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Title: The Last American Frontier
Author: Paxson, Frederic L. (Frederic Logan)
Language: English
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THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER
Stories from American History
* * * * * *
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
* * * * * *
[Illustration]
THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER
by
FREDERIC LOGAN PAXSON
Junior Professor of American History in the University of Michigan
Illustrated
New York
The Macmillan Company
1910
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1910,
By the Macmillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
PREFACE
I have told here the story of the last frontier within the United
States, trying at once to preserve the picturesque atmosphere which
has given to the "Far West" a definite and well-understood meaning,
and to indicate those forces which have shaped the history of the
country beyond the Mississippi. In doing it I have had to rely largely
upon my own investigations among sources little used and relatively
inaccessible. The exact citations of authority, with which I might have
crowded my pages, would have been out of place in a book not primarily
intended for the use of scholars. But I hope, before many years, to
exploit in a larger and more elaborate form the mass of detailed
information upon which this sketch is based.
My greatest debts are to the owners of the originals from which the
illustrations for this book have been made; to Claude H. Van Tyne, who
has repeatedly aided me with his friendly criticism; and to my wife,
whose careful readings have saved me from many blunders in my text.
FREDERIC L. PAXSON.
ANN ARBOR, August 7, 1909.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 1
CHAPTER II
THE INDIAN FRONTIER 14
CHAPTER III
IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST 33
CHAPTER IV
THE SANTA FÉ TRAIL 53
CHAPTER V
THE OREGON TRAIL 70
CHAPTER VI
OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS 86
CHAPTER VII
CALIFORNIA AND THE FORTY-NINERS 104
CHAPTER VIII
KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER 119
CHAPTER IX
"PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST!" 138
CHAPTER X
FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA 156
CHAPTER XI
THE OVERLAND MAIL 174
CHAPTER XII
THE ENGINEERS' FRONTIER 192
CHAPTER XIII
THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD 211
CHAPTER XIV
THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR 225
CHAPTER XV
THE CHEYENNE WAR 243
CHAPTER XVI
THE SIOUX WAR 264
CHAPTER XVII
THE PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY 284
CHAPTER XVIII
BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID 304
CHAPTER XIX
THE FIRST OF THE RAILWAYS 324
CHAPTER XX
THE NEW INDIAN POLICY 340
CHAPTER XXI
THE LAST STAND: CHIEF JOSEPH AND SITTING BULL 358
CHAPTER XXII
LETTING IN THE POPULATION 372
CHAPTER XXIII
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 387
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE PRAIRIE SCHOONER _Frontispiece_
PAGE
MAP: INDIAN COUNTRY AND AGRICULTURAL FRONTIER, 1840-1841 22
CHIEF KEOKUK _facing_ 30
IOWA SOD PLOW. (From a Cut belonging to the Historical
Department of Iowa.) 46
MAP: OVERLAND TRAILS 57
FORT LARAMIE, 1842 _facing_ 78
MAP: THE WEST IN 1849 120
MAP: THE WEST IN 1854 140
"HO FOR THE YELLOW STONE" _facing_ 144
THE MINING CAMP " 158
FORT SNELLING " 204
RED CLOUD AND PROFESSOR MARSH " 274
MAP: THE WEST IN 1863 300
POSITION OF RENO ON THE LITTLE BIG HORN _facing_ 360
MAP: THE PACIFIC RAILROADS, 1884 380
THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER
CHAPTER I
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
The story of the United States is that of a series of frontiers which
the hand of man has reclaimed from nature and the savage, and which
courage and foresight have gradually transformed from desert waste to
virile commonwealth. It is the story of one long struggle, fought over
different lands and by different generations, yet ever repeating the
conditions and episodes of the last period in the next. The winning of
the first frontier established in America its first white settlements.
Later struggles added the frontiers of the Alleghanies and the Ohio,
of the Mississippi and the Missouri. The winning of the last frontier
completed the conquest of the continent.
The greatest of American problems has been the problem of the West.
For four centuries after the discovery there existed here vast areas
of fertile lands which beckoned to the colonist and invited him to
migration. On the boundary between the settlements and the wilderness
stretched an indefinite line that advanced westward from year to year.
Hardy pioneers were ever to be found ahead of it, blazing the trails
and clearing in the valleys. The advance line of the farmsteads was
never far behind it. And out of this shifting frontier between man and
nature have come the problems that have occupied and directed American
governments since their beginning, as well as the men who have solved
them. The portion of the population residing in the frontier has
always been insignificant in number, yet it has well-nigh controlled
the nation. The dominant problems in politics and morals, in economic
development and social organization, have in most instances originated
near the frontier or been precipitated by some shifting of the frontier
interest.
The controlling influence of the frontier in shaping American problems
has been possible because of the construction of civilized governments
in a new area, unhampered by institutions of the past or conservative
prejudices of the present. Each commonwealth has built from the
foundation. An institution, to exist, has had to justify itself again
and again. No force of tradition has kept the outlawed fact alive. The
settled lands behind have in each generation been forced to remodel
their older selves upon the newer growths beyond.
Individuals as well as problems have emerged from the line of the
frontier as it has advanced across a continent. In the conflict with
the wilderness, birth, education, wealth, and social standing have
counted for little in comparison with strength, vigor, and aggressive
courage. The life there has always been hard, killing off the weaklings
or driving them back to the settlements, and leaving as a result a
picked population not noteworthy for its culture or its refinements,
but eminent in qualities of positive force for good or bad. The bad
man has been quite as typical of the frontier as the hero, but both
have possessed its dominant virtues of self-confidence, vigor, and
initiative. Thus it has been that the men of the frontiers have exerted
an influence upon national affairs far out of proportion to their
strength in numbers.
The influence of the frontier has been the strongest single factor
in American history, exerting its power from the first days of the
earliest settlements down to the last years of the nineteenth century,
when the frontier left the map. No other force has been continuous
in its influence throughout four centuries. Men still live whose
characters have developed under its pressure. The colonists of New
England were not too early for its shaping.
The earliest American frontier was in fact a European frontier,
separated by an ocean from the life at home and meeting a wilderness
in every extension. English commercial interests, stimulated by the
successes of Spain and Portugal, began the organization of corporations
and the planting of trading depots before the sixteenth century ended.
The accident that the Atlantic seaboard had no exploitable products at
once made the American commercial trading company of little profit and
translated its depots into resident colonies. The first instalments
of colonists had little intention to turn pioneer, but when religious
and political quarrels in the mother country made merry England a
melancholy place for Puritans, a motive was born which produced a
generation of voluntary frontiersmen. Their scattered outposts made
a line of contact between England and the American wilderness which
by 1700 extended along the Atlantic from Maine to Carolina. Until the
middle of the eighteenth century the frontier kept within striking
distance of the sea. Its course of advance was then, as always,
determined by nature and geographic fact. Pioneers followed the line
of least resistance. The river valley was the natural communicating
link, since along its waters the vessel could be advanced, while along
its banks rough trails could most easily develop into highways. The
extent and distribution of this colonial frontier was determined by the
contour of the seaboard along which it lay.
Running into the sea, with courses nearly parallel, the Atlantic
rivers kept the colonies separated. Each colony met its own problems
in its own way. England was quite as accessible as some of the
neighboring colonies. No natural routes invited communication among the
settlements, and an English policy deliberately discouraged attempts on
the part of man to bring the colonies together. Hence it was that the
various settlements developed as island frontiers, touching the river
mouths, not advancing much along the shore line, but penetrating into
the country as far as the rivers themselves offered easy access.
For varying distances, all the important rivers of the seaboard are
navigable; but all are broken by falls at the points where they emerge
upon the level plains of the coast from the hilly courses of the
foothills of the Appalachians. Connecting these various waterfalls a
line can be drawn roughly parallel to the coast and marking at once
the western limit of the earliest colonies and the line of the second
frontier. The first frontier was the seacoast itself. The second was
reached at the falls line shortly after 1700.
Within these island colonies of the first frontier American life began.
English institutions were transplanted in the new soil and shaped in
growth by the quality of their nourishment. They came to meet the
needs of their dependent populations, but they ceased to be English
in the process. The facts of similarity among the institutions of
Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or Georgia, point clearly
to the similar stocks of ideas imported with the colonists, and the
similar problems attending upon the winning of the first frontier.
Already, before the next frontier at the falls line had been reached,
the older settlements had begun to develop a spirit of conservatism
plainly different from the attitude of the old frontier.
The falls line was passed long before the colonial period came to an
end, and pioneers were working their way from clearing to clearing,
up into the mountains, by the early eighteenth century. As they
approached the summit of the eastern divide, leaving the falls behind,
the essential isolation of the provinces began to weaken under the
combined forces of geographic influence and common need. The valley
routes of communication which determined the lines of advance run
parallel, across the first frontier, but have a tendency to converge
among the mountains and to stand on common ground at the summit. Every
reader of Francis Parkman knows how in the years from 1745 to 1756 the
pioneers of the more aggressive colonies crossed the Alleghanies and
meeting on the summit found that there they must make common cause
against the French, or recede. The gateways of the West converge where
the headwaters of the Tennessee and Cumberland and Ohio approach the
Potomac and its neighbors. There the colonists first came to have
common associations and common problems. Thus it was that the years in
which the frontier line reached the forks of the Ohio were filled with
talk of colonial union along the seaboard. The frontier problem was
already influencing the life of the East and impelling a closer union
than had been known before.
The line of the frontier was generally parallel to the coast in 1700.
By 1800 it had assumed the form of a wedge, with its apex advancing
down the rivers of the Mississippi Valley and its sides sloping
backward to north and south. The French war of 1756-1763 saw the
apex at the forks of the Ohio. In the seventies it started down the
Cumberland as pioneers filled up the valleys of eastern Kentucky and
Tennessee. North and south the advance was slower. No other river
valleys could aid as did the Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee, and
population must always follow the line of least resistance. On both
sides of the main advance, powerful Indian confederacies contested
the ground, opposing the entry of the whites. The centres of Indian
strength were along the Lakes and north of the Gulf. Intermediate was
the strip of "dark and bloody ground," fought over and hunted over by
all, but occupied by none; and inviting white approach through the
three valleys that opened it to the Atlantic.
The war for independence occurred just as the extreme frontier started
down the western rivers. Campaigns inspired by the West and directed
by its leaders saw to it that when the independence was achieved the
boundary of the United States should not be where England had placed
it in 1763, on the summit of the Alleghanies, but at the Mississippi
itself, at which the lines of settlement were shortly to arrive. The
new nation felt the influence of this frontier in the very negotiations
which made it free. The development of its policies and its parties
felt the frontier pressure from the start.
Steadily after 1789 the wedge-shaped frontier advanced. New states
appeared in Kentucky and Tennessee as concrete evidences of its
advance, while before the century ended, the campaign of Mad Anthony
Wayne at the Fallen Timbers had allowed the northern flank of the wedge
to cross Ohio and include Detroit. At the turn of the century Ohio
entered the Union in 1803, filled with a population tempted to meet
the trying experiences of the frontier by the call of lands easier to
till than those in New England, from which it came. The old eastern
communities still retained the traditions of colonial isolation;
but across the mountains there was none of this. Here state lines
were artificial and convenient, not representing facts of barrier or
interest. The emigrants from varying sources passed over single routes,
through single gateways, into a valley which knew little of itself as
state but was deeply impressed with its national bearings. A second war
with England gave voice to this newer nationality of the newer states.
The war with England in its immediate consequences was a bad
investment. It ended with the government nearly bankrupt, its military
reputation redeemed only by a victory fought after the peace was
signed, its naval strength crushed after heroic resistance. The eastern
population, whose war had been forced upon it by the West, was bankrupt
too. And by 1814 began the Hegira. For five years the immediate result
of the struggle was a suffering East. A new state for every year was
the western accompaniment.
The westward movement has been continuous in America since the
beginning. Bad roads, dense forests, and Indian obstructers have
never succeeded in stifling the call of the West. A steady procession
of pioneers has marched up the slopes of the Appalachians, across
the trails of the summits, and down the various approaches to the
Mississippi Valley. When times have been hard in the East, the stream
has swollen to flood proportions. In the five years which followed
the English war the accelerated current moved more rapidly than ever
before; while never since has its speed been equalled save in the years
following similar catastrophes, as the panics of 1837 and 1857, or in
the years under the direct inspiration of the gold fields.
Five new states between 1815 and 1821 carried the area of settlement
down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and even up the Missouri to its
junction with the Kansas. The whole eastern side was filled with
states, well populated along the rivers, but sparsely settled to north
and south. The frontier wedge, noticeable by 1776, was even more
apparent, now that the apex had crossed the Mississippi and ascended
the Missouri to its bend, while the wings dragged back, just including
New Orleans at the south, and hardly touching Detroit at the north.
The river valleys controlled the distribution of population, and as
yet it was easier and simpler to follow the valleys farther west than
to strike out across country for lands nearer home but lacking the
convenience of the natural route.
For the pioneer advancing westward the route lay direct from the summit
of the Alleghanies to the bend of the Missouri. The course of the Ohio
facilitated his advance, while the Missouri River, for two hundred
and fifty miles above its mouth, runs so nearly east and west as to
afford a natural continuation of the route. But at the mouth of the
Kansas the Missouri bends. Its course changes to north and south and
it ceases to be a highway for the western traveller. Beyond the bend
an overland journey must commence. The Platte and Kansas and Arkansas
all continue the general direction, but none is easily navigable. The
emigrant must leave the boat near the bend of the Missouri and proceed
by foot or wagon if he desire to continue westward. With the admission
of Missouri in 1821 the apex of the frontier had touched the great bend
of the river, beyond which it could not advance with continued ease.
Population followed still the line of easiest access, but now it was
simpler to condense the settlements farther east, or to broaden out
to north or south, than to go farther west. The flanks of the wedge
began to move. The southwest cotton states received their influx of
population. The country around the northern lakes began to fill up.
The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 made easier the advancing of the
northern frontier line, with Michigan, Wisconsin, and even Iowa and
Minnesota to be colonized. And while these flanks were filling out, the
apex remained at the bend of the Missouri, whither it had arrived in
1821.
There was more to hold the frontier line at the bend of the Missouri
than the ending of the water route. In those very months when pioneers
were clearing plots near the mouth of the Kaw, or Kansas, a major
of the United States army was collecting data upon which to build a
tradition of a great American desert; while the Indian difficulty,
steadily increasing as the line of contact between the races grew
longer, acted as a vigorous deterrent.
Schoolboys of the thirties, forties, and fifties were told that from
the bend of the Missouri to the Stony Mountains stretched an American
desert. The makers of their geography books drew the desert upon their
maps, coloring its brown with the speckled aspect that connotes Sahara
or Arabia, with camels, oases, and sand dunes. The legend was founded
upon the fact that rainfall becomes more scanty as the slopes approach
the Rockies, and upon the observation of Major Stephen H. Long, who
traversed the country in 1819-1820. Long reported that it could never
support an agricultural population. The standard weekly journal of
the day thought of it as "covered with sand, gravel, pebbles, etc."
A writer in the forties told of its "utter destitution of timber,
the sterility of its sandy soil," and believed that at "this point
the Creator seems to have said to the tribes of emigration that are
annually rolling toward the west, 'Thus far shalt thou go, and no
farther.'" Thus it came about that the frontier remained fixed for many
years near the bend of the Missouri. Difficulty of route, danger from
Indians, and a great and erroneous belief in the existence of a sandy
desert, all served to barricade the way. The flanks advanced across the
states of the old Northwest, and into Louisiana and Arkansas, but the
western outpost remained for half a century at the point which it had
reached in the days of Stephen Long and the admission of Missouri.
By 1821 many frontiers had been created and crossed in the westward
march; the seaboard, the falls line, the crest of the Alleghanies, the
Ohio Valley, the Mississippi and the Missouri, had been passed in turn.
Until this last frontier at the bend of the Missouri had been reached
nothing had ever checked the steady progress. But at this point the
nature of the advance changed. The obstacles of the American desert
and the Rockies refused to yield to the "heel-and-toe" methods which
had been successful in the past. The slavery quarrel, the Mexican War,
even the Civil War, came and passed with the area beyond this frontier
scarcely changed. It had been crossed and recrossed; new centres of
life had grown up beyond it on the Pacific coast; Texas had acquired
an identity and a population; but the so-called desert with its
doubtful soils, its lack of easy highways and its Indian inhabitants,
threatened to become a constant quantity.
From 1821 to 1885 extends, in one form or another, the struggle for
the last frontier. The imperative demands from the frontier are heard
continually throughout the period, its leaders in long succession are
filling the high places in national affairs, but the problem remains
in its same territorial location. Connected with its phases appear
the questions of the middle of the century. The destiny of the Indian
tribes is suggested by the long line of contact and the impossibility
of maintaining a savage and a civilized life together and at once.
A call from the farther West leads to more thorough exploration of
the lands beyond the great frontier, bringing into existence the
continental trails, producing problems of long-distance government, and
intensifying the troubles of the Indians. The final struggle for the
control of the desert and the elimination of the frontier draws out
the tracks of the Pacific railways, changes and reshapes the Indian
policies again, and brings into existence, at the end of the period,
the great West. But the struggle is one of half a century, repeating
the events of all the earlier struggles, and ever more bitter as it is
larger and more difficult. It summons the aid of the nation, as such,
before it is concluded, but when it is ended the first era in American
history has been closed.
CHAPTER II
THE INDIAN FRONTIER
A lengthening frontier made more difficult the maintenance of friendly
relations between the two races involved in the struggle for the
continent. It increased the area of danger by its extension, while its
advance inland pushed the Indian tribes away from their old home lands,
concentrating their numbers along its margin and thereby aggravating
their situation. Colonial negotiations for lands as they were needed
had been relatively easy, since the Indians and whites were nearly
enough equal in strength to have a mutual respect for their agreements
and a fear of violation. But the white population doubled itself every
twenty-five years, while the Indians close enough to resist were never
more than 300,000, and have remained near that figure or under it
until to-day. The stronger race could afford to indulge the contempt
that its superior civilization engendered, while its individual
members along the line of contact became less orderly and governable
as the years advanced. An increasing willingness to override on the
part of the white governments and an increasing personal hatred and
contempt on the part of individual pioneers, account easily for the
danger to life along the frontier. The savage, at his best, was not
responsive to the motives of civilization; at his worst, his injuries,
real or imaginary,--and too often they were real,--made him the most
dangerous of all the wild beasts that harassed the advancing frontier.
The problem of his treatment vexed all the colonial governments and
endured after the Revolution and the Constitution. It first approached
a systematic policy in the years of Monroe and Adams and Jackson, but
never attained form and shape until the ideal which it represented had
been outlawed by the march of civilization into the West.
The conflict between the Indian tribes and the whites could not have
ended in any other way than that which has come to pass. A handful
of savages, knowing little of agriculture or manufacture or trade
among themselves, having no conception of private ownership of land,
possessing social ideals and standards of life based upon the chase,
could not and should not have remained unaltered at the expense of a
higher form of life. The farmer must always have right of way against
the hunter, and the trader against the pilferer, and law against
self-help and private war. In the end, by whatever route, the Indian
must have given up his hunting grounds and contented himself with
progress into civilized life. The route was not one which he could ever
have determined for himself. The stronger race had to determine it for
him. Under ideal conditions it might have been determined without loss
of life and health, without promoting a bitter race hostility that
invited extinction for the inferior race, without prostituting national
honor or corrupting individual moral standards. The Indians needed
maintenance, education, discipline, and guardianship until the older
ones should have died and the younger accepted the new order, and all
these might conceivably have been provided. But democratic government
has never developed a powerful and centralized authority competent to
administer a task such as this, with its incidents of checking trade,
punishing citizens, and maintaining rigorously a standard of conduct
not acceptable to those upon whom it is to be enforced.
The acts by which the United States formulated and carried out its
responsibilities towards the Indian tribes were far from the ideal. In
theory the disposition of the government was generally benevolent, but
the scheme was badly conceived, while human frailty among officers of
the law and citizens as well rendered execution short of such ideal as
there was.
For thirty years the government under the Constitution had no Indian
policy. In these years it acquired the habit of dealing with the tribes
as independent--"domestic dependent nations," Justice Marshall later
called them--by means of formal treaties. Europe thought of chiefs as
kings and tribes as nations. The practice of making treaties was based
on this delusion. After a century of practice it was finally learned
that nomadic savages have no idea of sovereign government or legal
obligation, and that the assumption of the existence of such knowledge
can lead only to misconception and disappointment.
As the frontier moved down the Ohio, individual wars were fought and
individual treaties were made as occasion offered. At times the tribes
yielded readily to white occupation; occasionally they struggled
bitterly to save their lands; but the result was always the same. The
right bank of the river, long known as the Indian Shore, was contested
in a series of wars lasting nearly until 1800, and became available for
white colonization only after John Jay had, through his treaty of 1794,
removed the British encouragement to the Indians, and General Wayne had
administered to them a decisive defeat. Isolated attacks were frequent,
but Tecumseh's war of 1811 was the next serious conflict, while, after
General Harrison brought this war to an end at Tippecanoe, there was
comparative peace along the northwest frontier until the time of Black
Hawk and his uprising of 1832.
The left bank of the river was opened with less formal resistance,
admitting Kentucky and Tennessee before the Indian Shore was a safe
habitation for whites. South of Tennessee lay the great southern
confederacies, somewhat out of the line of early western progress, and
hence not plunged into struggles until the War of 1812 was over. But
as Wayne and Harrison had opened the Northwest, so Jackson cleared
the way for white advance into Alabama and Mississippi. By 1821 new
states touched the Mississippi River along its whole course between New
Orleans and the lead mines of upper Illinois.
