The Project Gutenberg eBook of Colorado—The Bright Romance of American History, by F. C. Grable

There is a singular coincidence attached to the name of this Peak. A pike in former times was the name given to anything with a sharp point. A road with toll gates was called a pike, because the gate consisted of a pole that swung up with the small end pointing towards the sky. In olden times the name of pike, instead of peak, was given to all summits of mountains. Gradually the word pike gave way to peak, and the former finally became obsolete. So in the name of Pike's Peak, we have it so securely named, that even the highest legislation in the land could not take away from it the name of Pike. And in this towering peak and its companions, if Prof. Agassiz is right, we have the first dry land that was lifted out of the great world's waste of waters. Colorado is to be congratulated that it has a monument in its midst that will forever commemorate the memory of a good man, who was intellectually, physically and morally clean and strong; who was faithful to every trust; tender in his sympathies; lofty in his ideals and character; and who loved his country so much, that he was willing to give it all he had—his life.

As footprints on the sands of the ocean's beach are blotted out by winds and waves, so a Chapter of Colorado's History has been torn from its pages and can never be reproduced—the hunter and trapper. Exploring parties sent out by the Government were required to make careful observations, and a minute record of all they saw. It is by this we can follow them through their wanderings amidst primeval scenes, and can picture them moving slowly over the plains, solitary or in little groups, struggling forward, often hungry, lame, sick and desolate. But there will ever remain an untold story of those early times; as it can never be written by the hands long stilled, nor ever spoken by the lips long silenced. In that buried period are blended the romance, tragedy and adventures of the hunters and trappers who frequented Colorado in the beginning of the last century. They were few in number, mostly of French extraction, with St. Louis as their home. They were a type whose like will never be seen again, for the reasons for their existing can never again be duplicated. They were Indian Traders, who went at first to the outskirts of civilization, exchanging inexpensive articles for the rich furs of the Indians. As their acquaintance grew with the natives, they crowded into the Indians' country, and following the streams, took the otter and beaver at first hand. Because of their being so few in number, they were rarely molested; then, too, they were a medium by which the natives could realize on their furs, pittance though it was.

Some of these trappers would remain out on their expeditions for several years at a time, often living with the Indians and adopting their ways. As their clothes fell to pieces from age and use, they would replenish from the primitive blanket costumes of the Indians, whom in time they came to resemble. Often they would marry Indian wives and settle down to the nomadic life of the aborigines. Sometimes there would crowd upon them such stirring memories of the experiences they had once enjoyed, that the wives and children would be left to tears and loneliness, while the trapper with his face set toward the East, with his pack on his back, would tramp to the settlements, sometimes to remain, sometimes to return. We know some of the men who visited the mountains and streams of Colorado; knowledge of their presence here has floated down to us in various ways. When Major Long came on his exploring trip in 1819, he secured as guides two French Trappers, then living with the tribe of Pawnee Indians in southeastern Nebraska, who had trapped in the region of the Rocky Mountains.

James Pursley was here in 1805 and traded among the Indians; Lieutenant Pike in his report, speaks of him as the first white man who ever crossed the plains. He made the first discovery of gold in Colorado, which he found at the foot of Lincoln Mountain, doubtless at Fairplay on the Platte River, where once extensive placer diggings existed. As late as 1875, the Company operating there had a large number of Chinamen at work. The immense grass-grown gulch, wide and deep and long, at the edge of Fairplay, is the excavation out of which hundreds of thousands of dollars were taken. Colorado has done well to commemorate the name of Abraham Lincoln in one of its loftiest mountains.

A Frenchman named La Lande was sent out by an Illinois merchant in 1804, to make an investigation of the country and report. He came along the Platte Valley, crossed over to Santa Fe, where he concluded to remain. There was a party of French Trappers known to have been here about 1800 who went South into Arizona, in search of untouched territory to ply their avocation. Philip Covington in 1827 passed up the Cache La Poudre Valley with a pack train, on his way to Green River with supplies. He returned in 1828 and established a colony of trappers at La Porte, one of the oldest settlements in Colorado, and which is located near Ft. Collins. He was in the employ of the American Fur Company.

The trappers would often go alone into these vast solitudes, with pack horses to carry their supplies in, and their furs but. Sometimes they would die in their lonely retreats, and never be heard of again, only as some sign of the fate that had overtaken them would be found years later. After a time, there were wagon routes of travel along the Arkansas River, with a trading post at Fort Bent and one at Santa Fe; also up the South Platte River, with trading centers at Ft. St. Vrain and at Ft. Lupton; and up the North Platte River, with the business centering at Ft. Laramie. Sometimes trappers who were brought out in the freighting wagons in the Spring from St. Louis by the Fur-Trading Companies, would be left with supplies along the streams, and in the Fall they would be picked up and taken with their peltries back to St. Louis.

The Astor Trail was made in 1810 through South Dakota west to the Coast. A great impetus was given to the fur business by the Lewis and Clark Exploring Party in 1804. They opened up the first Coast to Coast trail, and were the first white men to cross the Continent between the British operations on the North, and the Spanish on the South. Lewis had been President Jefferson's Private Secretary, and Captain Clark was his friend. They traveled eighty-five hundred miles, and they nationalized the fur business which grew to such proportions that years after they had opened up the line of travel, we were selling in London, alone, two million one hundred and seventy thousand furs annually. The rich peltries then were what gold and silver were later, and what grain, alfalfa, fruit, sugar beets and potatoes are now, and will be as long as water, soil, and sunshine blend. Buffalo and otter skins brought in the western market three dollars each; beaver skins four dollars; coon and muskrat twenty-five cents; deer skins thirty-eight cents per pound.

