "a hollow square of one-storey log cabins, with roofs and floor of mud. Around these we found the conical skin lodges of the squaws of the white trappers who were away on their fall hunt, and also the lodges of a few Snake Indians who had preceded their tribe to this their winter haunt. Here also were the lodges of Mr.

Robinson, a trader, who usually stations himself here to traffic with the Indians and white trappers. His skin lodge was his warehouse, and buffalo robes spread on the ground his counter, on which he displayed his butcher knives, hatchets, powder, lead, fish-hooks, and whiskey.

In exchange for these articles he received beaver skins from trappers, money from travellers, and horses from the Indians. Thus, as one would believe, Mr. Robinson drives a very snug little business. And, indeed, when all the independent trappers are driven by the appearance of winter into this delightful retreat, and the whole Snake village, two thousand or three thousand strong, impelled by the same necessity, pitch their lodges around the fort and the dances and merrymakings of a long winter are thoroughly commenced, there is no want of customers."

With this happy picture of frontier luxury in the trapper period I will close the scene. Unwittingly, but no less thoroughly, the trappers had accomplished a mission: they had opened the gates of the wilderness.

Two-thirds of these intrepid spirits had left their bones on the field, but theirs had been the privilege of seeing the priscan glory of the wilderness.

Note.--Near the emigrant crossing of Green River, in Wyoming, early in 1849, a party bound for California discovered an old scow ferry-boat, twelve feet long and about six feet wide, with two oars. Deciding to complete their journey by water they embarked. Later they built canoes.

They were: William Lewis Manly (aged 29); M. S. McMahon; Charles and Joseph Hazelrig; Richard Field; Alfred Watson; and John Rogers. Manly's account appears entirely truthful. He tells of canyons, rapids, etc., till near the mouth of Uinta River they met the Ute chief Walker (Wakar) who explained by signs that the fury of the river below was worse than above, and all but two gave up. These two, McMahon and Field, stopped with the Utes, intending to continue. The others went to Salt Lake.

Wakar (whom McMahon calls "the generous old chief") repeated his warnings. Field lost courage, and finally McMahon also abandoned the desire. Manly's story (first published in the Santa Clara Valley Weekly) is given in his book Death Valley in '49. The volume was edited by the late Henry L. Brainard, head of the San Jose, California, company which, in 1894, published it. It was Mr. Brainard who secured the story from Manly for the Weekly. Mrs. Brainard says of Manly: "He was one of the dearest old men; kind, loving, gentle, as one seldom meets in this world. It was a pleasure to meet and know him. His character was unblemished." At one place which I identify as lower Disaster Falls, Canyon of Lodore, they came to a deserted camp, "a skiff and some heavy cooking utensils, with a notice posted on an alder [box-elder] tree, saying that they had found the river route impracticable... and were about to start overland to Salt Lake." Manly took down the signed names of this party but his diary was later lost by fire. Apparently the cooking utensils, etc., were the same we saw twenty-two years later at that place and thought were wreckage (see p. 255). Manly died February 5, 1903, and is buried at Merced, California.

CHAPTER VI

Fremont, the Pathfinder--Owners.h.i.+p of the Colorado--The Road of the Gold Seekers--First United States Military Post, 1849--Steam Navigation--Captain Johnson Goes to the Head of Black Canyon.

The great Western wilderness was now no longer "unknown" to white men.

By the year 1840 the American had traversed it throughout, excepting the canyons of the Colorado, which yet remained, at least below the mouth of Grand River, almost as much of a problem as before the fur trade was born. Like some antediluvian monster the wild torrent stretched a foaming barrier miles on miles from the mountains of the north to the seas of the south, fortified in a rock-bound lair, roaring defiance at conquistadore, padre, and trapper alike.

