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diff --git a/3033-0.txt b/3033-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a5a46f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/3033-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3544 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 3033 *** +THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER + +A CHRONICLE OF THE OLD WEST + +By Emerson Hough + + +New Haven: Yale University Press + +Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co. + +London: Humphrey Milford + +Oxford University Press + +1918 + + + + + +Contents + +THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER + + Chapter I. The Frontier In History + Chapter II. The Range + Chapter III. The Cattle Trails + Chapter IV. The Cowboy + Chapter V. The Mines + Chapter VI. The Pathways Of The West + Chapter VII. The Indian Wars + Chapter VIII. The Cattle Kings + Chapter IX. The Homesteader + + + + + + +THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER + + + + +Chapter I. The Frontier In History + +The frontier! There is no word in the English language more stirring, +more intimate, or more beloved. It has in it all the elan of the old +French phrase, _En avant!_ It carries all of the old Saxon command, +Forward!! It means all that America ever meant. It means the old hope of +a real personal liberty, and yet a real human advance in character and +achievement. To a genuine American it is the dearest word in all the +world. + +What is, or was, the frontier? Where was it? Under what stars did it +lie? Because, as the vague Iliads of ancient heroes or the nebulous +records of the savage gentlemen of the Middle Ages make small specific +impingement on our consciousness today, so also even now begin the tales +of our own old frontier to assume a haziness, an unreality, which makes +them seem less history than folklore. Now the truth is that the American +frontier of history has many a local habitation and many a name. And +this is why it lies somewhat indefinite under the blue haze of the +years, all the more alluring for its lack of definition, like some old +mountain range, the softer and more beautiful for its own shadows. + +The fascination of the frontier is and has ever been an undying thing. +Adventure is the meat of the strong men who have built the world for +those more timid. Adventure and the frontier are one and inseparable. +They suggest strength, courage, hardihood--qualities beloved in men +since the world began--qualities which are the very soul of the United +States, itself an experiment, an adventure, a risk accepted. Take away +all our history of political regimes, the story of the rise and fall +of this or that partisan aggregation in our government; take away our +somewhat inglorious military past; but leave us forever the tradition +of the American frontier! There lies our comfort and our pride. There +we never have failed. There, indeed, we always realized our ambitions. +There, indeed, we were efficient, before that hateful phrase was known. +There we were a melting-pot for character, before we came to know +that odious appellation which classifies us as the melting-pot of the +nations. + +The frontier was the place and the time of the strong man, of the +self-sufficient but restless individual. It was the home of the rebel, +the protestant, the unreconciled, the intolerant, the ardent--and +the resolute. It was not the conservative and tender man who made our +history; it was the man sometimes illiterate, oftentimes uncultured, the +man of coarse garb and rude weapons. But the frontiersmen were the true +dreamers of the nation. They really were the possessors of a national +vision. Not statesmen but riflemen and riders made America. The noblest +conclusions of American history still rest upon premises which they +laid. + +But, in its broadest significance, the frontier knows no country. It +lies also in other lands and in other times than our own. When and what +was the Great Frontier? We need go back only to the time of Drake +and the sea-dogs, the Elizabethan Age, when all North America was a +frontier, almost wholly unknown, compellingly alluring to all bold +men. That was the day of new stirrings in the human heart. Some strange +impulse seemed to act upon the soul of the braver and bolder Europeans; +and they moved westward, nor could have helped that had they tried. They +lived largely and blithely, and died handsomely, those old Elizabethan +adventurers, and they lie today in thousands of unrecorded graves upon +two continents, each having found out that any place is good enough for +a man to die upon, provided that he be a man. + +The American frontier was Elizabethan in its quality--childlike, simple, +and savage. It has not entirely passed; for both Elizabethan folk and +Elizabethan customs are yet to be found in the United States. While +the half-savage civilization of the farther West was roaring on its +way across the continent--while the day of the keelboatman and the +plainsman, of the Indian-fighter and the miner, even the day of the +cowboy, was dawning and setting--there still was a frontier left far +behind in the East, near the top of the mountain range which made the +first great barrier across our pathway to the West. That frontier, the +frontier of Boone and Kenton, of Robertson and Sevier, still exists and +may be seen in the Cumberland--the only remaining part of America which +is all American. There we may find trace of the Elizabethan Age--idioms +lost from English literature and American speech long ago. There we may +see the American home life as it went on more than a hundred years +ago. We may see hanging on the wall the long muzzle-loading rifle of an +earlier day. We may see the spinning-wheel and the loom. The women still +make in part the clothing for their families, and the men still make +their own household furniture, their own farming implements, their own +boots. + +This overhanging frontier of America is a true survival of the days of +Drake as well as of the days of Boone. The people are at once godly and +savage. They breed freely; they love their homes; they are ever ready +for adventure; they are frugal, abstemious, but violent and strong. +They carry on still the half-religious blood feuds of the old Scotch +Highlands or the North of Ireland, whence they came. They reverence +good women. They care little for material accumulations. They believe in +personal ease and personal independence. With them life goes on not in +the slow monotony of reiterated performance, but in ragged profile, with +large exertions followed by large repose. Now that has been the fashion +of the frontier in every age and every land of all the world. And so, +by studying these people, we may even yet arrive at a just and +comprehensive notion of what we might call the "feel" of the old +frontier. + +There exists, too, yet another Saxon frontier in a far-off portion +of the world. In that strange country, Australia, tremendous unknown +regions still remain, and the wild pastoral life of such regions bids +fair to exist yet for many years. A cattle king of Queensland held +at one time sixty thousand square miles of land. It is said that the +average size of pastoral holdings in the northern territory of Australia +is two hundred and seventy-five thousand acres. Does this not recall the +old times of free range in the American West? + +This strange antipodal civilization also retains a curious flavor +of Elizabethan ideas. It does not plan for inordinate fortunes, the +continual amassing of money, but it does deliberately plan for the use +by the individual of his individual life. Australian business hours are +shorter than American. Routine is less general. The individual takes +upon himself a smaller load of effort. He is restive under monotony. He +sets aside a great part of his life for sport. He lives in a large and +young day of the world. Here we may see a remote picture of our own +American West--better, as it seems to me, than that reflected in the +rapid and wholly commercialized development of Western Canada, which is +not flavored by any age but this. + +But much of the frontier of Australia is occupied by men of means who +had behind them government aid and a semi-paternal encouragement in +their adventures. The same is true in part of the government-fostered +settlement of Western Canada. It was not so with the American West. Here +was not the place of the rich man but of the poor man, and he had no one +to aid him or encourage him. Perhaps no man ever understood the American +West who did not himself go there and make his living in that country, +as did the men who found it and held it first. Each life on our old +frontier was a personal adventure. The individual had no government +behind him and he lacked even the protection of any law. + +Our frontier crawled west from the first seaport settlements, afoot, on +horseback, in barges, or with slow wagon-trains. It crawled across the +Alleghanies, down the great river valleys and up them yet again; and at +last, in days of new transportation, it leaped across divides, from one +river valley to another. Its history, at first so halting, came to be +very swift--so swift that it worked great elisions in its own story. + +In our own day, however, the Old West generally means the old cow +country of the West--the high plains and the lower foothills running +from the Rio Grande to the northern boundary. The still more ancient +cattle-range of the lower Pacific Slope will never come into acceptance +as the Old West. Always, when we use these words, we think of buffalo +plains and of Indians, and of their passing before the footmen and +riders who carried the phantom flag of Drake and the Virgin Queen from +the Appalachians to the Rockies--before the men who eventually made good +that glorious and vaunting vision of the Virginia cavaliers, whose party +turned back from the Rockfish Gap after laying claim in the name of King +George on all the country lying west of them, as far as the South Sea! + +The American cow country may with very good logic arrogate to itself +the title of the real and typical frontier of all the world. We call +the spirit of the frontier Elizabethan, and so it was; but even as the +Elizabethan Age was marked by its contact with the Spanish civilization +in Europe, on the high seas, and in both the Americas, so the last +frontier of the American West also was affected, and largely, deeply, +by Spanish influence and Spanish customs. The very phraseology of range +work bears proof of this. Scores of Spanish words are written indelibly +in the language of the Plains. The frontier of the cow-range never was +Saxon alone. + +It is a curious fact also, seldom if ever noted, that this Old West of +the Plains was very largely Southern and not Northern on its Saxon +side. No States so much as Kentucky and Tennessee and, later, +Missouri--daughters of Old Virginia in her glory--contributed to the +forces of the frontiersmen. Texas, farther to the south, put her stamp +indelibly upon the entire cattle industry of the West. Visionary, +impractical, restless, adventurous, these later Elizabethan +heroes--bowing to no yoke, insisting on their own rights and scorning +often the laws of others, yet careful to retain the best and most +advantageous customs of any conquered country--naturally came from those +nearest Elizabethan countries which lay abandoned behind them. + +If the atmosphere of the Elizabethan Age still may be found in +the forgotten Cumberlands, let us lay claim to kinship with yonder +roystering heroes of a gallant day; for this was ever the atmosphere +of our own frontier. To feel again the following breezes of the Golden +Hind, or see again, floating high in the cloudless skies, the sails of +the Great Armada, was the privilege of Americans for a double decade +within the memory of men yet living, in that country, so unfailingly +beloved, which we call the Old West of America. + + + + + + +Chapter II. The Range + +When, in 1803, those two immortal youths, Meriwether Lewis and William +Clark, were about to go forth on their great journey across the +continent, they were admonished by Thomas Jefferson that they would in +all likelihood encounter in their travels, living and stalking about, +the mammoth or the mastodon, whose bones had been found in the great +salt-licks of Kentucky. We smile now at such a supposition; yet it was +not unreasonable then. No man knew that tremendous country that lay +beyond the mouth of the Missouri. + +The explorers crossed one portion of a vast land which was like to +nothing they had ever seen--the region later to become the great +cattle-range of America. It reached, although they could know nothing of +that, from the Spanish possessions on the south across a thousand miles +of short grass lands to the present Canadian boundary-line which certain +obdurate American souls still say ought to have been at 54 degrees 40 +minutes, and not where it is! From the Rio Grande to "Fifty-four forty," +indeed, would have made nice measurements for the Saxon cattle-range. + +Little, however, was the value of this land understood by the explorers; +and, for more than half a century afterwards, it commonly was supposed +to be useless for the occupation of white men and suitable only as a +hunting-ground for savage tribes. Most of us can remember the school +maps of our own youth, showing a vast region marked, vaguely, "The Great +American Desert," which was considered hopeless for any human industry, +but much of which has since proved as rich as any land anywhere on the +globe. + +Perhaps it was the treeless nature of the vast Plains which carried the +first idea of their infertility. When the first settlers of Illinois and +Indiana came up from south of the Ohio River they had their choice of +timber and prairie lands. Thinking the prairies worthless--since land +which could not raise a tree certainly could not raise crops--these +first occupants of the Middle West spent a generation or more, axe in +hand, along the heavily timbered river-bottoms. The prairies were long +in settling. No one then could have predicted that farm lands in that +region would be worth three hundred dollars an acre or better, and that +these prairies of the Mississippi Valley would, in a few generations, +be studded with great towns and would form a part of the granary of the +world. + +But, if our early explorers, passing beyond the valley of the Missouri, +found valueless the region of the Plains and the foothills, not so the +wild creatures or the savage men who had lived there longer than science +records. The buffalo then ranged from the Rio Grande to the Athabaska, +from the Missouri to the Rockies, and beyond. No one seems to have +concluded in those days that there was after all slight difference +between the buffalo and the domestic ox. The native cattle, however, in +untold thousands and millions, had even then proved beyond peradventure +the sustaining and strengthening nature of the grasses of the Plains. + +Now, each creature, even of human species, must adjust itself to its +environment. Having done so, commonly it is disposed to love that +environment. The Eskimo and the Zulu each thinks that he has the best +land in the world. So with the American Indian, who, supported by the +vast herds of buffalo, ranged all over that tremendous country which +was later to be given over to the white man with his domestic cattle. +No freer life ever was lived by any savages than by the Horse Indians +of the Plains in the buffalo days; and never has the world known a +physically higher type of savage. + +On the buffalo-range--that is to say, on the cattle-range which was to +be--Lewis and Clark met several bands of the Sioux--the Mandans and +the Assiniboines, the Blackfeet, the Shoshones. Farther south were the +Pawnees, the Kaws, the Otoes, the Osages, most of whom depended in part +upon the buffalo for their living, though the Otoes, the Pawnees, the +Mandans, and certain others now and then raised a little corn or a few +squashes to help out their bill of fare. Still farther south dwelt the +Kiowas, the Comanches, and others. The Arapahoes, the Cheyennes, the +Crows, and the Utes, all hunters, were soon to come into the ken of the +white man. Of such of these tribes as they met, the youthful captains +made accounting, gravely and with extraordinary accuracy, but without +discovering in this region much future for Americans. They were +explorers and not industrial investigators. + +It was nearly half a century after the journey of Lewis and Clark that +the Forty-Niners were crossing the Plains, whither, meanwhile, the +Mormons had trekked in search of a country where they might live as they +liked. Still the wealth of the Plains remained untouched. California was +in the eyes of the world. The great cow-range was overleaped. But, in +the early fifties, when the placer fields of California began to be less +numerous and less rich, the half-savage population of the mines roared +on northward, even across our northern line. Soon it was to roll back. +Next it worked east and southeast and northeast over the great dry +plains of Washington and Oregon, so that, as readily may be seen, the +cow-range proper was not settled as most of the West was, by a directly +westbound thrust of an eastern population; but, on the contrary, it was +approached from several different angles--from the north, from the east, +from the west and northwest, and finally from the south. + +The early, turbulent population of miners and adventurers was crude, +lawless, and aggressive. It cared nothing whatever for the Indian +tribes. War, instant and merciless, where it meant murder for the most +part, was set on foot as soon as white touched red in that far western +region. + +All these new white men who had crowded into the unknown country of the +Plains, the Rockies, the Sierras, and the Cascades, had to be fed. They +could not employ and remain content with the means by which the red +man there had always fed himself. Hence a new industry sprang up in the +United States, which of itself made certain history in that land. The +business of freighting supplies to the West, whether by bull-train or +by pack-train, was an industry sui generic, very highly specialized, +and pursued by men of great business ability as well as by men of great +hardihood and daring. + +Each of these freight trains which went West carried hanging on its +flank more and more of the white men. As the trains returned, more and +more was learned in the States of the new country which lay between the +Missouri and the Rockies, which ran no man knew how far north, and no +man could guess how far south. Now appears in history Fort Benton, on +the Missouri, the great northern supply post--just as at an earlier date +there had appeared Fort Hall, one of the old fur-trading posts beyond +the Rockies, Bent's Fort on the Arkansas, and many other outposts of the +new Saxon civilization in the West. + +Later came the pony express and the stage coach which made history and +romance for a generation. Feverishly, boisterously, a strong, rugged, +womanless population crowded westward and formed the wavering, now +advancing, now receding line of the great frontier of American story. + +But for long there was no sign of permanent settlement on the Plains, +and no one thought of this region as the frontier. The men there +who were prospecting and exploiting were classified as no more than +adventurers. No one seems to have taken a lesson from the Indian and the +buffalo. The reports of Fremont long since had called attention to the +nourishing quality of those grasses of the high country, but the day of +the cowboy had not yet dawned. There is a somewhat feeble story which +runs to the effect that in 1866 one of the great wagon-trains, caught by +the early snows of winter, was obliged to abandon its oxen on the range. +It was supposed that, of course, the oxen must perish during the winter. +But next spring the owners were surprised to find that the oxen, so far +from perishing, had flourished very much--indeed, were fat and in good +condition. So runs the story which is often repeated. It may be true, +but to accredit to this incident the beginnings of the cattle industry +in the Indian country would surely be going too far. The truth is that +the cow industry was not a Saxon discovery. It was a Latin enterprise, +flourishing in Mexico long before the first of these miners and +adventurers came on the range. + +Something was known of the Spanish lands to the south through the +explorations of Pike, but more through the commerce of the prairies--the +old wagon trade from the Missouri River to the Spanish cities of Sante +Fe and Chihuahua. Now the cow business, south of the Rio Grande, +was already well differentiated and developed at the time the first +adventurers from the United States went into Texas and began to crowd +their Latin neighbors for more room. There it was that our Saxon +frontiersmen first discovered the cattle industry. But these +southern and northern riflemen--ruthless and savage, yet strangely +statesmanlike--though they might betimes drive away the owners of the +herds, troubled little about the herds themselves. There was a certain +fascination to these rude strangers in the slow and easeful civilization +of Old Spain which they encountered in the land below them. Little +by little, and then largely and yet more largely, the warriors of San +Jacinto reached out and began to claim lands for themselves--leagues +and uncounted leagues of land, which had, however, no market value. Well +within the memory of the present generation large tracts of good land +were bought in Texas for six cents an acre; some was bought for half +that price in a time not much earlier. Today much of that land is +producing wealth; but land then was worthless--and so were cows. + +This civilization of the Southwest, of the new Republic of Texas, may +be regarded as the first enduring American result of contact with the +Spanish industry. The men who won Texas came mostly from Kentucky and +Tennessee or southern Ohio, and the first colonizer of Texas was a +Virginian, Stephen Fuller Austin. They came along the old Natchez Trace +from Nashville to the Mississippi River--that highway which has so much +history of its own. Down this old winding trail into the greatest valley +of all the world, and beyond that valley out into the Spanish country, +moved steadily the adventurers whose fathers had but recently crossed +the Appalachians. One of the strongest thrusts of the American +civilization thus entered the cattle-range at its lower end, between the +Rio Grande and the Red River. + +In all the several activities, mining, freighting, scouting, soldiering, +riding pony express, or even sheer adventuring for what might come, +there was ever a trading back and forth between home-staying men and +adventuring men. Thus there was an interchange of knowledge and of +customs between East and West, between our old country and our +new. There was an interchange, too, at the south, where our Saxon +civilization came in touch with that of Mexico. + +We have now to note some fundamental facts and principles of the cattle +industry which our American cattlemen took over ready-made from the +hands of Mexico. + +The Mexicans in Texas had an abundance of small, hardy horses of African +and Spanish breed, which Spain had brought into the New World--the same +horses that the Moors had brought into Spain--a breed naturally hardy +and able to subsist upon dry food. Without such horses there could +have been no cattle industry. These horses, running wild in herds, had +crossed to the upper Plains. La Verendrye, and later Lewis and Clark, +had found the Indians using horses in the north. The Indians, as we have +seen, had learned to manage the horse. Formerly they had used dogs to +drag the travois, but now they used the "elk-dog," as they first called +the horse. + +In the original cow country, that is, in Mexico and Texas, countless +herds of cattle were held in a loose sort of ownership over wide and +unknown plains. Like all wild animals in that warm country, they bred +in extraordinary numbers. The southern range, indeed, has always been +called the breeding range. The cattle had little value. He who wanted +beef killed beef. He who wanted leather killed cattle for their hides. +But beyond these scant and infrequent uses cattle had no definite value. + +The Mexican, however, knew how to handle cows. He could ride a horse, +and he could rope cattle and brand them. Most of the cattle of a wide +range would go to certain water-holes more or less regularly, where they +might be roughly collected or estimated. This coming of the cattle to +the watering-places made it unnecessary for owners of cattle to acquire +ranch land. It was enough to secure the water-front where the cows must +go to drink. That gave the owner all the title he needed. His right to +the increase he could prove by another phenomenon of nature, just as +inevitable and invariable as that of thirst. The maternal instinct of a +cow and the dependence of the calf upon its mother gave the old rancher +of immemorial times sufficient proof of ownership in the increase of +his herd. The calf would run with its own mother and with no other cow +through its first season. So that if an old Mexican _ranchero_ saw a +certain number of cows at his watering-places, and with them calves, +he knew that all before him were his property--or, at least, he claimed +them as such and used them. + +Still, this was loose-footed property. It might stray away after all, +or it might be driven away. Hence, in some forgotten time, our shrewd +Spaniard invented a system of proof of ownership which has always lain +at the very bottom of the organized cow industry; he invented the method +of branding. This meant his sign, his name, his trade-mark, his proof of +ownership. The animal could not shake it off. It would not burn off in +the sun or wash off in the rain. It went with the animal and could not +be eradicated from the animal's hide. Wherever the bearer was seen, the +brand upon its hide provided certain identification of the owner. + +Now, all these basic ideas of the cow industry were old on the lower +range in Texas when our white men first drifted thither. The cattle +industry, although in its infancy, and although supposed to have no +great future, was developed long before Texas became a republic. It +never, indeed, changed very much from that time until the end of its own +career. + +One great principle was accepted religiously even in those early and +crude days. A man's cow was _his_ cow. A man's brand was HIS brand. +There must be no interference with his ownership. Hence certain other +phases of the industry followed inevitably. These cattle, these calves, +each branded by the iron of the owner, in spite of all precautions, +began to mingle as settlers became more numerous; hence came the idea of +the round-up. The country was warm and lazy. If a hundred or a thousand +cows were not collected, very well. If a calf were separated from its +mother, very well. The old ranchers never quarreled among themselves. +They never would have made in the South anything like a cattle +association; it was left for the Yankees to do that at a time when cows +had come to have far greater values. There were few arguments in the +first rodeos of the lower range. One rancher would vie with his neighbor +in generosity in the matter of unbranded calves. Haggling would have +been held contemptible. On the lower range in the old times no one cared +much about a cow. Why should one do so? There was no market for cows--no +one who wished to buy them. If one tendered a Mexican cinquo pesos for a +yearling or a two-year-old, the owner might perhaps offer the animal as +a gift, or he might smile and say "_Con mucho gusto_" as he was handed a +few pieces of silver. There were plenty of cows everywhere in the world! + +Let us, therefore, give the old Spaniard full credit alike in +picturesque romance and in the organized industry of the cow. The +westbound thrust which came upon the upper part of the range in the days +of more shrewd and exacting business methods was simply the best-known +and most published phase of frontier life in the cow country; hence we +have usually accepted it as typical. It would not be accurate to say +that the cattle industry was basically much influenced or governed by +northern or eastern men. In practically all of its great phenomena the +frontier of the old cow-range was southern by birth and growth. + +There lay, then, so long unused, that vast and splendid land so soon to +write romantic history of its own, so soon to come into the admiration +or the wonder of a great portion of the earth--a land of fascinating +interest to the youth of every country, and a region whose story holds +a charm for young and old alike even today. It was a region royal in +its dimensions. Far on the west it was hedged by the gray-sided and +white-topped mountains, the Rockies. Where the buffalo once lived, the +cattle were to live, high up in the foothills of this great mountain +range which ran from the Rio Grande to Canada. On the east, where lay +the Prairies rather than the Plains, it was a country waving with high +native grasses, with many brilliant flowers hiding among them, the +sweet-william, the wild rose, and often great masses of the yellow +sunflower. + +From the Rio Grande to the Athabaska, for the greater part, the frontier +sky was blue and cloudless during most of the year. The rainfall was +not great. The atmosphere was dry. It was a cheerful country, one of +optimism and not of gloom. In the extreme south, along the Rio Grande, +the climate was moister, warmer, more enervating; but on the high +steppes of the middle range in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, western +Nebraska, there lay the finest out-of-doors country, man's country the +finest of the earth. + +But for the time, busy with more accustomed things, mining and +freighting and fighting and hunting and trading and trapping, we +Americans who had arrived upon the range cared little for cows. The +upper thrust of the great herds from the south into the north had not +begun. It was after the Civil War that the first great drives of cattle +from the south toward the north began, and after men had learned in +the State of Texas that cattle moved from the Rio Grande to the upper +portions of the State and fed on the mesquite grass would attain greater +stature than in the hot coast country. Then swiftly, somewhat luridly, +there leaped into our comprehension and our interest that strange +country long loosely held under our flag, the region of the Plains, the +region which we now call the Old West. + +In great bands, in long lines, slowly, towheaded, sore-footed, the vast +gatherings of the prolific lower range moved north, each cow with its +title indelibly marked upon its hide. These cattle were now going to +take the place of those on which the Indians had depended for their +living these many years. A new day in American history had dawned. + + + + + + +Chapter III. The Cattle Trails + +The customary method of studying history by means of a series of events +and dates is not the method which we have chosen to employ in this study +of the Old West. Speaking generally, our minds are unable to assimilate +a condensed mass of events and dates; and that is precisely what would +be required of us if we should attempt here to follow the ways of +conventional history. Dates are at best no more than milestones on the +pathway of time; and in the present instance it is not the milestones +but the road itself with which we are concerned. Where does the road +begin? Why comes it hither? Whither does it lead? These are the real +questions. + +Under all the exuberance of the life of the range there lay a steady +business of tremendous size and enormous values. The "uproarious +iniquity" of the West, its picturesqueness, its vividness--these were +but froth on the stream. The stream itself was a steady and somber +flood. Beyond this picturesqueness of environment very few have cared to +go, and therefore sometimes have had little realization of the vastness +of the cowboy's kingdom, the "magnitude of the interests in his care, or +the fortitude, resolution, and instant readiness essential to his daily +life." The American cowboy is the most modern representative of a human +industry that is second to very few in antiquity. + +Julius Caesar struck the note of real history: _Quorum pars magna +fui_--"Of which I was a great part." If we are to seek the actual truth, +we ought most to value contemporary records, representations made by men +who were themselves a part of the scenes which they describe. In that +way we shall arrive not merely upon lurid events, not alone upon the +stereotyped characters of the "Wild West," but upon causes which are +much more interesting and immensely more valuable than any merely +titillating stories from the weirdly illustrated Apocrypha of the +West. We must go below such things if we would gain a just and lasting +estimate of the times. We ought to look on the old range neither as a +playground of idle men nor as a scene of hysterical and contorted human +activities. We ought to look upon it from the point of view of its uses +to mankind. The explorers found it a wilderness, the home of the red man +and the buffalo. What were the underlying causes of its settlement and +development? + +There is in history no agency so wondrous in events, no working +instrumentality so great as transportation. The great seeking of all +human life is to find its level. Perhaps the first men traveled +by hollowed logs down stream. Then possibly the idea of a sail was +conceived. Early in the story of the United States men made commercial +journeys from the head of the Ohio to the mouth of the Mississippi +by flatboats, and came back by keelboats. The pole, the cordelle, the +paddle, and the sail, in turn helped them to navigate the great streams +which led out into the West. And presently there was to come that +tremendous upheaval wrought by the advent of the iron trails which, +scorning alike waterways and mountain ranges, flung themselves almost +directly westward across the continent. + +The iron trails, crossing the northern range soon after the Civil War, +brought a market to the cattle country. Inevitably the men of the +lower range would seek to reach the railroads with what they had to +sell--their greatest natural product, cattle on the hoof. This was the +primary cause of the great northbound drives already mentioned, the +greatest pastoral phenomena in the story of the world. + +The southern herds at that time had no market at their doors. They had +to go to the market, and they had to go on foot. That meant that they +must be driven northward by cattle handlers who had passed their days +in the wild life of the lower range. These cowmen of course took their +character and their customs northward with them, and so they were +discovered by those enthusiastic observers, newly arrived by rail, whom +the cowmen were wont to call "pilgrims." + +Now the trail of the great cattle drives--the Long Trail-was a thing of +tremendous importance of itself and it is still full of interest. As it +may not easily be possible for the author to better a description of it +that was written some twenty years ago, that description is here again +set down. * + + + * "The Story of the Cowboy," by E. Hough. Appleton. 1897. +Reprinted by permission. + +The braiding of a hundred minor pathways, the Long Trail lay like a vast +rope connecting the cattle country of the South with that of the North. +Lying loose or coiling, it ran for more than two thousand miles along +the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, sometimes close in at their +feet, again hundreds of miles away across the hard tablelands or the +well-flowered prairies. It traversed in a fair line the vast land of +Texas, curled over the Indian Nations, over Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, +Wyoming, and Montana, and bent in wide overlapping circles as far west +as Utah and Nevada; as far east as Missouri, Iowa, even Illinois; and as +far north as the British possessions. Even today you may trace plainly +its former course, from its faint beginnings in the lazy land of +Mexico, the Ararat of the cattle-range. It is distinct across Texas, and +multifold still in the Indian lands. Its many intermingling paths still +scar the iron surface of the Neutral Strip, and the plows have not +buried all the old furrows in the plains of Kansas. Parts of the path +still remain visible in the mountain lands of the far North. You may +see the ribbons banding the hillsides today along the valley of the +Stillwater, and along the Yellowstone and toward the source of the +Missouri. The hoof marks are beyond the Musselshell, over the Bad Lands +and the coulees and the flat prairies; and far up into the land of +the long cold you may see, even today if you like, the shadow of that +unparalleled pathway, the Long Trail of the cattle-range. History has no +other like it. + +The Long Trail was surveyed and constructed in a century and a day. +Over the Red River of the South, a stream even today perhaps known but +vaguely in the minds of many inhabitants of the country, there +appeared, almost without warning, vast processions of strange horned +kine--processions of enormous wealth, owned by kings who paid no +tribute, and guarded by men who never knew a master. Whither these were +bound, what had conjured them forth, whence they came, were questions +in the minds of the majority of the population of the North and East +to whom the phenomenon appeared as the product of a day. The answer to +these questions lay deep in the laws of civilization, and extended far +back into that civilization's history. The Long Trail was finished in a +day. It was begun more than a century before that day, and came forward +along the very appointed ways of time.... Thus, far down in the vague +Southwest, at some distant time, in some distant portion of old, +mysterious Mexico, there fell into line the hoof prints which made the +first faint beginnings of the Long Trail, merely the path of a half +nomadic movement along the line of the least resistance. + +The Long Trail began to deepen and extend. It received then, as it +did later, a baptism of human blood such as no other pathway of the +continent has known. The nomadic and the warlike days passed, and +there ensued a more quiet and pastoral time. It was the beginning of a +feudalism of the range, a barony rude enough, but a glorious one, +albeit it began, like all feudalism, in large-handed theft and generous +murdering. The flocks of these strong men, carelessly interlapping, +increased and multiplied amazingly. They were hardly looked upon as +wealth. The people could not eat a tithe of the beef; they could not +use a hundredth of the leather. Over hundreds and hundreds of miles of +ownerless grass lands, by the rapid waters of the mountains, by the +slow streams of the plains or the long and dark lagoons of the low coast +country, the herds of tens grew into droves of hundreds and thousands +and hundreds of thousands. This was really the dawning of the American +cattle industry. + +Chips and flakes of the great Southwestern herd began to be seen in the +Northern States. As early as 1857 Texas cattle were driven to Illinois. +In 1861 Louisiana was, without success, tried as an outlet. In 1867 +a venturous drover took a herd across the Indian Nations, bound for +California, and only abandoned the project because the Plains Indians +were then very bad in the country to the north. In 1869 several herds +were driven from Texas to Nevada. These were side trails of the main +cattle road. It seemed clear that a great population in the North needed +the cheap beef of Texas, and the main question appeared to be one of +transportation. No proper means for this offered. The Civil War stopped +almost all plans to market the range cattle, and the close of that war +found the vast grazing lands of Texas covered fairly with millions of +cattle which had no actual or determinate value. They were sorted and +branded and herded after a fashion, but neither they nor their increase +could be converted into anything but more cattle. The cry for a market +became imperative. + +Meantime the Anglo-Saxon civilization was rolling swiftly toward the +upper West. The Indians were being driven from the Plains. A solid army +was pressing behind the vanguard of soldier, scout, and plainsman. The +railroads were pushing out into a new and untracked empire. They carried +the market with them. The market halted, much nearer, though still some +hundred of miles to the north of the great herd. The Long Trail tapped +no more at the door of Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, but leaped north +again definitely, this time springing across the Red River and up to the +railroads, along sharp and well-defined channels deepened in the year of +1866 alone by the hoofs of more than a quarter of a million cattle. + +In 1871, only five years later, over six hundred thousand cattle crossed +the Red River for the Northern markets. Abilene, Newton, Wichita, +Ellsworth, Great Bend, Dodge, flared out into a swift and sometime evil +blossoming. Thus the men of the North first came to hear of the Long +Trail and the men who made it, although really it had begun long ago and +had been foreordained to grow. + +By this time, 1867 and 1868, the northern portions of the region +immediately to the east of the Rocky Mountains had been sufficiently +cleared of their wild inhabitants to admit a gradual though precarious +settlement. It had been learned yet again that the buffalo grass and +the sweet waters of the far North would fatten a range broadhorn to a +stature far beyond any it could attain on the southern range. The +Long Trail pushed rapidly even farther to the north where there still +remained "free grass" and a new market. The territorial ranges needed +many thousands of cattle for their stocking, and this demand took a +large part of the Texas drive which came to Abilene, Great Bend, and +Fort Dodge. Moreover, the Government was now feeding thousands of its +new red wards, and these Indians needed thousands of beeves for rations, +which were driven from the southern range to the upper army posts and +reservations. Between this Government demand and that of the territorial +stock ranges there was occupation for the men who made the saddle their +home. + +The Long Trail, which had previously found the black corn lands of +Illinois and Missouri, now crowded to the West, until it had reached +Utah and Nevada, and penetrated every open park and mesa and valley of +Colorado, and found all the high plains of Wyoming. Cheyenne and Laramie +became common words now, and drovers spoke as wisely of the dangers of +the Platte as a year before they had mentioned those of the Red River +or the Arkansas. Nor did the Trail pause in its irresistible push to +the north until it had found the last of the five great transcontinental +lines, far in the British provinces. Here in spite of a long season of +ice and snow the uttermost edges of the great herd might survive, in a +certain percentage at least, each year in an almost unassisted struggle +for existence, under conditions different enough, it would seem, from +those obtaining at the opposite extreme of the wild roadway over which +they came. + +The Long Trail of the cattle-range was done! By magic the cattle +industry had spread over the entire West. Today many men think of that +industry as belonging only to the Southwest, and many would consider +that it was transferred to the North. Really it was not transferred +but extended, and the trail of the old drive marks the line of that +extension. + +Today the Long Trail is replaced by other trails, product of the swift +development of the West, and it remains as the connection, now for the +most part historical only, between two phases of an industry which, in +spite of differences of climate and condition, retain a similarity in +all essential features. When the last steer of the first herd was driven +into the corral at the Ultima Thule of the range, it was the pony of the +American cowboy which squatted and wheeled under the spur and burst down +the straggling street of the little frontier town. Before that time, and +since that time, it was and has been the same pony and the same man who +have traveled the range, guarding and guiding the wild herds, from the +romantic to the commonplace days of the West. + + + + + + +Chapter IV. The Cowboy + +The Great West, vast and rude, brought forth men also vast and rude. We +pass today over parts of that matchless region, and we see the red hills +and ragged mountain-fronts cut and crushed into huge indefinite shapes, +to which even a small imagination may give a human or more than human +form. It would almost seem that the same great hand which chiseled out +these monumental forms had also laid its fingers upon the people of this +region and fashioned them rude and ironlike, in harmony with the stern +faces set about them. + +Of all the babes of that primeval mother, the West, the cowboy was +perhaps her dearest because he was her last. Some of her children lived +for centuries; this one for not a triple decade before he began to +be old. What was really the life of this child of the wild region of +America, and what were the conditions of the experience that bore him, +can never be fully known by those who have not seen the West with wide +eyes--for the cowboy was simply a part of the West. He who does not +understand the one can never understand the other. + +If we care truly to see the cowboy as he was and seek to give our wish +the dignity of a real purpose, we should study him in connection with +his surroundings and in relation to his work. Then we shall see him not +as a curiosity but as a product--not as an eccentric driver of horned +cattle but as a man suited to his times. + +Large tracts of that domain where once the cowboy reigned supreme have +been turned into farms by the irrigator's ditch or by the dry-farmer's +plan. The farmer in overalls is in many instances his own stockman +today. On the ranges of Arizona, Wyoming, and Texas and parts of Nevada +we may find the cowboy, it is true, even today: but he is no longer the +Homeric figure that once dominated the plains. In what we say as to +his trade, therefore, or his fashion in the practice of it, we speak +in terms of thirty or forty years ago, when wire was unknown, when the +round-up still was necessary, and the cowboy's life was indeed that of +the open. + +By the costume we may often know the man. The cowboy's costume was +harmonious with its surroundings. It was planned upon lines of +such stern utility as to leave no possible thing which we may call +dispensable. The typical cowboy costume could hardly be said to contain +a coat and waistcoat. The heavy woolen shirt, loose and open at the +neck, was the common wear at all seasons of the year excepting winter, +and one has often seen cowboys in the winter-time engaged in work about +the yard or corral of the ranch wearing no other cover for the upper +part of the body but one or more of these heavy shirts. If the cowboy +wore a coat he would wear it open and loose as much as possible. If +he wore a "vest" he would wear it slouchily, hanging open or partly +unbuttoned most of the time. There was a reason for this slouchy habit. +The cowboy would say that the vest closely buttoned about the body would +cause perspiration, so that the wearer would quickly chill upon ceasing +exercise. If the wind were blowing keenly when the cowboy dismounted to +sit upon the ground for dinner, he would button up his waistcoat and be +warm. If it were very cold he would button up his coat also. + +The cowboy's boots were of fine leather and fitted tightly, with light +narrow soles, extremely small and high heels. Surely a more irrational +foot-covering never was invented; yet these tight, peaked cowboy boots +had a great significance and may indeed be called the insignia of a +calling. There was no prouder soul on earth than the cowboy. He was +proud of being a horseman and had a contempt for all human beings who +walked. On foot in his tight-toed boots he was lost; but he wished it +to be understood that he never was on foot. If we rode beside him and +watched his seat in the big cow saddle we found that his high and narrow +heels prevented the slipping forward of the foot in the stirrup, into +which he jammed his feet nearly full length. If there was a fall, the +cowboy's foot never hung in the stirrup. In the corral roping, +afoot, his heels anchored him. So he found his little boots not so +unserviceable and retained them as a matter of pride. Boots made for +the cowboy trade sometimes had fancy tops of bright-colored leather. The +Lone Star of Texas was not infrequent in their ornamentation. + +The curious pride of the horseman extended also to his gloves. The +cowboy was very careful in the selection of his gloves. They were made +of the finest buckskin, which could not be injured by wetting. Generally +they were tanned white and cut with a deep cuff or gauntlet from which +hung a little fringe to flutter in the wind when he rode at full speed +on horseback. + +The cowboy's hat was one of the typical and striking features of his +costumes. It was a heavy, wide, white felt hat with a heavy leather +band buckled about it. There has been no other head covering devised so +suitable as the Stetson for the uses of the Plains, although high and +heavy black hats have in part supplanted it today among stockmen. The +boardlike felt was practically indestructible. The brim flapped a little +and, in time, was turned up and perhaps held fast to the crown by a +thong. The wearer might sometimes stiffen the brim by passing a thong +through a series of holes pierced through the outer edge. He could +depend upon his hat in all weathers. In the rain it was an umbrella; in +the sun a shield; in the winter he could tie it down about his ears with +his handkerchief. + +Loosely thrown about the cowboy's shirt collar was a silk kerchief. It +was tied in a hard knot in front, and though it could scarcely be said +to be devoted to the uses of a neck scarf, yet it was a great comfort to +the back of the neck when one was riding in a hot wind. It was sure to +be of some bright color, usually red. Modern would-be cowpunchers do not +willingly let this old kerchief die, and right often they over-play it. +For the cowboy of the "movies," however, let us register an unqualified +contempt. The real range would never have been safe for him. + +A peculiar and distinctive feature of the cowboy's costume was his +"chaps" (_chaparejos_). The chaps were two very wide and full-length +trouser-legs made of heavy calfskin and connected by a narrow belt +or strap. They were cut away entirely at front and back so that they +covered only the thigh and lower legs and did not heat the body as +a complete leather garment would. They were intended solely as a +protection against branches, thorns, briers, and the like, but they were +prized in cold or wet weather. Sometimes there was seen, more often on +the southern range, a cowboy wearing chaps made of skins tanned with +the hair on; for the cowboy of the Southwest early learned that goatskin +left with the hair on would turn the cactus thorns better than any other +material. Later, the chaps became a sort of affectation on the part of +new men on the range; but the old-time cowboy wore them for use, not as +a uniform. In hot weather he laid them off. + +In the times when some men needed guns and all men carried them, no +pistol of less than 44-caliber was tolerated on the range, the solid +framed 45-caliber being the one almost universally used. The barrel +was eight inches long, and it shot a rifle cartridge of forty grains +of powder and a blunt-ended bullet that made a terrible missile. This +weapon depended from a belt worn loose resting upon the left hip and +hanging low down on the right hip so that none of the weight came upon +the abdomen. This was typical, for the cowboy was neither fancy gunman +nor army officer. The latter carries the revolver on the left, the butt +pointing forward. + +An essential part of the cow-puncher's outfit was his "rope." This was +carried in a close coil at the side of the saddle-horn, fastened by one +of the many thongs scattered over the saddle. In the Spanish country +it was called _reata_ and even today is