In the advance of the frontier to the bend of the Missouri some of the
tribes were pushed back, while others were passed and swallowed up by
the invading population. Experience showed that the two races could
not well live in adjacent lands. The conditions which made for Indian
welfare could not be kept up in the neighborhood of white settlements,
for the more lawless of the whites were ever ready, through illicit
trade, deceit, and worse, to provoke the most dangerous excesses of
the savage. The Indian was demoralized, the white became steadily more
intolerant.
Although the ingenious Jefferson had anticipated him in the idea,
the first positive policy which looked toward giving to the Indian
a permanent home and the sort of guardianship which he needed until
he could become reconciled to civilized life was the suggestion of
President Monroe. At the end of his presidency, Georgia was angrily
demanding the removal of the Cherokee from her limits, and was ready to
violate law and the Constitution in her desire to accomplish her end.
Monroe was prepared to meet the demand. He submitted to Congress, on
January 27, 1825, a report from Calhoun, then Secretary of War, upon
the numbers of the tribes, the area of their lands, and the area of
available destinations for them. He recommended that as rapidly as
agreements could be made with them they be removed to country lying
westward and northwestward,--to the further limits of the Louisiana
Purchase, which lay beyond the line of the western frontier.
Already, when this message was sent to Congress, individual steps
had been taken in the direction which it pointed out. A few tribes
had agreed to cross the Mississippi, and had been allotted lands in
Missouri and Arkansas. But Missouri, just admitted, and Arkansas, now
opening up, were no more hospitable to Indian wards than Georgia and
Ohio had been. The Indian frontier must be at some point still farther
west, towards the vast plains overrun by the Osage[1] and Kansa tribes,
the Pawnee and the Sioux. There had been few dealings with the Indians
beyond the Mississippi before Monroe advanced his policy. Lieutenant
Pike had visited the head of the Mississippi in 1805 and had treated
with the Sioux for a reserve at St. Paul. Subsequent agreements farther
south brought the Osage tribes within the treaty arrangements. The year
1825 saw the notable treaties which prepared the way for peace among
the western tribes, and the reception by these tribes of the eastern
nations.
[1] My usage in spelling tribal names follows the list agreed
upon by the bureaus of Indian Affairs and American
Ethnology, and printed in C. J. Kappler, Indian Affairs,
Laws and Treaties, 57th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. 452,
Serial 4253, p. 1021.
Five weeks after the special message Congress authorized a negotiation
with the Kansa and Osage nations. These tribes roamed over a vast
country extending from the Platte River to the Red, and west as far as
the lower slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Their limits had never been
definitely stated, although the Osage had already surrendered claim to
lands fronting on the Mississippi between the mouths of the Missouri
and the Arkansas. Not only was it now desirable to limit them more
closely in order to make room for Indian immigrants, but these tribes
had already begun to worry traders going overland to the Southwest. As
soon as the frontier reached the bend of the Missouri, the profits of
the Santa Fé trade had begun to tempt caravans up the Arkansas valley
and across the plains. To preserve peace along the Santa Fé trail was
now as important as to acquire grounds. Governor Clark negotiated the
treaties at St. Louis. On June 2, 1825, he persuaded the Osage chiefs
to surrender all their lands except a strip fifty miles wide, beginning
at White Hair's village on the Neosho, and running indefinitely west.
The Kaw or Kansa tribe was a day later in its agreement, and reserved a
thirty-mile strip running west along the Kansas River. The two treaties
at once secured rights of transit and pledges of peace for traders to
Santa Fé, and gave the United States title to ample lands west of the
frontier on which to plant new Indian colonies.
The autumn of 1825 witnessed at Prairie du Chien the first step
towards peace and condensation along the northern frontier. The Erie
Canal, not yet opened, had not begun to drain the population of the
East into the Northwest, and Indians were in peaceful possession of
the lake shores nearly to Fort Wayne. West of Lake Michigan were
constant tribal wars. The Potawatomi, Menominee, and Chippewa, first,
then Winnebago, and Sauk and Foxes, and finally the various bands of
Sioux around the Mississippi and upper Missouri, enjoyed still their
traditional hostility and the chase. Governor Clark again, and Lewis
Cass, met the tribes at the old trading post on the Mississippi to
persuade them to bury the tomahawk among themselves. The treaty, signed
August 19, 1825, defined the boundaries of the different nations by
lines of which the most important was between the Sioux and Sauk and
Foxes, which was later to be known as the Neutral Line, across northern
Iowa. The basis of this treaty of Prairie du Chien was temporary at
best. Before it was much more than ratified the white influx began,
Fort Dearborn at the head of Lake Michigan blossomed out into Chicago,
and squatters penetrating to Rock Island in the Mississippi had
provoked the war of 1832, in which Black Hawk made the last stand of
the Indians in the old Northwest. In the thirties the policy of removal
completed the opening of Illinois and Wisconsin to the whites.
[Illustration: INDIAN COUNTRY AND AGRICULTURAL FRONTIER, 1840-1841
Showing the solid line of reservation lands extending from the Red
River to Green Bay, and the agricultural frontier of more than six
inhabitants per square mile.]
The policy of removal and colonization urged by Monroe and Calhoun was
supported by Congress and succeeding Presidents, and carried out during
the next fifteen years. It required two transactions, the acquisition
by the United States of western titles, and the persuasion of eastern
tribes to accept the new lands thus available. It was based upon an
assumption that the frontier had reached its final resting place.
Beyond Missouri, which had been admitted in 1821, lay a narrow strip of
good lands, merging soon into the American desert. Few sane Americans
thought of converting this land into states as had been the process
farther east. At the bend of the Missouri the frontier had arrived;
there it was to stay, and along the lines of its receding flanks the
Indians could be settled with pledges of permanent security and growth.
Here they could never again impede the western movement in its creation
of new communities and states. Here it would be possible, in the words
of Lewis Cass, to "leave their fate to the common God of the white man
and the Indian."
The five years following the treaty of Prairie du Chien were filled
with active negotiation and migration in the lands beyond the Missouri.
First came the Shawnee to what was promised as a final residence.
From Pennsylvania, into Ohio, and on into Missouri, this tribe had
already been pushed by the advancing frontier. Now its ever shrinking
lands were cut down to a strip with a twenty-five-mile frontage on the
Missouri line and an extension west for one hundred and twenty-five
miles along the south bank of the Kansas River and the south line of
the Kaw reserve. Its old neighbors, the Delawares, became its new
neighbors in 1829, accepting the north bank of the Kansas, with a
Missouri River frontage as far north as the new Fort Leavenworth, and a
ten-mile outlet to the buffalo country, along the northern line of the
Kaw reserve. Later the Kickapoo and other minor tribes were colonized
yet farther to the north. The chase was still to be the chief reliance
of the Indian population. Unlimited supplies of game along the plains
were to supply his larder, with only occasional aid from presents of
other food supplies. In the long run agriculture was to be encouraged.
Farmers and blacksmiths and teachers were to be provided in various
ways, but until the longed-for civilization should arrive, the red man
must hunt to live. The new Indian frontier was thus started by the
colonization of the Shawnee and Delawares just beyond the bend of the
Missouri on the old possessions of the Kaw.
The northern flank of the Indian frontier, as it came to be
established, ran along the line of the frontier of white settlements,
from the bend of the Missouri, northeasterly towards the upper lakes.
Before the final line of the reservations could be determined the
Erie Canal had begun to shape the Northwest. Its stream of population
was filling the northern halves of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and
working up into Michigan and Wisconsin. Black Hawk's War marked the
last struggle for the fertile plains of upper Illinois, and made
possible an Indian line which should leave most of Wisconsin and part
of Iowa open to the whites.
Before Black Hawk's War occurred, the great peace treaty of Prairie
du Chien had been followed, in 1830, by a second treaty at the same
place, at which Governor Clark and Colonel Morgan reënforced the
guarantees of peace. The Omaha tribe now agreed to stay west of the
Missouri, its neighbors being the Yankton Sioux above, and the Oto
and Missouri below; a half-breed tract was reserved between the
Great and Little Nemahas, while the neutral line across Iowa became
a neutral strip forty miles wide from the Mississippi River to the
Des Moines. Chronic warfare between the Sioux and Sauk and Foxes had
threatened the extinction of the latter as well as the peace of the
frontier, so now each tribe surrendered twenty miles of its land along
the neutral line. Had the latter tribes been willing to stay beyond
the Mississippi, where they had agreed to remain, and where they had
clear and recognized title to their lands, the war of 1832 might
have been avoided. But they continued to occupy a part of Illinois,
and when squatters jumped their cornfields near Rock Island, the
pacific counsels of old Keokuk were less acceptable than the warlike
promises of the able brave Black Hawk. The resulting war, fought
over the country between the Rock and Wisconsin rivers, threw the
frontier into a state of panic out of all proportion to the danger
threatening. Volunteers of Illinois and Michigan, and regulars from
eastern posts under General Winfield Scott, produced a peace after a
campaign of doubtful triumph. Near Fort Armstrong, on Rock Island, a
new territorial arrangement was agreed upon. As the price of their
resistance, the Sauk and Foxes, who were already located west of the
Mississippi, between Missouri and the Neutral Strip, surrendered to
the United States a belt of land some forty miles wide along the west
bank of the Mississippi, thus putting a buffer between themselves and
Illinois and making way for Iowa. The Winnebago consented, about this
time, to move west of the Mississippi and occupy a portion of the
Neutral Strip.
The completion of the Indian frontier to the upper lakes was the work
of the early thirties. The purchase at Fort Armstrong had made the
line follow the north boundary of Missouri and run along the west
line of this Black Hawk purchase to the Neutral Strip. A second Black
Hawk purchase in 1837 reduced their lands by a million and a quarter
acres just west of the purchase of 1832. Other agreements with the
Potawatomi, the Sioux, the Menominee, and the Chippewa established
a final line. Of these four nations, one was removed and the others
forced back within their former territories. The Potawatomi, more
correctly known as the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi, since the
tribe consisted of Indians related by marriage but representing these
three stocks, had occupied the west shore of Lake Michigan from Chicago
to Milwaukee. After a great council at Chicago in 1833 they agreed to
cross the Mississippi and take up lands west of the Sauk and Foxes and
east of the Missouri, in present Iowa. The Menominee, their neighbors
to the north, with a shore line from Milwaukee to the Menominee River,
gave up their lake front during these years, agreeing in 1836 to live
on diminished lands west of Green Bay and including the left bank of
the Wisconsin River.
The Sioux and Chippewa receded to the north. Always hereditary enemies,
they had accepted a common but ineffectual demarcation line at the
old treaty of Prairie du Chien in 1825. In 1837 both tribes made
further cessions, introducing between themselves the greater portion
of Wisconsin. The Sioux acknowledged the Mississippi as their future
eastern boundary, while the Chippewa accepted a new line which left the
Mississippi at its junction with the Crow Wing, ran north of Lake St.
Croix, and extended thence to the north side of the Menominee country.
With trifling exceptions, the north flank of the Indian frontier had
been completed by 1837. It lay beyond the farthest line of white
occupation, and extended unbroken from the bend of the Missouri to
Green Bay.
While the north flank of the Indian frontier was being established
beyond the probable limits of white advance, its south flank was
extended in an unbroken series of reservations from the bend of the
Missouri to the Texas line. The old Spanish boundary of the Sabine
River and the hundredth meridian remained in 1840 the western limit of
the United States. Farther west the Comanche and the plains Indians
roamed indiscriminately over Texas and the United States. The Caddo,
in 1835, were persuaded to leave Louisiana and cross the Sabine into
Texas; while the quieting of the Osage title in 1825 had freed the
country north of the Red River from native occupants and opened the way
for the colonizing policy.
The southern part of the Indian Country was early set aside as the new
home of the eastern confederacies lying near the Gulf of Mexico. The
Creeks, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole had in the twenties
begun to feel the pressure of the southern states. Jackson's campaigns
had weakened them even before the cession of Florida to the United
States removed their place of refuge. Georgia was demanding their
removal when Monroe announced his policy.
A new home for the Choctaw was provided in the extreme Southwest in
1830. Ten years before, this nation had been given a home in Arkansas
territory, but now, at Dancing Rabbit Creek, it received a new eastern
limit in a line drawn from Fort Smith on the Arkansas due south to the
Red River. Arkansas had originally reached from the Mississippi to the
hundredth meridian, but it was, after this Choctaw cession, cut down
to the new Choctaw line, which remains its boundary to-day. From Fort
Smith the new boundary was run northerly to the southwest corner of
Missouri.
The Creeks and Cherokee promised in 1833 to go into the Indian Country,
west of Arkansas and north of the Choctaw. The Creeks became the
neighbors of the Choctaw, separated from them by the Canadian River,
while the Cherokee adjoined the Creeks on the north and east. With
small exceptions the whole of the present state of Oklahoma was thus
assigned to these three nations. The migrations from their old homes
came deliberately in the thirties and forties. The Chickasaw in 1837
purchased from the Choctaw the right to occupy the western end of their
strip between the Red and Canadian. The Seminole had acquired similar
rights among the Creeks, but were so reluctant to keep the pledge to
emigrate that their removal taxed the ability of the United States army
for several years.
Between the southern portion of the Indian Country and the Missouri
bend minor tribes were colonized in profusion. The Quapaw and United
Seneca and Shawnee nations were put into the triangle between the
Neosho and Missouri. The Cherokee received an extra grant in the
"Cherokee Neutral Strip," between the Osage line of 1825 and the
Missouri line. Next to the north was made a reserve for the New York
Indians, which they refused to occupy. The new Miami home came next,
along the Missouri line; while north of this were little reserves for
individual bands of Ottawa and Chippewa, for the Piankashaw and Wea,
the Kaskaskia and Peoria, the last of which adjoined the Shawnee line
of 1825 upon the south.
The Indian frontier, determined upon in 1825, had by 1840 been carried
into fact, and existed unbroken from the Red River and Texas to the
Lakes. The exodus from the old homes to the new had in many instances
been nearly completed. The tribes were more easily persuaded to promise
than to act, and the wrench was often hard enough to produce sullenness
or even war when the moment of departure arrived. A few isolated bands
had not even agreed to go. But the figures of the migrations, published
from year to year during the thirties, show that all of the more
important nations east of the new frontier had ceded their lands, and
that by 1840 the migration was substantially over.
[Illustration: CHIEF KEOKUK
From a photograph of a contemporary oil painting owned by Judge C. F.
Davis. Reproduced by permission of the Historical Department of Iowa.]
President Monroe had urged as an essential part of the removal policy
that when the Indians had been transferred and colonized they should be
carefully educated into civilization, and guarded from contamination by
the whites. Congress, in various laws, tried to do these things. The
policy of removal, which had been only administrative at the start,
was confirmed by law in 1830. A formal Bureau of Indian Affairs was
created in 1832, under the supervision of a commissioner. In 1834 was
passed the Indian Intercourse Act, which remained the fundamental law
for half a century.
The various treaties of migration had contained the pledge that never
again should the Indians be removed without their consent, that
whites should be excluded from the Indian Country, and that their
lands should never be included within the limits of any organized
territory or state. To these guarantees the Intercourse Act attempted
to give force. The Indian Country was divided into superintendencies,
agencies, and sub-agencies, into which white entry, without license,
was prohibited by law. As the tribes were colonized, agents and schools
and blacksmiths were furnished to them in what was a real attempt to
fulfil the terms of the pledge. The tribes had gone beyond the limits
of probable extension of the United States, and there they were to
settle down and stay. By 1835 it was possible for President Jackson to
announce to Congress that the plan approached its consummation: "All
preceding experiments for the improvement of the Indians" had failed;
but now "no one can doubt the moral duty of the Government of the
United States to protect and if possible to preserve and perpetuate the
scattered remnants of this race which are left within our borders....
The pledge of the United States," he continued, "has been given by
Congress that the country destined for the residence of this people
shall be forever 'secured and guaranteed to them.' ... No political
communities can be formed in that extensive region.... A barrier has
thus been raised for their protection against the encroachment of
our citizens." And now, he concluded, "they ought to be left to the
progress of events."
The policy of the United States towards the wards was generally
benevolent. Here, it was sincere, whether wise or not. As it turned
out, however, the new Indian frontier had to contend with movements
of population, resistless and unforeseen. No Joshua, no Canute, could
hold it back. The result was inevitable. The Indian, wrote one of the
frontiersmen in a later day, speaking in the language of the West, "is
a savage, noxious animal, and his actions are those of a ferocious
beast of prey, unsoftened by any touch of pity or mercy. For them he
is to be blamed exactly as the wolf or tiger is blamed." But by 1840
an Indian frontier had been erected, coterminous with the agricultural
frontier, and beyond what was believed to be the limit of expansion.
The American desert and the Indian frontier, beyond the bend of the
Missouri, were forever to be the western boundary of the United States.
CHAPTER III
IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST
In the end of the thirties the "right wing" of the frontier, as a
colonel of dragoons described it, extended northeasterly from the bend
of the Missouri to Green Bay. It was an irregular line beyond which
lay the Indian tribes, and behind which was a population constantly
becoming more restless and aggressive. That it should have been a
permanent boundary is not conceivable; yet Congress professed to regard
it as such, and had in 1836 ordered the survey and construction of
a military road from the mouth of the St. Peter's to the Red River.
The maintenance of the southern half of the frontier was perhaps
practicable, since the tradition of the American desert was long to
block migration beyond the limits of Missouri and Arkansas, but north
and east of Fort Leavenworth were lands too alluring to be safe in the
control of the new Indian Bureau. And already before the thirties were
over the upper Mississippi country had become a factor in the westward
movement.
A few years after the English war the United States had erected a
fort at the junction of the St. Peter's and the Mississippi, near the
present city of St. Paul. In 1805, Zebulon Montgomery Pike had treated
with the Sioux tribes at this point, and by 1824 the new post had
received the name Fort Snelling, which it was to retain until after the
admission of Minnesota as a state. Pike and his followers had worked
their way up the Mississippi from St. Louis or Prairie du Chien in
skiffs or keelboats, and had found little of consequence in the way of
white occupation save a few fur-trading posts and the lead mines of
Du Buque. Until after the English war, indeed, and the admission of
Illinois, there had been little interest in the country up the river;
but during the early twenties the lead deposits around Du Buque's
old claim became the centre of a business that soon made new treaty
negotiations with the northern Indians necessary.
On both sides of the Mississippi, between the mouths of the Wisconsin
and the Rock, lie the extensive lead fields which attracted Du Buque
in the days of the Spanish rule, and which now in the twenties induced
an American immigration. The ease with which these diggings could
be worked and the demand of a growing frontier population for lead,
brought miners into the borderland of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa
long before either of the last states had acquired name or boundary
or the Indian possessors of the soil had been satisfied and removed.
The nations of Winnebago, Sauk and Foxes, and Potawatomi were most
interested in this new white invasion, while all were reluctant to
yield the lands to the incoming pioneers. The Sauk and Foxes had given
up their claim to nearly all the lead country in 1804; the Potawatomi
ceded portions of it in 1829; and the Winnebago in the same year made
agreements covering the mines within the present state of Wisconsin.
Gradually in the later twenties the pioneer miners came in, one
by one. From St. Louis they came up the great river, or from Lake
Michigan they crossed the old portage of the Fox and Wisconsin. The
southern reënforcements looked much to Fort Armstrong on Rock Island
for protection. The northern, after they had left Fort Howard at Green
Bay, were out of touch until they arrived near the old trading post at
Prairie du Chien. War with the Winnebago in 1827 was followed in 1828
by the erection of another United States fort,--at the portage, and
known as Fort Winnebago. Thus the United States built forts to defend a
colonization which it prohibited by law and treaty.
The individual pioneers differed much in their morals and their
cultural antecedents, but were uniform in their determination to enjoy
the profits for which they had risked the dangers of the wilderness.
Notable among them, and typical of their highest virtues, was Henry
Dodge, later governor of Wisconsin, and representative and senator for
his state in Congress, but now merely one of the first in the frontier
movement. It is related of him that in 1806 he had been interested in
the filibustering expedition of Aaron Burr, and had gone as far as
New Madrid, to join the party, before he learned that it was called
treason. He turned back in disgust. "On reaching St. Genevieve," his
chronicler continues, "they found themselves indicted for treason by
the grand jury then in session. Dodge surrendered himself, and gave
bail for his appearance; but feeling outraged by the action of the
grand jury he pulled off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and whipt
nine of the jurors; and would have whipt the rest, if they had not run
away." With such men to deal with, it was always difficult to enforce
unpopular laws upon the frontier. Dodge had no hesitation in settling
upon his lead diggings in the mineral country and in defying the Indian
agents, who did their best to persuade him to leave the forbidden
country. On the west bank of the Mississippi federal authority was
successful in holding off the miners, but the east bank was settled
between Galena and Mineral Point before either the Indian title had
been fully quieted, or the lands had been surveyed and opened to
purchase by the United States.