The early trappers could have been of inestimable benefit to the Government, had they been called upon to help solve the perplexing Indian problems that for so many years confronted us. They knew the Indians, their languages, habits and customs; and had their knowledge and influence with the natives been utilized, we might have peaceably settled many of the difficulties that required the sacrifice of so many lives and the unnecessary expenditure of so much money.

The fur industry, however, depended upon the keen perception of an awkward, unlettered, German boy for its growth and quick development. He came to London from Germany, with his bundle under his arm, to help in his brother's music store. John Jacob Ashdoer was his name, which by evolution became "Astor." With great frugality and unceasing industry, he saved enough in two years to pay his passage on a sailing ship to America, and there was enough left of his little hoard to buy seven flutes of his uncle, his sole stock in trade. When he reached this country, he traded one of his flutes for some furs; and that particular flute, and those particular furs, made history. It turned his attention to the fur trade, and laid the foundation for the greatest landed estate in America. With his pack on his back, he traveled among the Indian tribes of the Eastern States, and got their furs in exchange for gaudy trinkets, such as beads and ribbons. He personally took the furs to London, so as to realize the highest possible price for them and rapidly grew rich. In 1800 when he had only been in this country fifteen years, he was clearing fifty thousand dollars on a single trip of one of his sailing vessels.

It was at this time that Astor founded Astoria as a fur trading point, on the Columbia River, expecting to operate by ship, as well as freighting overland by the way of Ft. Laramie, and thus control the fur traffic along the tributary rivers. The destruction of Astoria by the British kept him from realizing his dream of becoming "the richest man in the world." Washington Irving and John Jacob Astor were friends, and the latter placed in Irving's hands all the records of his Company's operations, from which Irving gathered much interesting data, and many thrilling experiences from the lives of the early trappers and hunters. He wrote "Astoria" as a compliment to his friend. In this book he pictures the Rocky Mountains as having an elevation in places of twenty-five thousand feet, but frankly states that it is only conjecture, since their altitude had never been measured. The average height of the Rocky Mountains exceed that of the famous Alps, a number of the noted peaks being above thirteen thousand feet.

"It is a region almost as vast and trackless as the ocean, and at the time of which we treat, but little known, excepting through the vague accounts of Indian hunters. A part of their route would lay across an immense tract, stretching North and South for hundreds of miles along the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and drained by the tributaries of the Missouri and the Mississippi. This region, which resembles one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, has not inaptly been termed 'The Great American Desert.' It spreads forth into undulating and trackless plains and desolate sandy wastes, wearisome to the eye from their extent and monotony, and which are supposed by geologists to have formed the ancient floor of the ocean, countless ages since, when its primeval waves beat against the granite bases of the Rocky Mountains.

"It is a land where no man permanently abides; for, in certain seasons of the year, there is no food, either for the hunter or his steed. The herbage is parched and withered; the brooks and streams are dried up; the buffalo, the elk and the deer have wandered to distant parts, keeping within the verge of expiring verdure, and leaving behind them a vast uninhabited solitude, seamed by ravines, the beds of former torrents, but now serving only to tantalize and increase the thirst of the traveler. Such is the nature of this immense wilderness of the far West, which apparently defies cultivation, and the habitation of civilized life * * * Here may spring up new and mongrel races * * * Some may gradually become pastoral hordes, like those rude and migratory people, half shepherd, half warrior, who, with their flocks and herds, roam the plains of Upper Asia; but, others, it is to be apprehended, will become predatory bands, mounted on the fleet steeds of the prairies, with the open plains for their marauding ground, and the mountains for their retreats and lurking places. Here they may resemble those great hordes of the North; 'Gog and Magog with their bands,' that haunted the gloomy imaginations of the prophets, 'A great Company and a mighty host all riding upon horses, and warring upon those nations which were at rest, and dwelt peaceably, and had gotten cattle and goods.'"

1819 Fourteen years have passed since Lieutenant Pike sold his two little sail boats to the Osage Indians as he left the Missouri River and started on his overland journey. Within this brief period a great invention has marked the progress of the century. After years of experiments, failures and disappointments; after sinking one vessel and abandoning others; Robert Fulton has returned from his trip to France, bringing with him his steam engine with which he had perfected water navigation, and by his genius linked together all the nations of the earth, increased the wealth and commerce of the world, and won for himself enduring fame.

The next exploring party was to start in a steamship owned by the Government of the United States, and under the leadership of Stephen Harriman Long. Born at Hopkington, New Hampshire, December 30, 1784, Long had graduated at Dartmouth College, and entered the corps of Engineers of the U.S. Army, in 1814; had been a professor of mathematics at the Military Academy at West Point, and had been transferred to the Topographical Engineers in 1815, with the brevet-rank of Major.

James Monroe was President, and John C. Calhoun Secretary of War, and they gave Major Long elaborate instructions as to his duty. We had owned the vast Louisiana Territory for sixteen years, and knew but little more about it than when it came into our possession. So, Long was to explore it and make a very thorough investigation of the "country between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, the Missouri and its tributaries, the Red River, the Arkansas River, and the Mississippi above the mouth of the Missouri."