sometimes seen in the Southwest +made of rawhide. In the South it was called a _lariat_. The modern rope +is a well-made three-quarter-inch hemp rope about thirty feet in length, +with a leather or rawhide eye. The cowboy's quirt was a short heavy +whip, the stock being of wood or iron covered with braided leather and +carrying a lash made of two or three heavy loose thongs. The spur in the +old days had a very large rowel with blunt teeth an inch long. It was +often ornamented with little bells or oblongs of metal, the tinkling of +which appealed to the childlike nature of the Plains rider. Their use +was to lock the rowel. + +His bridle--for, since the cowboy and his mount are inseparable, we +may as well speak of his horse's dress also--was noticeable for its +tremendously heavy and cruel curbed bit, known as the "Spanish bit." But +in the ordinary riding and even in the exciting work of the old round-up +and in "cutting out," the cowboy used the bit very little, nor exerted +any pressure on the reins. He laid the reins against the neck of the +pony opposite to the direction in which he wished it to go, merely +turning his hand in the direction and inclining his body in the same +way. He rode with the pressure of the knee and the inclination of the +body and the light side-shifting of both reins. The saddle was the +most important part of the outfit. It was a curious thing, this saddle +developed by the cattle trade, and the world has no other like it. Its +great weight--from thirty to forty pounds--was readily excusable when +one remembers that it was not only seat but workbench for the cowman. +A light saddle would be torn to pieces at the first rush of a maddened +steer, but the sturdy frame of a cow-saddle would throw the heaviest +bull on the range. The high cantle would give a firmness to the cowboy's +seat when he snubbed a steer with a sternness sufficient to send it +rolling heels over head. The high pommel, or "horn," steel-forged and +covered with cross braids of leather, served as anchor post for this +same steer, a turn of the rope about it accomplishing that purpose at +once. The saddle-tree forked low down over the pony's back so that the +saddle sat firmly and could not readily be pulled off. The great broad +cinches bound the saddle fast till horse and saddle were practically one +fabric. The strong wooden house of the old heavy stirrup protected +the foot from being crushed by the impact of the herd. The form of the +cow-saddle has changed but little, although today one sees a shorter +seat and smaller horn, a "swell front" or roll, and a stirrup of open +"ox-bow" pattern. + +The round-up was the harvest of the range. The time of the calf round-up +was in the spring after the grass had become good and after the calves +had grown large enough for the branding. The State Cattle Association +divided the entire State range into a number of round-up districts. +Under an elected round-up captain were all the bosses in charge of the +different ranch outfits sent by men having cattle in the round-up. Let +us briefly draw a picture of this scene as it was. + +Each cowboy would have eight or ten horses for his own use, for he had +now before him the hardest riding of the year. When the cow-puncher went +into the herd to cut out calves he mounted a fresh horse, and every few +hours he again changed horses, for there was no horse which could long +endure the fatigue of the rapid and intense work of cutting. Before the +rider stretched a sea of interwoven horns, waving and whirling as the +densely packed ranks of cattle closed in or swayed apart. It was +no prospect for a weakling, but into it went the cow-puncher on his +determined little horse, heeding not the plunging, crushing, and +thrusting of the excited cattle. Down under the bulks of the herd, half +hid in the whirl of dust, he would spy a little curly calf running, +dodging, and twisting, always at the heels of its mother; and he would +dart in after, following the two through the thick of surging and +plunging beasts. The sharp-eyed pony would see almost as soon as his +rider which cow was wanted and he needed small guidance from that time +on. He would follow hard at her heels, edging her constantly toward the +flank of the herd, at times nipping her hide as a reminder of his own +superiority. In spite of herself the cow would gradually turn out +toward the edge, and at last would be swept clear of the crush, the calf +following close behind her. There was a whirl of the rope and the calf +was laid by the heels and dragged to the fire where the branding irons +were heated and ready. + +Meanwhile other cow-punchers are rushing calves to the branding. +The hubbub and turmoil increase. Taut ropes cross the ground in many +directions. The cutting ponies pant and sweat, rear and plunge. The +garb of the cowboy is now one of white alkali which hangs gray in his +eyebrows and moustache. Steers bellow as they surge to and fro. Cows +charge on their persecutors. Fleet yearlings break and run for the open, +pursued by men who care not how or where they ride. + +We have spoken in terms of the past. There is no calf round-up of the +open range today. The last of the roundups was held in Routt County, +Colorado, several years ago, so far as the writer knows, and it had only +to do with shifting cattle from the summer to the winter range. + +After the calf round-up came the beef round-up, the cowman's final +harvest. This began in July or August. Only the mature or fatted animals +were cut out from the herd. This "beef cut" was held apart and driven on +ahead from place to place as the round-up progressed. It was then driven +in by easy stages to the shipping point on the railroad, whence the long +trainloads of cattle went to the great markets. + +In the heyday of the cowboy it was natural that his chief amusements +should be those of the outdoor air and those more or less in line with +his employment. He was accustomed to the sight of big game, and so had +the edge of his appetite for its pursuit worn off. Yet he was a hunter, +just as every Western man was a hunter in the times of the Western game. +His weapons were the rifle, revolver, and rope; the latter two were +always with him. With the rope at times he captured the coyote, and +under special conditions he has taken deer and even antelope in this +way, though this was of course most unusual and only possible under +chance conditions of ground and cover. Elk have been roped by cowboys +many times, and it is known that even the mountain sheep has been so +taken, almost incredible as that may seem. The young buffalo were easy +prey for the cowboy and these he often roped and made captive. In fact +the beginnings of all the herds of buffalo now in captivity in this +country were the calves roped and secured by cowboys; and these few +scattered individuals of a grand race of animals remain as melancholy +reminders alike of a national shiftlessness and an individual skill and +daring. + +The grizzly was at times seen by the cowboys on the range, and if it +chanced that several cowboys were together it was not unusual to give +him chase. They did not always rope him, for it was rarely that the +nature of the country made this possible. Sometimes they roped him and +wished they could let him go, for a grizzly bear is uncommonly active +and straightforward in his habits at close quarters. The extreme +difficulty of such a combat, however, gave it its chief fascination for +the cowboy. Of course, no one horse could hold the bear after it was +roped, but, as one after another came up, the bear was caught by neck +and foot and body, until at last he was tangled and tripped and hauled +about till he was helpless, strangled, and nearly dead. It is said that +cowboys have so brought into camp a grizzly bear, forcing him to half +walk and half slide at the end of the ropes. No feat better than this +could show the courage of the plainsman and of the horse which he so +perfectly controlled. + +Of such wild and dangerous exploits were the cowboy's amusements on the +range. It may be imagined what were his amusements when he visited the +"settlements." The cow-punchers, reared in the free life of the open +air, under circumstances of the utmost freedom of individual action, +perhaps came off the drive or round-up after weeks or months of unusual +restraint or hardship, and felt that the time had arrived for them +to "celebrate." Merely great rude children, as wild and untamed and +untaught as the herds they led, they regarded their first look at the +"settlements" of the railroads as a glimpse of a wider world. They +pursued to the uttermost such avenues of new experience as lay before +them, almost without exception avenues of vice. It is strange that the +records of those days should be chosen by the public to be held as the +measure of the American cowboy. Those days were brief, and they are +long since gone. The American cowboy atoned for them by a quarter of a +century of faithful labor. + +The amusements of the cowboy were like the features of his daily +surroundings and occupation--they were intense, large, Homeric. Yet, +judged at his work, no higher type of employee ever existed, nor +one more dependable. He was the soul of honor in all the ways of his +calling. The very blue of the sky, bending evenly over all men alike, +seemed to symbolize his instinct for justice. Faithfulness and manliness +were his chief traits; his standard--to be a "square man." + +Not all the open range will ever be farmed, but very much that was long +thought to be irreclaimable has gone under irrigation or is being more +or less successfully "dry-farmed." The man who brought water upon the +arid lands of the West changed the entire complexion of a vast country +and with it the industries of that country. Acres redeemed from the +desert and added to the realm of the American farmer were taken from the +realm of the American cowboy. + +The West has changed. The curtain has dropped between us and its wild +and stirring scenes. The old days are gone. The house dog sits on the +hill where yesterday the coyote sang. There are fenced fields and in +them stand sleek round beasts, deep in crops such as their ancestors +never saw. In a little town nearby is the hurry and bustle of modern +life. This town is far out upon what was called the frontier, long after +the frontier has really gone. Guarding its ghost here stood a little +army post, once one of the pillars, now one of the monuments of the +West. + +Out from the tiny settlement in the dusk of evening, always facing +toward where the sun is sinking, might be seen riding, not so long +ago, a figure we should know. He would thread the little lane among the +fences, following the guidance of hands other than his own, a thing he +would once have scorned to do. He would ride as lightly and as easily +as ever, sitting erect and jaunty in the saddle, his reins held high and +loose in the hand whose fingers turn up gracefully, his whole body free +yet firm in the saddle with the seat of the perfect horseman. At the +boom of the cannon, when the flag dropped fluttering down to sleep, he +would rise in his stirrups and wave his hat to the flag. Then, toward +the edge, out into the evening, he would ride on. The dust of his riding +would mingle with the dusk of night. We could not see which was the +one or the other. We could only hear the hoofbeats passing, boldly and +steadily still, but growing fainter, fainter, and more faint. * + + + * For permission to use in this chapter material from the +author's "The Story of the Cowboy," acknowledgment is made to D. +Appleton & Co. + + + + + +Chapter V. The Mines + +If the influence of the cattle industry was paramount in the development +of the frontier region found by the first railways, it should not be +concluded that this upthrust of the southern cattle constituted the +only contribution to the West of that day. There were indeed earlier +influences, the chief of which was the advent of the wild population of +the placer mines. The riches of the gold-fields hastened the building of +the first transcontinental railroads and the men of the mines set their +mark also indelibly upon the range. + +It is no part of our business here to follow the great discoveries of +1849 in California. * Neither shall we chronicle the once-famous rushes +from California north into the Fraser River Valley of British Columbia; +neither is it necessary to mention in much detail the great camps of +Nevada; nor yet the short-lived stampede of 1859 to the Pike's Peak +country in Colorado. The rich placer fields of Idaho and Montana, from +which enormous amounts were taken, offer typical examples of the mining +communities of the Rockies. + + + * See Stewart Edward White: "The Forty-Niners" ("Chronicles of +America"). + +We may never know how much history remains forever unwritten. Of the +beginnings of the Idaho camps there have trickled back into record only +brief, inconsequent, and partial stories. The miners who surged this +way and that all through the Sierras, the upper Cascades, north into the +Selkirks, and thence back again into the Rockies were a turbulent mob. +Having overrun all our mountain ranges, following the earlier trails of +the traders and trappers, they now recoiled upon themselves and rolled +back eastward to meet the advancing civilization of the westbound rails, +caring nothing for history and less for the civilized society in which +they formerly had lived. This story of bedlam broken loose, of men gone +crazed, by the sudden subversion of all known values and all standards +of life, was at first something which had no historian and can be +recorded only by way of hearsay stories which do not always tally as to +the truth. + +The mad treasure-hunters of the California mines, restless, +insubordinate, incapable of restraint, possessed of the belief that +there might be gold elsewhere than in California, and having heard +reports of strikes to the north, went hurrying out into the mountains of +Oregon and Washington, in a wild stampede, all eager again to engage in +the glorious gamble where by one lucky stroke of the pick a man might be +set free of the old limitations of human existence. + +So the flood of gold-seekers--passing north into the Fraser River +country, south again into Oregon and Washington, and across the great +desert plains into Nevada and Idaho--made new centers of lurid activity, +such as Oro Fino, Florence, and Carson. Then it was that Walla Walla +and Lewiston, outfitting points on the western side of the range, found +place upon the maps of the land, such as they were. + +Before these adventurers, now eastbound and no longer facing west, there +arose the vast and formidable mountain ranges which in their time had +daunted even the calm minds of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. But +the prospectors and the pack-trains alike penetrated the Salmon River +Range. Oro Fino, in Idaho, was old in 1861. The next great strikes were +to be made around Florence. Here the indomitable packer from the West, +conquering unheard-of difficulties, brought in whiskey, women, pianos, +food, mining-tools. Naturally all these commanded fabulous prices. +The price for each and all lay underfoot. Man, grown superman, could +overleap time itself by a stroke of the pick! What wonder delirium +reigned! + +These events became known in the Mississippi Valley and farther +eastward. And now there came hurrying out from the older regions +many more hundreds and thousands eager to reach a land not so far +as California, but reputed to be quite as rich. It was then, as the +bull-trains came in from the East, from the head of navigation on the +Missouri River, that the western outfitting points of Walla Walla and +Lewiston lost their importance. + +Southward of the Idaho camps the same sort of story was repeating +itself. Nevada had drawn to herself a portion of the wild men of the +stampedes. Carson for its day (1859-60) was a capital not unlike the +others. Some of its men had come down from the upper fields, some had +arrived from the East over the old Santa Fe Trail, and yet others had +drifted in from California. + +All the camps were very much alike. A straggling row of log cabins or +huts of motley construction; a few stores so-called, sometimes of logs, +or, if a saw-mill was at hand, of rude sawn boards; a number of saloons, +each of which customarily also supported a dance-hall; a series of +cabins or huts where dwelt individual men, each doing his own cooking +and washing; and outside these huts the uptorn earth--such were the +camps which dotted the trails of the stampedes across inhospitable +deserts and mountain ranges. Church and school were unknown. Law there +was none, for of organized society there was none. The women who lived +there were unworthy of the name of woman. The men strode about in +the loose dress of the camp, sometimes without waistcoat, sometimes +coatless, shod with heavy boots, always armed. + +If we look for causes contributory to the history of the mining-camp, we +shall find one which ordinarily is overlooked--the invention of Colt's +revolving pistol. At the time of the Civil War, though this weapon was +not old, yet it had attained very general use throughout the frontier. +That was before the day of modern ammunition. The six-shooter of the +placer days was of the old cap-and-ball type, heavy, long-barreled, and +usually wooden-handled. It was the general ownership of these deadly +weapons which caused so much bloodshed in the camps. The revolver in +the hands of a tyro is not especially serviceable, but it attained great +deadliness in the hands of an expert user. Such a man, naturally of +quick nerve reflexes, skillful and accurate in the use of the +weapon through long practice, became a dangerous, and for a time an +unconquerable, antagonist. + +It is a curious fact that the great Montana fields were doubly +discovered, in part by men coming east from California, and in part by +men passing west in search of new gold-fields. The first discovery of +gold in Montana was made on Gold Creek by a half-breed trapper named +Francois, better known as Be-net-see. This was in 1852, but the news +seems to have lain dormant for a time--naturally enough, for there was +small ingress or egress for that wild and unknown country. In 1857, +however, a party of miners who had wandered down the Big Hole River on +their way back east from California decided to look into the Gold Creek +discovery, of which they had heard. This party was led by James and +Granville Stuart, and among others in the party were Jake Meeks, Robert +Hereford, Robert Dempsey, John W. Powell, John M. Jacobs, Thomas Adams, +and some others. These men did some work on Gold Creek in 1858, but seem +not to have struck it very rich, and to have withdrawn to Fort Bridger +in Utah until the autumn of 1860. Then a prospector by the name of Tom +Golddigger turned up at Bridger with additional stories of creeks to the +north, so that there was a gradual straggling back toward Gold Creek and +other gulches. This prospector had been all over the Alder Gulch, which +was ere long to prove fabulously rich. + +It was not, however, until 1863 that the Montana camps sprang into +fame. It was not Gold Creek or Alder Gulch, but Florence and other +Idaho camps, that, in the summer and autumn of 1862, brought into the +mountains no less than five parties of gold-seekers, who remained in +Montana because they could not penetrate the mountain barrier which lay +between them and the Salmon River camps in Idaho. + +The first of these parties arrived at Gold Creek by wagon-train from +Fort Benton and the second hailed from Salt Lake. An election was held +for the purpose of forming a sort of community organization, the first +election ever known in Montana. The men from the East had brought with +them some idea of law and organization. There were now in the Montana +fields many good men such as the Stuart Brothers, Samuel T. Hauser, +Walter Dance, and others later well known in the State. These men were +prominent in the organization of the first miners' court, which had +occasion to try--and promptly to hang--Stillman and Jernigan, two +ruffians who had been in from the Salmon River mines only about four +days when they thus met retribution for their early crimes. An +associate of theirs, Arnett, had been killed while resisting arrest. +The reputation of Florence for lawlessness and bloodshed was well known; +and, as the outrages of the well-organized band of desperadoes operating +in Idaho might be expected to begin at any time in Montana, a certain +uneasiness existed among the newcomers from the States. + +Two more parties, likewise bound for Idaho and likewise baffled by the +Salmon River range, arrived at the Montana camps in the same summer. +Both these were from the Pike's Peak country in Colorado. And in the +autumn came a fifth--this one under military protection, Captain James +L. Fisk commanding, and having in the party a number of settlers bound +for Oregon as well as miners for Idaho. This expedition arrived in the +Prickly Pear Valley in Montana on September 21, 1862, having left St. +Paul on the 16th of June, traveling by steamboat and wagon-train. While +Captain Fisk and his expedition pushed on to Walla Walla, nearly half of +the immigrants stayed to try their luck at placer-mining. But the +yield was not great and the distant Salmon River mines, their original +destination, still awaited them. Winter was approaching. It was now too +late in the season to reach the Salmon River mines, five hundred miles +across the mountains, and it was four hundred miles to Salt Lake, the +nearest supply post; therefore, most of the men joined this little +army of prospectors in Montana. Some of them drifted to the Grasshopper +diggings, soon to be known under the name of Bannack--one of the wildest +mining-camps of its day. + +These different origins of the population of the first Montana camps are +interesting because of the fact that they indicate a difference in the +two currents of population which now met here in the new placer fields. +In general the wildest and most desperate of the old-time adventurers, +those coming from the West, had located in the Idaho camps, and might +be expected in Montana at any time. In contrast to these, the men lately +out from the States were of a different type, many of them sober, most +of them law-abiding, men who had come out to better their fortunes and +not merely to drop into the wild and licentious life of a placercamp. +Law and order always did prevail eventually in any mining community. +In the case of Montana, law and order arrived almost synchronously with +lawlessness and desperadoism. + +Law and order had not long to wait before the arrival of the notorious +Henry Plummer and his band from Florence. Plummer was already known as +a bad man, but was not yet recognized as the leader of that secret +association of robbers and murderers which had terrorized the Idaho +camps. He celebrated his arrival in Bannack by killing a man named +Cleveland. He was acquitted in the miners' court that tried him, on +the usual plea of self-defense. He was a man of considerable personal +address. + +The same tribunal soon assembled once more to try three other murderers, +Moore, Reeves, and Mitchell, with the agreement that the men should have +a jury and should be provided with counsel. They were all practically +freed; and after that the roughs grew bolder than ever. The Plummer band +swore to kill every man who had served in that court, whether as juryman +or officer. So well did they make good their threat that out of the +twenty-seven men thus engaged all but seven were either killed or driven +out of the country, nine being murdered outright. The man who had acted +as sheriff of this miners' court, Hank Crawford, was unceasingly hounded +by Plummer, who sought time and again to fix a quarrel on him. Plummer +was the best shot in the mountains at that time, and he thought it +would be easy for him to kill his man and enter the usual plea of +self-defense. By good fortune, however, Crawford caught Plummer off his +guard and fired upon him with a rifle, breaking his right arm. Plummer's +friends called in Dr. Glick, the best physician in Bannack, to treat +the wounded man, warning him that if he told anything about the visit +he would be shot down. Glick held his peace, and later was obliged to +attend many of the wounded outlaws, who were always engaged in affairs +with firearms. + +Of all these wild affrays, of the savage life which they denoted, and +of the stern ways in which retribution overtook the desperadoes of +the mines, there is no better historian than Nathaniel P. Langford, a +prominent citizen of the West, who accompanied the overland expedition +of 1862 and took part in the earliest life of Montana. His work, +"Vigilante Days and Ways," is an invaluable contemporary record. + +It is mentally difficult for us now fully to restore these scenes, +although the events occurred no earlier than the Civil War. "Life in +Bannack at this time," says Langford, "was perfect isolation from the +rest of the world. Napoleon was not more of an exile on St. Helena than +a newly arrived immigrant from the States in this region of lakes +and mountains. All the great battles of the season of 1862--Antietam, +Fredericksburg, Second Bull Run--all the exciting debates of Congress, +and the more exciting combats at sea, first became known to us on the +arrival of newspapers and letters in the spring of 1863." + +The Territory of Idaho, which included Montana and nearly all Wyoming, +was organized March 3, 1863. Previous to that time western Montana and +Idaho formed a part of Washington Territory, of which Olympia was the +capital, and Montana, east of the mountains, belonged to the Territory +of Dakota, of which the capital was Yankton, on the Missouri. Langford +makes clear the political uncertainties of the time, the difficulty +of enforcing the laws, and narrates the circumstances which led to the +erection in 1864 of the new Territory of Montana, comprising the limits +of the present State. * + + + * The Acts of Congress organizing Territories and admitting +States are milestones in the occupation of this last West. On the eve of +the Civil War, Kansas was admitted into the Union; during the war, the +Territories of Colorado, Nevada, Dakota, Arizona, Idaho, and Montana +were organized, and Nevada was admitted as a State. Immediately after +the war, Nebraska was admitted and Wyoming was organized as a Territory. +In the Centennial Year (1876) Colorado became a State. In 1889 and 1890 +North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming were +admitted as States. In the latter year Oklahoma was carved out of the +Indian Territory. Utah with its Mormon population was kept waiting at +the doors of the Union until 1896. Oklahoma became a State in 1907; +Arizona and New Mexico were admitted in 1912. + +In Montana as elsewhere in these days of great sectional bitterness, +there was much political strife; and this no doubt accounts for an +astonishing political event that now took place. Henry Plummer, the most +active outlaw of his day, was elected sheriff and entrusted with the +enforcement of the laws! He made indeed a great show of enforcing the +laws. He married, settled down, and for a time was thought by some of +the ill-advised to have reformed his ways, although in truth he could +not have reformed. + +By June, 1863, the extraordinarily rich strike in Alder Gulch had been +made. The news of this spread like wildfire to Bannack and to the Salmon +River mines in Idaho as well, and the result was one of the fiercest +of all the stampedes, and the rise, almost overnight, of Virginia City. +Meanwhile some Indian fighting had taken place and in a pitched battle +on the Bear River General Connor had beaten decisively the Bannack +Indians, who for years had preyed on the emigrant trains. This made +travel on the mountain trails safer than it had been; and the rich +Last Chance Gulch on which the city of Helena now stands attracted a +tremendous population almost at once. The historian above cited lived +there. Let him tell of the life. + +"One long stream of active life filled the little creek on its +auriferous course from Bald Mountain, through a canyon of wild and +picturesque character, until it emerged into the large and fertile +valley of the Pas-sam-a-ri... the mountain stream called by Lewis and +Clark in their journal 'Philanthropy River.' Lateral streams of great +beauty pour down the sides of the mountain chain bounding the valley.... +Gold placers were found upon these streams and occupied soon after the +settlement at Virginia City was commenced.... This human hive, numbering +at least ten thousand people, was the product of ninety days. Into +it were crowded all the elements of a rough and active civilization. +Thousands of cabins and tents and brush wakiups... were seen on every +hand. Every foot of the gulch... was undergoing displacement, and it was +already disfigured by huge heaps of gravel which had been passed +through the sluices and rifled of their glittering contents.... Gold was +abundant, and every possible device was employed by the gamblers, the +traders, the vile men and women that had come in with the miners into +the locality, to obtain it. Nearly every third cabin was a saloon where +vile whiskey was peddled out for fifty cents a drink in gold dust. +Many of these places were filled with gambling tables and gamblers.... +Hurdy-gurdy dance-houses were numerous.... Not a day or night passed +which did not yield its full fruition of vice, quarrels, wounds, or +murders. The crack of the revolver was often heard above the merry notes +of the violin. Street fights were frequent, and as no one knew when +or where they would occur, every one was on his guard against a random +shot. + +"Sunday was always a gala day.... The stores were all open.... Thousands +of people crowded the thoroughfares ready to rush in the direction +of any promised excitement. Horse-racing was among the most favored +amusements. Prize rings were formed, and brawny men engaged in +fisticuffs until their sight was lost and their bodies pommelled to +a jelly, while hundreds of onlookers cheered the victor.... Pistols +flashed, bowie knives flourished, and braggart oaths filled the air, as +often as men's passions triumphed over their reason. This was indeed +the reign of unbridled license, and men who at first regarded it with +disgust and terror, by constant exposure soon learned to become a part +of it and forget that they had ever been aught else. All classes of +society were represented at this general exhibition. Judges, lawyers, +doctors, even clergymen, could not claim exemption. Culture and religion +afforded feeble protection, where allurement and indulgence ruled the +hour." + +Imagine, therefore, a fabulously rich mountain valley twelve miles in +extent, occupied by more than ten thousand men and producing more than +ten millions of dollars before the close of the first year! It is a +stupendous demand on any imagination. How might all this gold be sent +out in safe-keeping? We are told that the only stage route extended from +Virginia City no farther than Bannack. Between Virginia City and Salt +Lake City there was an absolute wilderness, wholly unsettled, four +hundred and seventy-five miles in width. "There was no post office in +the Territory. Letters were brought from Salt Lake first at a cost of +two dollars and a half each, and later in the season at one dollar each. +All money at infinite risk was sent to the nearest express office at +Salt Lake City by private hands." + +Practically every man in the new gold-fields was aware of the existence +of a secret band of well-organized ruffians and robbers. The general +feeling was one of extreme uneasiness. There were plenty of men who had +taken out of the ground considerable quantities of gold, and who would +have been glad to get back to the East with their little fortunes, but +they dared not start. Time after time the express coach, the solitary +rider, the unguarded wagon-train, were held up and robbed, usually with +the concomitant of murder. When the miners did start out from one camp +to another they took all manner of precautions to conceal their gold +dust. We are told that on one occasion one party bored a hole in the end +of the wagon tongue with an auger and filled it full of gold dust, thus +escaping observation! The robbers learned to know the express agents, +and always had advice of every large shipment of gold. It was almost +useless to undertake to conceal anything from them; and resistance was +met with death. Such a reign of terror, such an organized system of +highway robbery, such a light valuing of human life, has been seldom +found in any other time or place. + +There were, as we have seen, good men in these camps--although the best +of them probably let down the standards of living somewhat after their +arrival there; but the trouble was that the good men did not know one +another, had no organization, and scarcely dared at first to attempt +one. On the other hand, the robbers' organization was complete and kept +its secrets as the grave; indeed, many and many a lonesome grave held +secrets none ever was to know. How many men went out from Eastern States +and disappeared, their fate always to remain a mystery, is a part of the +untold story of the mining frontier. + +There are known to have been a hundred and two men killed by Plummer +and his gang; how many were murdered without their fate ever being +discovered can not be told. Plummer was the leader of the band, but, +arch-hypocrite that he was, he managed to keep his own connection with +it a secret. His position as sheriff gave him many advantages. He posed +as being a silver-mine expert, among other things, and often would be +called out to "expert" some new mine. That usually meant that he left +town in order to commit some desperate robbery. The boldest outrages +always required Plummer as the leader. Sometimes he would go away on +the pretense of following some fugitive from justice. His horse, the +fleetest in the country, often was found, laboring and sweating, at the +rear of his house. That meant that Plummer had been away on some secret +errand of his own. He was suspected many times, but nothing could be +fastened upon him; or there lacked sufficient boldness and sufficient +organization on the part of the law-and-order men to undertake his +punishment. + +We are not concerned with repeating thrilling tales, bloody almost +beyond belief, and indicative of an incomprehensible depravity in human +nature, so much as we are with the causes and effects of this wild +civilization which raged here quite alone in the midst of one of the +wildest of the western mountain regions. It will best serve our purpose +to retain in mind the twofold character of this population, and to +remember that the frontier caught to itself not only ruffians and +desperadoes, men undaunted by any risk, but also men possessed of a yet +steadier personal courage and hardihood. There were men rough, coarse, +brutal, murderous; but against them were other men self-reliant, stern, +just, and resolved upon fair play. + +That was indeed the touchstone of the entire civilization which followed +upon the heels of these scenes of violence. It was fair play which +really animated the great Montana Vigilante movement and which +eventually cleaned up the merciless gang of Henry Plummer and his +associates. The centers of civilization were far removed. The courts +were powerless. In some cases even the machinery of the law was in the +hands of these ruffians. But so violent were their deeds, so brutal, so +murderous, so unfair, that slowly the indignation of the good men arose +to the white-hot point of open resentment and of swift retribution. What +the good men of the frontier loved most of all was justice. They now +enforced justice in the only way left open to them. They did this as +California earlier had done; and they did it so well that there was +small need to repeat the lesson. + +The actual extermination of the Henry Plummer band occurred rather +promptly when the Vigilantes once got under way. One of the band by the +name of Red Yager, in company with yet another by the name of Brown, +had been concerned in the murder of Lloyd Magruder, a merchant of the +Territory. The capture of these two followed closely upon the hanging of +George Ives, also accused of more than one murder. Ives was an example +of the degrading influence of the mines. He was a decent young man until +he left his home in Wisconsin. He was in California from 1857 to 1858. +When he appeared in Idaho he seemed to have thrown off all restraint and +to have become a common rowdy and desperado. It is said of him that "few +men of his age ever had been guilty of so many fiendish crimes." + +Yager and Brown, knowing the fate which Ives had met, gave up hope when +they fell into the hands of the newly organized Vigilantes. Brown +was hanged; so was Yager; but Yager, before his death, made a full +confession which put the Vigilantes in possession of information they +had never yet been able to secure. * + + + * Langford gives these names disclosed by Yager as follows: +"Henry Plummer was chief of the band; Bill Bunton, stool pigeon and +second in command; George Brown, secretary; Sam Bunton, roadster; +Cyrus Skinner, fence, spy, and roadster; George Shears, horse thief and +roadster; Frank Parish, horse thief and roadster; Hayes Lyons, telegraph +man and roadster; Bill Hunter, telegraph man and roadster; Ned Ray, +council-room keeper at Bannack City; George Ives, Stephen Marshland, +Dutch John (Wagner), Alex Carter, Whiskey Bill (Graves), Johnny Cooper, +Buck Stinson, Mexican Frank, Bob Zachary, Boone Helm, Clubfoot George +(Lane), Billy Terwiliger, Gad Moore were roadsters." Practically all +these were executed by the Vigilantes, with many others, and eventually +the band of outlaws was entirely broken up. + +Much has been written and much romanced about the conduct of these +desperadoes when they met their fate. Some of them were brave and some +proved cowards at the last. For a time, Plummer begged abjectly, his +eyes streaming with tears. Suddenly he was smitten with remorse as +the whole picture of his past life appeared before him. He promised +everything, begged everything, if only life might be spared him--asked +his captors to cut off his ears, to cut out his tongue, then strip him +naked and banish him. At the very last, however, he seems to have become +composed. Stinson and Ray went to their fate alternately swearing and +whining. Some of the ruffians faced death boldly. More than one himself +jumped from the ladder or kicked from under him the box which was the +only foothold between him and eternity. Boone Helm was as hardened as +any of them. This man was a cannibal and murderer. He seems to have had +no better nature whatever. His last words as he sprang off were "Hurrah +for Jeff Davis! Let her rip!" Another man remarked calmly that he cared +no more for hanging than for drinking a glass of water. But each after +his own fashion met the end foreordained for him by his own lack of +compassion; and of compassion he received none at the hands of the men +who had resolved that the law should be established and should remain +forever. + +There was an instant improvement in the social life of Virginia City, +Bannack, and the adjoining camps as soon as it was understood that the +Vigilantes were afoot. Langford, who undoubtedly knew intimately of the +activities of this organization, makes no apology for the acts of the +Vigilantes, although they did not have back of them the color of the +actual law. He says: + +"The retribution dispensed to these daring freebooters in no respect +exceeded the demands of absolute justice.... There was no other remedy. +Practically the citizens had no law, but if law had existed it could +not have afforded adequate redress. This was proven by the feeling of +security consequent upon the destruction of the band. When the robbers +were dead the people felt safe, not for themselves alone but for their +pursuits and their property. They could travel without fear. They had +reasonable assurance of safety in the transmission of money to the +States and in the arrival of property over the unguarded route from Salt +Lake. The crack of pistols had ceased, and they could walk the streets +without constant exposure to danger. There was an omnipresent spirit of +protection, akin to that omnipresent spirit of law which pervaded older +and more civilized communities.... Young men who had learned to believe +that the roughs were destined to rule and who, under the influence of +that faith, were fast drifting into crime shrunk appalled before the +thorough work of the Vigilantes. Fear, more potent than conscience, +forced even the worst of men to observe the requirements of society, and +a feeling of comparative security among all classes was the result." + +Naturally it was not the case that all the bad men were thus +exterminated. From time to time there appeared vividly in the midst of +these surroundings additional figures of solitary desperadoes, each to +have his list of victims, and each himself to fall before the weapons of +his enemies or to meet the justice of the law or the sterner meed of the +Vigilantes. It would not be wholly pleasant to read even the names of +a long list of these; perhaps it will be sufficient to select one, the +notorious Joseph Slade, one of the "picturesque" characters of whom a +great deal of inaccurate and puerile history has been written. The +truth about Slade is that he was a good man at first, faithful in the +discharge of his duties as an agent of the stage company. Needing at +times to use violence lawfully, he then began to use it unlawfully. He +drank and soon went from bad to worse. At length his outrages became so +numerous that the men of the community took him out and hanged him. His +fate taught many others the risk of going too far in defiance of law and +decency. + +What has been true regarding the camps of Florence, Bannack, and +Virginia City, had been true in part in earlier camps and was to be +repeated perhaps a trifle less vividly in other camps yet to come. The +Black Hills gold rush, for instance, which came after the railroad +but before the Indians were entirely cleared away, made a certain +wild history of its own. We had our Deadwood stage line then, and +our Deadwood City with all its wild life of drinking, gambling, and +shooting--the place where more than one notorious bad man lost his life, +and some capable officers of the peace shared their fate. To describe in +detail the life of this stampede and the wild scenes ensuing upon it is +perhaps not needful here. The main thing is that the great quartz lodes +of the Black Hills support in the end a steady, thrifty, and law-abiding +population. + +All over that West, once so unspeakably wild and reckless, there now +rise great cities where recently were scattered only mining-camps scarce +fit to be called units of any social compact. It was but yesterday +that these men fought and drank and dug their own graves in their own +sluices. At the city of Helena, on the site of Last Chance Gulch, +one recalls that not so long ago citizens could show with a certain +contemporary pride the old dead tree once known as "Hangman's Tree." It +marked a spot which might be called a focus of the old frontier. Around +it, and in the country immediately adjoining, was fought out the great +battle whose issue could not be doubted--that between the new and the +old days; between law and order and individual lawlessness; between +the school and the saloon; between the home and the dance-hall; between +society united and resolved and the individual reverted to worse than +savagery. + + + + + + +Chapter VI. The Pathways Of The West + +Since we have declared ourselves to be less interested in bald +chronology than in the naturally connected causes of events which make +chronology worth while, we may now, perhaps, double back upon the path +of chronology, and take up the great early highways of the West--what we +might call the points of attack against the frontier. + +The story of the Santa Fe Trail, now passing into oblivion, once was on +the tongue of every man. This old highroad in its heyday presented the +most romantic and appealing features of the earlier frontier life. The +Santa Fe Trail was the great path of commerce between our frontier and +the Spanish towns trading through Santa Fe. This commerce began in 1822, +when about threescore men shipped certain goods across the lower Plains +by pack-animals. By 1826 it was employing a hundred men and was using +wagons and mules. In 1830, when oxen first were used on the trail, the +trade amounted to $120,000 annually; and by 1843, when the Spanish ports +were closed, it had reached the value of $450,000, involving the use +of 230 wagons and 350 men. It was this great wagon trail which first +brought us into touch with the Spanish civilization of the Southwest. +Its commercial totals do not bulk large today, but the old trail itself +was a thing titanic in its historic value. + +This was the day not of water but of land transport; yet the wheeled +vehicles which passed out into the West as common carriers of +civilization clung to the river valleys--natural highways and natural +resting places of home-building man. This has been the story of the +advance of civilization from the first movements of the world's peoples. +The valleys are the cleats of civilization's golden sluices. + +There lay the great valley of the Arkansas, offering food and water, an +easy grade and a direct course reaching out into the West, even to the +edge of the lands of Spain; and here stood wheeled vehicles able to +traverse it and to carry drygoods and hardware, and especially +domestic cotton fabrics, which formed the great staple of a "Santa Fe +assortment." The people of the Middle West were now, in short, able +to feed and clothe themselves and to offer a little of their surplus +merchandise to some one else in sale. They had begun to export! Out +yonder, in a strange and unknown land, lay one of the original markets +of America! + +On the heels of Lewis and Clark, who had just explored the Missouri +River route to the Northwest, Captain Zebulon Pike of the Army, long +before the first wheeled traffic started West, had employed this valley +of the Arkansas in his search for the southwestern delimitations of the +United States. Pike thought he had found the head of the Red River when +after a toilsome and dangerous march he reached the headwaters of +the Rio Grande. But it was not our river. It belonged to Spain, as he +learned to his sorrow, when he marched all the way to Chihuahua in old +Mexico and lay there during certain weary months. + +It was Pike's story of the far Southwest that first started the idea of +the commerce of the Santa Fe Trail. In that day geography was a human +thing, a thing of vital importance to all men. Men did not read the +stock markets; they read stories of adventure, tales of men returned +from lands out yonder in the West. Heretofore the swarthy Mexicans, folk +of the dry plains and hills around the head of the Rio Grande and the +Red, had carried their cotton goods and many other small and needful +things all the way from Vera Cruz on the seacoast, over trails that were +long, tedious, uncertain, and expensive. A far shorter and more natural +trade route went west along the Arkansas, which would bring the American +goods to the doors of the Spanish settlements. After Pike and one or two +others had returned with reports of the country, the possibilities of +this trade were clear to any one with the merchant's imagination. + +There is rivalry for the title of "Father of the Santa Fe Trail." As +early as 1812, when the United States was at war with England, a party +of men on horseback trading into the West, commonly called the McKnight, +Baird, and Chambers party, made their way west to Santa Fe. There, +however, they met with disaster. All their goods were confiscated and +they themselves lay in Mexican jails for nine years. Eventually the +returning survivors of this party told their stories, and those stories, +far from chilling, only inflamed the ardor of other adventurous traders. +In 1821 more than one American trader reached Santa Fe; and, now that +the Spanish yoke had been thrown off by the Mexicans, the goods, instead +of being confiscated, were purchased eagerly. + +It is to be remembered, of course, that trading of this sort to Mexico +was not altogether a new thing. Sutlers of the old fur traders and +trappers already had found the way to New Spain from the valley of the +Platte, south along the eastern edge of the Rockies, through Wyoming +and Colorado. By some such route as that at least one trader, a French +creole, agent of the firm of Bryant & Morrison at Kaskaskia, had +penetrated to the Spanish lands as early as 1804, while Lewis and Clark +were still absent in the upper wilderness. Each year the great mountain +rendezvous of the trappers--now at Bent's Fort on the Arkansas, now +at Horse Creek in Wyoming, now on Green River in Utah, or even farther +beyond the mountains--demanded supplies of food and traps and ammunition +to enable the hunters to continue their work for another year. Perhaps +many of the pack-trains which regularly supplied this shifting mountain +market already had traded in the Spanish country. + +It is not necessary to go into further details regarding this primitive +commerce of the prairies. It yielded a certain profit; it shaped the +character of the men who carried it on. But what is yet more important, +it greatly influenced the country which lay back of the border on the +Missouri River. It called yet more men from the eastern settlements +to those portions which lay upon the edge of the Great Plains. There +crowded yet more thickly, up to the line between the certain and the +uncertain, the restless westbound population of all the country. + +If on the south the valley of the Arkansas led outward to New Spain, +yet other pathways made out from the Mississippi River into the unknown +lands. The Missouri was the first and last of our great natural frontier +roads. Its lower course swept along the eastern edge of the Plains, far +to the south, down to the very doors of the most adventurous settlements +in the Mississippi Valley. Those who dared its stained and turbulent +current had to push up, onward, northward, past the mouth of the Platte, +far to the north across degrees of latitude, steadily forward through +a vast virgin land. Then the river bent boldly and strongly off to the +west, across another empire. Its great falls indicated that it headed +high; beyond the great falls its steady sweep westward and at last +southward, led into yet other kingdoms. + +When we travel by horse or by modern motor car in that now accessible +region and look about us, we should not fail to reflect on the long +trail of the upbound boats which Manuel Lisa and other traders sent out +almost immediately upon the return of the Lewis and Clark expedition. +We should see them struggling up against that tremendous current +before steam was known, driven by their lust for new lands. We may +then understand fully what we have read of the enterprises of the old +American Fur Company, and bring to mind the forgotten names of Campbell +and Sublette, of General Ashley and of Wyeth--names to be followed by +others really of less importance, as those of Bonneville and Fremont. +That there could be farms, that there ever might be homes, in this +strange wild country, was, to these early adventurers, unthinkable. + +Then we should picture the millions of buffalo which once covered these +plains and think of the waste and folly of their slaughtering. We should +see the long streams of the Mackinaw boats swimming down the Missouri, +bound for St. Louis, laden with bales of buffalo and beaver peltry, +every pound of which would be worth ten dollars at the capital of the +fur trade; and we should restore to our minds the old pictures of savage +tribesmen, decked in fur-trimmed war-shirts and plumed bonnets, armed +with lance and sinewed bow and bull-neck shield, not forgetting whence +they got their horses and how they got their food. + +The great early mid-continental highway, known as the Oregon Trail or +the Overland Trail, was by way of the Missouri up the Platte Valley, +thence across the mountains. We know more of this route because it was +not discontinued, but came steadily more and more into