The Indian war of 1827, the erection of Fort Winnebago in 1828, the
cession of their mineral lands by the Winnebago Indians in 1829, are
the events most important in the development of the first settlements
in the new Northwest. In 1829 and 1830 pioneers came up the Mississippi
to the diggings in increasing numbers, while farmers began to cast
covetous eyes upon the prairies lying between Lake Michigan and the
Mississippi. These were the lands which the Sauk and Fox tribes had
surrendered in 1804, but over which they still retained rights of
occupation and the chase until Congress should sell them. The entry of
every American farmer was a violation of good faith and law, and so
the Indians regarded it. Their largest city and the graves of their
ancestors were in the peninsula between the Rock and the Mississippi,
and as the invaders seized the lands, their resentment passed beyond
control. The Black Hawk War was the forlorn attempt to save the lands.
When it ended in crushing defeat, the United States exercised its
rights of conquest to compel a revision of the treaty limits.
The great treaties of 1832 and 1833 not only removed all Indian
obstruction from Illinois, but prepared the way for further settlement
in both Wisconsin and Iowa. The Winnebago agreed to migrate to the
Neutral Strip in Iowa, the Potawatomi accepted a reserve near the
Missouri River, while the Black Hawk purchase from the offending Sauk
and Foxes opened a strip some forty miles wide along the west bank of
the Mississippi. These Indian movements were a part of the general
concentrating policy made in the belief that a permanent Indian
frontier could be established. After the Black Hawk War came the
creation of the Indian Bureau, the ordering of the great western road,
and the erection of a frontier police. Henry Dodge was one of the few
individuals to emerge from the war with real glory. His reward came
when Congress formed a regiment of dragoons for frontier police, and
made him its colonel. In his regiment he operated up and down the long
frontier for three years, making expeditions beyond the line to hold
Pawnee conferences and meetings with the tribes of the great plains,
and resigning his command only in time to be the first governor of the
new territory of Wisconsin, in 1836. He knew how little dependence
could be placed on the permanency of the right wing of the frontier.
"Nor let gentlemen forget," he reminded his colleagues in Congress a
few years later, "that we are to have continually the same course of
settlements going on upon our border. They are perpetually advancing
westward. They will reach, they will cross, the Rocky Mountains, and
never stop till they have reached the shores of the Pacific. Distance
is nothing to our people.... [They will] turn the whole region into the
happy dwellings of a free and enlightened people."
The Black Hawk War and its resulting treaties at once quieted the
Indian title and gave ample advertisement to the new Northwest. As yet
there had been no large migration to the West beyond Lake Michigan.
The pioneers who had provoked the war had been few in number and far
from their base upon the frontier. Mere access to the country had been
difficult until after the opening of the Erie Canal, and even then
steamships did not run regularly on Lake Michigan until after 1832.
But notoriety now tempted an increasing wave of settlers. Congress woke
up to the need of some territorial adjustment for the new country.
Ever since Illinois had been admitted in 1818, Michigan had been the
one remaining territory of the old Northwest, including the whole area
north of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and extending from Lake Huron
to the Mississippi River. Her huge size was admittedly temporary, but
as no large centre of population existed outside of Detroit, it was
convenient to simplify the federal jurisdiction in this fashion. The
lead mines on the Mississippi produced a secondary centre of population
in the late twenties and pointed to an early division of Michigan. But
before this could be accomplished the Black Hawk purchase had carried
the Mississippi centre of population to the right bank of the river.
The American possessions on this bank, west of the river, had been cast
adrift without political organization on the admission of Missouri in
1821. Now the appearance of a vigorous population in an unorganized
region compelled Congress to take some action, and thus, for temporary
purposes, Michigan was enlarged in 1834. Her new boundary extended
west to the Missouri River, between the state of Missouri and Canada.
The new Northwest, which may be held to include Iowa, Wisconsin, and
Minnesota, started its political history as a remote settlement in a
vast territory of Michigan, with its seat of government at Detroit.
Before it was cut off as the territory of Wisconsin in 1836 much had
been done in the way of populating it.
The boom of the thirties brought Arkansas and Michigan into the Union
as states, and started the growth of the new Northwest. The industrial
activity of the period was based on speculation in public lands and
routes of transportation. America was transportation mad. New railways
were building in the East and being projected West. Canals were
turning the western portage paths into water highways. The speculative
excitement touched the field of religion as well as economics,
producing new sects by the dozen, and bringing schisms into the old.
And population moving already in its inherent restlessness was made
more active in migration by the hard times of the East in 1833 and 1834.
The immigrants brought to the Black Hawk purchase and its vicinity,
in the boom of the thirties, came chiefly by the river route. The
lake route was just beginning to be used; not until the Civil War did
the traffic of the upper Mississippi naturally and generally seek its
outlet by Lake Michigan. The Mississippi now carried more than its
share of the home seekers.
Steamboats had been plying on western waters in increasing numbers
since 1811. By 1823, one had gone as far north on the Mississippi as
Fort Snelling, while by 1832 the Missouri had been ascended to Fort
Union. In the thirties an extensive packet service gathered its
passengers and freight at Pittsburg and other points on the Ohio,
carrying them by a devious voyage of 1400 miles to Keokuk, near the
southeast corner of the new Black Hawk lands. Wagons and cattle,
children and furniture, crowded the decks of the boats. The aristocrats
of emigration rode in the cabins provided for them, but the great
majority of home seekers lived on deck and braved the elements upon the
voyage. Explosions, groundings, and collisions enlivened the reckless
river traffic. But in 1836 Governor Dodge found more than 22,000
inhabitants in his new territory of Wisconsin, most of whom had reached
the promised land by way of the river.
For those whom the long river journey did not please, or who lived
inland in Ohio or Indiana, the national road was a help. In 1825 the
continuation of the Cumberland Road through Ohio had been begun. By
1836 enough of it was done to direct the overland course of migration
through Indianapolis towards central Illinois. The Conestoga wagon,
which had already done its share in crossing the Alleghanies, now
carried a second generation to the Mississippi. At Dubuque and Buffalo
and Burlington ferries were established before 1836 to take the
immigrants across the Mississippi into the new West.
By the terms of its treaty, the Black Hawk purchase was to be vacated
by the Indians in the summer of 1833. Before that year closed, its
settlement had begun, despite the fact that the government surveys had
not yet been made. Here, as elsewhere, the frontier farmer paid little
regard to the legal basis of his life. He settled upon unoccupied lands
as he needed them, trusting to the public opinion of the future to
secure his title.
The legislature of Michigan watched the migration of 1833 and 1834, and
in the latter year created the two counties of Dubuque and Demoine,
beyond the Mississippi, embracing these settlements. At the old claim
a town of miners appeared by magic, able shortly to boast "that the
first white man hung in Iowa in a Christian-like manner was Patrick
O'Conner, at Dubuque, in June, 1834." Dubuque was a mining camp,
differing from the other villages in possessing a larger proportion
of the lawless element. Generally, however, this Iowa frontier was
peaceful in comparison with other frontiers. Life and property were
safe, and except for its dealings with the Indians and the United
States government, in which frontiers have rarely recognized a law,
the community was law-abiding. It stands in some contrast with another
frontier building at the same time up the valley of the Arkansas. "Fent
Noland of Batesville," wrote a contemporary of one of the heroes of
this frontier, "is in every way one of the most remarkable men of the
West; for such is the versatility of his genius that he seems equally
adapted to every species of effort, intellectual or physical. With
a like unerring aim he shoots a bullet or a _bon mot_; and wields
the pen or the Bowie knife with the same thought, swift rapidity
of motion, and energetic fury of manner. Sunday he will write an
eloquent dissertation on religion; Monday he rawhides a rogue; Tuesday
he composes a sonnet, set in silver stars and breathing the perfume
of roses to some fair maid's eyebrows; Wednesday he fights a duel;
Thursday he does up brown the personal character of Senators Sevier
and Ashley; Friday he goes to the ball dressed in the most finical
superfluity of fashion and shines the soul of wit and the sun of merry
badinage among all the gay gentlemen; and to close the triumphs of the
week, on Saturday night he is off thirty miles to a country dance in
the Ozark Mountains, where they trip it on the light fantastic toe in
the famous jig of the double-shuffle around a roaring log heap fire in
the woods all night long, while between the dances Fent Noland sings
some beautiful wild song, as 'Lucy Neal' or 'Juliana Johnson.' Thus
Fent is a myriad-minded Proteus of contradictory characters, many-hued
as the chameleon fed on the dews and suckled at the breast of the
rainbow." Much of this luxuriant imagery was lacking farther north.
The first phase of this development of the new Northwest was ended
in 1837, when the general panic brought confusion to speculation
throughout the United States. For four years the sanguine hopes of the
frontier had led to large purchases of public lands, to banking schemes
of wildest extravagance, and to railroad promotion without reason or
demand. The specie circular of 1836 so deranged the currency of the
whole United States that the effort to distribute the surplus in 1837
was fatal to the speculative boom. The new communities suffered for
their hopeful attempts. When the panic broke, the line of agricultural
settlement had been pushed considerably beyond the northern and western
limits of Illinois. The new line ran near to the Fox and Wisconsin
portage route and the west line of the Black Hawk purchase. Milwaukee
and Southport had been founded on the lake shore, hopeful of a great
commerce that might rival the possessions of Chicago. Madison and its
vicinity had been developed. The lead country in Wisconsin had grown
in population. Across the river, Dubuque, Davenport, and Burlington
gave evidence of a growing community in the country still farther west.
Nearly the whole area intended for white occupation by the Indian
policy had been settled, so that any further extension must be at the
expense of the Indians' guaranteed lands.
On the eve of the panic, which depopulated many of the villages of the
new strip, Michigan had been admitted. Her possessions west of Lake
Michigan had been reorganized as a new territory of Wisconsin, with
a capital temporarily at Belmont, where Henry Dodge, first governor,
took possession in the fall of 1836. A territorial census showed that
Wisconsin had a population of 22,214 in 1836, divided nearly equally by
the Mississippi. Most of the population was on the banks of the great
river, near the lead mines and the Black Hawk purchase, while only a
fourth could be found near the new cities along the lake. The outlying
settlements were already pressing against the Indian neighbors, so that
the new governor soon was obliged to conduct negotiations for further
cessions. The Chippewa, Menominee, and Sioux all came into council
within two years, the Sioux agreeing to retire west of the Mississippi,
while the others receded far into the north, leaving most of the
present Wisconsin open to development. These treaties completed the
line of the Indian frontier as it was established in the thirties.
The Mississippi divided the population of Wisconsin nearly equally in
1836, but subsequent years witnessed greater growth upon her western
bank. Never in the westward movement had more attractive farms been
made available than those on the right bank now reached by the river
steamers and the ferries from northern Illinois. Two years after the
erection of Wisconsin the western towns received their independent
establishment, when in 1838 Iowa Territory was organized by Congress,
including everything between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and
north of the state of Missouri. Burlington, a village of log houses
with perhaps five hundred inhabitants, became the seat of government
of the new territory, while Wisconsin retired east of the river to a
new capital at Madison. At Burlington a first legislature met in the
autumn, to choose for a capital Iowa City, and to do what it could for
a community still suffering from the results of the panic.
The only Iowa lands open to lawful settlement were those of the Black
Hawk purchase, many of which were themselves not surveyed and on the
market. But the pioneers paid little heed to this. Leaving titles to
the future, they cleared their farms, broke the sod, and built their
houses.
[Illustration: IOWA SOD PLOW]
The heavy sod of the Iowa prairies was beyond the strength of the
individual settler. In the years of first development the professional
sod breaker was on hand, a most important member of his community, with
his great plough, and large teams of from six to twelve oxen, making
the ground ready for the first crop. In the frontier mind the land
belonged to him who broke it, regardless of mere title. The quarrel
between the squatter and the speculator was perennial. Congress in its
laws sought to dispose of lands by auction to the highest bidder,--a
scheme through which the sturdy impecunious farmer saw his clearing
in danger of being bought over his modest bid by an undeserving
speculator. Accordingly the history of Iowa and Wisconsin is full of
the claims associations by which the squatters endeavored to protect
their rights and succeeded well. By voluntary association they agreed
upon their claims and bounds. Transfers and sales were recorded on
their books. When at last the advertised day came for the formal sale
of the township by the federal land officer the population attended the
auction in a body, while their chosen delegate bid off the whole area
for them at the minimum price, and without competition. At times it
happened that the speculator or the casual purchaser tried to bid, but
the squatters present with their cudgels and air of anticipation were
usually able to prevent what they believed to be unfair interference
with their rights. The claims associations were entirely illegal; yet
they reveal, as few American institutions do, the orderly tendencies
of an American community even when its organization is in defiance of
existing law.
The development of the new territories of Iowa and Wisconsin in the
decade after their erection carried both far towards statehood.
Burlington, the earliest capital of Iowa, was in 1840 "the largest,
wealthiest, most business-doing and most fashionable city, on or in
the neighborhood of the Upper Mississippi.... We have three or four
churches," said one of its papers, "a theatre, and a dancing school in
full blast." As early as 1843 the Black Hawk purchase was overrun. The
Sauk and Foxes had ceded provisionally all their Iowa lands and the
Potawatomi were in danger. "Although it is but ten years to-day," said
their agent, speaking of their Chicago treaty of 1833, "the tide of
emigration has rolled onwards to the far West, until the whites are now
crowded closely along the southern side of these lands, and will soon
swarm along the eastern side, to exhibit the very worst traits of the
white man's character, and destroy, by fraud and illicit intercourse,
the remnant of a powerful people, now exposed to their influence." Iowa
was admitted to the Union in 1846, after bickering over her northern
boundary; Wisconsin followed in 1848; the remnant of both, now known as
Minnesota, was erected as a territory in its own right in the next year.
Fort Snelling was nearly twenty years old before it came to be more
than a distant military outpost. Until the treaties of 1837 it was
in the midst of the Sioux with no white neighbors save the agents of
the fur companies, a few refugees from the Red River country, and a
group of more or less disreputable hangers-on. An enlargement of the
military reserve in 1837 led to the eviction by the troops of its
near-by squatters, with the result that one of these took up his grog
shop, left the peninsula between the Mississippi and St. Peter's, and
erected the first permanent settlement across the former, where St.
Paul now stands. Iowa had desired a northern boundary which should
touch the St. Peter's River, but when she was admitted without it and
Wisconsin followed with the St. Croix as her western limit, Minnesota
was temporarily without a government.
The Minnesota territorial act of 1849 preceded the active colonization
of the country around St. Paul. Mendota, Fort Snelling, St. Anthony's,
and Stillwater all came into active being, while the most enterprising
settlers began to push up the Minnesota River, as the St. Peter's now
came to be called. As usual the Indians were in the way. As usual the
claims associations were resorted to. And finally, as usual the Indians
yielded. At Mendota and Traverse des Sioux, in the autumn of 1851, the
magnates of the young territory witnessed great treaties by which the
Sioux, surrendering their portion of the permanent Indian frontier,
gave up most of their vast hunting grounds to accept valley reserves
along the Minnesota. And still more rapidly population came in after
the cession.
The new Northwest was settled after the great day of the keelboat on
western waters. Iowa and the lead country had been reached by the
steamboats of the Mississippi. The Milwaukee district was reached by
the steamboats from the lakes. The upper Mississippi frontier was
now even more thoroughly dependent on the river navigation than its
neighbors had been, while its first period was over before any railroad
played an immediate part in its development.
The boom period between the panics of 1837 and 1857 thus added another
concentric band along the northwest border, disregarding the Indian
frontier and introducing a large population where the prophet of the
early thirties had declared that civilization could never go. The
Potawatomi of Iowa had yielded in 1846, the Sioux in 1851. The future
of the other tribes in their so-called permanent homes was in grave
question by the middle of the decade. The new frontier by 1857 touched
the tip of Lake Superior, included St. Paul and the lower Minnesota
valley, passed around Spirit Lake in northwest Iowa, and reached the
Missouri near Sioux City. In a few more years the right wing of the
frontier would run due north from the bend of the Missouri.
The hopeful life of the fifties surpassed that of the thirties in
its speculative zeal. The home seeker had to struggle against the
occasional Indian and the unscrupulous land agent as well as his own
too sanguine disposition. Fictitious town sites had to be distinguished
from the real. Fraudulent dealers more than once sold imaginary lots
and farms from beautifully lithographed maps to eastern investors.
Occasionally whole colonies of migrants would appear on the steamboat
wharves bound for non-existent towns. And when the settler had escaped
fraud, and avoided or survived the racking torments of fever or
cholera, the Indian danger was sometimes real.
Iowa had advanced her northwest frontier up the Des Moines River, past
the old frontier fort, until in 1856 a couple of trading houses and a
few families had reached the vicinity of Spirit Lake. Here, in March,
1857, one of the settlers quarrelled with a wandering Indian over a
dog. The Indian belonged to Inkpaduta's band of Sioux, one not included
in the treaty of 1851. Forty-seven dead settlers slaughtered by the
band were found a few days later by a visitor to the village. A hard
winter campaign by regulars from Fort Ridgely resulted in the rescue
of some of the captives, but the indignant demand of the frontier for
retaliation was never granted.
In spite of fraud and danger the population grew. For the first time
the railroad played a material part in its advance. The great eastern
trunk lines had crossed the Alleghanies into the Ohio valley. Chicago
had received connection with the East in 1852. The Mississippi had been
reached by 1854. In the spring of 1856 all Iowa celebrated the opening
of a railway bridge at Davenport.
The new Northwest escaped its dangers only to fall a victim to its own
ambition. An earlier decade of expansion had produced panic in 1837.
Now greater expansion and prosperity stimulated an over-development
that chartered railways and even built them between points that
scarcely existed and through country rank in its prairie growth, wild
with game, and without inhabitants. Over-speculation on borrowed money
finally brought retribution in the panic of 1857, with Minnesota about
to frame a constitution and enter the Union. The panic destroyed the
railways and bankrupted the inhabitants. At Duluth, a canny pioneer,
who lived in the present, refused to swap a pair of boots for a town
lot in the future city. At the other end of the line a floating
population was prepared to hurry west on the first news of Pike's Peak
gold.
But a new Northwest had come into life in spite of the vicissitudes of
1837 and 1857. Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa had in 1860 ten times
the population of Illinois at the opening of the Black Hawk War. More
than a million and a half of pioneers had settled within these three
new states, building their towns and churches and schools, pushing back
the right flank of the Indian frontier, and reiterating their perennial
demand that the Indian must go. This was the first departure from the
policy laid down by Monroe and carried out by Adams and Jackson. Before
this movement had ended, that policy had been attacked from another
side, and was once more shown to be impracticable. The Indian had too
little strength to compel adherence to the contract, and hence suffered
from this encroachment by the new Northwest. His final destruction
came from the overland traffic, which already by 1857 had destroyed
the fiction of the American desert, and introduced into his domain
thousands of pioneers lured by the call of the West and the lust for
gold.
CHAPTER IV
THE SANTA FÉ TRAIL
England had had no colonies so remote and inaccessible as the interior
provinces of Spain, which stretched up into the country between the Rio
Grande and the Pacific for more than fifteen hundred miles above Vera
Cruz. Before the English seaboard had received its earliest colonists,
the hand of Spain was already strong in the upper waters of the Rio
Grande, where her outposts had been planted around the little adobe
village of Santa Fé. For more than two hundred years this life had gone
on, unchanged by invention or discovery, unenlightened by contact with
the world or admixture of foreign blood. Accepting, with a docility
characteristic of the colonists of Spain, the hard conditions and
restrictions of the law, communication with these villages of Chihuahua
and New Mexico had been kept in the narrow rut worn through the hills
by the pack-trains of the king.
It was no stately procession that wound up into the hills yearly to
supply the Mexican frontier. From Vera Cruz the port of entry, through
Mexico City, and thence north along the highlands through San Luis
Potosi and Zacatecas to Durango, and thence to Chihuahua, and up the
valley of the Rio Grande to Santa Fé climbed the long pack-trains and
the clumsy ox-carts that carried into the provinces their whole supply
from outside. The civilization of the provincial life might fairly be
measured by the length, breadth, and capacity of this transportation
route. Nearly two thousand miles, as the road meandered, of river,
mountain gorge, and arid desert had to be overcome by the mule-drivers
of the caravans. What their pack-animals could not carry, could not go.
What had large bulk in proportion to its value must stay behind. The
ancient commerce of the Orient, carried on camels across the Arabian
desert, could afford to deal in gold and silver, silks, spices, and
precious drugs; in like manner, though in less degree, the world's
contribution to these remote towns was confined largely to textiles,
drugs, and trinkets of adornment. Yet the Creole and Mestizo population
of New Mexico bore with these meagre supplies for more than two
centuries without an effort to improve upon them. Their resignation
gives some credit to the rigors of the Spanish colonial system which
restricted their importation to the defined route and the single port.
It is due as much, however, to the hard geographic fact which made Vera
Cruz and Mexico, distant as they were, their nearest neighbors, until
in the nineteenth century another civilization came within hailing
distance, at its frontier in the bend of the Missouri.
The Spanish provincials were at once willing to endure the rigors of
the commercial system and to smuggle when they had a chance. So long as
it was cheaper to buy the product of the annual caravan than to develop
other sources of supply the caravans flourished without competition.
It was not until after the expulsion of Spain and the independence
of Mexico that a rival supply became important, but there are enough
isolated events before this time to show what had to occur just so soon
as the United States frontier came within range.
The narrative of Pike after his return from Spanish captivity did
something to reveal the existence of a possible market in Santa Fé.
He had been engaged in exploring the western limits of the Louisiana
purchase, and had wandered into the valley of the Rio Grande while
searching for the head waters of the Red River. Here he was arrested,
in 1807, by Spanish troops, and taken to Chihuahua for examination.