On May 3, 1819, the party of nine started from the arsenal on the Allegheny River just above Pittsburgh, at which point they entered the Ohio River. Their steamer carried them down the Ohio to its junction with the Mississippi, a distance of about nine hundred miles, where they arrived May 30th. Here they turned north up the Mississippi River, about one hundred and seventy-five miles to St. Louis, which they reached June 9th. Then they steamed West up the Missouri, over the course that Pike had sailed fourteen years before, to the same point where the Osage River enters the Missouri, near the present location of Jefferson City and one hundred and thirty-three miles from the Mississippi River. The party divided; part of the number disembarked and proceeded with horses through Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska, meeting those of the party who remained on the boat at Council Bluffs on September 19th. There they established their winter quarters on the banks of the Missouri, about five miles below the present City of Council Bluffs, and so named because of a Council held with the Indians by the Government at that point. In the log houses, built by Pike and his party, and with the supplies they had brought on the ship, the party passed a comfortable and leisurely winter. On June 6, 1820, they started from Council Bluffs, the party then consisting of twenty men and twenty-eight horses. It is interesting to know what their pack ponies carried. Here is an invoice:

They followed along the Platte River, and stopped for a time at the junction of the North Fork of that River with the South Fork, where North Platte is now situated. Here they tell of watching the beavers cut down a cottonwood tree. They observed that when it was nearly ready to fall, one of the beavers swam out into the river and posted itself as a sentinel. As soon as it saw the tops of the branches begin to move, it gave the signal by giving the water a resounding slap with its flat tail, when every beaver scampered out of reach of the falling tree. It must have been a moonlight night when they were there, otherwise they would not have seen the beavers at work, for they reverse nature's order and sleep in the daytime, working at night. They sleep in their houses, with their bodies in the water, and their heads resting out of the water on a stick. At twilight, a wise old mother beaver comes out and swims all around the pond or river, looking and smelling. Their sense of smell is very keen, and those who wish to observe them do so from treetops near the water. If after a careful investigation, the sentinel decides there are no man people, or wild animals around, one slap of the tail on the water is given, and out pops the nose of every beaver of the band, and all proceed with their work, exactly where it ended at sunrise. If the one on picket duty sees or hears anything that seems suspicious, three sharp resounding strokes of the tail sends every beaver in a flash to his hiding place, and nothing will tempt them out again that night. They have an instinct for making a tree fall in exactly the place where they want it, and it is used as a foundation for the numerous dams they build in the streams.

On June 30th, Long's party got their first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains. Later on, when they were camped near Ft. Lupton, opposite the Peak, they gave it the name of Long, its altitude being fourteen thousand two hundred and seventy feet.

None of the party were ever near the Peak. Two of them, more courageous than the others, rode out one memorable morning, under a cloudless sky, with their faces towards the snowy range—rode away to defeat and oblivion. As morning turned to noon and they seemed no nearer to the pinnacle than when they started, they retraced their steps across the silent plain. Thus they lost an opportunity of forever linking their names to undying fame. Had they proceeded, they could have electrified a nation by writing into their report a page that would have remained undimmed to the end of time. It was theirs, had they embraced it, to have discovered Estes Park, the gorgeous setting that crowns the approach to the King of Peaks. But they turned back; back from the snow-white mountains beckoning them onward; from the purple tints that veiled the mystic summits in a mellow haze; from the lights and shadows playing over hill and dale, under a canopy of fleecy clouds.

Beautiful Estes Park! Rarest gem of all the sparkling jewels that adorn the bosom of this fair world! In you the Divine Hand has created the masterpiece of all earthly beauty! You are so freighted down with scenic blessings that the mould was broken in your formation and there can be no duplication! Glorious is your resting place under the cloudless sky, as you lie in the embraces of the soft and balmy air that envelops you! Beautiful are your grassy slopes and velvet meadows, asleep beneath the gleaming stars, awake under the mellow skies, reaching away in a panoramic view of exquisite colorings! Faultless are Nature's highways as they wind in and out among your fir and spruce, your pine and aspen, through silvery glades and leafy dells, by rocky gorges and towering cliffs! Lovely are the azure lakes that rest against your mountain sides, reflecting in their limpid depths your rocks and trees, your lights and shades, your fleecy clouds and snow-clad peaks! How gentle is the flow of your sounding streams; how they eddy and fall; how they tumble and roar, as they hurry along to their far-away home in the sea! How grand and terrible are the awe-inspiring storms that gather in the mountains high above you, as cloud rolls upon cloud, black, dense, lowering; how the terrific peals of thunder crash from peak to peak, like the duel of artillery meeting on the field of carnage in the mighty shock of battle!

As light follows darkness, as sunshine comes after the rain, as peace succeeds strife, the clouds unveil, the tempest is calmed, the glory of the sun dispels the gloom, and the storm lashed pinnacles robed in eternal snow, light up under the glow of the lingering twilight. The tiny throated songsters warble their simple evening notes, ever old and forever new, rivaling the music of the streams, as they flood this paradise of parks with an ecstasy of melody. The eagle mounts skyward, rising higher and higher, in ever widening circles, standing out against the sky, then soaring away beyond the vision to his eyrie in the gaping gorge of the lofty crest.

The opalescent hues envelop the mountain rims. The fiery red, flames into a glow, melts to the softest purple, blends to the rarest gray, and in a delirium of rich colors the sun goes down in a cloud of glory. The sublimity of the scene clings like a halo around the sky-piercing summits. The day darkens, and the rosy tints of sunset fade into a flood of moonlight that mirrors the shining stars in the rivers, flowing far below under the mysterious shadows of the mighty cliffs.