use, for one +reason after another. The fur traders used it, the Forty-Niners used it, +the cattlemen used it in part, the railroads used it; and, lastly, the +settlers and farmers used it most of all. + +In physical features the Platte River route was similar to that of the +Arkansas Valley. Each at its eastern extremity, for a few days' travel, +passed over the rolling grass-covered and flower-besprinkled prairies +ere it broke into the high and dry lands of the Plains, with their green +or grey or brown covering of practically flowerless short grasses. But +between the two trails of the Arkansas and the Platte there existed +certain wide differences. At the middle of the nineteenth century the +two trails were quite distinct in personnel, if that word may be used. +The Santa Fe Trail showed Spanish influences; that of the Platte Valley +remained far more nearly American. + +Thus far the frontier had always been altering the man who came to it; +and, indirectly, always altering those who dwelt back of the frontier, +nearer to the Appalachians or the Atlantic. A new people now was in +process of formation--a people born of a new environment. America and +the American were conceiving. There was soon to be born, soon swiftly to +grow, a new and lasting type of man. Man changes an environment only by +bringing into it new or better transportation. Environment changes man. +Here in the midcontinent, at the mid-century, the frontier and the ways +of the frontier were writing their imprint on the human product of our +land. + +The first great caravans of the Platte Valley, when the wagon-trains +went out hundreds strong, were not the same as the scattering cavalcade +of the fur hunters, not the same as the ox-trains and mule-trains of the +Santa Fe traffic. The men who wore deepest the wheel marks of the Oregon +Trail were neither trading nor trapping men, but homebuilding men--the +first real emigrants to go West with the intent of making homes beyond +the Rockies. + +The Oregon Trail had been laid out by the explorers of the fur trade. +Zealous missionaries had made their way over the trail in the thirties. +The Argonauts of '49 passed over it and left it only after crossing the +Rockies. But, before gold in California was dreamed of, there had come +back to the States reports of lands rich in resources other than gold, +lying in the far Northwest, beyond the great mountain ranges and, before +the Forty-Niners were heard of, farmers, home-builders, emigrants, +men with their families, men with their household goods, were steadily +passing out for the far-off and unknown country of Oregon. + +The Oregon Trail was the pathway for Fremont in 1842, perhaps the most +overvalued explorer of all the West; albeit this comment may to some +seem harsh. Kit Carson and Bill Williams led Fremont across the Rockies +almost by the hand. Carson and Williams themselves had been taken across +by the Indian tribes. But Fremont could write; and the story which he +set down of his first expedition inflamed the zeal of all. Men began +to head out for that far-away country beyond the Rockies. Not a few +scattered bands, but very many, passed up the valley of the Platte. +There began a tremendous trek of thousands of men who wanted homes +somewhere out beyond the frontier. And that was more than ten years +before the Civil War. The cow trade was not dreamed of; the coming cow +country was overleaped and ignored. + +Our national horizon extended immeasurably along that dusty way. In the +use of the Oregon Trail we first began to be great. The chief figure +of the American West, the figure of the ages, is not the long-haired, +fringed-legging man riding a raw-boned pony, but the gaunt and sad-faced +woman sitting on the front seat of the wagon, following her lord where +he might lead, her face hidden in the same ragged sunbonnet which had +crossed the Appalachians and the Missouri long before. That was America, +my brethren! There was the seed of America's wealth. There was the great +romance of all America--the woman in the sunbonnet; and not, after all, +the hero with the rifle across his saddle horn. Who has written her +story? Who has painted her picture? + +They were large days, those of the great Oregon Trail, not always +pleasingly dramatic, but oftentimes tragic and terrible. We speak of +the Oregon Trail, but it means little to us today; nor will any mere +generalities ever make it mean much to us. But what did it mean to the +men and women of that day? What and who were those men and women? +What did it mean to take the Overland Trail in the great adventure of +abandoning forever the known and the safe and setting out for Oregon +or California at a time when everything in the far West was new and +unknown? How did those good folk travel? Why and whither did they +travel? + +There is a book done by C. F. McGlashan, a resident of Truckee, +California, known as "The History of the Donner Party," holding a great +deal of actual history. McGlashan, living close to Donner Lake, wrote +in 1879, describing scenes with which he was perfectly familiar, and +recounting facts which he had from direct association with participants +in the ill-fated Donner Party. He chronicles events which happened in +1846--a date before the discovery of gold in California. The Donner +Party was one of the typical American caravans of homeseekers who +started for the Pacific Slope with no other purpose than that of +founding homes there, and with no expectation of sudden wealth to be +gained in the mines. I desire therefore to quote largely from the +pages of this book, believing that, in this fashion, we shall come upon +history of a fundamental sort, which shall make us acquainted with the +men and women of that day, with the purposes and the ambitions which +animated them, and with the hardships which they encountered. + +"The States along the Mississippi were but sparsely settled in 1846, yet +the fame of the fruitfulness, the healthfulness, and the almost tropical +beauty of the land bordering the Pacific, tempted the members of +the Donner Party to leave their homes. These homes were situated in +Illinois, Iowa, Tennessee, Missouri, and Ohio. Families from each of +these States joined the train and participated in its terrible fate; yet +the party proper was organized in Sangamon County, Illinois, by George +and Jacob Donner and James F. Reed. Early in April, 1846, the party set +out from Springfield, Illinois, and by the first week in May reached +Independence, Missouri. Here the party was increased by additional +members, and the train comprised about one hundred persons.... + +In the party were aged fathers with their trusting families about them, +mothers whose very lives were wrapped up in their children, men in the +prime and vigor of manhood, maidens in all the sweetness and freshness +of budding womanhood, children full of glee and mirthfulness, and babes +nestling on maternal breasts. Lovers there were, to whom the journey was +tinged with rainbow hues of joy and happiness, and strong, manly hearts +whose constant support and encouragement was the memory of dear ones +left behind in homeland. + +"The wonderment which all experience in viewing the scenery along the +line of the old emigrant road was peculiarly vivid to these people. +Few descriptions had been given of the route, and all was novel and +unexpected. In later years the road was broadly and deeply marked, and +good camping grounds were distinctly indicated. The bleaching bones of +cattle that had perished, or the broken fragments of wagons or castaway +articles, were thickly strewn on either side of the highway. But in 1846 +the way was through almost trackless valleys waving with grass, along +rivers where few paths were visible, save those made by the feet of +buffalo and antelope, and over mountains and plains where little more +than the westward course of the sun guided the travelers. Trading-posts +were stationed at only a few widely distant points, and rarely did the +party meet with any human beings, save wandering bands of Indians. Yet +these first days are spoken of by all of the survivors as being crowned +with peaceful enjoyment and pleasant anticipations. There were beautiful +flowers by the roadside, an abundance of game in the meadows and +mountains, and at night there were singing, dancing, and innocent plays. +Several musical instruments, and many excellent voices, were in the +party, and the kindliest feeling and goodfellowship prevailed among the +members. + +"The formation of the company known as the Donner Party was purely +accidental. The union of so many emigrants into one train was not +occasioned by any preconcerted arrangement. Many composing the Donner +Party were not aware, at the outset, that such a tide of emigration was +sweeping to California. In many instances small parties would hear +of the mammoth train just ahead of them or just behind them, and by +hastening their pace, or halting for a few days, joined themselves to +the party. Many were with the train during a portion of the journey, but +from some cause or other became parted from the Donner company before +reaching Donner Lake. Soon after the train left Independence it +contained between two and three hundred wagons, and when in motion was +two miles in length. The members of the party proper numbered ninety." + +This caravan, like many others of the great assemblage westbound at that +time, had great extremes in personnel. Some were out for mere adventure; +some were single men looking for a location. Most of them were fathers +of families, among them several persons of considerable means and of +good standing in the community which they were leaving. While we may +suppose that most of them were folk of no extraordinary sort, certainly +some were persons of education and intelligence. Among these was the +wife of George Donner--Tamsen Donner, a woman of education, a musician, +a linguist, a botanist, and of the most sublime heroism. + +Tamsen Donner sent back now and then along the route some story of the +daily doings of the caravan; and such letters as these are of the utmost +interest to any who desire precise information of that time. It would +seem that the emigrants themselves for a great part of their route met +with no great adventures, nor indeed, appeared to be undertaking any +unusual affair. They followed a route up the Platte Valley already long +known to those of the eastern settlements. + +"Near the Junction of the North and South Platte, June 16, 1846. + +"My Old Friend: We are now on the Platte, two hundred miles from Fort +Laramie. Our journey so far has been pleasant, the roads have been good, +and food plentiful. The water for part of the way has been indifferent, +but at no time have our cattle suffered for it. Wood is now very scarce, +but 'buffalo chips' are excellent; they kindle quickly and retain heat +surprisingly. We had this morning buffalo steaks broiled upon them that +had the same flavor they would have had upon hickory coals. + +"We feel no fear of Indians; our cattle graze quietly around our +encampment unmolested. Two or three men will go hunting twenty miles +from camp; and last night two of our men lay out in the wilderness +rather than ride their horses after a hard chase. + +"Indeed, if I do not experience something far worse than I have yet +done, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started. Our wagons have +not needed much repair, and I can not yet tell in what respects they +could be improved. Certain it is, they can not be too strong. Our +preparations for the journey might have been in some respects bettered. + +"Bread has been the principal article of food in our camp. We laid in +one hundred and fifty pounds of flour and seventy-five pounds of meat +for each individual, and I fear bread will be scarce. Meat is abundant. +Rice and beans are good articles on the road; cornmeal too, is +acceptable. Linsey dresses are the most suitable for children. Indeed, +if I had one, it would be acceptable. There is so cool a breeze at +all times on the Plains that the sun does not feel so hot as one would +suppose. + +"We are now four hundred and fifty miles from Independence. Our route +at first was rough, and through a timbered country, which appeared to be +fertile. After striking the prairie, we found a firstrate road, and the +only difficulty we have had, has been in crossing the creeks. In that, +however, there has been no danger. + +"I never could have believed we could have traveled so far with so +little difficulty. The prairie between the Blue and the Platte Rivers is +beautiful beyond description. Never have I seen so varied a country, so +suitable for cultivation. Everything is new and pleasing; the Indians +frequently come to see us, and the chiefs of a tribe breakfasted at +our tent this morning. All are so friendly that I can not help feeling +sympathy and friendship for them. But on one sheet what can I say? + +"Since we have been on the Platte, we have had the river on one side +and the ever varying mounds on the other, and have traveled through the +bottom lands from one to two miles wide, with little or no timber. +The soil is sandy, and last year, on account of the dry season, the +emigrants found grass here scarce. Our cattle are in good order, and +when proper care has been taken, none have been lost. Our milch cows +have been of great service, indeed. They have been of more advantage +than our meat. We have plenty of butter and milk. + +"We are commanded by Captain Russell, an amiable man. George Donner +is himself yet. He crows in the morning and shouts out, 'Chain up, +boys--chain up,' with as much authority as though he was 'something in +particular.' John Denton is still with us. We find him useful in the +camp. Hiram Miller and Noah James are in good health and doing well. We +have of the best people in our company, and some, too, that are not so +good. + +"Buffalo show themselves frequently. We have found the wild tulip, the +primrose, the lupine, the eardrop, the larkspur, and creeping hollyhock, +and a beautiful flower resembling the bloom of the beech tree, but in +bunches as large as a small sugarloaf, and of every variety of shade, to +red and green. + +"I botanize, and read some, but cook 'heaps' more. There are four +hundred and twenty wagons, as far as we have heard, on the road between +here and Oregon and California. + +"Give our love to all inquiring friends. God bless them. + +"Yours truly, Mrs. George Donner." + +By the Fourth of July the Donner Party had reached Fort Laramie. They +pushed on west over the old trail up the Sweetwater River and across the +South Pass, the easiest of all the mountain passes known to the early +travelers. Without much adventure they reached Fort Bridger, then only a +trading-post. Here occurred the fatal mistake of the Donner Party. + +Some one at the fort strongly advised them to take a new route, a +cut-off said to shorten the distance by about three hundred miles. This +cut-off passed along the south shore of Great Salt Lake and caught up +the old California Trail from Fort Hall--then well established and well +known-along the Humboldt River. The great Donner caravan delayed for +some days at Fort Bridger, hesitating over the decision of which route +to follow. The party divided. All those who took the old road north of +Salt Lake by way of Fort Hall reached California in complete safety. Of +the original Donner Party there remained eighty-seven persons. All of +these took the cut-off, being eager to save time in their travel. They +reached Salt Lake after unspeakable difficulties. Farther west, in the +deserts of Nevada, they lost many of their cattle. + +Now began among the party dissensions and grumblings. The story is a +long one. It reached its tragic denouement just below the summit of the +Sierras, on the shores of Donner Lake. The words of McGlashan may now +best serve our purpose. + +"Generally, the ascent of the Sierra brought joy and gladness to weary +overland emigrants. To the Donner Party it brought terror and dismay. +The company had hardly obtained a glimpse of the mountains, ere the +winter storm clouds began to assemble their hosts around the loftier +crests. Every day the weather appeared more ominous and threatening. The +delay at the Truckee Meadows had been brief, but every day ultimately +cost a dozen lives. On the twenty-third of October, they became +thoroughly alarmed at the angry heralds of the gathering storm, and with +all haste resumed the journey. It was too late! At Prosser Creek, three +miles below Truckee, they found themselves encompassed with six inches +of snow. On the summits, the snow was from two to five feet in depth. +This was October 28, 1846. Almost a month earlier than usual, the Sierra +had donned its mantle of ice and snow. The party were prisoners! + +"All was consternation. The wildest confusion prevailed. In their +eagerness, many went far in advance of the main train. There was little +concert of action or harmony of plan. All did not arrive at Donner Lake +the same day. Some wagons and families did not reach the lake until the +thirty-first day of October, some never went farther than Prosser Creek, +while others, on the evening of the twenty-ninth, struggled through the +snow, and reached the foot of the precipitous cliffs between the summit +and the upper end of the lake. Here, baffled, wearied, disheartened, +they turned back to the foot of the lake." + +These emigrants did not lack in health, strength, or resolution, but +here they were in surroundings absolutely new to them. A sort of panic +seized them now. They scattered; their organization disintegrated. +All thought of conjoint action, of a social compact, a community of +interests, seems to have left them. It was a history of every man for +himself, or at least every family for itself. All track of the road +was now lost under the snow. At the last pitch up to the summit of the +Sierras precipitous cliffs abounded. No one knew the way. And now the +snows came once again. + +"The emigrants suffered a thousand deaths. The pitiless snow came down +in large, steady masses. All understood that the storm meant death. One +of the Indians silently wrapped his blanket about him and in deepest +dejection seated himself beside a tall pine. In this position he passed +the entire night, only moving occasionally to keep from being +covered with snow. Mrs. Reed spread down a shawl, placed her four +children--Virginia, Patty, James, and Thomas--thereon, and putting +another shawl over them, sat by the side of her babies during all the +long hours of darkness. Every little while she was compelled to lift the +upper shawl and shake off the rapidly accumulating snow. + +"With slight interruptions, the storm continued several days. The mules +and oxen that had always hovered about camp were blinded and bewildered +by the storm, and straying away were literally buried alive in the +drifts. What pen can describe the horror of the position in which the +emigrants found themselves? It was impossible to move through the deep, +soft snow without the greatest effort. The mules were gone, and were +never found. Most of the cattle had perished, and were wholly hidden +from sight. The few oxen which were found were slaughtered for beef." + +The travelers knew that the supplies they had could not last long. On +the 12th of November a relief party essayed to go forward, but after +struggling a short distance toward the summit, came back wearied and +broken-hearted, unable to make way through the deep, soft snow. Then +some one--said to have been F. W. Graves of Vermont--bethought himself +of making snowshoes out of the oxbows and the hides of the slaughtered +oxen. With these they did better. + +Volunteers were called for yet another party to cross the mountains into +California. Fifteen persons volunteered. Not all of them were men--some +were mothers, and one was a young woman. Their mental condition was +little short of desperation. Only, in the midst of their intense +hardships it seemed to all, somewhere to the westward was California, +and that there alone lay any hope. The party traveled four miles the +first day; and their camp fires were visible below the summit. The next +day they traveled six miles and crossed the divide. + +They were starving, cold, worn out, their feet frozen to bursting, their +blood chilled. At times they were caught in some of the furious storms +of the Sierras. They did not know their way. On the 27th of December +certain of the party resolved themselves to that last recourse which +alone might mean life. Surrounded by horrors as they were, it seemed +they could endure the thought of yet an additional horror.... There were +the dead, the victims who already had perished!... + +Seven of the fifteen got through to the Sacramento Valley, among these +the young girl, Mary Graves, described as "a very beautiful girl, of +tall and slender build, and, exceptionally graceful character." The +story brought out by these survivors of the first party to cross the +Sierras from the starving camp set all California aflame. There were +no less than three relief expeditions formed, which at varying dates +crossed the mountains to the east. Some men crossed the snow belt five +times in all. The rescuers were often in as much danger as the victims +they sought to save. + +And they could not save them. Back there in their tents and hovels +around Donner Lake starvation was doing its work steadily. There is +contemporary history also covering the details of this. Tamsen Donner, +heroine that she was, kept a diary which would have been valuable +for us, but this was lost along with her paintings and her botanical +collections. The best preserved diary is that of Patrick Breen, done +in simple and matter-of-fact fashion throughout most of the starving +winter. Thus: + +"Dec. 17. Pleasant; William Murphy returned from the mountain party last +evening; Baylis Williams died night before last; Milton and Noah started +for Donner's eight days ago; not returned yet; think they are lost in +the snow. + +"Dec. 21. Milton got back last night from Donner's camp. Sad news; Jacob +Donner, Samuel Shoemaker, Rhineheart, and Smith are dead; the rest of +them in a low situation; snowed all night, with a strong southwest wind. + +"Dec. 23. Clear to-day; Milton took some of his meat away; all well at +their camp. Began this day to read the 'Thirty Days' Prayers'; Almighty +God, grant the requests of unworthy sinners! + +"Jan. 13. Snowing fast; snow higher than the shanty; it must be thirteen +feet deep. Can not get wood this morning; it is a dreadful sight for us +to look upon. + +"Jan. 27. Commenced snowing yesterday; still continues today. Lewis +Keseberg, Jr., died three days ago; food growing scarce; don't have fire +enough to cook our hides. + +"Jan. 31. The sun does not shine out brilliant this morning; froze hard +last night; wind northwest. Landrum Murphy died last night about ten +o'clock; Mrs. Reed went to Graves's this morning to look after goods. + +"Feb. 4. Snowed hard until twelve o'clock last night; many uneasy for +fear we shall all perish with hunger; we have but little meat left, and +only three hides; Mrs. Reed has nothing but one hide, and that is on +Graves's house; Milton lives there, and likely will keep that. Eddy's +child died last night. + +"Feb. 7. Ceased to snow at last; today it is quite pleasant. McCutchen's +child died on the second of this month. + +"[This child died and was buried in the Graves's cabin. Mr. W. C. Graves +helped dig the grave near one side of the cabin, and laid the little one +to rest. One of the most heart-rending features of this Donner tragedy +is the number of infants that perished. Mrs. Breen, Mrs. Pike, Mrs. +Foster, Mrs. McCutchen, Mrs. Eddy, and Mrs. Graves each had nursing +babes when the fatal camp was pitched at Donner Lake.] + +"Feb. 8. Fine, clear morning. Spitzer died last night, and we will bury +him in the snow; Mrs. Eddy died on the night of the seventh. + +"Feb. 9. Mrs. Pike's child all but dead; Milton is at Murphy's, not able +to get out of bed; Mrs. Eddy and child buried today; wind southeast. + +"Feb. 10. Beautiful morning; thawing in the sun; Milton Elliott died +last night at Murphy's cabin, and Mrs. Reed went there this morning to +see about his effects. John Denton trying to borrow meat for Graves; had +none to give; they had nothing but hides; all are entirely out of meat, +but a little we have; our hides are nearly all eat up, but with God's +help spring will soon smile upon us." + +There was one survivor of the camp at Donner Lake, a man named Lewis +Keseberg, of German descent. That he was guilty of repeated cannibalism +cannot be doubted. It was in his cabin that, after losing all her loved +ones, the heroic Tamsen Donner met her end. Many thought he killed her +for the one horrid purpose. * + + + * Many years later (1879) Keseberg declared under oath to C. F. +McGlashan that he did not take her life. See "History of the Donner" +Party, pp. 212, 213. + +Such then is the story of one of the great emigrant parties who started +West on a hazard of new fortunes in the early days of the Oregon +Trail. Happily there has been no parallel to the misadventures of this +ill-fated caravan. It is difficult--without reading these bald and awful +details--to realize the vast difference between that day and this. Today +we may by the gentle stages of a pleasant railway journey arrive at +Donner Lake. Little trace remains, nor does any kindly soul wish for +more definite traces, of those awful scenes. Only a cross here and +there with a legend, faint and becoming fainter every year, may be seen, +marking the more prominent spots of the historic starving camp. + +Up on the high mountain side, for the most part hid in the forest, lie +the snowsheds and tunnels of the railway, now encountering its stiffest +climb up the steep slopes to the summit of the Sierras. The +author visited this spot of melancholy history in company with the +vice-president of the great railway line which here swings up so +steadily and easily over the Sierras. Bit by bit we checked out as best +we might the fateful spots mentioned in the story of the Donner Party. A +splendid motor highway runs by the lakeside now. While we halted our +own car there, a motor car drove up from the westward--following +that practical automobile