Till now the trappers and fur companies had been the chief travellers through this strange, weird land, but as the fourth decade of the century fairly opens, a new kind of pioneer appears suddenly on the field; a pioneer with motives totally different from those of the preceding explorers. Proselyting or profit had been heretofore the main spurs to ambition, but the commanding figure which we now observe scanning, from the majestic heights of the Wind River range, the labyrinthian maze of unlocated, unrecorded mountains, valleys, rivers, and canyons, rolling far and away to the surf of the Pacific, is imbued with a broader purpose. His mission is to know. The immediately previous elements drifted across the scene like rifle-smoke on the morning breeze, making no more impression on the world's knowledge. They recorded little, and, so far as information was concerned, they might almost as well never have set foot in the wilderness. But the new man records everything: the wind, the cold, the clouds, the trees, the gra.s.s, the mice, the men, the worms, the birds, etc., to the end of his time and his ability. He is the real explorer, the advance guard of those many expeditions which followed and whose labours form the fourth division of our subject. Fremont is the name, since that time called "Pathfinder," though, of course, the paths he followed had often before been travelled by the redoubtable trapper, whose knowledge, like that of the native, was personal only. Indeed, he was guided in his journeys by several men now quite as famous as himself--Kit Carson, Fitzpatrick, Walker, and G.o.dey. But the field was still new to the world and to science. Quite appropriately, one of the highest peaks from which the Colorado draws its first waters, is now distinguished by the name of the earliest scientific observer to enter its basin. Fremont came up the North Platte and the Sweet.w.a.ter branch, crossing (1842) from that stream by the South Pa.s.s thirty-four years after Andrew Henry had first traversed it, over to the headwaters of the Colorado. The ascent to South Pa.s.s is very gradual, and there is no gorge or defile. The total width is about twenty miles. A day or two later Fremont climbed out of the valley on the flank of the Wind River Mountains. "We had reached a very elevated point," he says; "and in the valley below and among the hills were a number of lakes at different levels; some two or three hundred feet above others, with which they communicated by foaming torrents. Even to our great height the roar of the cataracts came up, and we could see them leaping down in lines of snowy foam." Thus are the rills and the rivulets from the summits collected in these beautiful alpine lakes to give birth to the Colorado in white cascades, typical, at the very fountainhead, of the turbulence of the waters which have rent for themselves a trough of rock to the gulf.* Springing from these clear pools and seething falls, shadowed by sombre pines and granite crags, its course is run through plunging rapids to the final a.s.sault on the sea, where wide sand-barrens and desolation prevail. Fremont understood this from his guides and says: "Lower down, from Brown's Hole to the southward, the river runs through lofty chasms, walled in by precipices of red rock." The descent

"of the Colorado is but little known, and that little derived from vague report. Three hundred miles of its lower part, as it approaches the Gulf of California, is reported to be smooth and tranquil; but its upper part is manifestly broken into many falls and rapids. From many descriptions of trappers it is probable that in its foaming course among its lofty precipices, it presents many scenes of wild grandeur; and though offering many temptations, and often discussed, no trappers have yet been found bold enough to undertake a voyage which has so certain a prospect of fatal termination."

* These mountains, as the glacial acc.u.mulations began to permanently diminish, must have annually sent a long-continued huge flood of water down the rivers heading there.

He was mistaken about the trappers, not having ventured, for, as we have seen, there are traces of at least three parties: that of Ashley, that of the missionaries mentioned by Farnham, the trappers also mentioned by him, and the one indicated by the wreckage discovered in Lodore by Powell's expeditions, though the latter and that mentioned by Farnham are possibly the same.

The fur trade, which up to about 1835 was princ.i.p.ally in beaver skins, had now somewhat changed, and buffalo robes were the chief article of traffic. But the buffalo were also beginning to diminish. They were no longer found on the western slope of the mountains, and no wonder, as the fur companies ANNUALLY gathered in about ninety thousand marketable skins during the ten years ending with 1842, yet it was only those animals killed in the cold months whose pelts were suitable for the fur business. The largest number of buffalo were killed in the summer months for other purposes; therefore one is not surprised that they were soon exterminated in the Colorado River Valley, where they never were as numerous as on the plains, and apparently never went west of the mouth of White River.