After a short detention he was escorted to the limits of the United
States, where he was released. He carried home the news of high prices
and profitable markets existing among the Mexicans.
In 1811 an organized expedition set out to verify the statements of
Pike. Rumor had come to the States of an insurrection in upper Mexico,
which might easily abolish the trade restriction. But the revolt had
been suppressed before the dozen or so of reckless Americans who
crossed the plains had arrived at their destination. The Spanish
authorities, restored to power and renewed vigor, received them with
open prisons. In jail they were kept at Chihuahua, some for ten years,
while the traffic which they had hoped to inaugurate remained still in
the future. Their release came only with the independence of Mexico,
which quickly broke down the barrier against importation and the
foreigner.
The Santa Fé trade commenced when the news of the Mexican revolution
reached the border. Late in the fall of 1821 one William Becknell,
chancing a favorable reception from Iturbide's officials, took a
small train from the Missouri to New Mexico, in what proved to be a
profitable speculation. He returned to the States in time to lead
out a large party in the following summer. So long as the United
States frontier lay east of the Missouri River there could have been
no western traffic, but now that settlement had reached the Indian
Country, and river steamers had made easy freighting from Pittsburg
to Franklin or Independence, Santa Fé was nearer to the United States
seaboard markets than to Vera Cruz. Hence the breach in the American
desert and the Indian frontier made by this earliest of the overland
trails.
[Illustration: OVERLAND TRAILS
The main trail to Oregon was opened before 1840; that to California
appeared about 1845; the Santa Fé trail had been used since 1821. The
overland mail of 1858 followed the southern route.]
The year 1822 was not only the earliest in the Santa Fé trade, but it
saw the first wagons taken across the plains. The freight capacity
of the mule-train placed a narrow limit upon the profits and extent
of trade. Whether a wagon could be hauled over the rough trails was
a matter of considerable doubt when Becknell and Colonel Cooper
attempted it in this year. The experiment was so successful that within
two years the pack-train was generally abandoned for the wagons by the
Santa Fé traders. The wagons carried a miscellaneous freight. "Cotton
goods, consisting of coarse and fine cambrics, calicoes, domestic,
shawls, handkerchiefs, steam-loom shirtings, and cotton hose," were in
high demand. There were also "a few woollen goods, consisting of super
blues, stroudings, pelisse cloths, and shawls, crapes, bombazettes,
some light articles of cutlery, silk shawls, and looking-glasses."
Backward bound their freights were lighter. Many of the wagons, indeed,
were sold as part of the cargo. The returning merchants brought some
beaver skins and mules, but their Spanish-milled dollars and gold and
silver bullion made up the bulk of the return freight.
Such a commerce, even in its modest beginnings, could not escape the
public eye. The patron of the West came early to its aid. Senator
Thomas Hart Benton had taken his seat from the new state of Missouri
just in time to notice and report upon the traffic. No public man was
more confirmed in his friendship for the frontier trade than Senator
Benton. The fur companies found him always on hand to get them favors
or to "turn aside the whip of calamity." Because of his influence his
son-in-law, Frémont, twenty years later, explored the wilderness. Now,
in 1824, he was prompt to demand encouragement. A large policy in the
building of public roads had been accepted by Congress in this year.
In the following winter Senator Benton's bill provided $30,000 to mark
and build a wagon road from Missouri to the United States border on the
Arkansas. The earliest travellers over the road reported some annoyance
from the Indians, whose hungry, curious, greedy bands would hang around
their camps to beg and steal. In the Osage and Kansa treaties of 1825
these tribes agreed to let the traders traverse the country in peace.
Indian treaties were not sufficient to protect the Santa Fé trade.
The long journey from the fringe of settlement to the Spanish towns
eight hundred miles southwest traversed both American and Mexican
soil, crossing the international boundary on the Arkansas near the
hundredth meridian. The Indians of the route knew no national lines,
and found a convenient refuge against pursuers from either nation in
crossing the border. There was no military protection to the frontier
at the American end of the trail until in 1827 the war department
erected a new post on the Missouri, above the Kansas, calling it Fort
Leavenworth. Here a few regular troops were stationed to guard the
border and protect the traders. The post was due as much to the new
Indian concentration policy as to the Santa Fé trade. Its significance
was double. Yet no one seems to have foreseen that the development of
the trade through the Indian Country might prevent the accomplishment
of Monroe's ideal of an Indian frontier.
From Fort Leavenworth occasional escorts of regulars convoyed the
caravans to the Southwest. In 1829 four companies of the sixth
infantry, under Major Riley, were on duty. They joined the caravan at
the usual place of organization, Council Grove, a few days west of
the Missouri line, and marched with it to the confines of the United
States. Along the march there had been some worry from the Indians.
After the caravan and escort had separated at the Arkansas the former,
going on alone into Mexico, was scarcely out of sight of its guard
before it was dangerously attacked. Major Riley rose promptly to the
occasion. He immediately crossed the Arkansas into Mexico, risking the
consequences of an invasion of friendly territory, and chastised the
Indians. As the caravan returned, the Mexican authorities furnished an
escort of troops which marched to the crossing. Here Major Riley, who
had been waiting for them at Chouteau's Island all summer, met them. He
entertained the Mexican officers with drill while they responded with
a parade, chocolate, and "other refreshments," as his report declares,
and then he brought the traders back to the States by the beginning of
November.
There was some criticism in the United States of this costly use of
troops to protect a private trade. Hezekiah Niles, who was always
pleading for high protection to manufactures and receiving less than
he wanted, complained that the use of four companies during a whole
season was extravagant protection for a trade whose annual profits
were not over $120,000. The special convoy was rarely repeated after
1829. Fort Leavenworth and the troops gave moral rather than direct
support. Colonel Dodge, with his dragoons,--for infantry were soon
seen to be ridiculous in Indian campaigning,--made long expeditions
and demonstrations in the thirties, reaching even to the slopes of
the Rockies. And the Santa Fé caravans continued until the forties in
relative safety.
Two years after Major Riley's escort occurred an event of great
consequence in the history of the Santa Fé trail. Josiah Gregg,
impelled by ill health to seek a change of climate, made his first trip
to Santa Fé in 1831. As an individual trader Gregg would call for no
more comment than would any one who crossed the plains eight times in a
single decade. But Gregg was no mere frontier merchant. He was watching
and thinking during his entire career, examining into the details of
Mexican life and history and tabulating the figures of the traffic.
When he finally retired from the plains life which he had come to love
so well, he produced, in two small volumes, the great classic of the
trade: "The Commerce of the Prairies, or the Journal of a Santa Fé
Trader." It is still possible to check up details and add small bits
of fact to supplement the history and description of this commerce
given by Gregg, but his book remains, and is likely to remain, the
fullest and best source of information. Gregg had power of scientific
observation and historical imagination, which, added to unusual
literary ability, produced a masterpiece.
The Santa Fé trade, begun in 1822, continued with moderate growth until
1843. This was its period of pioneer development. After the Mexican War
the commerce grew to a vastly larger size, reaching its greatest volume
in the sixties, just before the construction of the Pacific railways.
But in its later years it was a matter of greater routine and less
general interest than in those years of commencement during which it
was educating the United States to a more complete knowledge of the
southern portion of the American desert. Gregg gives a table in which
he shows the approximate value of the trade for its first twenty-two
years. To-day it seems strange that so trifling a commerce should have
been national in its character and influence. In only one year, 1843,
does he find that the eastern value of the goods sent to Santa Fé was
above a quarter of a million dollars; in that year it reached $450,000,
but in only two other years did it rise to the quarter million mark. In
nine years it was under $100,000. The men involved were a mere handful.
At the start nearly every one of the seventy men in the caravan was
himself a proprietor. The total number increased more rapidly than the
number of independent owners. Three hundred and fifty were the most
employed in any one year. The twenty-six wagons of 1824 became two
hundred and thirty in 1843, but only four times in the interval were
there so many as a hundred.
Yet the Santa Fé trade was national in its importance. Its romance
contained a constant appeal to a public that was reading the Indian
tales of James Fenimore Cooper, and that loved stories of hardship
and adventure. New Mexico was a foreign country with quaint people
and strange habitations. The American desert, not much more than a
chartless sea, framed and emphasized the traffic. If one must have
confirmation of the truth that frontier causes have produced results
far beyond their normal measure, such confirmation may be found here.
The traders to Santa Fé commonly travelled together in a single
caravan for safety. In the earlier years they started overland from
some Missouri town--Franklin most often--to a rendezvous at Council
Grove. The erection of Fort Leavenworth and an increasing navigation
of the Missouri River made possible a starting-point further west than
Franklin; hence when this town was washed into the Missouri in 1828
its place was taken by the new settlement of Independence, further
up the river and only twelve miles from the Missouri border. Here at
Independence was done most of the general outfitting in the thirties.
For the greater part of the year the town was dead, but for a few
weeks in the spring it throbbed with the rough-and-ready life of the
frontier. Landing of traders and cargoes, bartering for mules and
oxen, building and repairing wagons and ox-yokes, and in the evening
drinking and gambling among the hard men soon to leave port for the
Southwest,--all these gave to Independence its name and place. From
Independence to Council Grove, some one hundred and fifty miles, across
the border, the wagons went singly or in groups. At the Grove they
halted, waiting for an escort, or to organize in a general company for
self-defence. Here in ordinary years the assembled traders elected
a captain whose responsibility was complete, and whose authority
was as great as he could make it by his own force. Under him were
lieutenants, and under the command of these the whole company was
organized in guards and watches, for once beyond the Grove the company
was in dangerous Indian Country in which eternal vigilance was the
price of safety.
The unit of the caravan was the wagon,--the same Pittsburg or Conestoga
wagon that moved frontiersmen whenever and wherever they had to
travel on land. It was drawn by from eight to twelve mules or oxen,
and carried from three to five thousand pounds of cargo. Over the
wagon were large arches covered with Osnaburg sheetings to turn water
and protect the contents. The careful freighter used two thicknesses
of sheetings, while the canny one slipped in between them a pair of
blankets, which might thus increase his comfort outward bound, and
be in an inconspicuous place to elude the vigilance of the customs
officials at Santa Fé. Arms, mounts, and general equipment were
innumerable in variation, but the prairie schooner, as its white canopy
soon named it, survived through its own superiority.
At Council Grove the desert trip began. The journey now became one
across a treeless prairie, with water all too rare, and habitations
entirely lacking. The first stage of the trail crossed the country,
nearly west, to the great bend of the Arkansas River, two hundred
and seventy miles from Independence. Up the Arkansas it ran on, past
Chouteau's Island, to Bent's Fort, near La Junta, Colorado, where fur
traders had established a post. Water was most scarce. Whether the
caravan crossed the river at the Cimarron crossing or left it at Bent's
Fort to follow up the Purgatoire, the pull was hard on trader and on
stock. His oxen often reached Santa Fé with scarcely enough strength
left to stand alone. But with reasonable success and skilful guidance
the caravan might hope to surmount all these difficulties and at last
enter Santa Fé, seven hundred and eighty miles away, in from six to
seven weeks from Independence.
When the Mexican War came in 1846, the Missouri frontier was familiar
with all of the long trail to Santa Fé. Even in the East there had come
to be some real interest in and some accurate knowledge of the desert
and its thoroughfares. One of the earliest steps in the strategy of the
war was the organization of an Army of the West at Fort Leavenworth,
with orders to march overland against Mexico and Upper California.
Colonel Stephen W. Kearny was given command of the invading army, which
he recruited largely from the frontier and into which he incorporated a
battalion of the Mormon emigrants who were, in the summer of 1846, near
Council Bluffs, on their way to the Rocky Mountains and the country
beyond. Kearny himself knew the frontier, duty having taken him in
1845 all the way to the mountains and back in the interest of policing
the trails. By the end of June he was ready to begin the march towards
Bent's Fort on the upper Arkansas, where there was to be a common
rendezvous. To this point the army marched in separate columns, far
enough apart to secure for all the force sufficient water and fodder
from the plains. Up to Bent's Fort the march was little more than a
pleasure jaunt. The trail was well known, and Indians, never likely
to run heedlessly into danger, were well behaved. Beyond Bent's Fort
the advance assumed more of a military aspect, for the enemy's country
had been entered and resistance by the Mexicans was anticipated in the
mountain passes north of Santa Fé. But the resistance came to naught,
while the army, footsore and hot, marched easily into Santa Fé on
August 18, 1846. In the palace of the governor the conquering officers
were entertained as lavishly as the resources of the provinces would
permit. "We were too thirsty to judge of its merits," wrote one of
them of the native wines and brandy which circulated freely; "anything
liquid and cool was palatable." With little more than the formality of
taking possession New Mexico thus fell into the hands of the United
States, while the war of conquest advanced further to the West. In the
end of September Kearny started out from Santa Fé for California, where
he arrived early in the following January.
The conquest of the Southwest extended the boundary of the United
States to the Gila and the Pacific, broadening the area of the desert
within the United States and raising new problems of long-distance
government in connection with the populations of New Mexico and
California. The Santa Fé trail, with its continuance west of the Rio
Grande, became the attenuated bond between the East and the West. From
the Missouri frontier to California the way was through the desert and
the Indian Country, with regular settlements in only one region along
the route. The reluctance of foreign customs officers to permit trade
disappeared with the conquest, so that the traffic with the Southwest
and California boomed during the fifties.
The volume of the traffic expanded to proportions which had never been
dreamed of before the conquest. Kearny's baggage-trains started a new
era in plains freighting. The armies had continuously to be supplied.
Regular communication had to be maintained for the new Southwest.
But the freighting was no longer the adventurous pioneering of the
Santa Fé traders. It became a matter of business, running smoothly
along familiar channels. It ceased to have to do with the extension
of geographic knowledge and came to have significance chiefly in
connection with the organization of overland commerce. Between the
Mexican and Civil wars was its new period of life. Finally, in the
seventies, it gradually receded into history as the tentacles of the
continental railway system advanced into the desert.
The Santa Fé trail was the first beaten path thrust in advance of the
western frontier. Even to-day its course may be followed by the wheel
ruts for much of the distance from the bend of the Missouri to Santa
Fé. Crossing the desert, it left civilized life behind it at the start,
not touching it again until the end was reached. For nearly fifty
years after the trade began, this character of the desert remained
substantially unchanged. Agricultural settlement, which had rushed
west along the Ohio and Missouri, stopped at the bend, and though the
trail continued, settlement would not follow it. The Indian country
and the American desert remained intact, while the Santa Fé trail, in
advance of settlement, pointed the way of manifest destiny, as no one
of the eastern trails had ever done. When the new states grew up on the
Pacific, the desert became as an ocean traversed only by the prairie
schooners in their beaten paths. Islands of settlement served but to
accentuate the unpopulated condition of the Rocky Mountain West.
The bend of the Missouri had been foreseen by the statesmen of the
twenties as the limit of American advance. It might have continued thus
had there really been nothing beyond it. But the profits of the trade
to Santa Fé created a new interest and a connecting road. In nearly
the same years the call of the fur trade led to the tracing of another
path in the wilderness, running to a new goal. Oregon and the fur trade
had stirred up so much interest beyond the Rockies that before Kearny
marched his army into Santa Fé another trail of importance equal to his
had been run to Oregon.
The maintenance of the Indian frontier depended upon the ability of
the United States to keep whites out of the Indian Country. But with
Oregon and Santa Fé beyond, this could never be. The trails had already
shown the fallacy of the frontier policy before it had become a fact in
1840.
CHAPTER V
THE OREGON TRAIL
The Santa Fé trade had just been started upon its long career when
trappers discovered in the Rocky Mountains, not far from where the
forty-second parallel intersects the continental divide, an easy
crossing by which access might be had from the waters of the upper
Platte to those of the Pacific Slope. South Pass, as this passage
through the hills soon came to be called, was the gateway to Oregon.
As yet the United States had not an inch of uncontested soil upon the
Pacific, but in years to come a whole civilization was to pour over
the upper trail to people the valley of the Columbia and claim it for
new states. The Santa Fé trail was chiefly the route of commerce. The
Oregon trail became the pathway of a people westward bound.
In its earliest years the Oregon trail knew only the fur traders, those
nameless pioneers who possessed an accurate rule-of-thumb knowledge of
every hill and valley of the mountains nearly a generation before the
surveyor and his transit brought them within the circle of recorded
facts. The historian of the fur trade, Major Hiram Martin Chittenden,
has tracked out many of them with the same laborious industry that
carried them after the beaver and the other marketable furs. When they
first appeared is lost in tradition. That they were everywhere in the
period between the journey of Lewis and Clark, in 1805, and the rise of
Independence as an outfitting post, in 1832, is clearly manifest. That
they discovered every important geographic fact of the West is quite
as certain as it is that their discoveries were often barren, were
generally unrecorded in a formal way, and exercised little influence
upon subsequent settlement and discovery. Their place in history
is similar to that of those equally nameless ship captains of the
thirteenth century who knew and charted the shore of the Mediterranean
at a time when scientific geographers were yet living on a flat
earth and shaping cosmographies from the Old Testament. Although the
fur-traders, with their great companies behind them, did less to direct
the future than their knowledge of geography might have warranted,
they managed to secure a foothold upon the Pacific coast early in the
century. Astoria, in 1811, was only a pawn in the game between the
British and American organizations, whose control over Oregon was so
confusing that Great Britain and the United States, in 1818, gave up
the task of drawing a boundary when they reached the Rockies, and
allowed the country beyond to remain under joint occupation.
In the thirties, religious enthusiasm was added to the profits of
the fur trade as an inducement to visit Oregon. By 1832 the trading
prospects had incited migration outside the regular companies.
Nathaniel J. Wyeth took out his first party in this year. He repeated
the journey with a second party in 1834. The Methodist church sent a
body of missionaries to convert the western Indians in this latter
year. The American Board of Foreign Missions sent out the redoubtable
Marcus Whitman in 1835. Before the thirties were over Oregon had
become a household word through the combined reports of traders and
missionaries. Its fertility and climate were common themes in the
lyceums and on the lecture platform; while the fact that this garden
might through prompt migration be wrested from the British gave an
added inducement. Joint occupation was yet the rule, but the time was
approaching when the treaty of 1818 might be denounced, a time when
Oregon ought to become the admitted property of the United States. The
thirties ended with no large migration begun. But the financial crisis
of 1837, which unsettled the frontier around the Great Lakes, provided
an impoverished and restless population ready to try the chance in the
farthest West.
A growing public interest in Oregon roused the United States government
to action in the early forties. The Indians of the Northwest were
in need of an agent and sound advice. The exact location of the
trail, though the trail itself was fairly well known, had not been
ascertained. Into the hands of the senators from Missouri fell the task
of inspiring the action and directing the result. Senator Linn was the
father of bills and resolutions looking towards a territory west of the
mountains; while Benton, patron of the fur trade, received for his new
son-in-law, John C. Frémont, a detail in command of an exploring party
to the South Pass.
The career of Frémont, the Pathfinder, covers twenty years of great
publicity, beginning with his first command in 1842. On June 10, of
this year, with some twenty-one guides and men, he departed from
Cyprian Chouteau's place on the Kansas, ten miles above its mouth. He
shortly left the Kansas, crossed country to Grand Island in the Platte,
and followed the Platte and its south branch to St. Vrain's Fort in
northern Colorado, where he arrived in thirty days. From St. Vrain's
he skirted the foothills north to Fort Laramie. Thence, ascending the
Sweetwater, he reached his destination at South Pass on August 8,
just one day previous to the signing of the great English treaty at
Washington. At South Pass his journey of observation was substantially
over. He continued, however, for a few days along the Wind River Range,
climbing a mountain peak and naming it for himself. By October he was
back in St. Louis with his party.
In the spring of 1843, Frémont started upon a second and more extended
governmental exploration to the Rockies. This time he followed a trail
along the Kansas River and its Republican branch to St. Vrain's, whence
he made a detour south to Boiling Spring and Bent's trading-post on the
Arkansas River. Mules were scarce, and Colonel Bent was relied upon
for a supply. Returning to the Platte, he divided his company, sending
part of it over his course of 1842 to Laramie and South Pass, while
he led his own detachment directly from St. Vrain's into the Medicine
Bow Range, and across North Park, where rises the North Platte. Before
reaching Fort Hall, where he was to reunite his party, he made another
detour to Great Salt Lake, that he might feel like Balboa as he looked
upon the inland sea. From Fort Hall, which he reached on September 18,
he followed the emigrant route by the valley of the Snake to the Dalles
of the Columbia.
Whether the ocean could be reached by any river between the Columbia
and Colorado was a matter of much interest to persons concerned with
the control of the Pacific. The facts, well enough known to the
trappers, had not yet received scientific record when Frémont started
south from the Dalles in November, 1843, to ascertain them. His
march across the Nevada desert was made in the dead of winter under
difficulties that would have brought a less resolute explorer to a
stop. It ended in March, 1844, at Sutter's ranch in the Sacramento
Valley, with half his horses left upon the road. His homeward march
carried him into southern California and around the sources of the
Colorado, proving by recorded observation the difficult character of
the country between the mountains and the Pacific.
In following years the Pathfinder revisited the scenes of these two
expeditions upon which his reputation is chiefly based. A man of
resolution and moderate ability, the glory attendant upon his work
turned his head. His later failures in the face of military problems
far beyond his comprehension tended to belittle the significance of his
earlier career, but history may well agree with the eminent English
traveller, Burton, who admits that: "Every foot of ground passed
over by Colonel Frémont was perfectly well known to the old trappers
and traders, as the interior of Africa to the Arab and Portuguese
pombeiros. But this fact takes nothing away from the honors of the man
who first surveyed and scientifically observed the country." Through
these two journeys the Pacific West rose in clear definition above the
American intellectual horizon. "The American Eagle," quoth the _Platte
(Missouri) Eagle_ in 1843, "is flapping his wings, the precurser
[_sic_] of the end of the British lion, on the shores of the Pacific.