Long and his party followed along the Platte River by the place where Denver is located, and on to Colorado Springs, at which point some of them attempted to climb Pike's Peak, but did not succeed. Greatly to their discredit, they named that Peak for "James," one of their number, instead of for "Pike," its discoverer. The people saw to it, however, that the name thus given it, should not be permanent. The people are nearly always right. The party proceeded on to Canon City and Pueblo, and then this exploring party made a discovery; they discovered that their biscuits were running short, so they immediately started home. They had left Council Bluffs, June 6th; they knew how long five hundred pounds of biscuits would last twenty men; so they knew they were on a pleasure trip and would have to start back July 19th, just one month and thirteen days after they set out, and ten days after they reached Colorado. When we think of the faithful Pike and his loyal men, freezing, starving, persisting; think of them with worn-out cotton clothing in winter, instead of warm flannel; of making shoes out of raw buffalo hides; of persevering in the face of every obstruction, and then read Long's report of starting back in midsummer, for the want of biscuits, our admiration grows for Lieutenant Pike and his devoted party of courageous men.

Major Long's report to the Government was of such a discouraging nature that it retarded the settlement of the country for nearly half a century, and it should never have been written. He was quoted in the newspapers, and people everywhere read of a "desert inhabited by savages," a sentiment that became so firmly fixed in the minds of many in the Eastern States that the prejudices of the people have only in recent years been wholly removed. He often refers in his report to the enormous herds of fat buffalo that "darken the plains." How this queer-shaped animal with its powerful front and slender hind parts originated, or where it came from, will forever remain an unsolved mystery like the beginning of the race of Indians. They were here in immense droves. Ernest Seton Thompson thinks that there were seventy millions within the compass of their range, which was from the Allegheny Mountains on the East, to Nevada on the West; and that fifty millions of them were west of the Mississippi River. He bases his estimate on the amount of acreage they grazed over, and the number of animals the pasturage would sustain. I think he is far too low in his estimate. If we assign forty feet of space to each buffalo they would occupy an area, if bunched together, of but sixty-four thousand two hundred and eighty acres, or only one hundred square miles, which would be equal to a herd twenty-five miles long and four miles wide. The Government reports give an estimate of two hundred and fifty millions killed, from 1850 to 1883.

All the reports of explorers, scouts and emigrants dwell on the magnitude of these immense herds, which were so numerous that "the earth as far as the eye can reach, seems to be alive and to move." Coronado was never out of sight of them in traveling the seven hundred miles from New Mexico to Kansas, according to his letter to the King. Along every pioneer trail the prairies were covered in every direction with them, and away up in the Wind River Country, in the land of the Wyoming, Longfellow sings of the

"Billowy bays of grass ever rolling in shadow and sunshine,

Bright and luxuriant clusters of roses and purple amorphas,

Over them wander the buffalo herds, and the elk and the roebuck."

These peaceful herds, as they roamed over the plains, had their Nemesis at their heels, in the vast number of Indians trailing behind them and living upon them; while on all sides were thousands of hungry grey wolves devouring the calves or attacking the old, at will. In spite of these decimating influences, and their companion, the blizzard, the buffalo herds multiplied, and the Great Plains themselves seemed to be "alive and to move," as the countless numbers slowly grazed over them. Buffalo steak was good eating, and so adaptable that J. M. Bagley of Colorado, the veteran wood engraver, in relating early experiences tells how he started a restaurant on one buffalo ham, from which he served veal, beef, mutton, bear, venison, and all other wild game!

The first telegraph line reaching out over the plains, was a very primitive one. The posts were short and light, and they carried but one wire. A great deal of trouble arose from the cattle rubbing against the poles and wrecking the line. This was remedied by driving long heavy spikes into the poles at the point where the cattle would do the rubbing. But the workman got out of the cattle plague, only to get into worse trouble from the buffalo. They liked the spikes, and used the sharp points to scratch their rough hides. There seemed to be a buffalo language, for those shaggy and amiable animals flocked to the spikes from all sections. They reveled in the luxury of having their backs scratched, and to show their appreciation rubbed so hard that they completely demolished the line. Telegraph wire entangled in the horns of a buffalo was found as far away as Canada when it was killed. Only the rebuilding of the line with heavy poles and leaving off the scratching comforts, enabled business to proceed.

It seems strange that everyone lost sight of the productiveness that must lie in land that would sustain such quantities of grass-devouring animals; and that in the instructions given by Congress, the Presidents of the United States, and the Secretaries of War, to the leaders of these various exploring parties, the important question of irrigation should have never been considered, nor mentioned by the explorers themselves. It is true, irrigation was wholly unknown in our country at the time, but Egypt and China had been artificially watered for centuries, and it is strange that no Congressman or Government official, or enterprising newspaper editor called attention to this vital question.

The Long party divided as it started East. Captain Bell with eleven men went down the Arkansas River, while Major Long with nine, went farther south in search of the Red River. They all met at Ft. Smith, in western Arkansas, the middle of September; thence the united party crossed through Arkansas to the Mississippi River, where their trip ended.

Major Long looked like a college professor. He wore glasses over very black eyes; had thin, firm lips; high cheek bones; long wavy hair, and was close shaven, except for a little tuft of side whiskers back close to his ears. He later explored the source of the Mississippi River for the Government, and then became Engineer in Chief for the Western and Atlantic Railroad in Georgia.

When Major Long in 1805 turned the prow of his steamer into the mouth of the Missouri River, the first that ever ploughed its waters, he little thought that just above the junction of those two rivers would some day, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi, be built a City that would be named Alton; and little did he think that, fifty-nine years later, at the age of eighty, his grave would there be dug, and there would he be buried.