Fremont went over to the California region, returning through Nevada by way of the Spanish Trail, past Las Vegas (see cut, page 137), and up the Virgen, which he called the most dreary river he had ever seen, till he reached the point where Escalante had turned east. From here he followed Escalante's trail back to Utah Lake, pa.s.sing through Mountain Meadows (1844), afterward the scene of the terrible ma.s.sacre of emigrants by a body of Mormons under John D. Lee.* His route was full of interesting adventures, but it is not possible to give details here.** Pa.s.sing over the Wasatch by way of Spanish Fork, he again entered the valley of the Colorado on the head-waters of the Uinta, pausing briefly at Roubidoux's Fort on Uinta River. Soon after he left, the fort and its occupants were annihilated by the Utes. Crossing Ashley Fork he climbed on the trail high up the mountain, where he had "a view of the river below shut up amongst rugged mountains;" Whirlpool Canyon and the Canyon of Lodore.

Descending then to Brown's Hole, he crossed the river in a skin boat, and camped just above Vermilion Creek, opposite the remains of an "old fort," which was doubtless Fort Davy Crockett. "Here the river enters between lofty precipices of red rock" (now the Gate of Lodore), "and the country below is said to a.s.sume a very rugged character; the river and its affluents pa.s.sing through canons which forbid all access to the water." After journeying to the head of the Platte, and south through the Parks, he went east by the Arkansas, and came again in 1845 to cross the Green a little farther south on his way to California.

* For an account of this unfortunate affair see The Rocky Mountain Saints, chapter xliii., by T. B. H. Stenhouse. I knew Lee. Personally he was an agreeable man, and to me he disclaimed responsibility in this matter.

** See Fremont and '49 by F. S. Dellenbaugh.

By this time the relations between the United States and Mexico were at the point of rupture, and in 1846 Kearny's forces moved on New Mexico and California, the Mormon Battalion marking out a waggon-road down the Gila. Fremont, being in California, took an active part (1846) in the capture of the region, but the story of that episode does not belong here, and may be found in any history of California. The same year in which the formal treaty of peace was signed (1848) another event occurred which was destined to have a vast influence on the whole country and lead streams of emigrants to the new Dorado across the broad wastes of the Colorado Valley; gold in enormous quant.i.ties was discovered on Sutler's California ranch. There were three chief routes from the "States" across the wilderness of the Colorado River basin: one down the Gila to the Yuma country, another by South Pa.s.s and so on around Salt Lake and down the Humboldt, and the third also by South Pa.s.s and Salt Lake and thence south, by Mountain Meadows and west by the Old Spanish Trail. On the northern road Jim Bridger had, in 1843, established a trading post on Ham's Fork of Black's Fork of Green River, and this now was a welcome stopping-place for many of the emigrants,*

while on the southern trail a temporary ferry was established at the mouth of the Gila by Lieut. Cave J. Coutts, who had arrived in September, 1849, commanding an escort for some boundary surveyors under Lieutenant Whipple. For a couple of months he rendered great a.s.sistance to the stream of weary emigrants, who had reached this point on their long journey to the Golden Country of their dreams. A flatboat, built on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan, and there fitted with wheels so that it could be used as a waggon on land, was launched on the Gila at the Pima villages and came safely down to the Colorado, bearing its owners.

Coutts is said to have purchased this boat and used it till he left, which was not long after. The junction now began to be a busy place. The United States troops came and went, occupying the site of Coutt's Camp Calhoun, which Major Heintzelman, November, 1850, called Camp Independence. In March, 1851, he re-established his command on the spot where the futile Spanish mission of Garces's time had stood, and this was named Fort Yuma. It was abandoned again in the autumn of the year, as had been done with the camps of the previous seasons, but when Heintzelman returned in the spring of 1852 he made it a permanent military post.