highway which now exists from the plains of +California across the Sierras and east over precisely that trail +where once the weary feet of the oxen dragged the wagons of the early +emigrants. It was a small car of no expensive type. It was loaded down +with camping equipment until the wheels scarcely could be seen. It +carried five human occupants--an Iowa farmer and his family. They had +been out to California for a season. Casually they had left Los Angeles, +had traveled north up the valleys of California, east across the summit +of the Sierras, and were here now bound for Iowa over the old emigrant +trail! + +We hailed this new traveler on the old trail. I do not know whether or +not he had any idea of the early days of that great highway; I suspect +that he could tell only of its present motoring possibilities. But his +wheels were passing over the marks left more than half a century ago +by the cracked felloes of the emigrant wagons going west in search +of homes. If we seek history, let us ponder that chance pause of the +eastbound family, traveling by motor for pleasure, here by the side of +the graves of the travelers of another day, itself so briefly gone. What +an epoch was spanned in the passing of that frontier! + + + + + + +Chapter VII. The Indian Wars + +It might well be urged against the method employed in these pages that, +although we undertook to speak of the last American frontier, all that +we really thus far have done has been to describe a series of frontiers +from the Missouri westward. In part this is true. But it was precisely +in this large, loose, and irregular fashion that we actually arrived at +our last frontier. Certainly our westbound civilization never advanced +by any steady or regular process. It would be a singularly illuminating +map--and one which I wish we might show--which would depict in different +colors the great occupied areas of the West, with the earliest dates of +their final and permanent occupation. Such a map as this would show us +that the last frontier of America was overleaped and left behind not +once but a score of times. + +The land between the Missouri and the Rockies, along the Great Plains +and the high foothills, was crossed over and forgotten by the men who +were forging on into farther countries in search of lands where fortune +was swift and easy. California, Oregon, all the early farming and +timbering lands of the distant Northwest--these lay far beyond the +Plains; and as we have noted, they were sought for, even before gold was +dreamed of upon the Pacific Slope. + +So here, somewhere between the Missouri and the Rockies, lay our last +frontier, wavering, receding, advancing, gaining and losing, changing +a little more every decade--and at last so rapidly changed as to be +outworn and abolished in one swift decade all its own. + +This unsettled land so long held in small repute by the early Americans, +was, as we have pointed out, the buffalo-range and the country of the +Horse Indians--the Plains tribes who lived upon the buffalo. For a long +time it was this Indian population which held back the white settlements +of Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado. But as men +began to work farther and farther westward in search of homes in Oregon, +or in quest of gold in California or Idaho or Montana, the Indian +question came to be a serious one. + +To the Army, soon after the Civil War, fell the task of exterminating, +or at least evicting, the savage tribes over all this unvalued and +unknown Middle West. This was a process not altogether simple. For +a considerable time the Indians themselves were able to offer very +effective resistance to the enterprise. They were accustomed to living +upon that country, and did not need to bring in their own supplies; +hence the Army fought them at a certain disadvantage. In sooth, the Army +had to learn to become half Indian before it could fight the Indians on +anything like even terms. We seem not so much to have coveted the lands +in the first Indian-fighting days; we fought rather for the trails than +for the soil. The Indians themselves had lived there all their lives, +had conquered their environment, and were happy in it. They made a +bitter fight; nor are they to be blamed for doing so. + +The greatest of our Indian wars have taken place since our own Civil +War; and perhaps the most notable of all the battles are those which +were fought on the old cow range--in the land of our last frontier. We +do not lack abundant records of this time of our history. Soon after the +Civil War the railroads began edging out into the plains. They brought, +besides many new settlers, an abundance of chroniclers and historians +and writers of hectic fiction or supposed fact. A multitude of books +came out at this time of our history, most of which were accepted +as truth. That was the time when we set up as Wild West heroes rough +skin-clad hunters and so-called scouts, each of whom was allowed to tell +his own story and to have it accepted at par. As a matter of fact, at +about the time the Army had succeeded in subduing the last of the Indian +tribes on the buffalo-range, the most of our Wild West history, at least +so far as concerned the boldest adventure, was a thing of the past. +It was easy to write of a past which every one now was too new, too +ignorant, or too busy critically to remember. + +Even as early as 1866, Colonel Marcy, an experienced army officer and +Indian-fighter, took the attitude of writing about a vanishing phase of +American life. In his "Army Life on the Border," he says: + +"I have been persuaded by many friends that the contents of the book +which is herewith presented to the public are not without value as +records of a fast-vanishing age, and as truthful sketches of men of +various races whose memory will shortly depend only on romance, unless +some one who knew them shall undertake to leave outlines of their +peculiar characteristics.... I am persuaded that excuse may be found +in the simple fact that all these peoples of my description--men, +conditions of life, races of aboriginal inhabitants and adventurous +hunters and pioneers--are passing away. A few years more and the prairie +will be transformed into farms. The mountain ravines will be the abodes +of busy manufacturers, and the gigantic power of American civilization +will have taken possession of the land from the great river of the West +to the very shores of the Pacific.... The world is fast filling up. +I trust I am not in error when I venture to place some value, however +small, on everything which goes to form the truthful history of a +condition of men incident to the advances of civilization over the +continent--a condition which forms peculiar types of character, breeds +remarkable developments of human nature--a condition also which can +hardly again exist on this or any other continent, and which has, +therefore, a special value in the sum of human history." + +Such words as the foregoing bespeak a large and dignified point of +view. No one who follows Marcy's pages can close them with anything but +respect and admiration. It is in books such as this, then, that we may +find something about the last stages of the clearing of the frontier. + +Even in Marcy's times the question of our Government's Indian policy +was a mooted one. He himself as an Army officer looked at the matter +philosophically, but his estimate of conditions was exact. Long ago as +he wrote, his conclusions were such as might have been given forty years +later. + +"The limits of their accustomed range are rapidly contracting, and their +means of subsistence undergoing a corresponding diminution. The white +man is advancing with rapid strides upon all sides of them, and they +are forced to give way to his encroachments. The time is not far distant +when the buffalo will become extinct, and they will then be compelled +to adopt some other mode of life than the chase for a subsistence.... No +man will quietly submit to starvation when food is within his reach, and +if he cannot obtain it honestly he will steal it or take it by +force. If, therefore, we do not induce them to engage in agricultural +avocations we shall in a few years have before us the alternative of +exterminating them or fighting them perpetually. That they are destined +ultimately to extinction does not in my mind admit of a doubt. For the +reasons above mentioned it may at first be necessary for our government +to assert its authority over them by a prompt and vigorous exercise of +the military arm.... The tendency of the policy I have indicated will be +to assemble these people in communities where they will be more readily +controlled; and I predict from it the most gratifying results." + +Another well-informed army officer, Colonel Richard Dodge, himself a +hunter, a trailer, and a rider able to compete with the savages in their +own fields, penetrated to the heart of the Indian problem when he wrote: + +"The conception of Indian character is almost impossible to a man who +has passed the greater portion of his life surrounded by the influences +of a cultivated, refined, and moral society.... The truth is simply too +shocking, and the revolted mind takes refuge in disbelief as the less +painful horn of the dilemma. As a first step toward an understanding of +his character we must get at his standpoint of morality. As a child he +is not brought up.... From the dawn of intelligence his own will is his +law. There is no right and no wrong to him.... No dread of punishment +restrains him from any act that boyish fun or fury may prompt. No +lessons inculcating the beauty and sure reward of goodness or the +hideousness and certain punishment of vice are ever wasted on him. The +men by whom he is surrounded, and to whom he looks as models for +his future life, are great and renowned just in proportion to their +ferocity, to the scalps they have taken, or the thefts they have +committed. His earliest boyish memory is probably a dance of rejoicing +over the scalps of strangers, all of whom he is taught to regard as +enemies. The lessons of his mother awaken only a desire to take his +place as soon as possible in fight and foray. The instruction of his +father is only such as is calculated to fit him best to act a prominent +part in the chase, in theft, and in murder.... Virtue, morality, +generosity, honor, are words not only absolutely without significance to +him, but are not accurately translatable into any Indian language on the +Plains." + +These are sterner, less kindly, less philosophic words than Marcy's, +but they keenly outline the duty of the Army on the frontier. We made +treaties with the Indians and broke them. In turn men such as these +ignorant savages might well be expected to break their treaties also; +and they did. Unhappily our Indian policy at that time was one of +mingled ferocity and wheedling. The Indians did not understand us any +more than we did them. When we withdrew some of the old frontier posts +from the old hunting-range, the action was construed by the tribesmen as +an admission that we feared them, and they acted upon that idea. In one +point of view they had right with them, for now we were moving out into +the last of the great buffalo country. Their war was one of desperation, +whereas ours was one of conquest, no better and no worse than all the +wars of conquest by which the strong have taken the possessions of the +weak. + +Our Army at the close of the Civil War and at the beginning of the wars +with the Plains tribes was in better condition than it has ever been +since that day. It was made up of the soundest and best-seasoned +soldiers that ever fought under our flag; and at that time it +represented a greater proportion of our fighting strength than it +ever has before or since. In 1860 the Regular Army, not counting the +volunteer forces, was 16,000. In 1870 it was 37,000--one soldier to each +one thousand of our population. + +Against this force, pioneers of the vaster advancing army of peaceful +settlers now surging West, there was arrayed practically all the +population of fighting tribes such as the Sioux, the two bands of the +Cheyennes, the Piegans, the Assiniboines, the Arapahoes, the Kiowas, the +Comanches, and the Apaches. These were the leaders of many other tribes +in savage campaigns which set the land aflame from the Rio Grande to our +northern line. The Sioux and Cheyennes were more especially the leaders, +and they always did what they could to enlist the aid of the less +warlike tribes such as the Crows, the Snakes, the Bannacks, the +Utes--indeed all of the savage or semi-civilized tribes which had hung +on the flanks of the traffic of the westbound trail. + +The Sioux, then at the height of their power, were distinguished by many +warlike qualities. They fought hard and were quick to seize upon any +signs of weakness in their enemies. When we, in the course of our Civil +War, had withdrawn some of the upper posts, the Sioux edged in at once +and pressed back the whites quite to the eastern confines of the Plains. +When we were locked in the death grip of internecine war in 1862, they +rose in one savage wave of rebellion of their own and massacred with the +most horrible ferocity not less than six hundred and forty-four whites +in Minnesota and South Dakota. When General Sibley went out among them +on his later punitive campaign he had his hands full for many a long and +weary day. + +Events following the close of the Civil War did not mend matters in +the Indian situation. The railroads had large land grants given to +them along their lines, and they began to offer these lands for sale to +settlers. Soldier scrip entitling the holder to locate on public lands +now began to float about. Some of the engineers, even some of the +laborers, upon the railroads, seeing how really feasible was the +settlement of these Plains, began to edge out and to set up their homes, +usually not far from the railway lines. All this increase in the numbers +of the white population not only infuriated the Indians the more, but +gave them the better chance to inflict damage upon our people. Our Army +therefore became very little more than a vast body of police, and it was +always afoot with the purpose of punishing these offending tribesmen, +who knew nothing of the higher laws of war and who committed atrocities +that have never been equalled in history; unless it be by one of the +belligerents of the Great War in Europe, with whom we are at this +writing engaged--once more in the interest of a sane and human +civilization. The last great struggle for the occupation of the frontier +was on. It involved the ownership of the last of our open lands; and +hence may be called the war of our last frontier. + +The settler who pushed West continued to be the man who shared his time +between his rifle and his plough. The numerous buffalo were butchered +with an endless avidity by the men who now appeared upon the range. As +the great herds regularly migrated southward with each winter's snows, +they were met by the settlers along the lower railway lines and in a +brutal commerce were killed in thousands and in millions. The Indians +saw this sudden and appalling shrinkage of their means of livelihood. +It meant death to them. To their minds, especially when they thought we +feared them, there was but one answer to all this--the whites must all +be killed. + +Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Roman Nose, American Horse, Black Kettle--these +were names of great Indian generals who proved their ability to fight. +At times they brought into the open country, which as yet remained +unoccupied by the great pastoral movement from the south, as many as +five thousand mounted warriors in one body, and they were well armed +and well supplied with ammunition. Those were the days when the Indian +agents were carrying on their lists twice as many Indians as actually +existed--and receiving twice as many supplies as really were issued to +the tribes. The curse of politics was ours even at that time, and it +cost us then, as now, unestimated millions of our nation's dearest +treasures. As to the reservations which the Indians were urged to +occupy, they left them when they liked. In the end, when they were +beaten, all they were asked to do was to return to these reservations +and be fed. + +There were fought in the West from 1869 to 1875 more than two hundred +pitched actions between the Army and the Indians. In most cases the +white men were heavily outnumbered. The account which the Army gave of +itself on scores of unremembered minor fields--which meant life or death +to all engaged--would make one of the best pages of our history, could +it be written today. The enlisted men of the frontier Army were riding +and shooting men, able to live as the Indians did and able to beat them +at their own game. They were led by Army officers whose type has never +been improved upon in any later stage of our Army itself, or of any army +in the world. + +There are certain great battles which may at least receive notice, +although it would be impossible to mention more than a few of the +encounters of the great Indian wars on the buffalo-range at about the +time of the buffalo's disappearance. The Fetterman Massacre in 1866, +near Fort Phil Kearney, a post located at the edge of the Big Horn +Mountains, was a blow which the Army never has forgotten. "In a place +of fifty feet square lay the bodies of Colonel Fetterman, Captain Brown, +and sixty-five enlisted men. Each man was stripped naked and hacked and +scalped, the skulls beaten in with war clubs and the bodies gashed with +knives almost beyond recognition, with other ghastly mutilations that +the civilized pen hesitates to record." + +This tragedy brought the Indian problem before the country as never +before. The hand of the Western rancher and trader was implacably +against the tribesmen of the plains; the city-dweller of the East, +with hazy notions of the Indian character, was disposed to urge lenient +methods upon those responsible for governmental policy. While the Sioux +and Cheyenne wars dragged on, Congress created, by act of July 20, 1867, +a peace commission of four civilians and three army officers to deal +with the hostile tribes. For more than a year, with scant sympathy from +the military members, this commission endeavored to remove the causes of +friction by amicable conference with the Indian chiefs. The attitude of +the Army is reflected in a letter of General Sherman to his brother. +"We have now selected and provided reservations for all, off the great +roads. All who cling to their old hunting-grounds are hostile and will +remain so till killed off. We will have a sort of predatory war for +years--every now and then be shocked by the indiscriminate murder of +travelers and settlers, but the country is so large, and the advantage +of the Indians so great, that we cannot make a single war and end it. +From the nature of things we must take chances and clean out Indians as +we encounter them." + +Segregation of the Indian tribes upon reservations seemed to the +commission the only solution of the vexing problem. Various treaties +were made and others were projected looking toward the removal of +the tribesmen from the highways of continental travel. The result was +misgiving and increased unrest among the Indians. + +In midsummer of 1868 forays occurred at many points along the border of +the Indian Territory. General Sheridan, who now commanded the Department +of the Missouri, believed that a general war was imminent. He determined +to teach the southern tribesmen a lesson they would not forget. In the +dead of winter our troops marched against the Cheyennes, then in their +encampments below the Kansas line. The Indians did not believe that +white men could march in weather forty below zero, during which they +themselves sat in their tepees around their fires; but our cavalrymen +did march in such weather, and under conditions such as our cavalry +perhaps could not endure today. Among these troops was the Seventh +Cavalry, Custer's Regiment, formed after the Civil War, and it was led +by Lieutenant-Colonel George A. Custer himself, that gallant officer +whose name was to go into further and more melancholy history of the +Plains. + +Custer marched until he got in touch with the trails of the Cheyennes, +whom he knew to belong to Black Kettle's band. He did not at the time +know that below them, in the same valley of the Washita, were also the +winter encampments of the Kiowas, the Comanches, the Arapahoes, and even +a few Apaches. He attacked at dawn of a bleak winter morning, November +27, 1868, after taking the precaution of surrounding the camp, and +killed Black Kettle, and another chief, Little Rock, and over a hundred +of their warriors. Many women and children also were killed in this +attack. The result was one which sank deep into the Indian mind. They +began to respect the men who could outmarch them and outlive them on +the range. Surely, they thought, these were not the same men who had +abandoned Forts Phil Kearney, C. F. Smith, and Reno. There had been +some mistake about this matter. The Indians began to think it over. The +result was a pacifying of all the country south of the Platte. The lower +Indians began to come in and give themselves up to the reservation life. + +One of the hardest of pitched battles ever fought with an Indian tribe +occurred in September, 1868, on the Arickaree or South Fork of the +Republican River, where General "Sandy" Forsyth, and his scouts, for +nine days fought over six hundred Cheyennes and Arapahoes. These savages +had been committing atrocities upon the settlers of the Saline, the +Solomon, and the Republican valleys, and were known to have killed some +sixty-four men and women at the time General Sheridan resolved to punish +them. Forsyth had no chance to get a command of troops, but he +was allowed to enlist fifty scouts, all "first-class, hardened +frontiersmen," and with this body of fighting men he carried out the +most dramatic battle perhaps ever waged on the Plains. + +Forsyth ran into the trail of two or three large Indian villages, but +none the less he followed on until he came to the valley of the South +Fork. Here the Cheyennes under the redoubtable Roman Nose surrounded +him on the 17th of September. The small band of scouts took refuge on a +brushy island some sixty yards from shore, and hastily dug themselves in +under fire. + +They stood at bay outnumbered ten to one, with small prospect of escape, +for the little island offered no protection of itself, and was in +pointblank range from the banks of the river. All their horses soon were +shot down, and the men lay in the rifle pits with no hope of escape. +Roman Nose, enraged at the resistance put up by Forsyth's men, led a +band of some four hundred of his warriors in the most desperate charge +that has been recorded in all our Indian fighting annals. It was rarely +that the Indian would charge at all; but these tribesmen, stripped naked +for the encounter, and led at first by that giant warrior, who came +on shouting his defiance, charged in full view not only once but three +times in one day, and got within a hundred feet of the foot of the +island where the scouts were lying. + +According to Forsyth's report, the Indians came on in regular ranks like +the cavalry of the white men, more than four hundred strong. They were +met by the fire of repeating carbines and revolvers, and they stood for +the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth fire of repeating weapons, +and still charged in! Roman Nose was killed at last within touch of the +rifle pits against which he was leading his men. The second charge +was less desperate, for the savages lost heart after the loss of their +leader. The third one, delivered towards the evening of that same day, +was desultory. By that time the bed of the shallow stream was well +filled with fallen horses and dead warriors. + +Forsyth ordered meat cut from the bodies of his dead horses and buried +in the wet sand so that it might keep as long as possible. Lieutenant +Beecher, his chief of scouts, was killed, as also were Surgeon Mooers, +and Scouts Smith, Chalmers, Wilson, Farley, and Day. Seventeen others +of the party were wounded, some severely. Forsyth himself was shot three +times, once in the head. His left leg was broken below the knee, and +his right thigh was ripped up by a rifle ball, which caused him extreme +pain. Later he cut the bullet out of his own leg, and was relieved from +some part of the pain. After his rescue, when his broken leg was set it +did not suit him, and he had the leg broken twice in the hospital and +reset until it knitted properly. + +Forsyth's men lay under fire under a blazing sun in their holes on the +sandbar for nine days. But the savages never dislodged them, and at last +they made off, their women and children beating the death drums, and the +entire village mourning the unreturning brave. On the second day of the +fighting Forsyth had got out messengers at extreme risk, and at length +the party was rescued by a detachment of the Tenth Cavalry. The Indians +later said that they had in all over six hundred warriors in this fight. +Their losses, though variously estimated, were undoubtedly heavy. + +It was encounters such as this which gradually were teaching the Indians +that they could not beat the white men, so that after a time they began +to yield to the inevitable. + +What is known as the Baker Massacre was the turning-point in the +half-century of warfare with the Blackfeet, the savage tribe which +had preyed upon the men of the fur trade in a long-continued series of +robberies and murders. On January 22, 1870, Major E. M. Baker, led by +half-breeds who knew the country, surprised the Piegans in their winter +camp on the Marias River, just below the border. He, like Custer, +attacked at dawn, opening the encounter with a general fire into the +tepees. He killed a hundred and seventy-three of the Piegans, including +very many women and children, as was unhappily the case so often in +these surprise attacks. It was deplorable warfare. But it ended the +resistance of the savage Blackfeet. They have been disposed for peace +from that day to this. + +The terrible revenge which the Sioux and Cheyennes took in the battle +which