Of all those to whom we owe honor and loyalty, and affection; to whom belongs the first place of honor at the banqueting board; the highest monument to mark their passing; whose memory should be longest cherished, and beside whose grave we should tread most lightly; in all the generations of the past and future, we owe our allegiance first and always to the old settler! The very name marks the whole span of life. We see its spring time—youth and strength, teeming with energy; we see its autumn—the last leaf upon the tree, clinging, poised, ready to float away into eternal silence. Twilight, the lengthening shadows, the old settler; they blend into a harmonious setting for the slowly descending curtain upon the drama of life, ere the "silver cord is loosened or the golden bowl broken at the fountain." The old settler—what a train of thought the words suggest! He is the corner stone of civilization. He it is who pushes out beyond the confines of safety; out into scenes of privation and hardships; into conditions calling for sacrifices and disappointments; into danger and ofttimes death. Through it all he is so brave and so loyal, so earnest and capable, so patient and cheerful, so tender in his sympathies, so strong in his forceful grasp, so superior in his principles, that his name deserves to be written high up on the walls of the Temple of Fame! Nationally and locally, as a people, we have a feeling of veneration for those who clear the way and conquer the formidable obstacles that stand in the path of progress. They develop the highest type of rugged manhood and womanhood—strong, fearless, independent and self-sustaining. For nearly three centuries history has been repeating itself in this country of ours. As the Pilgrim Fathers endured and conquered, so in each succeeding generation have there been those who have given the days of their lives to labor, in the midst of loneliness, and the nights to vigil, surrounded by danger, that security and prosperity might come to those who followed them. They are the battle scarred veterans who fought for a foothold in a hostile country, and through their untiring efforts and indomitable courage made possible the enjoyment of others in the midst of congenial and ennobling surroundings.

Napoleon, as all the world knows, instituted the Order of the Legion of Honor in recognition of merit, civil or military. To be a member of that Order was an honor so great that the decorations were cherished long afterwards by the descendants of the recipients. History records that a French Grenadier, returning from a leave of absence, was astonished to find the Austrian Army secretly advancing through the mountains by a comparatively unknown path. Hastening forward to give warning to the handful of soldiers stationed in a strong tower to defend the path, he found to his dismay that they had fled, leaving their thirty muskets behind. Undeterred by such a calamity, he entered the tower, barricaded the door and loaded his muskets, determined to hold the post against the whole Austrian Army. This he succeeded in doing for thirty-six hours. Every shot told. Artillerymen were killed the moment they appeared in the narrow path, and cannon were useless. Assaults were repulsed with great loss in killed and wounded. Finally, when not another round of ammunition was left, the Grenadier signalled that the Post would be evacuated if the garrison could march out with its arms, and with its colors flying proceed to the French Army. This was agreed to; and when the old Grenadier came staggering out under all the muskets he could carry, and it developed that he was the whole garrison, the admiration of the Austrians was boundless; they sent him with an escort and a note to the appreciative Napoleon, who knighted him on the spot. When, later, he was killed in battle, he was continued on the roll call of his regiment, and when the name of Latour d'Auvergne was called, the ranking sergeant stepped forward, saluted the commanding officer, and answered in a loud voice, "dead on the field of honor."

To such a class belong the courageous, vigilant and enthusiastic advance guard of civilization everywhere. They placed the plowshare and the pruning hook where the rifle and the tomahawk long held sway. They worked with rough hands and stout hearts to solve the problems that beset the West, and to make gardens bloom where the desert had cast its blight for centuries. They brought order out of chaos and from the woof of time wove the lasting fabric of justice and good government. Such were the old settlers of our own beautiful mountain land. They came, many of them, in the slow, monotonous, wearisome, creaking, covered wagon drawn by heavy-footed oxen; through midday heat and wintry blasts, through blinding storms of sand and snow, they wended their way for months from far-off countries, sometimes leaving their dead in unmarked graves by the wayside, and with set faces and leaden hearts, pushed on to unknown scenes.

Half a century has wrought wonderful changes! Now, the traveler sees the sun go down upon the middle west, with the Missouri winding its way to the sea; the morning's radiance glints the summit of the Great Divide, and unrolls a picture of rare beauty and majesty! Five hundred miles in a night; sleep, comfort, luxury; no hunger, or thirst, or fear, or discomfort; cushioned seats, soft carpets, fine linen; dining cars shining with polished woodwork, beveled mirrors, solid silver; a moving palace such as was unknown even in the days of luxurious Rome.

I have listened to many pathetic stories of our old pioneers that touched me deeply. The history of those distant days is full of interest. An air of romance envelops those early western scenes. Many a troth was plighted in the long trip across the plains, and many a friendship was formed that ended only in death. The novelist clothes his characters with the imaginary joys and griefs of imaginary people; but imagery never was and never can be as interesting as real incidents in the lives of real people. A dignity crowns the memory of the men whose feet were set where never human feet were placed before; honors cling around the names of those who lived in the days when the buffalo roamed the plains unmolested, when the skulking savage lurked in hiding, and when the weird bark of the hungry coyote penetrated the solitude of night. Out of such experiences empires are born. The founders of our prosperous state little knew that here they were opening up the richest mineral and farming country in all the world! Nor did they realize that they would here plant the future metropolis of the Great Rocky Mountain Region. We honor them—the living and the dead—for what they are, and what they did! Their ranks are rapidly thinning. It will not be long until at Old Settlers Roll Call there will be no response—save only from out the stillness will be heard, like an appreciative echo, the voices of their successors as they answer, "Dead on the field of honor."