Destiny has willed it."
The year in which Frémont made his first expedition to the mountains
was also the year of the first formal, conducted emigration to
Oregon. Missionaries beyond the mountains had urged upon Congress
the appointment of an American representative and magistrate for
the country, with such effect that Dr. Elijah White, who had some
acquaintance with Oregon, was sent out as sub-Indian agent in the
spring of 1842. With him began the regular migration of homeseekers
that peopled Oregon during the next ten years. His emigration was not
large, perhaps eighteen Pennsylvania wagons and 130 persons; but it
seems to have been larger than he expected, and large enough to raise
doubt as to the practicability of taking so many persons across the
plains at once. In the decade following, every May, when pasturage was
fresh and green, saw pioneers gathering, with or without premeditation,
at the bend of the Missouri, bound for Oregon. Independence and its
neighbor villages continued to be the posts of outfit. How many in
the aggregate crossed the plains can never be determined, in spite of
the efforts of the pioneer societies of Oregon to record their names.
The distinguishing feature of the emigration was its spontaneous
individualistic character. Small parties, too late for the caravan,
frequently set forth alone. Single families tried it often enough to
have their wanderings recorded in the border papers. In the spring
following the crossing of Elijah White emigrants gathered by hundreds
at the Missouri ferries, until an estimate of a thousand in all is
probably not too high. In 1844 the tide subsided a little, but in
1845 it established a new mark in the vicinity of three thousand, and
in 1847 ran between four and five thousand. These were the highest
figures, yet throughout the decade the current flowed unceasingly.
The migration of 1843, the earliest of the fat years, may be taken as
typical of the Oregon movement. Early in the year faces turned toward
the Missouri rendezvous. Men, women, and children, old and young, with
wagons and cattle, household equipment, primitive sawmills, and all
the impedimenta of civilization were to be found in the hopeful crowd.
For some days after departure the unwieldy party, a thousand strong,
with twice as many cattle and beasts of burden, held together under
Burnett, their chosen captain. But dissension beyond his control soon
split the company. In addition to the general fear that the number was
dangerously high, the poorer emigrants were jealous of the rich. Some
of the latter had in their equipment cattle and horses by the score,
and as the poor man guarded these from the Indian thieves during his
long night watches he felt the injustice which compelled him to protect
the property of another. Hence the party broke early in June. A "cow
column" was formed of those who had many cattle and heavy belongings;
the lighter body went on ahead, though keeping within supporting
distance; and under two captains the procession moved on. The way was
tedious rather than difficult, but habit soon developed in the trains
a life that was full and complete. Oregon, one of the migrants of 1842
had written, was a "great country for unmarried gals." Courtship and
marriage began almost before the States were out of sight. Death and
burial, crime and punishment, filled out the round of human experience,
while Dr. Whitman was more than once called upon in his professional
capacity to aid in the enlargement of the band.
[Illustration: FORT LARAMIE IN 1842
From a sketch made to illustrate Frémont's report.]
The trail to Oregon was the longest road yet developed in the
United States. It started from the Missouri River anywhere between
Independence and Council Bluffs. In the beginning, Independence was
the common rendezvous, but as the agricultural frontier advanced
through Iowa in the forties numerous new crossings and ferries were
made further up the stream. From the various ferries the start began,
as did the Santa Fé trade, sometime in May. By many roads the wagons
moved westward towards the point from which the single trail extended
to the mountains. East of Grand Island, where the Platte River reaches
its most southerly point, these routes from the border were nearly
as numerous as the caravans, but here began the single highway along
the river valley, on its southern side. At this point, in the years
immediately after the Mexican War, the United States founded a military
post to protect the emigrants, naming it for General Stephen W. Kearny,
commander of the Army of the West. From Fort Kearney (custom soon
changed the spelling of the name) to the fur-trading post at Laramie
Creek the trail followed the river and its north fork. Fort Laramie
itself was bought from the fur company and converted into a military
post which became a second great stopping-place for the emigrants.
Shortly west of Laramie, the Sweetwater guided the trail to South Pass,
where, through a gap twenty miles in width, the main commerce between
the Mississippi Valley and the Pacific was forced to go. Beyond
South Pass, Wyeth's old Fort Hall was the next post of importance on
the road. From Fort Hall to Fort Boisé the trail continued down the
Snake, cutting across the great bend of the river to meet the Columbia
near Walla Walla.
The journey to Oregon took about five months. Its deliberate,
domesticated progress was as different as might be from the commercial
rush to Santa Fé. Starting too late, the emigrant might easily get
caught in the early mountain winter, but with a prompt start and a wise
guide, or pilot, winter always found the homeseeker in his promised
land. "This is the right manner to settle the Oregon question," wrote
Niles, after he had counted over the emigrants of 1844.
Before the great migration of 1843 reached Oregon the pioneers already
there had taken the law to themselves and organized a provisional
government in the Willamette Valley. The situation here, under
the terms of the joint occupation treaty, was one of considerable
uncertainty. National interests prompted settlers to hope and work for
future control by one country or the other, while advantage seemed
to incline to the side of Dr. McLoughlin, the generous factor of the
British fur companies. But the aggressive Americans of the early
migrations were restive under British leadership. They were fearful
also lest future American emigration might carry political control out
of their hands into the management of newcomers. Death and inheritance
among their number had pointed to a need for civil institutions. In
May, 1843, with all the ease invariably shown by men of Anglo-Saxon
blood when isolated together in the wilderness, they formed a voluntary
association for government and adopted a code of laws.
Self-confidence, the common asset of the West, was not absent in this
newest American community. "A few months since," wrote Elijah White,
"at our Oregon lyceum, it was unanimously voted that the colony of
Wallamette held out the most flattering encouragement to immigrants of
any colony on the globe." In his same report to the Commissioner of
Indian Affairs, the sub-Indian agent described the course of events.
"During my up-country excursion, the whites of the colony convened,
and formed a code of laws to regulate intercourse between themselves
during the absence of law from our mother country, adopting in almost
all respects the Iowa code. In this I was consulted, and encouraged the
measure, as it was so manifestly necessary for the collection of debts,
securing rights in claims, and the regulation of general intercourse
among the whites."
A messenger was immediately sent east to beg Congress for the extension
of United States laws and jurisdiction over the territory. His
journey was six months later than the winter ride of Marcus Whitman,
who went to Boston to save the missions of the American Board from
abandonment, and might with better justice than Whitman's be called
the ride to save Oregon. But Oregon was in no danger of being lost,
however dilatory Congress might be. The little illegitimate government
settled down to work, its legislative committee enacted whatever laws
were needed for local regulation, and a high degree of law and order
prevailed.
Sometimes the action of the Americans must have been meddlesome and
annoying to the English and Canadian trappers. In the free manners
of the first half of the nineteenth century the use of strong drink
was common throughout the country and universal along the frontier.
"A family could get along very well without butter, wheat bread,
sugar, or tea, but whiskey was as indispensable to housekeeping as
corn-meal, bacon, coffee, tobacco, and molasses. It was always present
at the house raising, harvesting, road working, shooting matches,
corn husking, weddings, and dances. It was never out of order 'where
two or three were gathered together.'" Yet along with this frequent
intemperance, a violent abstinence movement was gaining way. Many of
the Oregon pioneers came from Iowa and the new Northwest, full of
the new crusade and ready to support it. Despite the lack of legal
right, though with every moral justification, attempts were made to
crush the liquor traffic with the Indians. White tells of a mass
meeting authorizing him to take action on his own responsibility; of
his enlisting a band of coadjutors; and, finally, of finding "the
distillery in a deep, dense thicket, 11 miles from town, at 3 o'clock
P.M. The boiler was a large size potash kettle, and all the apparatus
well accorded. Two hogsheads and eight barrels of slush or beer were
standing ready for distillation, with part of one barrel of molasses.
No liquor was to be found, nor as yet had much been distilled. Having
resolved on my course, I left no time for reflection, but at once upset
the nearest cask, when my noble volunteers immediately seconded my
measures, making a river of beer in a moment; nor did we stop till the
kettle was raised, and elevated in triumph at the prow of our boat, and
every cask, with all the distilling apparatus, was broken to pieces and
utterly destroyed. We then returned, in high cheer, to the town, where
our presence and report gave general joy."
The provisional government lasted for several years, with a fair
degree of respect shown to it by its citizens. Like other provisional
governments, it was weakest when revenue was in question, but its
courts of justice met and satisfied a real need of the settlers. It was
long after regular settlement began before Congress acquired sure title
to the country and could pass laws for it.
The Oregon question, muttering in the thirties, thus broke out loudly
in the forties. Emigrants then rushed west in the great migrations with
deliberate purpose to have and to hold. Once there, they demanded, with
absolute confidence, that Congress protect them in their new homes. The
stories of the election of 1844, the Oregon treaty of 1846, and the
erection of a territorial government in 1848 would all belong to an
intimate study of the Oregon trail.
In the election of 1844 Oregon became an important question in
practical politics. Well-informed historians no longer believe that the
annexation of Texas was the result of nothing but a deep-laid plot of
slaveholders to acquire more lands for slave states and more southern
senators. All along the frontier, whether in Illinois, Wisconsin, and
Iowa, or in Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi, population was restive
under hard times and its own congenital instinct to move west to
cheaper lands. Speculation of the thirties had loaded up the eastern
states with debts and taxes, from which the states could not escape
with honor, but from under which their individual citizens could
emigrate. Wherever farm lands were known, there went the home-seekers,
and it needs no conspiracy explanation to account for the presence,
in the platform, of a party that appealed to the great plain people,
of planks for the reannexation of Texas and the whole of Oregon. With
a Democratic party strongest in the South, the former extension was
closer to the heart, but the whole West could subscribe to both.
Oregon included the whole domain west of the Rockies, between Spanish
Mexico at 42° and Russian America, later known as Alaska, at 54° 40´.
Its northern and southern boundaries were clearly established in
British and Spanish treaties. Its eastern limit by the old treaty of
1818 was the continental divide, since the United States and Great
Britain were unable either to allot or apportion it. Title which should
justify a claim to it was so equally divided between the contesting
countries that it would be difficult to make out a positive claim
for either, while in fact a compromise based upon equal division was
entirely fair. But the West wanted all of Oregon with an eagerness
that saw no flaw in the United States title. That the democratic party
was sincere in asking for all of it in its platform is clearer with
respect to the rank and file of the organization than with the leaders
of the party. Certain it is that just so soon as the execution of the
Texas pledge provoked a war with Mexico, President Polk, himself both a
westerner and a frontiersman, was ready to eat his words and agree with
his British adversary quickly.
Congress desired, after Polk's election in 1844, to serve a year's
notice on Great Britain and bring joint occupation to an end. But more
pacific advices prevailed in the mouth of James Buchanan, Secretary of
State, so that the United States agreed to accept an equitable division
instead of the whole or none. The Senate, consulted in advance upon the
change of policy, gave its approval both before and after to the treaty
which, signed June 15, 1846, extended the boundary line of 49° from the
Rockies to the Pacific. The settled half of Oregon and the greater part
of the Columbia River thus became American territory, subject to such
legislation as Congress should prescribe.
A territory of Oregon, by law of 1848, was the result of the
establishment of the first clear American title on the Pacific. All
that the United States had secured in the division was given the
popular name. Missionary activity and the fur trade, and, above all,
popular agricultural conquest, had established the first detached
American colony, with the desert separating it from the mother country.
The trail was already well known to thousands, and so clearly defined
by wheel ruts and débris along the sides that even the blind could
scarce wander from the beaten path. A temporary government, sufficient
for the immediate needs of the inhabitants, had at once paved the way
for the legitimate territory and revealed the high degree of law and
morality prevailing in the population. Already the older settlers were
prosperous, and the first chapter in the history of Oregon was over. A
second great trail had still further weakened the hold of the American
desert over the American mind, endangering, too, the Indian policy that
was dependent upon the desert for its continuance.
CHAPTER VI
OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS
The story of the settlement and winning of Oregon is but a small
portion of the whole history of the Oregon trail. The trail was
not only the road to Oregon, but it was the chief road across the
continent. Santa Fé dominated a southern route that was important in
commerce and conquest, and that could be extended west to the Pacific.
But the deep ravine of the Colorado River splits the United States into
sections with little chance of intercourse below the fortieth parallel.
To-day, in only two places south of Colorado do railroads bridge it;
only one stage route of importance ever crossed it. The southern trail
could not be compared in its traffic or significance with the great
middle highway by South Pass which led by easy grades from the Missouri
River and the Platte, not only to Oregon but to California and Great
Salt Lake.
Of the waves of influence that drew population along the trail, the
Oregon fever came first; but while it was still raging, there came
the Mormon trek that is without any parallel in American history.
Throughout the lifetime of the trails the American desert extended
almost unbroken from the bend of the Missouri to California and
Oregon. The Mormon settlement in Utah became at once the most
considerable colony within this area, and by its own fertility
emphasized the barren nature of the rest.
Of the Mormons, Joseph Smith was the prophet, but it would be fair to
ascribe the parentage of the sect to that emotional upheaval of the
twenties and thirties which broke down barriers of caste and politics,
ruptured many of the ordinary Christian churches, and produced new
revelations and new prophets by the score. Joseph Smith was merely
one of these, more astute perhaps than the others, having much of
the wisdom of leadership, as Mohammed had had before him, and able
to direct and hold together the enthusiasm that any prophet might
have been able to arouse. History teaches that it is easy to provoke
religious enthusiasm, however improbable or fraudulent the guides or
revelations may be; but that the founding of a church upon it is a task
for greatest statesmanship.
The discovery of the golden plates and the magic spectacles, and
the building upon them of a militant church has little part in the
conquest of the frontier save as a motive force. It is difficult for
the gentile mind to treat the Book of Mormon other than as a joke,
and its perpetrator as a successful charlatan. Mormon apologists and
their enemies have gone over the details of its production without
establishing much sure evidence on either side. The theological
teaching of the church seems to put less stress upon it than its
supposed miraculous origin would dictate. It is, wrote Mark Twain,
with his light-hearted penetration, "rather stupid and tiresome to
read, but there is nothing vicious in its teachings. Its code of
morals is unobjectionable--it is 'smouched' from the New Testament
and no credit given." Converts came slowly to the new prophet at the
start, for he was but one of many teachers crying in the wilderness,
and those who had known him best in his youth were least ready to
see in him a custodian of divinity. Yet by the spring of 1830 it was
possible to organize, in western New York, the body which Rigdon was
later to christen the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."
By the spring of 1831 headquarters had moved to Kirtland, Ohio, where
proselyting had proved to be successful in both religion and finance.
Kirtland was but a temporary abode for the new sect. Revelations came
in upon the prophet rapidly, pointing out the details of organization
and administration, the duty of missionary activity among the Indians
and gentiles, and the future home further to the west. Scouts were sent
to the Indian Country at an early date, leaving behind at Kirtland
the leaders to build their temple and gather in the converts who, by
1833 and 1834, had begun to appear in hopeful numbers. The frontier of
this decade was equally willing to speculate in religion, agriculture,
banking, or railways, while Smith and his intimates possessed the germ
of leadership to take advantage of every chance. Until the panic
of 1837 they flourished, apparently not always beyond reproach in
financial affairs, but with few neighbors who had the right to throw
the stone. Antagonism, already appearing against the church, was due
partly to an essential intolerance among their frontier neighbors
and partly to the whole-souled union between church and life which
distinguished the Mormons from the other sects. Their political
complexion was identical with their religion,--a combination which
always has aroused resentment in America.
For a western home, the leaders fell upon a tract in Missouri, not far
from Independence, close to the Indians whose conversion was a part of
the Mormon duty. In the years when Oregon and Santa Fé were by-words
along the Missouri, the Mormons were getting a precarious foothold near
the commencement of the trails. The population around Independence was
distinctly inhospitable, with the result that petty violence appeared,
in which it is hard to place the blame. There was a calm assurance
among the Saints that they and they alone were to inherit the earth.
Their neighbors maintained that poultry and stock were unsafe in their
vicinity because of this belief. The Mormons retaliated with charges of
well-spoiling, incendiarism, and violence. In all the bickerings the
sources of information are partisan and cloudy with prejudice, so that
it is easier to see the disgraceful scuffle than to find the culprit.
From the south side of the Missouri around Independence the Saints
were finally driven across the river by armed mobs; a transaction in
which the Missourians spoke of a sheriff's posse and maintaining the
peace. North of the river the unsettled frontier was reached in a few
miles, and there at Far West, in Caldwell County, they settled down at
last, to build their tabernacle and found their Zion. In the summer of
1838 their corner-stone was laid.
Far West remained their goal in belief longer than in fact. Before
1838 ended they had been forced to agree to leave Missouri; yet they
returned in secret to relay the corner-stone of the tabernacle and
continued to dream of this as their future home. Up to the time of
their expulsion from Missouri in 1838 they are not proved to have been
guilty of any crime that could extenuate the gross intolerance which
turned them out. As individuals they could live among Gentiles in
peace. It seems to have been the collective soul of the church that
was unbearable to the frontiersmen. The same intolerance which had
facilitated their departure from Ohio and compelled it from Missouri,
in a few more years drove them again on their migrations. The cohesion
of the church in politics, economics, and religion explains the
opposition which it cannot well excuse.
In Hancock County, Illinois, not far from the old Fort Madison ferry
which led into the half-breed country of Iowa, the Mormons discovered
a village of Commerce, once founded by a communistic settlement
from which the business genius of Smith now purchased it on easy
terms. It was occupied in 1839, renamed Nauvoo in 1840, and in it a
new tabernacle was begun in 1841. From the poverty-stricken young
clairvoyant of fifteen years before, the prophet had now developed
into a successful man of affairs, with ambitions that reached even to
the presidency at Washington. With a strong sect behind him, money at
his disposal, and supernatural powers in which all faithful saints
believed, Joseph could go far. Nauvoo had a population of about fifteen
thousand by the end of 1840.
Coming into Illinois upon the eve of a closely contested presidential
election, at a time when the state feared to lose its population in
an emigration to avoid taxation, and with a vote that was certain to
be cast for one candidate or another as a unit, the Mormons insured
for themselves a hearty welcome from both Democrats and Whigs. A
complaisant legislature gave to the new Zion a charter full of
privilege in the making and enforcing of laws, so that the ideal
of the Mormons of a state within the state was fully realized. The
town council was emancipated from state control, its courts were
independent, and its militia was substantially at the beck of Smith.
Proselyting and good management built up the town rapidly. To an
importunate creditor Smith described it as a "deathly sickly hole," but
to the possible convert it was advertised as a land of milk and honey.
Here it began to be noticed that desertions from the church were not
uncommon; that conversion alone kept full and swelled its ranks. It
was noised about that the wealthy convert had the warmest reception,
but was led on to let his religious passion work his impoverishment for
the good of the cause.
Here in Nauvoo it was that the leaders of the church took the decisive
step that carried Mormonism beyond the pale of the ordinary, tolerable,
religious sects. Rumors of immorality circulated among the Gentile
neighbors. It was bad enough, they thought, to have the Mormons chronic
petty thieves, but the license that was believed to prevail among the
leaders was more than could be endured by a community that did not
count this form of iniquity among its own excesses. The Mormons were in
general of the same stamp as their fellow frontiersmen until they took
to this. At the time, all immorality was denounced and denied by the
prophet and his friends, but in later years the church made public a
revelation concerning celestial or plural marriage, with the admission
that Joseph Smith had received it in the summer of 1843. Never does
Mormon polygamy seem to have been as prevalent as its enemies have
charged. But no church countenancing the practice could hope to be
endured by an American community. The odium of practising it was
increased by the hypocrisy which denied it. It was only a matter of
time until the Mormons should resume their march.
The end of Mormon rule at Nauvoo was precipitated by the murder of
Joseph Smith, and Hyrum his brother, by a mob at Carthage jail in the
summer of 1844. Growing intolerance had provoked an attack upon the
Saints similar to that in Missouri. Under promise of protection the
Smiths had surrendered themselves. Their martyrdom at once disgraced
the state in which it could be possible, and gave to Mormonism in a
murdered prophet a mighty bond of union. The reins of government fell
into hands not unworthy of them when Brigham Young succeeded Joseph
Smith.
Not until December, 1847, did Brigham become in a formal way president
of the church, but his authority was complete in fact after the death
of Joseph. A hard-headed Missouri River steamboat captain knew him, and
has left an estimate of him which must be close to truth. He was "a man
of great ability. Apparently deficient in education and refinement,
he was fair and honest in his dealings, and seemed extremely liberal
in conversation upon religious subjects. He impressed La Barge," so
Chittenden, the biographer of the latter relates, "as anything but a
religious fanatic or even enthusiast; but he knew how to make use of
the fanaticism of others and direct it to great ends." Shortly after
the murder of Joseph it became clear that Nauvoo must be abandoned, and
Brigham began to consider an exodus across the plains so familiar by
hearsay to every one by 1845, to the Rocky Mountains beyond the limits
of the United States. Persecution, for the persecuted can never see
two sides, had soured the Mormons. The threatened eviction came in the
autumn of 1845. In 1846 the last great trek began.