annihilated Custer and his men on the Little Big Horn in the +summer of 1876; the Homeric running fight made by Chief Joseph of the +Nez Perces--a flight which baffled our best generals and their men for +a hundred and ten days over more than fourteen hundred miles of +wilderness--these are events so well known that it seems needless to +do more than to refer to them. The Nez Perces in turn went down forever +when Joseph came out and surrendered, saying, "From where the sun now +stands I fight against the white man no more forever." His surrender to +fate did not lack its dignity. Indeed, a mournful interest attached +to the inevitable destiny of all these savage leaders, who, no doubt, +according to their standards, were doing what men should do and all that +men could do. + +The main difficulty in administering full punishment to such bands was +that after a defeat they scattered, so that they could not be overtaken +in any detailed fashion. After the Custer fight many of the tribe went +north of the Canadian line and remained there for some time. The writer +himself has seen along the Qu'Appelle River in Saskatchewan some of the +wheels taken out of the watches of Custer's men. The savages broke them +up and used the wheels for jewelry. They even offered the Canadians for +trade boots, hats, and clothing taken from the bodies of Custer's men. + +The Modoc war against the warriors of Captain Jack in 1873 was waged in +the lava beds of Oregon, and it had the distinction of being one of +the first Indian wars to be well reported in the newspapers. We heard a +great deal of the long and trying campaigns waged by the Army in revenge +for the murder of General Canby in his council tent. We got small glory +out of that war, perhaps, but at last we hanged the ringleader of the +murderers; and the extreme Northwest remained free from that time on. + +Far in the dry Southwest, where home-building man did not as yet essay +a general occupation of the soil, the blood-thirsty Apache long waged +a warfare which tried the mettle of our Army as perhaps no other tribes +ever have done. The Spaniards had fought these Apaches for nearly three +hundred years, and had not beaten them. They offered three hundred +dollars each for Apache scalps, and took a certain number of them. +But they left all the remaining braves sworn to an eternal enmity. The +Apaches became mountain outlaws, whose blood-mad thirst for revenge +never died. No tribe ever fought more bitterly. Hemmed in and +surrounded, with no hope of escape, in some instances they perished +literally to the last man. General George Crook finished the work of +cleaning up the Apache outlaws only by use of the trailers of their own +people who sided with the whites for pay. Without the Pima scouts he +never could have run down the Apaches as he did. Perhaps these were +the hardest of all the Plains Indians to find and to fight. But in 1872 +Crook subdued them and concentrated them in reservations in Arizona. +Ten years later, under Geronimo, a tribe of the Apaches broke loose and +yielded to General Crook only after a prolonged war. Once again they +raided New Mexico and Arizona in 1885-6. This was the last raid of +Geronimo. He was forced by General Miles to surrender and, together with +his chief warriors, was deported to Fort Pickens in Florida. + +In all these savage pitched battles and bloody skirmishes, the surprises +and murderous assaults all over the old range, there were hundreds of +settlers killed, hundreds also of our army men, including some splendid +officers. In the Custer fight alone, on the Little Big Horn, the Army +lost Custer himself, thirteen commissioned officers, and two hundred +and fifty-six enlisted men killed, with two officers and fifty-one men +wounded; a total of three hundred and twenty-three killed and wounded in +one battle. Custer had in his full column about seven hundred men. The +number of the Indians has been variously estimated. They had perhaps +five thousand men in their villages when they met Custer in this, +the most historic and most ghastly battle of the Plains. It would be +bootless to revive any of the old discussions regarding Custer and his +rash courage. Whether in error or in wisdom, he died, and gallantly. He +and his men helped clear the frontier for those who were to follow, and +the task took its toll. + +Thus, slowly but steadily, even though handicapped by a vacillating +governmental policy regarding the Indians, we muddled through these +great Indian wars of the frontier, our soldiers doing their work +splendidly and uncomplainingly, such work as no other body of civilized +troops has ever been asked to do or could have done if asked. At the +close of the Civil War we ourselves were a nation of fighting men. We +were fit and we were prepared. The average of our warlike qualities +never has been so high as then. The frontier produced its own +pathfinders, its own saviors, its own fighting men. + +So now the frontier lay ready, waiting for the man with the plough. The +dawn of that last day was at hand. + + + + + + +Chapter VIII. The Cattle Kings + +It is proper now to look back yet again over the scenes with which +we hitherto have had to do. It is after the railways have come to the +Plains. The Indians now are vanishing. The buffalo have not yet gone, +but are soon to pass. + +Until the closing days of the Civil War the northern range was a wide, +open domain, the greatest ever offered for the use of a people. None +claimed it then in fee; none wanted it in fee. The grasses and the sweet +waters offered accessible and profitable chemistry for all men who +had cows to range. The land laws still were vague and inexact in +application, and each man could construe them much as he liked. The +excellent homestead law of 1862, one of the few really good land laws +that have been put on our national statute books, worked well enough +so long as we had good farming lands for homesteading--lands of which a +quarter section would support a home and a family. This same homestead +law was the only one available for use on the cattle-range. In practice +it was violated thousands of times--in fact, of necessity violated +by any cattle man who wished to acquire sufficient range to run a +considerable herd. Our great timber kings, our great cattle kings, made +their fortunes out of their open contempt for the homestead law, which +was designed to give all the people an even chance for a home and a +farm. It made, and lost, America. + +Swiftly enough, here and there along all the great waterways of the +northern range, ranchers and their men filed claims on the water fronts. +The dry land thus lay tributary to them. For the most part the open +lands were held practically under squatter right; the first cowman in +any valley usually had his rights respected, at least for a time. These +were the days of the open range. Fences had not come, nor had farms been +staked out. + +From the South now appeared that tremendous and elemental force--most +revolutionary of all the great changes we have noted in the swiftly +changing West--the bringing in of thousands of horned kine along the +northbound trails. The trails were hurrying from the Rio Grande to the +upper plains of Texas and northward, along the north and south line of +the Frontier--that land which now we have been seeking less to define +and to mark precisely than fundamentally to understand. + +The Indian wars had much to do with the cow trade. The Indians were +crowded upon the reservations, and they had to be fed, and fed on beef. +Corrupt Indian agents made fortunes, and the Beef Ring at Washington, +one of the most despicable lobbies which ever fattened there, now wrote +its brief and unworthy history. In a strange way corrupt politics and +corrupt business affected the phases of the cattle industry as they had +affected our relations with the Indians. More than once a herd of some +thousand beeves driven up from Texas on contract, and arriving late in +autumn, was not accepted on its arrival at the army post--some pet of +Washington perhaps had his own herd to sell! All that could be done then +would be to seek out a "holding range." In this way, more and more, the +capacity of the northern Plains to nourish and improve cattle became +established. + +Naturally, the price of cows began to rise; and naturally, also, the +demand for open range steadily increased. There now began the whole +complex story of leased lands and fenced lands. The frontier still was +offering opportunity for the bold man to reap where he had not sown. +Lands leased to the Indians of the civilized tribes began to cut large +figure in the cow trade--as well as some figure in politics--until at +length the thorny situation was handled by a firm hand at Washington. +The methods of the East were swiftly overrunning those of the West. +Politics and graft and pull, things hitherto unknown, soon wrote their +hurrying story also over all this newly won region from which the +rifle-smoke had scarcely yet cleared away. + +But every herd which passed north for delivery of one sort or the other +advanced the education of the cowman, whether of the northern or the +southern ranges. Some of the southern men began to start feeding ranges +in the North, retaining their breeding ranges in the South. The demand +of the great upper range for cattle seemed for the time insatiable. + +To the vision of the railroad builders a tremendous potential freightage +now appeared. The railroad builders began to calculate that one day they +would parallel the northbound cow trail with iron trails of their own +and compete with nature for the carrying of this beef. The whole swift +story of all that development, while the westbound rails were crossing +and criss-crossing the newly won frontier, scarce lasted twenty years. +Presently we began to hear in the East of the Chisholm Trail and of the +Western Trail which lay beyond it, and of many smaller and intermingling +branches. We heard of Ogallalla, in Nebraska, the "Gomorrah of the +Range," the first great upper market-place for distribution of cattle to +the swiftly forming northern ranches. The names of new rivers came +upon our maps; and beyond the first railroads we began to hear of the +Yellowstone, the Powder, the Musselshell, the Tongue, the Big Horn, the +Little Missouri. + +The wild life, bold and carefree, coming up from the South now in a +mighty surging wave, spread all over that new West which offered to the +people of older lands a strange and fascinating interest. Every one on +the range had money; every one was independent. Once more it seemed that +man had been able to overleap the confining limitations of his life, and +to attain independence, self-indulgence, ease and liberty. A chorus of +Homeric, riotous mirth, as of a land in laughter, rose up all over the +great range. After all, it seemed that we had a new world left, a land +not yet used. We still were young! The cry arose that there was land +enough for all out West. And at first the trains of white-topped wagons +rivaled the crowded coaches westbound on the rails. + +In consequence there came an entire readjustment of values. This +country, but yesterday barren and worthless, now was covered with +gold, deeper than the gold of California or any of the old placers. New +securities and new values appeared. Banks did not care much for the land +as security--it was practically worthless without the cattle--but they +would lend money on cattle at rates which did not then seem usurious. A +new system of finance came into use. Side by side with the expansion of +credits went the expansion of the cattle business. Literally in hundreds +of thousands the cows came north from the exhaustless ranges of the +lower country. + +It was a wild, strange day. But withal it was the kindliest and most +generous time, alike the most contented and the boldest time, in all the +history of our frontiers. There never was a better life than that of the +cowman who had a good range on the Plains and cattle enough to stock his +range. There never will be found a better man's country in all the world +than that which ran from the Missouri up to the low foothills of the +Rockies. + +The lower cities took their tribute of the northbound cattle for quite a +time. Wichita, Coffeyville, and other towns of lower Kansas in turn made +bids for prominence as cattle marts. Agents of the Chicago stockyards +would come down along the trails into the Indian Nations to meet the +northbound herds and to try to divert them to this or that market as +a shipping-point. The Kiowas and Comanches, not yet wholly confined to +their reservations, sometimes took tribute, whether in theft or in open +extortion, of the herds laboring upward through the long slow season. +Trail-cutters and herd-combers, licensed or unlicensed hangers-on to the +northbound throngs of cattle, appeared along the lower trails--with some +reason, occasionally; for in a great northbound herd there might be +many cows included under brands other than those of the road brands +registered for the drovers of that particular herd. Cattle thieving +became an industry of certain value, rivaling in some localities the +operations of the bandits of the placer camps. There was great wealth +suddenly to be seen. The weak and the lawless, as well as the strong and +the unscrupulous, set out to reap after their own fashion where they had +not sown. If a grave here or there appeared along the trail or at the +edge of the straggling town, it mattered little. If the gamblers and the +desperadoes of the cow towns such as Newton, Ellsworth, Abilene, Dodge, +furnished a man for breakfast day after day, it mattered little, for +plenty of men remained, as good or better. The life was large and +careless, and bloodshed was but an incident. + +During the early and unregulated days of the cattle industry, the +frontier insisted on its own creed, its own standards. But all the time, +coming out from the East, were scores and hundreds of men of exacter +notions of trade and business. The enormous waste of the cattle range +could not long endure. The toll taken by the thievery of the men who +came to be called range-rustlers made an element of loss which could not +long be sustained by thinking men. As the Vigilantes regulated things in +the mining camps, so now in slightly different fashion the new property +owners on the upper range established their own ideas, their own sense +of proportion as to law and order. The cattle associations, the banding +together of many owners of vast herds, for mutual protection and mutual +gain were a natural and logical development. Outside of these there was +for a time a highly efficient corps of cattle-range Vigilantes, who shot +and hanged some scores of rustlers. + +It was a frenzied life while it lasted--this lurid outburst, the +last flare of the frontier. Such towns as Dodge and Ogallalla offered +extraordinary phenomena of unrestraint. But fortunately into the worst +of these capitals of license came the best men of the new regime, +and the new officers of the law, the agents of the Vigilantes, the +advance-guard of civilization now crowding on the heels of the wild men +of the West. In time the lights of the dance-halls and the saloons and +the gambling parlors went out one by one all along the frontier. By 1885 +Dodge City, a famed capital of the cow trade, which will live as long +as the history of that industry is known, resigned its eminence and +declared that from where the sun then stood it would be a cow camp no +more! The men of Dodge knew that another day had dawned. But this was +after the homesteaders had arrived and put up their wire fences, cutting +off from the town the holding grounds of the northbound herds. + +This innovation of barb-wire fences in the seventies had caused a +tremendous alteration of conditions over all the country. It had enabled +men to fence in their own water-fronts, their own homesteads. Casually, +and at first without any objection filed by any one, they had included +in their fences many hundreds of thousands of acres of range land to +which they had no title whatever. These men--like the large-handed cow +barons of the Indian Nations, who had things much as they willed in a +little unnoted realm all their own--had money and political influence. +And there seemed still range enough for all. If a man wished to throw a +drift fence here or there, what mattered it? + +Up to this time not much attention had been paid to the Little Fellow, +the man of small capital who registered a brand of his own, and who +with a Maverick * here and there and the natural increase, and perhaps +a trifle of unnatural increase here and there--had proved able to +accumulate with more or less rapidity a herd of his own. Now the cattle +associations passed rules that no foreman should be allowed to have +or register a brand of his own. Not that any foreman could be +suspected--not at all!--but the foreman who insisted on his old right to +own a running iron and a registered brand was politely asked to find his +employment somewhere else. + + + * In the early days a rancher by the name of Maverick, a Texas +man, had made himself rich simply by riding out on the open range and +branding loose and unmarked occupants of the free lands. Hence the term +"Maverick" was applied to any unbranded animal running loose on +the range. No one cared to interfere with these early activities in +collecting unclaimed cattle. Many a foundation for a great fortune was +laid in precisely that way. It was not until the more canny days in the +North that Mavericks were regarded with jealous eyes. + +The large-handed and once generous methods of the old range now began to +narrow themselves. Even if the Little Fellow were able to throw a fence +around his own land, very often he did not have land enough to support +his herd with profit. A certain antipathy now began to arise between the +great cattle owners and the small ones, especially on the upper range, +where some rather bitter wars were fought--the cow kings accusing their +smaller rivals of rustling cows; the small man accusing the larger +operators of having for years done the same thing, and of having grown +rich at it. + +The cattle associations, thrifty and shifty, sending their brand +inspectors as far east as the stockyards of Kansas City and Chicago, +naturally had the whip hand of the smaller men. They employed detectives +who regularly combed out the country in search of men who had loose +ideas of mine and thine. All the time the cow game was becoming stricter +and harder. Easterners brought on the East's idea of property, of low +interest, sure returns, and good security. In short, there was set on +once more--as there had been in every great movement across the entire +West--the old contest between property rights and human independence in +action. It was now once more the Frontier against the States, and the +States were foredoomed to win. + +The barb-wire fence, which was at first used extensively by the great +operators, came at last to be the greatest friend of the Little Fellow +on the range. The Little Fellow, who under the provisions of the +homestead act began to push West and to depart farther and farther from +the protecting lines of the railways, could locate land and water for +himself and fence in both. "I've got the law back of me," was what he +said; and what he said was true. Around the old cow camps of the trails, +and around the young settlements which did not aspire to be called cow +camps, the homesteaders fenced in land--so much land that there came to +be no place near any of the shipping-points where a big herd from the +South could be held. Along the southern range artificial barriers to the +long drive began to be raised. It would be hard to say whether fear of +Texas competition or of Texas cattle fever was the more powerful +motive in the minds of ranchers in Colorado and Kansas. But the cattle +quarantine laws of 1885 nearly broke up the long drive of that year. +Men began to talk of fencing off the trails, and keeping the northbound +herds within the fences--a thing obviously impossible. + +The railroads soon rendered this discussion needless. Their agents went +down to Texas and convinced the shippers that it would be cheaper and +safer to put their cows on cattle trains and ship them directly to the +ranges where they were to be delivered. And in time the rails running +north and south across the Staked Plains into the heart of the lower +range began to carry most of the cattle. So ended the old cattle trails. + +What date shall we fix for the setting of the sun of that last frontier? +Perhaps the year 1885 is as accurate as any--the time when the cattle +trails practically ceased to bring north their vast tribute. But, +in fact, there is no exact date for the passing of the frontier. Its +decline set in on what day the first lank "nester" from the States +outspanned his sun-burned team as he pulled up beside some sweet water +on the rolling lands, somewhere in the West, and looked about him, and +looked again at the land map held in his hand. + +"I reckon this is our land, Mother," said he. + +When he said that, he pronounced the doom of the old frontier. + + + + + + +Chapter IX. The Homesteader + +His name was usually Nester or Little Fellow. It was the old story of +the tortoise and the hare. The Little Fellow was from the first destined +to win. His steady advance, now on this flank, now on that, just back +of the vanguard pushing westward, had marked the end of all our earlier +frontiers. The same story now was being written on the frontier of the +Plains. + +But in the passing of this last frontier the type of the land-seeking +man, the type of the American, began to alter distinctly. The million +dead of our cruel Civil War left a great gap in the American population +which otherwise would have occupied the West and Northwest after the +clearing away of the Indians. For three decades we had been receiving +a strong and valuable immigration from the north of Europe. It was in +great part this continuous immigration which occupied the farming lands +of upper Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. Thus the population of the +Northwest became largely foreign. Each German or Scandinavian who found +himself prospering in this rich new country was himself an immigration +agency. He sent back word to his friends and relatives in the Old World +and these came to swell the steadily thickening population of the New. + +We have seen that the enterprising cattlemen had not been slow to reach +out for such resources as they might. Perhaps at one time between 1885 +and 1890 there were over ten million acres of land illegally fenced in +on the upper range by large cattle companies. This had been done without +any color of law whatever; a man simply threw out his fences as far as +he liked, and took in range enough to pasture all the cattle that he +owned. His only pretext was "I saw it first." For the Nester who wanted +a way through these fences out into the open public lands, he cherished +a bitter resentment. And yet the Nester must in time win through, must +eventually find the little piece of land which he was seeking. + +The government at Washington was finally obliged to take action. In +the summer of 1885, acting under authorization of Congress, President +Cleveland ordered the removal of all illegal enclosures and forbade any +person or association to prevent the peaceful occupation of the public +land by homesteaders. The President had already cancelled the leases by +which a great cattle company had occupied grazing lands in the Indian +Territory. Yet, with even-handed justice he kept the land boomers also +out of these coveted lands, until the Dawes Act of 1887 allotted the +tribal lands to the Indians in severalty and threw open the remainder +to the impatient homeseekers. Waiting thousands were ready at the Kansas +line, eager for the starting gun which was to let loose a mad stampede +of crazed human beings. + +It always was contended by the cowman that these settlers coming in on +the semi-arid range could not make a living there, that all they could +do was legally to starve to death some good woman. True, many of them +could not last out in the bitter combined fight with nature and the +grasping conditions of commerce and transportation of that time. The +western Canadian farmer of today is a cherished, almost a petted being. +But no one ever showed any mercy to the American farmer who moved out +West. + +As always has been the case, a certain number of wagons might be seen +passing back East, as well as the somewhat larger number steadily moving +westward. There were lean years and dry years, hot years, yellow years +here and there upon the range. The phrase written on one disheartened +farmer's wagon top, "Going back to my wife's folks," became historic. + +The railways were finding profit in carrying human beings out to the +cow-range just as once they had in transporting cattle. Indeed, it did +not take the wiser railroad men long to see that they could afford to +set down a farmer, at almost no cost for transportation, in any part +of the new West. He would after that be dependent upon the railroad in +every way. The railroads deliberately devised the great land boom of +1886, which was more especially virulent in the State of Kansas. Many of +the roads had lands of their own for sale, but what they wanted most was +the traffic of the settlers. They knew the profit to be derived from the +industry of a dense population raising products which must be shipped, +and requiring imports which also must be shipped. One railroad even +offered choice breeding-stock free on request. The same road, and others +also, preached steadily the doctrine of diversified farming. In short, +the railroads, in their own interests, did all they could to make +prosperous the farms or ranches of the West. The usual Western homestead +now was part ranch and part farm, although the term "ranch" continued +for many years to cover all the meanings of the farm of whatever sort. + +There appeared now in the new country yet another figure of the Western +civilization, the land-boomer, with his irresponsible and unregulated +statements in regard to the values of these Western lands. These men +were not always desirable citizens, although of course