1826 Down in the blue-grass region of Kentucky; down in the land of the cotton, the corn and the banjo; where the tiny feathered warblers carol their sweetest roundelays; where perennial flowers unceasingly bloom, and the trees are early at their blossomings; where silvery streamlets are kissed by the moonlight, and linger in the embraces of the warm southern suns; in that land, the home of lovely women, splendid men and fine horses; that has sent out its great generals, polished orators and renowned statesmen—two children were born, nearby, in the very memorable year of 1809. Abraham Lincoln grew to an uncrowned kingship. Christopher Carson won the highest place in the hearts of the empire builders of this wonderful West; and their names will never die. Lincoln was splitting rails by day, studying by the light of a log fire by night, and climbing hand over hand to his bed on the floor of the loft, by means of pegs driven in the logs of the cabin, as later he went hand over hand straight into the confidence and hearts of his countrymen.

Carson, the father, had apprenticed Kit, the son, to a saddler, as was the custom of those times. He rose before the break of dawn, made saddles and bridles all day and far into the night and was paid with poor food, a comfortless bed, and cheap and scanty clothing. Such was to be the lot of this unhappy boy until he was twenty-one. But he rebelled. Out into the blackness of the night, and to the light of freedom, crept the friendless youth, without a penny in his pocket or a bundle under his arm! And to such freedom! The limitless West with its stirring scenes beckoned him and he sped away, ahead of the advertisement that called him back, and in which the munificent reward of one cent for his return was offered by the man who had the legal right to call himself the master. At Franklin, where he lived, he had absorbed the spirit of the widening West that was calling him thither, and he quickly became an important factor in its upbuilding. Along that memorable Santa Fe trail, he crossed and re-crossed the southeastern part of Colorado.

Kit Carson became noted as a fearless hunter, trapper, miner, stockman, farmer, scout, guide, Indian fighter, Indian pacificator, treaty maker, Indian agent—all culminating in his Brigadier-generalship in the Civil War. In every capacity, he was faithful, persevering, energetic and capable. He learned the languages of the different tribes with painstaking study. He grew to understand the Indians as individuals, their ways, and their thoughts; he became their advisor and counselor, settled differences between tribes, and between the tribes and the Government; was the Government's advisor in treaty making, and was the first man to urge the attempt to domesticate the Indians. He knew the Spanish language as well as the Mexican and Indian patois; and he aided the Government in the solution of its troubles with the Indians as well as with the Mexicans and Spaniards. His influence for good stretched across a country, beginning with the Missouri River on the East and ending where the restless waves of civilization listened to the beating of the surges on the shores of the Pacific. He was a Lincoln sort of man with malice toward none. He had few enemies, and many friends. He was for peace, when peace was possible, but how he could fight when nothing else would do! Abbott, who does not realize that the towering peaks, the murmuring streams and the boundless plains, develop high ideals through the silent language that is all their own, says of Carson, "It is strange that the wilderness could have formed so estimable a character."

In Christopher Carson I see a serious man, modest and retiring, soft spoken, with quiet manners, medium in height, blue eyes and broad shouldered. I see a priestly looking man, with thoughtful mien, with face clean shaven; high, broad forehead, with receding hair flowing toward his shoulders, long and wavy; thin, firmly compressed lips; in all, very like the strong, splendid face of the world-famed artist, Liszt. I see a domestic man, adoring his amiable Spanish wife. I see him lying on his buffalo robe, with his children playing over him, and hunting the sugar lumps out of pockets that were never empty. I see him standing, gazing into the eyes of the Indian whose hand he clasps, vieing with each other in erectness, while at their feet lie the idle guns and cartridges, the broken bows and arrows, and the pruning hooks into which their swords have been beaten. I see him dying, two score and three years ago, with his honest homely face illuminated, as he smiles his "adios" to all about him and sinks gently into his last, long, dreamless sleep.

1838 Seventy-five years have come and gone since Richens Wooten joined a wagon train at Independence, Missouri, and came out over the Santa Fe trail. Until 1859 he felt that he was temporarily in the West; that he would go back to his old Missouri home and end his days in the midst of the peaceful scenes of boyhood joys, the memory of which had clung to him through all the exciting years of his frontier life. Then when he had achieved success; had money and property; had loaded his belongings on his wagons; had turned the heads of the horses to the East; looked into the faces of the friends who had surrounded him all the years, at the plains he knew and loved, at the magnificent mountains, silent, majestic, eternal, at the rivers murmuring to him as they went by—his courage faltered! He awoke from the dream he had dreamed for years, unhitched his horses, unloaded his wagons, and lived and died in the country from which his heart-strings could not be severed.

Like those of his day, he was everything he should be. He hunted and trapped; he was a Government scout; he raised stock; he farmed; everyone knew him as "Uncle Dick," and they knew him wherever a trail was laid. He lived at the junction of the Huerfano River with the Arkansas River about twenty miles East of Pueblo. He farmed there by a process of simple irrigation, as far back as 1854, which made him the Pioneer farmer of Colorado. He had a mill that was built by his own hands, that was run by water power in a sleepy sort of way. He would empty a couple of sacks of grain into the hopper at night and the flour would be ready for breakfast in the morning. He trapped mostly along the streams of Colorado and New Mexico. By handling his furs himself, at St. Louis, he realized as high as Fifteen Dollars for a beaver skin. He says "robes" were the cause of the disappearance of the vast buffalo herds; that those killed for meat by the whites and Indians would have made no appreciable inroad on the numbers that inhabited the Great Western Plains, but desire for hides caused their ruthless slaughter by the tens of thousands; that while they were gentle at first and had to be driven out of the way of the emigrant trains, they were hunted so much that later they became savage and would fight. He started a buffalo farm in 1840 where Pueblo is located, and sold the young to menageries. Wooten hated the Indians with exceeding great hate. There was a reason. He had chased them many and many a time; shot at them, hit them, had seen them fall, and their riderless ponies flee over the prairies, while a form lay silent beneath the sun and beneath the stars. But sometimes the tables were turned, and sometimes the chaser was chased! Ah! There's the rub, for Wooten could never look defeat in the face and be happy.