The van of the army crossed the Mississippi at Nauvoo as early as
February, 1846. By the hundred, in the spring of the year, the wagons
of the persecuted sect were ferried across the river. Five hundred and
thirty-nine teams within a single week in May is the report of one
observer. Property which could be commuted into the outfit for the
march was carefully preserved and used. The rest, the tidy houses, the
simple furniture, the careful farms (for the backbone of the church was
its well-to-do middle class), were abandoned or sold at forced sale
to the speculative purchaser. Nauvoo was full of real estate vultures
hoping to thrive upon the Mormon wreckage. Sixteen thousand or more
abandoned the city and its nearly finished temple within the year.
Across southern Iowa the "Camp of Israel," as Brigham Young liked to
call his headquarters, advanced by easy stages, as spring and summer
allowed. To-day, the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy railway follows
the Mormon road for many miles, but in 1846 the western half of Iowa
territory was Indian Country, the land of the Chippewa, Ottawa, and
Potawatomi, who sold out before the year was over, but who were in
possession at this time. Along the line of march camps were built by
advance parties to be used in succession by the following thousands.
The extreme advance hurried on to the Missouri River, near Council
Bluffs, where as yet no city stood, to plant a crop of grain, since
manna could not be relied upon in this migration. By autumn much of the
population of Nauvoo had settled down in winter quarters not far above
the present site of Omaha, preserving the orderly life of the society,
and enduring hardships which the leaders sought to mitigate by gaiety
and social gatherings. In the Potawatomi country of Iowa, opposite
their winter quarters, Kanesville sprang into existence; while all the
way from Kanesville to Grand Island in the Platte Mormon detachments
were scattered along the roads. The destination was yet in doubt.
Westward it surely was, but it is improbable that even Brigham knew
just where.
The Indians received the Mormons, persecuted and driven westward
like themselves, kindly at first, but discontent came as the winter
residence was prolonged. From the country of the Omaha, west of the
Missouri, it was necessary soon to prohibit Mormon settlement, but
east, in the abandoned Potawatomi lands, they were allowed to maintain
Kanesville and other outfitting stations for several years. A permanent
residence here was not desired even by the Mormons themselves. Spring
in 1847 found them preparing to resume the march.
In April, 1847, an advance party under the guidance of no less a person
than Brigham Young started out the Platte trail in search of Zion.
One hundred and forty-three men, seventy-two wagons, one hundred and
seventy-five horses, and six months' rations, they took along, if
the figures of one of their historians may be accepted. Under strict
military order, the detachment proceeded to the mountains. It is one of
the ironies of fate that the Mormons had no sooner selected their abode
beyond the line of the United States in their flight from persecution
than conquest from Mexico extended the United States beyond them to the
Pacific. They themselves aided in this defeat of their plan, since from
among them Kearny had recruited in 1846 a battalion for his army of
invasion.
Up the Platte, by Fort Laramie, to South Pass and beyond, the
prospectors followed the well-beaten trail. Oregon homeseekers had been
cutting it deep in the prairie sod for five years. West of South Pass
they bore southwest to Fort Bridger, and on the 24th of July, 1847,
Brigham gazed upon the waters of the Great Salt Lake. Without serious
premeditation, so far as is known, and against the advice of one of the
most experienced of mountain guides, this valley by a later-day Dead
Sea was chosen for the future capital. Fields were staked out, ground
was broken by initial furrows, irrigation ditches were commenced at
once, and within a month the town site was baptized the City of the
Great Salt Lake.
Behind the advance guard the main body remained in winter quarters,
making ready for their difficult search for the promised land; moving
at last in the late spring in full confidence that a Zion somewhere
would be prepared for them. The successor of Joseph relied but little
upon supernatural aid in keeping his flock under control. Commonly he
depended upon human wisdom and executive direction. But upon the eve
of his own departure from winter quarters he had made public, for the
direction of the main body, a written revelation: "The Word and Will
of the Lord concerning the Camp of Israel in their Journeyings to the
West." Such revelations as this, had they been repeated, might well
have created or renewed popular confidence in the real inspiration of
the leader. The order given was such as a wise source of inspiration
might have formed after constant intercourse with emigrants and traders
upon the difficulties of overland migration and the dangers of the way.
"Let all the people of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, and those who journey with them," read the revelation, "be
organized into companies, with a covenant and a promise to keep all
the commandments and statutes of the Lord our God. Let the companies
be organized with captains of hundreds, and captains of fifties, and
captains of tens, with a president and counsellor at their head, under
direction of the Twelve Apostles: and this shall be our covenant, that
we will walk in all the ordinances of the Lord.
"Let each company provide itself with all the teams, wagons,
provisions, and all other necessaries for the journey that they can.
When the companies are organized, let them go with all their might,
to prepare for those who are to tarry. Let each company, with their
captains and presidents, decide how many can go next spring; then
choose out a sufficient number of able-bodied and expert men to take
teams, seed, and farming utensils to go as pioneers to prepare for
putting in the spring crops. Let each company bear an equal proportion,
according to the dividend of their property, in taking the poor, the
widows, and the fatherless, and the families of those who have gone
with the army, that the cries of the widow and the fatherless come not
up into the ears of the Lord against his people.
"Let each company prepare houses and fields for raising grain for those
who are to remain behind this season; and this is the will of the Lord
concerning this people.
"Let every man use all his influence and property to remove this people
to the place where the Lord shall locate a stake of Zion: and if ye do
this with a pure heart, with all faithfulness, ye shall be blessed in
your flocks, and in your herds, and in your fields, and in your houses,
and in your families...."
The rendezvous for the main party was the Elk Horn River, whence the
head of the procession moved late in June and early in July. In careful
organization, with camps under guard and wagons always in corral at
night, detachments moved on in quick succession. Kanesville and a
large body remained behind for another year or longer, but before
Brigham had laid out his city and started east the emigration of
1847 was well upon its way. The foremost began to come into the city
by September. By October the new city in the desert had nearly four
thousand inhabitants. The march had been made with little suffering and
slight mortality. No better pioneer leadership had been seen upon the
trail.
The valley of the Great Salt Lake, destined to become an oasis in the
American desert, supporting the only agricultural community existing
therein during nearly twenty years, discouraged many of the Mormons at
the start. In Illinois and Missouri they were used to wood and water;
here they found neither. In a treeless valley they were forced to
carry their water to their crops in a way in which their leader had
more confidence than themselves. The urgency of Brigham in setting his
first detachment to work on fields and crops was not unwise, since for
two years there was a real question of food to keep the colony alive.
Inexperience in irrigating agriculture and plagues of crickets kept
down the early crops. By 1850 the colony was safe, but its maintenance
does still more credit to its skilful leadership. Its people, apart
from foreign converts who came in later years, were of the stuff that
had colonized the middle West and won a foothold in Oregon; but nowhere
did an emigration so nearly create a land which it enjoyed as here.
A paternal government dictated every effort, outlined the streets and
farms, detailed parties to explore the vicinity and start new centres
of life. Little was left to chance or unguided enthusiasm. Practical
success and a high state of general welfare rewarded the Saints for
their implicit obedience to authority.
Mormon emigration along the Platte trail became as common as that to
Oregon in the years following 1847, but, except in the disastrous
hand-cart episode of 1856, contains less of novelty than of substantial
increase to the colony. Even to-day men are living in the West, who,
walking all the way, with their own hands pushed and pulled two-wheeled
carts from the Missouri to the mountains in the fifties. To bad
management in handling proselytes the hand-cart catastrophe was chiefly
due. From the beginning missionary activity had been pressed throughout
the United States and even in Europe. In England and Scandinavia the
lower classes took kindly to the promises, too often impracticable, it
must be believed, of enthusiasts whose standing at home depended upon
success abroad. The convert with property could pay his way to the
Missouri border and join the ordinary annual procession. But the poor,
whose wealth was not equal to the moderately costly emigration, were
a problem until the emigration society determined to cut expenses by
reducing equipment and substituting pushcarts and human power for the
prairie schooner with its long train of oxen.
In 1856 well over one thousand poor emigrants left Liverpool, at
contract rates, for Iowa City, where the parties were to be organized
and ample equipment in handcarts and provisions were promised
to be ready. On arrival in Iowa City it was found that slovenly
management had not built enough of the carts. Delayed by the necessary
construction of these carts, some of the bands could not get on the
trail until late in the summer,--too late for a successful trip, as a
few of their more cautious advisers had said. The earliest company got
through to Salt Lake City in September with considerable success. It
was hard and toilsome to push the carts; women and children suffered
badly, but the task was possible. Snow and starvation in the mountains
broke down the last company. A friendly historian speaks of a loss of
sixty-seven out of a party of four hundred and twenty. Throughout the
United States the picture of these poor deluded immigrants, toiling
against their carts through mountain pass and river-bottom, with
clothing going and food quite gone, increased the conviction that the
Mormon hierarchy was misleading and abusing the confidence of thousands.
That the hierarchy was endangering the peace of the whole United States
came to be believed as well. In 1850, with the Salt Lake settlement
three years old, Congress had organized a territory of Utah, extending
from the Rockies to California, between 37° and 42°, and the President
had made Brigham Young its governor. The close association of the
Mormon church and politics had prevented peaceful relations from
existing between its people and the federal officers of the territory,
while Washington prejudiced a situation already difficult by sending
to Utah officers and judges, some of whom could not have commanded
respect even where the sway of United States authority was complete.
The vicious influence of politics in territorial appointments, which
the territories always resented, was specially dangerous in the case
of a territory already feeling itself persecuted for conscience' sake.
Yet it was not impossible for a tactful and respectable federal officer
to do business in Utah. For several years relations increased in bad
temper, both sides appealing constantly to President and Congress,
until it appeared, as was the fact, that the United States authority
had become as nothing in Utah and with the church. Among the earliest
of President Buchanan's acts was the preparation of an army which
should reëstablish United States prestige among the Mormons. Large
wagon trains were sent out from Fort Leavenworth in the summer of 1857,
with an army under Albert Sidney Johnston following close behind, and
again the old Platte trail came before the public eye.
The Utah war was inglorious. Far from its base, and operating in a
desert against plainsmen of remarkable skill, the army was helpless.
At will, the Mormon cavalry cut out and burned the supply trains,
confining their attacks to property rather than to armed forces. When
the army reached Fort Bridger, it found Brigham still defiant, his
people bitter against conquest, and the fort burned. With difficulty
could the army of invasion have lived through the winter without aid.
In the spring of 1858 a truce was patched up, and the Mormons, being
invulnerable, were forgiven. The army marched down the trail again.
The Mormon hegira planted the first of the island settlements in the
heart of the desert. The very isolation of Utah gave it prominence.
What religious enthusiasm lacked in aiding organization, shrewd
leadership and resulting prosperity supplied. The first impulse moving
population across the plains had been chiefly conquest, with Oregon as
the result. Religion was the next, producing Utah. The lust for gold
followed close upon the second, calling into life California, and then
in a later decade sprinkling little camps over all the mountain West.
The Mormons would have fared much worse had their leader not located
his stake of Zion near the point where the trail to the Southwest
deviated from the Oregon road, and where the forty-niners might pay
tribute to his commercial skill as they passed through his oasis on
their way to California.
CHAPTER VII
CALIFORNIA AND THE FORTY-NINERS
On his second exploring trip, John C. Frémont had worked his way south
over the Nevada desert until at last he crossed the mountains and found
himself in the valley of the Sacramento. Here in 1844 a small group
of Americans had already been established for several years. Mexican
California was scantily inhabited and was so far from the inefficient
central government that the province had almost fallen away of its
own weight. John A. Sutter, a Swiss of American proclivities, was
the magnate of the Sacramento region, whence he dispensed a liberal
hospitality to the Pathfinder's party.
In 1845, Frémont started on his third trip, this time entering
California by a southern route and finding himself at Sutter's early in
1846. In some respects his detachment of engineers had the appearance
of a filibustering party from the start. When it crossed the Rockies,
it began to trespass upon the territory belonging to Mexico, with
whom the United States was yet at peace. Whether the explorer was
actually instructed to detach California from Mexico, or whether he
only imagined that such action would be approved at home, is likely
never to be explained. Naval officers on the Pacific were already under
orders in the event of war to seize California at once; and Polk was
from the start ambitious to round out the American territory on the
Southwest. The Americans in the Sacramento were at variance with their
Mexican neighbors, who resented the steady influx of foreign blood.
Between 1842 and 1846 their numbers had rapidly increased. And in June,
1846, certain of them, professing to believe that they were to be
attacked, seized the Mexican village of Sonoma and broke out the colors
of what they called their Bear Flag Republic. Frémont, near at hand,
countenanced and supported their act, if he did not suggest it.
The news of actual war reached the Pacific shortly after the American
population in California had begun its little revolution. Frémont was
in his glory for a time as the responsible head of American power
in the province. Naval commanders under their own orders coöperated
along the coast so effectively that Kearny, with his army of the West,
learned that the conquest was substantially complete, soon after
he left Santa Fé, and was able to send most of his own force back.
California fell into American hands almost without a struggle, leaving
the invaders in possession early in 1847. In January of that year the
little village of Yerba Buena was rebaptized San Francisco, while the
American occupants began the sale of lots along the water front and the
construction of a great seaport.
The relations of Oregon and California to the occupation of the West
were much the same in 1847. Both had been coveted by the United States.
Both had now been acquired in fact. Oregon had come first because
it was most easily reached by the great trail, and because it had
no considerable body of foreign inhabitants to resist invasion. It
was, under the old agreement for joint occupation, a free field for
colonization. But California had been the territory of Mexico and was
occupied by a strange population. In the early forties there were from
4000 to 6000 Mexicans and Spaniards in the province, living the easy
agricultural life of the Spanish colonist. The missions and the Indians
had decayed during the past generation. The population was light
hearted and generous. It quarrelled loudly, but had the Latin-American
knack for bloodless revolutions. It was partly Americanized by long
association with those trappers who had visited it since the twenties,
and the settlers who had begun in the late thirties. But as an occupied
foreign territory it had not invited American colonization as Oregon
had done. Hence the Oregon movement had been going on three or four
years before any considerable bodies of emigrants broke away from the
trail, near Salt Lake, and sought out homes in California. If war had
not come, American immigration into California would have progressed
after 1846 quite as rapidly as the Mexican authorities would have
allowed. As it was, the actual conquest removed the barrier, so that
California migration in 1846 and 1847 rivalled that to Oregon under
the ordinary stimulus of the westward movement. The settlement of the
Mormons at Salt Lake developed a much-needed outfitting post at the
head of the most perilous section of the California trail. Both Mormons
and Californians profited by its traffic.
With respect to California, the treaty which closed the Mexican War
merely recognized an accomplished fact. By right of conquest California
had changed hands. None can doubt that Mexico here paid the penalty
under that organic law of politics which forbids a nation to sit still
when others are moving. In no conceivable way could the occupation
of California have been prevented, and if the war over Texas had not
come in 1846, a war over California must shortly have occurred. By the
treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo Mexico relinquished the territory which she
had never been able to develop, and made way for the erection of the
new America on the Pacific.
Most notable among the ante-bellum pioneers in California was John
A. Sutter, whose establishment on the Sacramento had been a centre
of the new life. Upon a large grant from the Mexican government he
had erected his adobe buildings in the usual semi-fortified style
that distinguished the isolated ranch. He was ready for trade, or
agriculture, or war if need be, possessing within his own domain
equipment for the ordinary simple manufactures and supplies. As his
ranch prospered, and as Americans increased in San Francisco and on the
Sacramento, the prospects of Sutter steadily improved. In 1847 he made
ready to reap an additional share of profit from the boom by building a
sawmill on his estate. Among his men there had been for some months a
shiftless jack-of-all-trades, James W. Marshall, who had been chiefly
carpenter while in Sutter's employ. In the summer of 1847 Marshall was
sent out to find a place where timber and water-power should be near
enough together to make a profitable mill site. He found his spot on
the south bank of the American, which is a tributary of the Sacramento,
some forty-five miles northeast of Sacramento.
In the autumn of the year Sutter and Marshall came to their agreement
by which the former was to furnish all supplies and the latter was to
build the mill and operate it on shares. Construction was begun before
the year ended, and was substantially completed in January, 1848.
Experience showed the amateur constructor that his mill-race was too
shallow. To remedy this he started the practice of turning the river
into it by night to wash out earth and deepen the channel. Here it was
that after one of these flushings, toward the end of January, he picked
up glittering flakes which looked to him like gold.
With his first find, Marshall hurried off to Sutter, at the ranch.
Together they tested the flakes in the apothecary's shop, proving the
reality of the discovery before returning to the mill to prospect more
fully.
For Sutter the discovery was a calamity. None could tell how large the
field might be, but he saw clearly that once the news of the find got
abroad, the whole population would rush madly to the diggings. His
ranch, the mill, and a new mill which was under way, all needed labor.
But none would work for hire with free gold to be had for the taking.
The discoverers agreed to keep their secret for six weeks, but the news
leaked out, carried off all Sutter's hands in a few days, and reached
even to San Francisco in the form of rumor before February was over. A
new force had appeared to change the balance of the West and to excite
the whole United States.
The rush to the gold fields falls naturally into two parts: the earlier
including the population of California, near enough to hear of the find
and get to the diggings in 1848. The later came from all the world, but
could not start until the news had percolated by devious and tedious
courses to centres of population thousands of miles away. The movement
within California started in March and April.
Further prospecting showed that over large areas around the American
and Sacramento rivers free gold could be obtained by the simple
processes of placer mining. A wooden cradle operated by six or eight
men was the most profitable tool, but a tin dishpan would do in an
emergency. San Francisco was sceptical when the rumor reached it, and
was not excited even by the first of April, but as nuggets and bags
of dust appeared in quantity, the doubters turned to enthusiasts.
Farms were abandoned, town houses were deserted, stores were closed,
while every able-bodied man tramped off to the north to try his luck.
The city which had flourished and expanded since the beginning of
1847 became an empty shell before May was over. Its newspaper is mute
witness of the desertion, lapsing into silence for a month after May
29th because its hands had disappeared. Farther south in California
the news spread as spring advanced, turning by June nearly every face
toward Sacramento.
The public authorities took cognizance of the find during the summer.
It was forced upon them by the wholesale desertions of troops who
could not stand the strain. Both Consul Larkin and Governor Mason, who
represented the sovereignty of the United States, visited the scenes in
person and described the situation in their official letters home. The
former got his news off to the Secretary of State by the 1st of June;
the latter wrote on August 17; together they became the authoritative
messengers that confirmed the rumors to the world, when Polk published
some of their documents in his message to Congress in December, 1848.
The rumors had reached the East as early as September, but now, writes
Bancroft, "delirium seized upon the community."
How to get to California became a great popular question in the winter
of 1848-1849. The public mind was well prepared for long migrations
through the news of Pacific pioneers which had filled the journals
for at least six years. Route, time, method, and cost were all to be
considered. Migration, of a sort, began at once.
Land and water offered a choice of ways to California. The former
route was now closed for the winter and could not be used until spring
should produce her crop of necessary pasturage. But the impetuous and
the well-to-do could start immediately by sea. All along the seaboard
enterprising ship-owners announced sailings for California, by the Horn
or by the shorter Isthmian route. Retired hulks were called again into
commission for the purpose. Fares were extortionate, but many were
willing to pay for speed. Before the discovery, Congress had arranged
for a postal service, _via_ Panama, and the Pacific Mail Steamship
Company had been organized to work the contracts. The _California_
had left New York in the fall of 1848 to run on the western end of
the route. It had sailed without passengers, but, meeting the news
of gold on the South American coast, had begun to load up at Latin
ports. When it reached Panama, a crowd of clamorous emigrants, many
times beyond its capacity, awaited its coming and quarrelled over its
accommodations. On February 28, 1849, it reached San Francisco at last,
starting the influx from the world at large.
The water route was too costly for most of the gold-seekers, who were
forced to wait for spring, when the trails would be open. Various
routes then guided them, through Mexico and Texas, but most of all they
crowded once more the great Platte trail. Oregon migration and the
Mormon flight had familiarized this route to all the world. For its
first stages it was "already broad and well beaten as any turnpike in
our country."
The usual crowd, which every May for several years had brought to
the Missouri River crossings around Fort Leavenworth, was reënforced
in 1849 and swollen almost beyond recognition. A rifle regiment of
regulars was there, bound for Forts Laramie and Hall to erect new
frontier posts. Lieutenant Stansbury was there, gathering his surveying
party which was to prospect for a railway route to Salt Lake. By
thousands and tens of thousands others came, tempted by the call of
gold. This was the cheap and popular route. Every western farmer was
ready to start, with his own wagons and his own stock. The townsman
could easily buy the simple equipment of the plains. The poor could
work their way, driving cattle for the better-off. Through inexperience
and congestion the journey was likely to be hard, but any one might
undertake it. Niles reported in June that up to May 18, 2850 wagons
had crossed the river at St. Joseph, and 1500 more at the other ferries.