no industry was +more solid or more valuable than that of legitimate handling of the +desirable lands. "Public spirit" became a phrase now well known in any +one of scores of new towns springing up on the old cow-range, each of +which laid claims to be the future metropolis of the world. In any one +of these towns the main industry was that of selling lands or "real +estate." During the Kansas boom of 1886 the land-boomers had their desks +in the lobbies of banks, the windows of hardware stores--any place and +every place offering room for a desk and chair. + +Now also flourished apace the industry of mortgage loans. Eastern +money began to flood the western Plains, attracted by the high rates of +interest. In 1886 the customary banking interest in western Kansas was +two per cent a month. It is easy to see that very soon such a state of +affairs as this must collapse. The industry of selling town lots far out +in the cornfields, and of buying unimproved subdivision property with +borrowed money at usurious rates of interest, was one riding for its own +fall. + +None the less the Little Fellow kept on going out into the West. We +did not change our land laws for his sake, and for a time he needed no +sympathy. The homestead law in combination with the preemption act and +the tree claim act would enable a family to get hold of a very sizable +tract of land. The foundations of many comfortable fortunes were laid in +precisely this way by thrifty men who were willing to work and willing +to wait. + +It was not until 1917 that the old homestead law limiting the settler +to a hundred and sixty acres of land was modified for the benefit of the +stock-raiser. The stock-raising homestead law, as it is called, permits +a man to make entry for not more than six hundred and forty acres of +unappropriated land which shall have been designated by the Secretary +of the Interior as "stock-raising land." Cultivation of the land is not +required, but the holder is required to make "permanent improvements" +to the value of a dollar and twenty-five cents an acre, and at least +one-half of these improvements must be made within three years after the +date of entry. In the old times the question of proof in "proving up" +was very leniently considered. A man would stroll down to the land +office and swear solemnly that he had lived the legal length of time on +his homestead, whereas perhaps he had never seen it or had no more than +ridden across it. Today matters perhaps will be administered somewhat +more strictly; for of all those millions of acres of open land once in +the West there is almost none left worth the holding for farm purposes. + +Such dishonest practices were, however, indignantly denied by those who +fostered the irrigation and dry-farming booms which made the last phase +of exploitation of the old range. A vast amount of disaster was worked +by the failure of numberless irrigation companies, each of them offering +lands to the settlers through the medium of most alluring advertising. +In almost every case the engineers underestimated the cost of getting +water on the land. Very often the amount of water available was not +sufficient to irrigate the land which had been sold to settlers. +In countless cases the district irrigation bonds-which were offered +broadcast by Eastern banks to their small investors--were hardly worth +the paper on which they were written. One after another these wildcat +irrigation schemes, purporting to assure sudden wealth in apples, +pears, celery, garden truck, cherries, small fruits, alfalfa, pecans, +eucalyptus or catalpa trees-anything you liked--went to the wall. +Sometimes whole communities became straitened by the collapse of these +overblown enterprises. The recovery was slow, though usually the result +of that recovery was a far healthier and more stable condition of +society. + +This whole question of irrigation and dry farming, this or that phase +of the last scrambling, feverish settling on the last lands, was sorely +wasteful of human enterprise and human happiness. It was much like the +spawning rush of the salmon from the sea. Many perish. A few survive. +Certainly there never was more cruel injustice done than that to the +sober-minded Eastern farmers, some of them young men in search of +cheaper homes, who sold out all they had in the East and went out to +the dry country to farm under the ditch, or to take up that still more +hazardous occupation--successful sometimes, though always hard and +always risky--dry farming on the benches which cannot be reached with +irrigating waters. + +Strangely changed was all the face of the cattle range by these +successive and startling innovations. The smoke of many little homes +rose now, scattered over all that tremendous country from the Rockies +to the edge of the short grass country, from Texas to the Canadian line. +The cattle were not banished from the range, for each little farmer +would probably have a few cows of his own; and in some fashion the great +cowmen were managing to get in fee tracts of land sufficient for their +purposes. There were land leases of all sorts which enabled the thrifty +Westerner who knew the inside and out of local politics to pick up +permanently considerable tracts of land. Some of these ranches held +together as late as 1916; indeed, there are some such oldtime holdings +still existent in the West, although far more rare than formerly was the +case. + +Under all these conditions the price of land went up steadily. Land +was taken eagerly which would have been refused with contempt a decade +earlier. The parings and scraps and crumbs of the Old West now were +fought for avidly. + +The need of capital became more and more important in many of the great +land operations. Even the government reclamation enterprises could not +open lands to the settler on anything like the old homestead basis. The +water right cost money--sometimes twenty-five or thirty dollars an acre; +in some of the private reclamation enterprises, fifty dollars an acre, +or even more. Very frequently when the Eastern farmer came out to settle +on such a tract and to meet the hard, new, and expensive conditions of +life in the semi-arid regions he found that he could not pay out on +the land. Perhaps he brought two or three thousand dollars with him. It +usually was the industrial mistake of the land-boomer to take from +this intending settler practically all of his capital at the start. +Naturally, when the new farmers were starved out and in one way or +another had made other plans, the country itself went to pieces. That +part of it was wisest which did not kill the goose of the golden +egg. But be these things as they may be and as they were, the whole +readjustment in agricultural values over the once measureless and +valueless cow country was a stupendous and staggering thing. + +Now appeared yet another agency of change. The high dry lands of many +of the Rocky Mountain States had long been regarded covetously by an +industry even more cordially disliked by the cattleman than the industry +of farming. The sheepman began to raise his head and to plan certain +things for himself in turn. Once the herder of sheep was a meek and +lowly man, content to slink away when ordered. The writer himself in the +dry Southwest once knew a flock of six thousand sheep to be rounded up +and killed by the cattlemen of a range into which they had intruded. +The herders went with the sheep. All over the range the feud between the +sheepmen and the cowmen was bitter and implacable. The issues in those +quarrels rarely got into the courts but were fought out on the ground. +The old Wyoming dead-line of the cowmen against intruding bands of +Green River sheep made a considerable amount of history which was never +recorded. + +The sheepmen at length began to succeed in their plans. Themselves not +paying many taxes, not supporting the civilization of the country, not +building the schools or roads or bridges, they none the less claimed the +earth and the fullness thereof. + +After the establishment of the great forest reserves, the sheepmen +coveted the range thus included. It has been the governmental policy to +sell range privileges in the forest reserves for sheep, on a per capita +basis. Like privileges have been extended to cattlemen in certain of the +reserves. Always the contact and the contest between the two industries +of sheep and cows have remained. Of course the issue even in this +ancient contest is foregone--as the cowman has had to raise his cows +under fence, so ultimately must the sheepman also buy his range in fee +and raise his product under fence. + +The wandering bands of sheep belong nowhere. They ruin a country. It +is a pathetic spectacle to see parts of the Old West in which sheep +steadily have been ranged. They utterly destroy all the game; they even +drive the fish out of the streams and cut the grasses and weeds down +to the surface of the earth. The denuded soil crumbles under their +countless hoofs, becomes dust, and blows away. They leave a waste, a +desert, an abomination. + +There were yet other phases of change which followed hard upon the heels +of our soldiers after they had completed their task of subjugating the +tribes of the buffalo Indians. After the homesteads had been proved up +in some of the Northwestern States, such as Montana and the Dakotas, +large bodies of land were acquired by certain capitalistic farmers. All +this new land had been proved to be exceedingly prolific of wheat, the +great new-land crop. The farmers of the Northwest had not yet learned +that no country long can thrive which depends upon a single crop. But +the once familiar figures of the bonanza farms of the Northwest--the +pictures of their long lines of reapers or self-binders, twenty, thirty, +forty, or fifty machines, one after the other, advancing through the +golden grain--the pictures of their innumerable stacks of wheat--the +figures of the vast mileage of their fencing--the yet more stupendous +figures of the outlay required to operate these farms, and the splendid +totals of the receipts from such operations--these at one time were +familiar and proudly presented features of boom advertising in the upper +portions of our black land belt, which day just at the eastern edge of +the old Plains. + +There was to be repeated in this country something of the history of +California. In the great valleys, such as the San Joaquin, the first +interests were pastoral, and the cowmen found a vast realm which seemed +to be theirs forever. There came to them, however, the bonanza wheat +farmers, who flourished there about 1875 and through the next decade. +Their highly specialized industry boasted that it could bake a loaf of +bread out of a wheat field between the hours of sunrise and sunset. The +outlay in stock and machinery on some of these bonanza ranches ran +into enormous figures. But here, as in all new wheat countries, the +productive power of the soil soon began to decrease. Little by little +the number of bushels per acre lessened, until the bonanza farmer found +himself with not half the product to sell which he had owned the first +few years of his operations. In one California town at one time a +bonanza farmer came in and covered three city blocks with farm machinery +which he had turned over to the bank owning the mortgages on his lands +and plant. He turned in also all his mules and horses, and retired worse +than broke from an industry in which he had once made his hundreds of +thousands. Something of this same story was to follow in the Dakotas. +Presently we heard no more of the bonanza wheat farms; and a little +later they were not. The one-crop country is never one of sound +investing values; and a land boom is something of which to +beware--always and always to beware. + +The prairie had passed; the range had passed; the illegal fences had +passed; and presently the cattle themselves were to pass--that is to +say, the great herds. As recently as five years ago (1912) it was my +fortune to be in the town of Belle Fourche, near the Black Hills--a +region long accustomed to vivid history, whether of Indians, mines, or +cows--at the time when the last of the great herds of the old industry +thereabouts were breaking up; and to see, coming down to the cattle +chutes to be shipped to the Eastern stockyards, the last hundreds of +the last great Belle Fourche herd, which was once numbered in thousands. +They came down out of the blue-edged horizon, threading their way from +upper benches down across the dusty valley. The dust of their travel +rose as it had twenty years earlier on the same old trail. But these +were not the same cattle. There was not a longhorn among them; there has +not been a longhorn on the range for many years. They were sleek, fat, +well-fed animals, heavy and stocky, even of type, all either whitefaces +or shorthorns. With them were some old-time cowmen, men grown gray in +range work. Alongside the herds, after the ancient fashion of trailing +cattle, rode cowboys who handled their charges with the same old skill. +But even the cowboys had changed. These were without exception men from +the East who had learned their trade here in the West. Here indeed +was one of the last acts of the great drama of the Plains. To many an +observer there it was a tragic thing. I saw many a cowman there the +gravity on whose face had nothing to do with commercial loss. It was the +Old West he mourned. I mourned with him. + +Naturally the growth of the great stockyards of the Middle West had an +effect upon all the cattle-producing country of the West, whether +those cattle were bred in large or in small numbers. The dealers of the +stockyards, let us say, gradually evolved a perfect understanding among +themselves as to what cattle prices ought to be at the Eastern end of +the rails. They have always pleaded poverty and explained the extremely +small margin of profit under which they have operated. Of course, the +repeated turn-over in their business has been an enormous thing; +and their industry, since the invention of refrigerator cars and the +shipment of dressed beef in tins, has been one which has extended to +all the corners of the world. The great packers would rather talk of +"by-products" than of these things. Always they have been poor, so very +poor! + +For a time the railroads east of the stockyard cities of Kansas City and +Chicago divided up _pro rata_ the dressed beef traffic. Investigation +after investigation has been made of the methods of the stockyard firms, +but thus far the law has not laid its hands successfully upon them. +Naturally of late years the extremely high price of beef has made +greater profit to the cattle raiser; but that man, receiving eight or +ten cents a pound on the hoof, is not getting rich so fast as did his +predecessor, who got half of it, because he is now obliged to feed hay +and to enclose his range. Where once a half ton of hay might have been +sufficient to tide a cow over the bad part of the winter, the Little +Fellow who fences his own range of a few hundred acres is obliged to +figure on two or three tons, for he must feed his herd on hay through +the long months of the winter. + +The ultimate consumer, of course, is the one who pays the freight and +stands the cost of all this. Hence we have the swift growth of American +discontent with living conditions. There is no longer land for free +homes in America. This is no longer a land of opportunity. It is no +longer a poor man's country. We have arrived all too swiftly upon the +ways of the Old World. And today, in spite of our love of peace, we are +in an Old World's war! + +The insatiable demand of Americans for cheap lands assumed a certain +international phase at the period lying between 1900 and 1913 or +later--the years of the last great boom in Canadian lands. The Dominion +Government, represented by shrewd and enterprising men able to handle +large undertakings, saw with a certain satisfaction of its own the swift +passing from the market of all the cheap lands of the United States. +It was proved to the satisfaction of all that very large tracts of +the Canadian plains also would raise wheat, quite as well as had the +prairies of Montana or Dakota. The Canadian railroads, with lands to +sell, began to advertise the wheat industry in Alberta and Saskatchewan. +The Canadian Government went into the publicity business on its own +part. To a certain extent European immigration was encouraged, but the +United States really was the country most combed out for settlers for +these Canadian lands. As by magic, millions of acres in western Canada +were settled. + +The young American farmers of our near Northwest were especially coveted +as settlers, because they knew how to farm these upper lands far better +than any Europeans, and because each of them was able to bring a little +capital of ready money into Canada. The publicity campaign waged by +Canadians in our Western States in one season took away more than a +hundred and fifty thousand good young farmers, resolved to live under +another flag. In one year the State of Iowa lost over fifteen million +dollars of money withdrawn from bank deposits by farmers moving across +the line into Canada. + +The story of these land rushes was much the same there as it had been +with us. Not all succeeded. The climatic conditions were far more +severe than any which we had endured, and if the soil for a time in some +regions seemed better than some of our poorest, at least there waited +for the one-crop man the same future which had been discovered for +similar methods within our own confines. But the great Canadian +land booms, carefully fostered and well developed, offered a curious +illustration of the tremendous pressure of all the populations of the +world for land and yet more land. + +In the year 1911 the writer saw, all through the Peace River Valley and +even in the neighborhood of the Little Slave Lake, the advance-guard +of wheat farmers crowding out even beyond the Canadian frontier in the +covetous search for yet more cheap land. In 1912 I talked with a +school teacher, who herself had homestead land in the Judith Basin +of Montana--once sacred to cows--and who was calmly discussing the +advisability of going up into the Peace River country to take up yet +more homestead land under the regulations of the Dominion Government! +In the year 1913 I saw an active business done in town lots at Fort +McMurray, five hundred miles north of the last railroad of Alberta, on +the ancient Athabasca waterway of the fur trade! + +Who shall state the limit of all this expansion? The farmer has ever +found more and more land on which he could make a living; he is always +taking land which his predecessor has scornfully refused. If presently +there shall come the news that the land boomer has reached the mouth +of the Mackenzie River--as long ago he reached certain portions of the +Yukon and Tanana country--if it shall be said that men are now +selling town lots under the Midnight Sun--what then? We are building a +government railroad of our own almost within shadow of Mount McKinley +in Alaska. There are steamboats on all these great sub-Arctic rivers. +Perhaps, some day, a power boat may take us easily where I have stood, +somewhat wearied, at that spot on the Little Bell tributary of +the Porcupine, where a slab on a post said, "Portage Road to Ft. +McPherson"--a "road" which is not even a trail, but which crosses the +most northerly of all the passes of the Rockies, within a hundred miles +of the Arctic Ocean. + +Land, land, more land! It is the cry of the ages, more imperative and +clamorous now than ever in the history of the world and only arrested +for the time by the cataclysm of the Great War. The earth is well-nigh +occupied now. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, even Africa, are +colonization grounds. What will be the story of the world at the end +of the Great War none may predict. For the time there will be more land +left in Europe; but, unbelievably soon, the Great War will have been +forgotten; and then the march of the people will be resumed toward such +frontiers of the world as yet may remain. Land, land, more land! + +Always in America we have occupied the land as fast as it was feasible +to do so. We have survived incredible hardships on the mining frontier, +have lived through desperate social conditions in the cow country, have +fought many of our bravest battles in the Indian country. Always it +has been the frontier which has allured many of our boldest souls. And +always, just back of the frontier, advancing, receding, crossing it +this way and that, succeeding and failing, hoping and despairing--but +steadily advancing in the net result--has come that portion of the +population which builds homes and lives in them, and which is not +content with a blanket for a bed and the sky for a roof above. + +We had a frontier once. It was our most priceless possession. It has not +been possible to eliminate from the blood of the American West, diluted +though it has been by far less worthy strains, all the iron of the old +home-bred frontiersmen. The frontier has been a lasting and ineradicable +influence for the good of the United States. It was there we showed our +fighting edge, our unconquerable resolution, our undying faith. There, +for a time at least, we were Americans. + +We had our frontier. We shall do ill indeed if we forget and abandon its +strong lessons, its great hopes, its splendid human dreams. + + + + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + +ANDY ADAMS, "The Log of a Cowboy," 1903. "The Outlet," 1905. Homely but +excellently informing books done by a man rarely qualified for his task +by long experience in the cattle business and on the trail. Nothing +better exists than Adams's several books for the man who wishes +trustworthy information on the early American cattle business. + +GEORGE A. FORSYTH, "The Story of the Soldier," 1900. + +GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, "The Story of the Indian," 1895. + +EMERSON HOUGH, "The Story of the Cowboy," 1897. + +CHARLES HOWARD SHINN, "The Story of the Mine," 1901. + +CY WARMAN, "The Story of the Railroad," 1898. The foregoing books of +Appleton's interesting series known as "The Story of the West" are +valuable as containing much detailed information, done by contemporaries +of wide experience. + +FRANCIS PARKMAN, "The Oregon Trail," 1901, with preface by the author to +the edition of 18991. This is a reprint of the edition published in 1857 +under the title "Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life," or "The California +and Oregon Trail," and has always been held as a classic in the +literature of the West. It holds a certain amount of information +regarding life on the Plains at the middle of the last century. The +original title is more accurate than the more usual one "The Oregon +Trail," as the book itself is in no sense an exclusive study of that +historic highway. + +COLONEL R. B. MARCY, U. S. A., "Thirty Years of Army Life on the +Border," 1866. An admirable and very informing book done by an Army +officer who was also a sportsman and a close observer of the conditions +of the life about him. One of the standard books for any library of +early Western literature. + +EMERSON HOUGH, "The Story of the Outlaw," 1907. A study of the Western +desperado, with historical narratives of famous outlaws, stories of +noted border movements, Vigilante activities, and armed conflicts on the +border. + +NATHANIEL PITT LANGFORD, "Vigilante Days and Ways," 1893. A storehouse +of information done in graphic anecdotal fashion of the scenes in the +early mining camps of Idaho and Montana. Valuable as the work of a +contemporary writer who took part in the scenes he describes. + +JOHN C. VAN TRAMP, "Prairie and Rocky Mountain Adventures or Life in +the West," 1870. A study of the States and territorial regions of our +Western empire, embracing history, statistics, and geography, +with descriptions of the chief cities of the West. In large part a +compilation of earlier Western literature. + +SAMUEL BOWLES, "Our New West," 1869. Records of travel between the +Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean, with details regarding scenery, +agriculture, mines, business, social life, etc., including a full +description of the Pacific States and studies of the "Mormons, Indians, +and Chinese" at that time. + +HIRAM MARTIN CHITTENDEN, "The American Fur Trade of the Far West," 1902. +The work of a distinguished Army officer. Done with the exact care of an +Army engineer. An extraordinary collection of facts and a general view +of the picturesque early industry of the fur trade, which did so much +toward developing the American West. See also his "History of Steamboat +Navigation on the Missouri River" (1903). + +A. J. SOWELL, "Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas," +1900. A local book, but done with contemporary accuracy by a man who +also studied the Texas Rangers and who was familiar with some of the +earlier frontier characters of the Southwest. + +The foregoing volumes are of course but a few among the many scores or +hundreds which will have been read avidly by every man concerned with +frontier life or with the expansion of the American people to the West. +Space lacks for a fuller list, but the foregoing readings will serve to +put upon the trail of wider information any one interested in these and +kindred themes. + +Let especial stress again be laid upon the preeminent value of books +done by contemporaries, men who wrote, upon the ground, of things which +they actually saw and actually understood. It is not always, or perhaps +often, that these contemporary books achieve the place which they ought +to have and hold. + +Among the many books dealing with the Indians and Indian Wars, the +following may be mentioned: J. P. DUNN, "Massacres of the Mountains, A +History of the Indian Wars of the Far West," 1886. + +L. E. TEXTOR, "Official Relations between the United States and the +Sioux Indians," 1896. + +G. W. MANYPENNY, "Our Indian Wards," 1880. + +There is an extensive bibliography appended to Frederic L. Paxson's "The +Last American Frontier" (1910), the first book to bring together the +many aspects of the Far West. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 3033 *** |