The Indians, he says, had a system of long distance communication, carried on among themselves by means of fire and smoke signals from the mountain tops. A puff of smoke was like a telephone message, and as easily understood; a second puff had its own peculiar meaning, and a blaze carried its special message to distant tribes. The whole country could be aroused in a day and night—the signals being taken up and repeated from mountain top to mountain top. The Indians spread themselves out to sleep in their tents, on buffalo robes or willow mattresses, with their feet towards a common fire in the center. They would place their dead in trees, or on a platform built on the top of four poles planted in the ground. The dead would be placed in a blanket, a buffalo robe wrapped around it, and then all bound together with strips of hide; the dead would thus lie for years. It was gruesome to happen upon these graveyard scenes at night, with the uncanny owls hooting in the treetops, and the wolves howling their warning notes. The Indians rode bareback with a rope for a bridle that would be fastened around the under jaw of the pony, which was trained to obey the slightest pressure of the knees or swaying of the body.

One of the feats of which Wooten was proud, and with good reason, was taking a great drove of sheep through to California. To do this successfully in the face of possible depredations from the Indians, to whom the sheep is a savory morsel; to escape the bands of thousands of aggressive grey wolves; to swim unbridged rivers when sheep so dislike to swim; to follow narrow mountain paths where overcrowding would precipitate the herd into the chasms below; to get by the crops of the Mormons who were all the time hunting for trouble; to reach his destination with every sheep fatter than when he started—that, says Uncle Dick, was the work of an artist.

Wooten came to Denver in 1858, where a few cabins had been built, and where a handful of people had centered. He started a store and built a two-story log house, the first pretentious building ever erected in Denver. Later, he built a frame residence when the saw mill came, a mill that had been stolen in the East and brought to this out-of-the-way country, where it was thought it could never be traced—in which, however, the plunderers were disappointed.

But Uncle Dick felt crowded. He could not breathe. He was elbowed by the people who were settling here. The wilds called to him. He wanted to get out alone, under the quiet stars; to have the glories of the setting sun all to himself; to see the wonderful moonlight shadows in the rivers; to feel the great orb creeping up in the morning, as he had seen it out on the broad plains and from the mountain tops nearly all the years of his life. So he went away; off to New Mexico, upon whose mountains he got a Government Charter for building a toll road by the abysses and along the over shadowing crags to shorten the trail. And there, with the years creeping on, he set himself down by the side of his toll gate, which was never shut down for the Indians, for they could not understand that in all this great free world, a road was not as free as sunshine or air. But is not this all told by Richens Wooten himself, in his very own book, in the picturesque and forceful style of a picturesque and forceful pioneer?

And finally, the toll that is taken from all mankind was collected from him, and he passed out alone by the road that every one must travel, and over which no one has ever traveled twice.

1838 Straight as an arrow, towering six feet and three inches, stands Oliver P. Wiggins, the oldest living pioneer of all the "winners of the West." Eighty-nine years have brought a dimness to the eyes and a slowness to the steps, but they have not touched the keen intellect, trained by such experiences as no other living man will ever acquire. He remembers distinctly every event that has occurred during all the years of his life on the plains. He talks slowly and impressively, and you feel as you leave his presence that you have been in touch with another age and another race of people. He will tell you his story as he told it to me.

"I was born on the Niagara River; that is, on an Island just above Niagara Falls, where my father had taken up some land. His father had selected his own land near by the American side of the Falls, and it became later on very valuable. Boylike, I wanted to fight Indians, and I dreamed about scouts and tomahawks, and the war dance, for I was a reader of the blood-curdling cheap Indian novels of that day. So I left home when I was fifteen and went by sailboat from Buffalo to Detroit, where I found some French emigrants just starting to Kankakee, Illinois, where they were going to take up land. I went with them as far as Ft. Dearborn, which afterwards became Chicago; it had but about three hundred people then and as many soldiers; there was one short street just South of the Chicago River, and among the houses was one they called a hotel that had nine rooms. A squaw man, that is, a white man with an Indian wife, was sent from the Fort with a paper to St. Louis, that had something to do with paying the Indians their annuities by the Government. I went along in the canoe down the Illinois River, and the Indians, knowing what we were going for, kept joining us in their canoes, until there must have been two thousand following us when we reached St. Louis. There was not a single house all the way from Chicago to St. Louis, which was not known as St. Louis then. Later my uncle settled there, and had the Wiggins Ferry, and four acres of land on what was known then as 'Bloody Island.' He sold it recently for Three Million Dollars. The Indians had some flour, bacon and blankets apportioned to them, and they traded a good deal of it off for whiskey, and many of them got drunk and had an awful time.