Familiarity had done much to divest the overland journey of its
terrors. We hear in this, and even in earlier years, of a sort of
plains travel de luxe, of wagons "fitted up so as to be secure from
the weather and ... the women knitting and sewing, for all the world
as if in their ordinary farm-houses." Stansbury, hurrying out in June
and overtaking the trains, was impressed with the picturesque character
of the emigrants and their equipment. "We have been in company with
multitudes of emigrants the whole day," he wrote on June 12. "The road
has been lined to a long extent with their wagons, whose white covers,
glittering in the sunlight, resembled, at a distance, ships upon the
ocean.... We passed also an old Dutchman, with an immense wagon, drawn
by six yoke of cattle, and loaded with household furniture. Behind
followed a covered cart containing the wife, driving herself, and a
host of babies--the whole bound to the land of promise, of the distance
to which, however, they seemed to have not the most remote idea. To the
tail of the cart was attached a large chicken-coop, full of fowls; two
milch-cows followed, and next came an old mare, upon the back of which
was perched a little, brown-faced, barefooted girl, not more than seven
years old, while a small sucking colt brought up the rear." Travellers
eastward bound, meeting the procession, reported the hundreds and
thousands whom they met.
The organization of the trains was not unlike that of the Oregonians
and the Mormons, though generally less formal than either of these.
The wagons were commonly grouped in companies for protection, little
needed, since the Indians were at peace during most of 1849. At
nightfall the long columns came to rest and worked their wagons into
the corral which was the typical plains encampment. To form this the
wagons were ranged in a large circle, each with its tongue overlapping
the vehicle ahead, and each fastened to the next with the brake or yoke
chains. An opening at one end allowed for driving in the stock, which
could here be protected from stampede or Indian theft. In emergency
the circle of wagons formed a fortress strong enough to turn aside
ordinary Indian attacks. When the companies had been on the road for a
few weeks the forming of the corral became an easy military manoeuvre.
The itinerant circus is to-day the thing most like the fleet of prairie
schooners.
The emigration of the forty-niners was attended by worse sufferings
than the trail had yet known. Cholera broke out among the trains at the
start. It stayed by them, lining the road with nearly five thousand
graves, until they reached the hills beyond Fort Laramie. The price
of inexperience, too, had to be paid. Wagons broke down and stock
died. The wreckage along the trail bore witness to this. On July 27,
Stansbury observed: "To-day we find additional and melancholy evidence
of the difficulties encountered by those who are ahead of us. Before
halting at noon, we passed eleven wagons that had been broken up, the
spokes of the wheels taken to make pack-saddles, and the rest burned or
otherwise destroyed. The road has been literally strewn with articles
that have been thrown away. Bar-iron and steel, large blacksmiths'
anvils and bellows, crowbars, drills, augers, gold-washers, chisels,
axes, lead, trunks, spades, ploughs, large grindstones, baking-ovens,
cooking-stoves without number, kegs, barrels, harness, clothing, bacon,
and beans, were found along the road in pretty much the order in which
they have been here enumerated. The carcasses of eight oxen, lying
in one heap by the roadside, this morning, explained a part of the
trouble." In twenty-four miles he passed seventeen abandoned wagons and
twenty-seven dead oxen.
Beyond Fort Hall, with the journey half done, came the worst perils. In
the dust and heat of the Humboldt Valley, stock literally faded away,
so that thousands had to turn back to refuge at Salt Lake, or were
forced on foot to struggle with thirst and starvation.
The number of the overland emigrants can never be told with accuracy.
Perhaps the truest estimate is that of the great California historian
who counts it that, in 1849, 42,000 crossed the continent and reached
the gold fields.
It was a mixed multitude that found itself in California after July,
1849, when the overland folk began to arrive. All countries and all
stations in society had contributed to fill the ranks of the 100,000
or more whites who were there in the end of the year. The farmer, the
amateur prospector, and the professional gambler mingled in the crowd.
Loose women plied their trade without rebuke. Those who had come by
sea contained an over-share of the undesirable element that proposed
to live upon the recklessness and vices of the miners. The overland
emigrants were largely of farmer stock; whether they had possessed
frontier experience or not before the start, the 3000-mile journey
toughened and seasoned all who reached California. Nearly all possessed
the essential virtues of strength, boldness, and initiative.
The experience of Oregon might point to the future of California when
its strenuous population arrived upon the unprepared community. The
Mexican government had been ejected by war. A military government
erected by the United States still held its temporary sway, but
felt out of place as the controlling power over a civilian American
population. The new inhabitants were much in need of law, and had
the American dislike for military authority. Immediately Congress
was petitioned to form a territorial government for the new El
Dorado. But Congress was preoccupied with the relations of slavery
and freedom in the Southwest during its session of 1848-1849. It
adjourned with nothing done for California. The mining population was
irritated but not deeply troubled by this neglect. It had already
organized its miners' courts and begun to execute summary justice in
emergencies. It was quite able and willing to act upon the suggestion
of its administrative officers and erect its state government without
the consent of Congress. The military governor called the popular
convention; the constitution framed during September, 1849, was
ratified by popular vote on November 13; a few days later Governor
Riley surrendered his authority into the hands of the elected governor,
Burnett, and the officials of the new state. All this was done
spontaneously and easily. There was no sanction in law for California
until Congress admitted it in September, 1850, receiving as one of its
first senators, John C. Frémont.
The year 1850 saw the great compromise upon slavery in the Southwest,
a compromise made necessary by the appearance on the Pacific of a new
America. The "call of the West and the lust for gold" had done their
work in creating a new centre of life beyond the quondam desert.
The census of 1850 revealed something of the nature of this population.
Probably 125,000 whites, though it was difficult to count them and
impossible to secure absolute accuracy, were found in Oregon and
California. Nine-tenths of these were in the latter colony. More than
11,000 were found in the settlements around Great Salt Lake. Not many
more than 3000 Americans were scattered among the Mexican population
along the Rio Grande. The great trails had seen most of these
home-seekers marching westward over the desert and across the Indian
frontier which in the blindness of statecraft had been completed for
all time in 1840.
CHAPTER VIII
KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER
The long line separating the Indian and agricultural frontiers was
in 1850 but little farther west than the point which it had reached
by 1820. Then it had arrived at the bend of the Missouri, where it
remained for thirty years. Its flanks had swung out during this
generation, including Arkansas on the south and Iowa, Minnesota, and
Wisconsin on the north, so that now at the close of the Mexican War the
line was nearly a true meridian crossing the Missouri at its bend. West
of this spot it had been kept from going by the tradition of the desert
and the pressure of the Indian tribes. The country behind had filled up
with population, Oregon and California had appeared across the desert,
but the barrier had not been pushed away.
Through the great trails which penetrated the desert accurate knowledge
of the Far West had begun to come. By 1850 the tradition which Pike
and Long had helped to found had well-nigh disappeared, and covetous
eyes had been cast upon the Indian lands across the border,--lands from
which the tribes were never to be removed without their consent, and
which were never to be included in any organized territory or state.
Most of the traffic over the trails and through this country had been
in defiance of treaty obligations. Some of the tribes had granted
rights of transit, but such privileges as were needed and used by the
Oregon, and California, and Utah hordes were far in excess of these.
Most of the emigrants were technically trespassers upon Indian lands as
well as violators of treaty provisions. Trouble with the Indians had
begun early in the migrations.
[Illustration: THE WEST IN 1849
Texas still claimed the Rio Grande as her western boundary. The
Southwest acquired in 1848 was yet unorganized.]
At the very beginning of the Oregon movement the Indian office had
foreseen trouble: "Frequent difficulties have occurred during the
spring of the last and present year [1845] from the passing of
emigrants for Oregon at various points into the Indian Country. Large
companies have frequently rendezvoused on the Indian lands for months
previous to the period of their starting. The emigrants have two
advantages in crossing into the Indian Country at an early period of
the spring; one, the facility of grazing their stock on the rushes with
which the lands abound; and the other, that they cross the Missouri
River at their leisure. In one instance a large party had to be forced
by the military to put back. This passing of the emigrants through
the Indian Country without their permission must, I fear, result in
an unpleasant collision, if not bloodshed. The Indians say that the
whites have no right to be in their country without their consent;
and the upper tribes, who subsist on game, complain that the buffalo
are wantonly killed and scared off, which renders their only means of
subsistence every year more precarious." Frémont had seen, in 1842,
that this invasion of the Indian Country could not be kept up safely
without a show of military force, and had recommended a post at the
point where Fort Laramie was finally placed.
The years of the great migrations steadily aggravated the relations
with the tribes, while the Indian agents continually called upon
Congress to redress or stop the wrongs being done as often by
panic-stricken emigrants as by vicious ones. "By alternate persuasion
and force," wrote the Commissioner in 1854, "some of these tribes have
been removed, step by step, from mountain to valley, and from river
to plain, until they have been pushed halfway across the continent.
They can go no further; on the ground they now occupy the crisis must
be met, and their future determined.... [There] they are, and as they
are, with outstanding obligations in their behalf of the most solemn
and imperative character, voluntarily assumed by the government." But a
relentless westward movement that had no regard for rights of Mexico in
either Texas or California could not be expected to notice the rights
of savages even less powerful. It demanded for its own citizens rights
not inferior to those conceded by the government "to wandering nations
of savages." A shrewd and experienced Indian agent, Fitzpatrick, who
had the confidence of both races, voiced this demand in 1853. "But
one course remains," he wrote, "which promises any permanent relief
to them, or any lasting benefit to the country in which they dwell.
That is simply to make such modifications in the 'intercourse laws' as
will invite the residence of traders amongst them, and _open the whole
Indian territory to settlement_. In this manner will be introduced
amongst them those who will set the example of developing the resources
of the soil, of which the Indians have not now the most distant idea;
who will afford to them employment in pursuits congenial to their
nature; and who will accustom them, imperceptibly, to those modes
of life which can alone secure them from the miseries of penury.
Trade is the only civilizer of the Indian. It has been the precursor
of all civilization heretofore, and it will be of all hereafter....
The present 'intercourse laws' too, so far as they are calculated to
protect the Indians from the evils of civilized life--from the sale of
ardent spirits and the prostitution of morals--are nothing more than a
dead letter; while, so far as they contribute to exclude the benefits
of civilization from amongst them, they can be, and are, strictly
enforced."
In 1849 the Indian Office was transferred by Congress from the War
Department to the Interior, with the idea that the Indians would be
better off under civilian than military control, and shortly after
this negotiations were begun looking towards new settlements with the
tribes. The Sioux were persuaded in the summer of 1851 to make way for
increasing population in Minnesota, while in the autumn of the same
year the tribes of the western plains were induced to make concessions.
The great treaties signed at the Upper Platte agency at Fort Laramie in
1851 were in the interest of the migrating thousands. Fitzpatrick had
spent the summer of 1850 in summoning the bands of Cheyenne and Arapaho
to the conference. Shoshoni were brought in from the West. From the
north of the Platte came Sioux and Assiniboin, Arickara, Grosventres,
and Crows. The treaties here concluded were never ratified in full,
but for fifteen years Congress paid various annuities provided by
them, and in general the tribes adhered to them. The right of the
United States to make roads across the plains and to fortify them
with military posts was fully agreed to, while the Indians pledged
themselves to commit no depredations upon emigrants. Two years later,
at Fort Atkinson, Fitzpatrick had a conference with the plains Indians
of the south, Comanche and Apache, making "a renewal of faith, which
the Indians did not have in the Government, nor the Government in them."
Overland traffic was made more safe for several years by these
treaties. Such friction and fighting as occurred in the fifties were
due chiefly to the excesses and the fears of the emigrants themselves.
But in these treaties there was nothing for the eastern tribes
along the Iowa and Missouri border, who were in constant danger of
dispossession by the advance of the frontier itself.
The settlement of Kansas, becoming probable in the early fifties,
was the impending danger threatening the peace of the border. There
was not as yet any special need to extend colonization across the
Missouri, since Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota were but
sparsely inhabited. Settlers for years might be accommodated farther
to the east. But the slavery debate of 1850 had revealed and aroused
passions in both North and South. Motives were so thoroughly mixed
that participants were rarely able to give satisfactory accounts of
themselves. Love of struggle, desire for revenge, political ambition,
all mingled with pure philanthropy and a reasonable fear of outside
interference with domestic institutions. The compromise had settled
the future of the new lands, but between Missouri and the mountains
lay the residue of the Louisiana purchase, divided truly by the
Missouri compromise line of 36° 30', but not yet settled. Ambition to
possess it, to convert it to slavery, or to retain it for freedom was
stimulated by the debate and the fears of outside interference. The
nearest part of the unorganized West was adjacent to Missouri. Hence it
was that Kansas came within the public vision first.
It is possible to trace a movement for territorial organization in
the Indian Country back to 1850 or even earlier. Certain of the more
intelligent of the Indian colonists had been able to read the signs
of the times, with the result that organized effort for a territory
of Nebraska had emanated from the Wyandot country and had besieged
Congress between 1851 and 1853. The obstacles in the road of fulfilment
were the Indians and the laws. Experience had long demonstrated the
unwisdom of permitting Indians and emigrants to live in the same
districts. The removal and intercourse acts, and the treaties based
upon them, had guaranteed in particular that no territory or state
should ever be organized in this country. Good faith and the physical
presence of the tribes had to be overcome before a new territory could
appear.
The guarantee of permanency was based upon treaty, and in the eye of
Congress was not so sacred that it could not be modified by treaty.
As it became clear that the demand for the opening of these lands
would soon have to be granted, Congress prepared for the inevitable
by ordering, in March, 1853, a series of negotiations with the tribes
west of Missouri with a view to the cession of more country. The
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, George W. Manypenny, who later wrote a
book on "Our Indian Wards," spent the next summer in breaking to the
Indians the hard news that they were expected once more to vacate. He
found the tribes uneasy and sullen. Occasional prospectors, wandering
over their lands, had set them thinking. There had been no actual white
settlement up to October, 1853, so Manypenny declared, but the chiefs
feared that he was contemplating a seizure of their lands. The Indian
mind had some difficulty in comprehending the difference between ceding
their land by treaty and losing it by force.
At a long series of council fires the Commissioner soothed away some of
the apprehensions, but found a stubborn resistance when he came to talk
of ceding all the reserves and moving to new homes. The tribes, under
pressure, were ready to part with some of their lands, but wanted to
retain enough to live on. When he talked to them of the Great Father
in Washington, Manypenny himself felt the irony of the situation; the
guarantee of permanency had been simple and explicit. Yet he arranged
for a series of treaties in the following year.
In the spring of 1854 treaties were concluded with most of the tribes
fronting on Missouri between 37° and 42° 40'. Some of these had been
persuaded to move into the Missouri Valley in the negotiations of
the thirties. Others, always resident there, had accepted curtailed
reserves. The Omaha faced the Missouri, north of the Platte. South of
the Platte were the Oto and Missouri, the Sauk and Foxes of Missouri,
the Iowa, and the Kickapoo. The Delaware reserve, north of the Kansas,
and around Fort Leavenworth, was the seat of Indian civilization of a
high order. The Shawnee, immediately south of the Kansas, were also
well advanced in agriculture in the permanent home they had accepted.
The confederated Kaskaskia and Peoria, and Wea and Piankashaw, and the
Miami were further south. From those tribes more than thirteen million
acres of land were bought in the treaties of 1854. In scattered and
reduced reserves the Indians retained for themselves about one-tenth
of what they ceded. Generally, when the final signing came, under
the persuasion of the Indian Office, and often amid the strange
surroundings of Washington, the chiefs surrendered the lands outright
and with no condition.
Certain of the tribes resisted all importunities to give title at once
and held out for conditions of sale. The Iowa, the confederated minor
tribes, and notably the Delawares, ceded their lands in trust to the
United States, with the treaty pledge that the lands so yielded should
be sold at public auction to the highest bidder, the remainders should
then be offered privately for three years at $1.25 per acre, and the
final remnants should be disposed of by the United States, the accruing
funds being held in trust by the United States for the Indians. By
the end of May the treaties were nearly all concluded. In July, 1854,
Congress provided a land office for the territory of Kansas.
While the Indian negotiations were in progress, Senator Douglas was
forcing his Kansas-Nebraska bill at Washington. The bill had failed in
1853, partly because the Senate had felt the sanctity of the Indian
agreement; but in 1854 the leader of the Democratic party carried it
along relentlessly. With words of highest patriotism upon his lips, as
Rhodes has told it, he secured the passage of a bill not needed by the
westward movement, subversive of the national pledge, and, blind as he
was, destructive as well of his party and his own political future.
The support of President Pierce and the coöperation of Jefferson Davis
were his in the struggle. It was not his intent, he declared, to
legislate slavery into or out of the territories; he proposed to leave
that to the people themselves. To this principle he gave the name of
"popular sovereignty," "and the name was a far greater invention than
the doctrine." With rising opposition all about him, he repealed the
Missouri compromise which in 1820 had divided the Indian Country by
the line of 36° 30' into free and slave areas, and created within these
limits the new territories of Kansas and Nebraska. His bill was signed
by the President on May 30, 1854. In later years this day has been
observed as a memorial to those who lost their lives in fighting the
battle which he provoked.
With public sentiment excited, and the Missouri compromise repealed,
eager partisans prepared in the spring of 1854 to colonize the new
territories in the interests of slavery and freedom. On the slavery
side, Senator Atchison, of Missouri, was to be reckoned as one of the
leaders. Young men of the South were urged to move, with their slaves
and their possessions, into the new territories, and thus secure these
for their cherished institution. If votes should fail them in the
future, the Missouri border was not far removed, and colonization of
voters might be counted upon. Missouri, directly adjacent to Kansas,
and a slave state, naturally took the lead in this matter of preventing
the erection of a free state on her western boundary. The northern
states had been stirred by the act as deeply as the South. In New
England the bill was not yet passed when leaders of the abolition
movement prepared to act under it. One Eli Thayer, of Worcester, urged
during the spring that friends of freedom could do no better work than
aid in the colonization of Kansas. He secured from his own state, in
April, a charter for a Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, through
which he proposed to aid suitable men to move into the debatable
land. Churches and schools were to be provided for them. A stern New
England abolition spirit was to be fostered by them. And they were
not to be left without the usual border means of defence. Amos A.
Lawrence, of Boston, a wealthy philanthropist, made Thayer's scheme
financially possible. Dr. Charles Robinson was their choice for leader
of emigration and local representative in Kansas.
The resulting settlement of Kansas was stimulated little by the
ordinary westward impulse but greatly by political ambition and
sectional rivalry. As late as October, 1853, there had been almost no
whites in the Indian Country. Early in 1854 they began to come in,
in increasing numbers. The Emigrant Aid Society sent its parties at
once, before the ink was dry on the treaties of cession and before
land offices had been opened. The approach was by the Missouri River
steamers to Kansas City and Westport, near the bend of the river, where
was the gateway into Kansas. The Delaware cession, north of the Kansas
River, was not yet open to legal occupation, but the Shawnee lands
had been ceded completely and would soon be ready. So the New England
companies worked their way on foot, or in hired wagons, up the right
bank of the Kansas, hunting for eligible sites. About thirty miles west
of the Missouri line and the old Shawnee mission they picked their
spot late in July. The town of Lawrence grew out of their cluster of
tents and cabins.
It was more than two months after the arrival of the squatters at
Lawrence before the first governor of the new territory, Andrew H.
Reeder, made his appearance at Fort Leavenworth and established civil
government in Kansas. One of his first experiences was with the attempt
of United States officers at the post to secure for themselves pieces
of the Delaware lands which surrounded it. "While lying at the fort,"
wrote a surveyor who left early in September to run the Nebraska
boundary line, "we heard a great deal about those d--d squatters who
were trying to steal the Leavenworth site." None of the Delaware lands
were open to settlement, since the United States had pledged itself to
sell them all at public auction for the Indians' benefit. But certain
speculators, including officers of the regular army, organized a town
company to preëmpt a site near the fort, where they thought they
foresaw the great city of the West. They relied on the immunity which
usually saved pilferers on the Indian lands, and seem even to have
used United States soldiers to build their shanties. They had begun to
dispose of their building lots "in this discreditable business" four
weeks before the first of the Delaware trust lands were put on sale.
However bitter toward each other, the settlers were agreed in their
attitude toward the Indians, and squatted regardless of Indian
rights or United States laws. Governor Reeder himself convened his
legislature, first at Pawnee, whence troops from Fort Riley ejected it;
then at the Shawnee mission, close to Kansas City, where his presence
and its were equally without authority of law. He established election
precincts in unceded lands, and voting places at spots where no white
man could go without violating the law. The legal snarl into which the
settlers plunged reveals the inconsistencies in the Indian policy. It
is even intimated that Governor Reeder was interested in a land scheme
at Pawnee similar to that at Fort Leavenworth.
The fight for Kansas began immediately after the arrival of Governor
Reeder and the earliest immigrants. The settlers actually in residence
at the commencement of 1855 seem to have been about 8500. Propinquity
gave Missouri an advantage at the start, when the North was not yet
fully aroused. At an election for territorial legislature held on
March 30, 1855, the threat of Senator Atchison was revealed in all
its fulness when more than 6000 votes were counted among a population
which had under 3000 qualified voters. Missouri men had ridden over
in organized bands to colonize the precincts and carry the election.
The whole area of settlement was within an easy two days' ride of the
Missouri border. The fraud was so crude that Governor Reeder disavowed
certain of the results, yet the resulting legislature, meeting in July,
1855, was able to expel some of its anti-slavery members, while the
rest resigned. It adopted the Missouri code of law, thus laying the
foundations for a slave state.
The political struggle over Kansas became more intense on the border
and more absorbing in the nation in the next four years. The free-state
men, as the settlers around Lawrence came to be known, disavowed the
first legislature on the ground of its fraudulent election, while
President Pierce steadily supported it from Washington. Governor
Reeder was removed during its session, seemingly because he had thrown
doubts upon its validity. Protesting against it, the northerners held
a series of meetings in the autumn, around Lawrence, and Topeka, some
twenty-five miles further up the Kansas River, and crystallized their
opposition under Dr. Robinson. Their efforts culminated at Topeka
in October in a spontaneous, but in this instance revolutionary,
convention which framed a free-state constitution for Kansas and
provided for erecting a rival administration. Dr. Robinson became its
governor.