"The following Spring, which was 1838, I went by steamer up to Independence, Missouri, which is just above where Kansas City was located later. It was the Eastern end of the Santa Fe Trail, while eight hundred miles away, Santa Fe was the Western terminus. At Independence, all the outfitting was done for the great overland freighting business, which at that early period had assumed important proportions. I joined a train, consisting of one hundred wagons and one hundred and twenty men. There were five yoke of oxen to each wagon, which made one thousand oxen; then there were a large number of extra oxen along to rest those that got sick or sore footed. By following close after each other, our wagon train stretched out about three miles. I was still on behind driving the cavy-yard, which was the name given to the sore-footed oxen. When we got to the Arkansas River where the trail crossed, which was very swift, we made boats out of two of the prairie schooners; calked them so they wouldn't leak, and loaded into these two boats all the loads that were on the rest of the wagons. A prairie schooner is a long deep wagon bed with flaring sides, about eight feet high and twenty feet long. The oxen swam across; then we chained all the empty wagons together, one behind the other, and hitched the oxen to a chain that reached back across the river to the wagons, pulled the wagons into the stream and on to the other side, where, as fast as one reached the bank, it was unchained from the rest, run up on the dry land, and the work of reloading began. It took four days to get all our outfit across. Our wagons were loaded mostly with merchandise for the stores to sell to the Mexicans, and with mining machinery. The wagons would carry on an average about seventy-five hundred pounds and the price of freight for the eight hundred miles from Independence to Santa Fe was generally eight dollars per hundred-weight, so the cost to the shippers of that trainload of freight run into the thousands. It would take from ten to sixteen weeks to cross the plains, owing to storms and the condition of the roads. We would shoe our own oxen and some of them had to be shod every morning. We would rope them and throw them for that purpose. It was not like a horseshoe, for the hoof of the ox is split and it requires a piece for each half of the hoof. We would make from fifteen to twenty miles a day. The dust was so great, that we traveled in a cloud of it all the time and the teams and drivers would change off; those who were ahead to-day, were behind to-morrow, all but me; I never got to go ahead with my cavy-yard, and I have never forgotten those weeks of frightful dust. They wouldn't let me stay back far, for fear the Indians would pick me off and run the cattle away.

"About a day and a half after we left Big Bend, we met a friendly Indian, who was much excited when he saw us. He said we must not try to go on, for we would all be killed, as the Kiowas were on the war path. Be we couldn't stop, so we kept right on, knowing that Kit Carson was coming with an escort to meet us. We brought up the rear half of the wagon train, however, and put two abreast, thus shortening the train to about a mile and a half. Pretty soon Carson met us with forty-six men, who were all well armed and mounted on good horses and then we felt easy once more. When we reached the Kiowa country, where we were most likely to be attacked, Carson and his men all got inside the covered wagons and led their horses behind. After awhile we saw the Indians coming charging down upon us, yelling and shooting with their bows and arrows; all the drivers in the meantime having gotten on the other side of their wagons. Carson kept his men quiet until the Indians were close enough, when every man shot from the wagons, and about forty-six Indians tumbled off their ponies dead or wounded at the first shot. Then Carson's men mounted their horses and there was a great fight. About two hundred of the three hundred Indians were killed. Not one of Carson's men or of our party were killed. 'Did we bury the Indians?' No, we left them where they were; they made good coyote beef.

"When we got opposite where Carson lived, which was at Taos above Santa Fe, he left the train, for there was no further danger and I went with him to his home about twenty miles off the trail, losing my pay because I did not go through with the party, this being a rule of freighting. I stayed with Carson two years. I became a guide and Government Scout and got eighty dollars a month. I was with General Fremont on his first and second trips. He wasn't liked by any of the men. He was very dictatorial and it didn't seem to us that he knew much. He had a German Scientist along whom all liked, and who knew his business. When we were with Fremont on his second trip, it was so late in the season when we reached the eastern foot of the Sierras, that twelve of us refused to go with him for we felt it was certain death. The snow falls in those mountains seventy feet deep at times, and it was the season for snows. Carson was along and had to go on because he had signed an agreement to go through, and he went, knowing he was taking his life in his hands. We were arrested for mutiny and put in charge of a sergeant, but soon got out of his reach, made a detour of several miles through the mountains, got on the back track and reached a place of safety after several days, thoroughly chilled from sleeping in that high cold country with no blankets, but glad to escape with any sacrifice. Fremont's party then consisted of fifteen, and they had a terrible time. They froze, and starved, and suffered, so that three men lost their minds and never recovered. Carson finally went on ahead, so weak he could hardly walk or crawl, and sent help back just in time to save the party.

"The first gold discovered in Colorado, was in August or September, 1858, by Green Russell. He had stopped here on his way to California where he was going to mine. He came from Georgia and knew about gold mining there, and said there must be gold in Cherry Creek. He found it up at the head of that Creek at a place called "Frankstown" where the trail from Ft. Bent on the Arkansas River crossed over to Ft. Lupton. Russell and Gregory and others came together, and Russell stayed here a year and located Russell Gulch at Central City, which became a great paying property. I did a great deal of hunting and trapping in those early days and made money until 1858, when the fur business died down, as silk had taken the place of fur. I was the first white man to visit Trappers Lake, which is about thirty miles north of Glenwood Springs and was considered inaccessible, because of the density of the fallen timber. We brought out in one season about two thousand dollars worth of furs and hides. The elk covered that country and was comparatively tame as they had not been hunted. We took Indians along for guides, and their squaws to tan the hides. This they did by boiling the brains of the animals we killed and rubbing the soft brain powder into the pores of the skin, folding the hides together, and in a week they were cured and were soft and pliable. The brains were used because of certain properties they possessed, and because of their pliant nature. To catch the beaver we would set our steel traps in the water about seven inches below the surface so the young could swim over them and not get caught. Then just above where the trap was set, we would fasten a branch from the limb of a tree into the bank, the bark of which the beaver lives on. We would rub beaver oil into the bark of the limb, so the beaver would think others of his kind had been there ahead and found no harm; they are a very suspicious little animal. The trap would have a spring that would close on the hind legs of the beaver, as they would swim above it.

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