Before the first legislature under the Topeka constitution assembled,
Kansas had still further trouble. Private violence and mob attacks
began during the fall of 1855. What is known as the Wakarusa War
occurred in November, when Sheriff Jones of Douglas County tried to
arrest some free-state men at Lecompton, and met with strong resistance
reënforced with Sharpe rifles from New England. Governor Wilson
Shannon, who had succeeded Reeder, patched up peace, but hostility
continued through the winter. Lawrence was increasingly the centre of
northern settlement and the object of pro-slave aggression. A Missouri
mob visited it on May 21, 1856, and in the approving presence, it is
said, of Sheriff Jones, sacked its hotel and printing shop, and burned
the residence of Dr. Robinson.
In the fall a free-state crowd marched up the river and attacked
Lecompton, but within a week of the sacking of Lawrence retribution
was visited upon the pro-slave settlers. In cold blood, five men were
murdered at a settlement on Potawatomi Creek, by a group of fanatical
free-state men. Just what provocation John Brown and his family had
received which may excuse his revenge is not certain. In many instances
individual anti-slavery men retaliated lawlessly upon their enemies.
But the leaders of the Lawrence party have led also in censuring Brown
and in disclaiming responsibility for his acts. It is certain that
in this struggle the free-state party, in general, wanted peaceful
settlement of the country, and were staking their fortunes and families
upon it. They were ready for defence, but criminal aggression was no
part of their platform.
The course of Governor Shannon reached its end in the summer of 1856.
He was disliked by the free-state faction, while his personal habits
gave no respectability to the pro-slave cause. At the end of his
régime the extra-legal legislature under the Topeka constitution was
prevented by federal troops from convening in session at Topeka. A few
weeks later Governor John W. Geary superseded him and established his
seat of government in Lecompton, by this time a village of some twenty
houses. It took Geary, an honest, well-meaning man, only six weeks to
fall out with the pro-slave element and the federal land officers. He
resigned in March, 1857.
Under Governor Robert J. Walker, who followed Geary, the first official
attempt at a constitution was entered upon. The legislature had already
summoned a convention which sat at Lecompton during September and
October. Its constitution, which was essentially pro-slavery, however
it was read, was ratified before the end of the year and submitted to
Congress. But meanwhile the legislature which called the convention had
fallen into free-state hands, disavowed the constitution, and summoned
another convention. At Leavenworth this convention framed a free-state
constitution in March, which was ratified by popular vote in May,
1858. Governor Walker had already resigned in December, 1857. Through
holding an honest election and purging the returns of slave-state
frauds he had enabled the free-state party to secure the legislature.
Southerner though he was, he choked at the political dishonesty of the
administration in Kansas. He had yielded to the evidence of his eyes,
that the population of Kansas possessed a large free-state majority.
But so yielding he had lost the confidence of Washington. Even Senator
Douglas, the patron of the popular sovereignty doctrine, had now broken
with President Buchanan, recognizing the right of the people to form
their own institutions. No attention was ever paid by Congress to
this Leavenworth constitution, but when the Lecompton constitution
was finally submitted to the people by Congress, in August, 1858, it
was defeated by more than 11,000 votes in a total of 13,000. Kansas
was henceforth in the hands of the actual settlers. A year later,
at Wyandotte, it made a fourth constitution, under which it at last
entered the union on January 29, 1861. "In the Wyandotte Convention,"
says one of the local historians, "there were a few Democrats and one
or two cranks, and probably both were of some use in their way."
There had been no white population in Kansas in 1853, and no special
desire to create one. But the political struggle had advertised
the territory on a large scale, while the whole West was under the
influence of the agricultural boom that was extending settlement into
Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. Governor Reeder's census in 1855 found
that about 8500 had come in since the erection of the territory. The
rioting and fighting, the rumors of Sharpe rifles and the stories of
Lawrence and Potawatomi, instead of frightening settlers away, drew
them there in increasing thousands. Some few came from the South, but
the northern majority was overwhelming before the panic of 1857 laid
its heavy hand upon expansion. There was a white population of 106,390
in 1860.
The westward movement, under its normal influences, had extended the
range of prosperous agricultural settlement into the Northwest in this
past decade. It had coöperated in the extension into that part of the
old desert now known as Kansas. But chiefly politics, and secondly the
call of the West, is the order of causes which must explain the first
westward advance of the agricultural frontier since 1820. Even in 1860
the population of Kansas was almost exclusively within a three days'
journey of the Missouri bend.
CHAPTER IX
"PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST"[2]
[2] This chapter is in part based upon my article on "The
Territory of Colorado" which was published in _The
American Historical Review_ in October, 1906.
The territory of Kansas completed the political organization of
the prairies. Before 1854 there had been a great stretch of land
beyond Missouri and the Indian frontier without any semblance of
organization or law. Indeed within the area whites had been forbidden
to enter, since here was the final abode of the Indians. But with the
Kansas-Nebraska act all this was changed. In five years a series of
amorphous territories had been provided for by law.
Along the line of the frontier were now three distinct divisions.
From the Canadian border to the fortieth parallel, Nebraska extended.
Kansas lay between 40° and 37°. Lying west of Arkansas, the old Indian
Country, now much reduced by partition, embraced the rest. The whole
plains country, east of the mountains, was covered by these territorial
projects. Indian Territory was without the government which its name
implied, but popular parlance regarded it as the others and refused to
see any difference among them.
Beyond the mountain wall which formed the western boundary of Kansas
and Nebraska lay four other territories equally without particular
reason for their shape and bounds. Oregon, acquired in 1846, had been
divided in 1853 by a line starting at the mouth of the Columbia and
running east to the Rockies, cutting off Washington territory on its
northern side. The Utah territory which figured in the compromise
of 1850, and which Mormon migration had made necessary, extended
between California and the Rockies, from Oregon at 42° to New Mexico
at 37°. New Mexico, also of the compromise year, reached from Texas
to California, south of 37°, and possessed at its northeast corner a
panhandle which carried it north to 38° in order to leave in it certain
old Mexican settlements.
These divisions of the West embraced in 1854 the whole of the country
between California and the states. As yet their boundaries were
arbitrary and temporary, but they presaged movements of population
which during the next quarter century should break them up still
further and provide real colonies in place of the desert and the Indian
Country. Congress had no formative part in the work. Population broke
down barriers and showed the way, while laws followed and legalized
what had been done. The map of 1854 reveals an intent to let the
mountain summit remain a boundary, and contains no prophecy of the four
states which were shortly to appear.
[Illustration: THE WEST IN 1854
Great amorphous territories now covered all the plains, and the Rocky
Mountains were recognized only as a dividing line.]
For several decades the area of Kansas territory, and the southern
part of Nebraska, had been well known as the range of the plains
Indians,--Pawnee and Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche
and Apache. Through this range the caravans had gone. Here had been
constant military expeditions as well. It was a common summer's
campaign for a dragoon regiment to go out from Fort Leavenworth to
the mountains by either the Arkansas or Platte route, to skirt the
eastern slopes along the southern fork of the Platte, and return home
by the other trail. Those military demonstrations, which were believed
to be needed to impress the tribes, had made this march a regular
performance. Colonel Dodge had done it in the thirties, Sumner and
Sedgwick did it in 1857, and there had been numerous others in between.
A well-known trail had been worn in this wise from Fort Laramie, on
the north, through St. Vrain's, crossing the South Platte at Cherry
Creek, past the Fontaine qui Bouille, and on to Bent's Fort and the
New Mexican towns. Yet Kansas had slight interest in its western end.
Along the Missouri the sections were quarrelling over slavery, but they
had scarcely scratched the soil for one-fourth of the length of the
territory.
The crest of the continent, lying at the extreme west of Kansas, lay
between the great trails, so that it was off the course of the chief
migrations, and none visited it for its own sake. The deviating trails,
which commenced at the Missouri bend, were some 250 miles apart at the
one hundred and third meridian. Here was the land which Kansas baptized
in 1855 as the county of Arapahoe, and whence arose the hills around
Pike's Peak, which rumor came in three years more to tip with gold.
The discovery of gold in California prepared the public for similar
finds in other parts of the West. With many of the emigrants
prospecting had become a habit that sent small bands into the mountain
valleys from Washington to New Mexico. Stories of success in various
regions arose repeatedly during the fifties and are so reasonable that
it is not possible to determine with certainty the first finds in many
localities. Any mountain stream in the whole system might be expected
to contain some gold, but deposits large enough to justify a boom were
slow in coming.
In January, 1859, six quills of gold, brought in to Omaha from the
mountains, confirmed the rumors of a new discovery that had been
persistent for several months. The previous summer had seen organized
attempts to locate in the Pike's Peak region the deposits whose
existence had been believed in, more or less, since 1850. Parties from
the gold fields of Georgia, from Lawrence, and from Lecompton are
known to have been in the field and to have started various mushroom
settlements. El Paso, near the present site of Colorado Springs,
appeared, as well as a group of villages at the confluence of the South
Platte and the half-dry bottom of Cherry Creek,--Montana, Auraria,
Highland, and St. Charles. Most of the gold-seekers returned to the
States before winter set in, but a few, encouraged by trifling finds,
remained to occupy their flimsy cabins or to jump the claims of the
absentees. In the sands of Cherry Creek enough gold was found to hold
the finders and to start a small migration thither in the autumn. In
the early winter the groups on Cherry Creek coalesced and assumed the
name of Denver City.
The news of Pike's Peak gold reached the Missouri Valley at the
strategic moment when the newness of Kansas had worn off, and the
depression of 1857 had brought bankruptcy to much of the frontier.
The adventurous pioneers, who were always ready to move, had been
reënforced by individuals down on their luck and reduced to any sort of
extremity. The way had been prepared for a heavy emigration to the new
diggings which started in the fall of 1858 and assumed great volume in
the spring of 1859.
The edge of the border for these emigrants was not much farther west
than it had been for emigrants of the preceding decade. A few miles
from the Missouri River all traces of Kansas or Nebraska disappeared,
whether one advanced by the Platte or the Arkansas, or by the
intermediate routes of the Smoky Hill and Republican. The destination
was less than half as far away as California had been. No mountains and
no terrible deserts were to be crossed. The costs and hardships of the
journey were less than any that had heretofore separated the frontier
from a western goal. There is a glimpse of the bustling life around the
head of the trails in a letter which General W. T. Sherman wrote to his
brother John from Leavenworth City, on April 30, 1859: "At this moment
we are in the midst of a rush to Pike's Peak. Steamboats arrive in twos
and threes each day, loaded with people for the new gold region. The
streets are full of people buying flour, bacon, and groceries, with
wagons and outfits, and all around the town are little camps preparing
to go west. A daily stage goes west to Fort Riley, 135 miles, and every
morning two spring wagons, drawn by four mules and capable of carrying
six passengers, start for the Peak, distance six hundred miles, the
journey to be made in twelve days. As yet the stages all go out and
don't return, according to the plan for distributing the carriages;
but as soon as they are distributed, there will be two going and two
returning, making a good line of stages to Pike's Peak. Strange to say,
even yet, although probably 25,000 people have actually gone, we are
without authentic advices of gold. Accounts are generally favorable
as to words and descriptions, but no positive physical evidence comes
in the shape of gold, and I will be incredulous until I know some
considerable quantity comes in in way of trade."
[Illustration: "HO FOR THE YELLOW STONE"
Reproduced by permission of the Montana Historical Society, from the
original handbill in its possession.]
Throughout the United States newspapers gave full notice to the new
boom, while a "Pike's Peak Guide," based on a journal kept by one of
the early parties, found a ready sale. No single movement had ever
carried so heavy a migration upon the plains as this, which in one
year must have taken nearly 100,000 pioneers to the mountains. "Pike's
Peak or Bust!" was a common motto blazoned on their wagon covers. The
sawmill, the press, and the stage-coach were all early on the field.
Byers, long a great editor in Denver, arrived in April to distribute
an edition of his _Rocky Mountain News_, which he had printed on one
side before leaving Omaha. Thenceforth the diggings were consistently
advertised by a resident enthusiast. Early in May the first coach of
the Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Company brought Henry Villard
into Denver. In June came no less a personage than Horace Greeley to
see for himself the new wonder. "Mine eyes have never yet been blessed
with the sight of any floor whatever in either Denver or Auraria,"
he could write of the village of huts which he inspected. The seal
of approval which his letters set upon the enterprise did much to
encourage it.
With the rush of prospectors to the hills, numerous new camps quickly
appeared. Thirty miles north along the foothills and mesas Boulder
marked the exit of a mountain creek upon the plains. Behind Denver,
in Clear Creek Valley, were Golden, at the mouth, and Black Hawk and
Central City upon the north fork of the stream. Idaho Springs and
Georgetown were on its south fork. Here in the Gregory district was the
active life of the diggings. The great extent of the gold belt to the
southwest was not yet fully known. Farther south was Pueblo, on the
Arkansas, and a line of little settlements working up the valley, by
Canyon City to Oro, where Leadville now stands.
Reaction followed close upon the heels of the boom, beginning its work
before the last of the outward bound had reached the diggings. Gold
was to be found in trifling quantities in many places, but the mob of
inexperienced miners had little chance for fortune. The great deposits,
which were some months in being discovered, were in refractory quartz
lodes, calling for heavy stamp mills, chemical processes, and, above
all, great capital for their working. Even for laborers there was no
demand commensurate with the number of the fifty-niners. Hence, more
than half of these found their way back to the border before the year
was over, bitter, disgusted, and poor, scrawling on deserted wagons, in
answer to the outward motto, "Busted! By Gosh!"
The problem of government was born when the first squatters ran the
lines of Denver City. Here was a new settlement far away from the seat
of territorial government, while the government itself was impotent.
Kansas had no legislature competent to administer law at home--far less
in outlying colonies. But spontaneous self-government came easily to
the new town. "Just to think," wrote one of the pioneers in his diary,
"that within two weeks of the arrival of a few dozen Americans in a
wilderness, they set to work to elect a Delegate to the United States
Congress, and ask to be set apart as a new Territory! But we are of
a fast race and in a fast age and must prod along." An early snow in
November, 1858, had confined the miners to their cabins and started
politics. The result had been the election of two delegates, one to
Congress and one to Kansas legislature, both to ask for governmental
direction. Kansas responded in a few weeks, creating five new counties
west of 104°, and chartering a city of St. Charles, long after St.
Charles had been merged into Denver. Congress did nothing.
The prospective immigration of 1859 inspired further and more
comprehensive attempts at local government. It was well understood
that the news of gold would send in upon Denver a wave of population
and perhaps a reign of lawlessness. The adjournment of Congress
without action in their behalf made it certain that there could
be no aid from this quarter for at least a year, and became the
occasion for a caucus in Denver over which William Larimer presided
on April 11, 1859. As a result of this caucus, a call was issued for
a convention of representatives of the neighboring mining camps to
meet in the same place four days later. On April 15, six camps met
through their delegates, "being fully impressed with the belief, from
early and recent precedents, of the power and benefits and duty of
self-government," and feeling an imperative necessity "for an immediate
and adequate government, for the large population now here and soon to
be among us ... and also believing that a territorial government is not
such as our large and peculiarly situated population demands."
The deliberations thus informally started ended in a formal call for
a constitutional convention to meet in Denver on the first Monday in
June, for the purpose, as an address to the people stated, of framing
a constitution for a new "state of Jefferson." "Shall it be," the
address demanded, "the government of the knife and the revolver, or
shall we unite in forming here in our golden country, among the ravines
and gulches of the Rocky Mountains, and the fertile valleys of the
Arkansas and the Platte, a new and independent State?" The boundaries
of the prospective state were named in the call as the one hundred
and second and one hundred and tenth meridians of longitude, and the
thirty-seventh and forty-third parallels of north latitude--including
with true frontier amplitude large portions of Utah and Nebraska and
nearly half of Wyoming, in addition to the present state of Colorado.
When the statehood convention met in Denver on June 6, the time was
inopportune for concluding the movement, since the reaction had set in.
The height of the gold boom was over, and the return migration left it
somewhat doubtful whether any permanent population would remain in the
country to need a state. So the convention met on the 6th, appointed
some eight drafting committees, and adjourned, to await developments,
until August 1. By this later date, the line had been drawn between
the confident and the discouraged elements in the population, and for
six days the convention worked upon the question of statehood. As to
permanency there was now no doubt; but the body divided into two nearly
equal groups, one advocating immediate statehood, the other shrinking
from the heavy taxation incident to a state establishment and so
preferring a territorial government with a federal treasury behind it.
The body, too badly split to reach a conclusion itself, compromised by
preparing the way for either development and leaving the choice to
a public vote. A state constitution was drawn up on one hand; on the
other, was prepared a memorial to Congress praying for a territorial
government, and both documents were submitted to a vote on September
5. Pursuant to the memorial, which was adopted, another election was
held on October 3, at which the local agent of the new Leavenworth
and Pike's Peak Express Company, Beverly D. Williams, was chosen as
delegate to Congress.
The adoption of the territorial memorial failed to meet the need for
immediate government or to prevent the advocates of such government
from working out a provisional arrangement pending the action of
Congress. On the day that Williams was elected, these advocates chose
delegates for a preliminary territorial constitutional convention
which met a week later. "Here we go," commented Byers, "a regular
triple-headed government machine; south of 40 deg. we hang on to the
skirts of Kansas; north of 40 deg. to those of Nebraska; straddling
the line, we have just elected a Delegate to the United States
Congress from the 'Territory of Jefferson,' and ere long we will have
in full blast a provisional government of Rocky Mountain growth and
manufacture." In this convention of October 10, 1859, the name of
Jefferson was retained for the new territory; the boundaries of April
15 were retained, and a government similar to the highest type of
territorial establishment was provided for. If the convention had met
on the authority of an enabling act, its career could not have been
more dignified. Its constitution was readily adopted, while officers
under it were chosen in an orderly election on October 24. Robert
W. Steele, of Ohio, became its governor. On November 7 he met his
legislature and delivered his first inaugural address.
The territory of Jefferson which thus came into existence in the Pike's
Peak region illustrates well the spirit of the American frontier. The
fundamental principle of American government which Byers expressed in
connection with it is applicable at all times in similar situations.
"We claim," he wrote in his _Rocky Mountain News_, "that any body,
or community of American citizens, which from any cause or under
any circumstance is cut off from, or from isolation is so situated
as not to be under, any active and protecting branch of the central
government, have a right, if on American soil, to frame a government,
and enact such laws and regulations as may be necessary for their own
safety, protection, and happiness, always with the condition precedent,
that they shall, at the earliest moment when the central government
shall extend an _effective_ organization and laws over them, give it
their unqualified support and obedience." The life of the spontaneous
commonwealth thus called into existence is a creditable witness to the
American instinct for orderly government.
When Congress met in December, 1859, the provisional territory of
Jefferson was in operation, while its delegates in Washington were
urging the need for governmental action. To their influence, President
Buchanan added, on February 20, 1860, a message transmitting the
petition from the Pike's Peak country. The Senate, upon April 3,
received a report from the Committee on Territories introducing Senate
Bill No. 366, for the erection of Colorado territory, while Grow of
Pennsylvania reported to the House on May 10 a bill to erect in the
same region a territory of Idaho. The name of Jefferson disappeared
from the project in the spring of 1860, its place being taken by sundry
other names for the same mountain area. Several weeks were given,
in part, to debate over this Colorado-Idaho scheme, though as usual
the debate turned less upon the need for this territorial government
than upon the attitude which the bill should take toward the slavery
issue. The slavery controversy prevented territorial legislation in
this session, but the reasonableness of the Colorado demand was well
established.
The territory of Jefferson, as organized in November, 1859, had
been from the first recognized as merely a temporary expedient. The
movement for it had gained weight in the summer of that year from
the probability that it need not be maintained for many months. When
Congress, however, failed in the ensuing session of 1859-1860 to grant
the relief for which the pioneers had prayed, the wisdom of continuing
for a second year the life of a government admitted to be illegal came
into question. The first session of its legislature had lasted from
November 7, 1859, to January 25, 1860. It had passed comprehensive
laws for the regulation of titles in lands, water, and mines, and had
adopted civil and criminal codes. Its courts had been established
and had operated with some show of authority. But the service and
obedience to the government had been voluntary, no funds being on
hand for the payment of salaries and expenses. One of the pioneers
from Vermont wrote home, "There is no hopes [_sic_] of perfect quiet
in our governmental matters until we are securely under the wing of
our National Eagle." In his proclamation calling the second election
Governor Steele announced that "all persons who expect to be elected
to any of the above offices should bear in mind that there will be no
salaries or per diem allowed from this territory, but that the General
Government will be memorialized to aid us in our adversity."
Upon this question of revenue the territory of Jefferson was wrecked.
Taxes could not be collected, since citizens had only to plead grave
doubts as to the legality in order to evade payment. "We have tried a
Provisional Government, and how has it worked," asked William Larimer
in announcing his candidacy for the office of territorial delegate.
"It did well enough until an attempt was made to tax the people to
support it." More than this, the real need for the government became
less apparent as 1860 advanced, for the scattered communities learned
how to obtain a reasonable peace without it. American mining camps
are peculiarly free from the need for superimposed government. The
new camp at once organizes itself on a democratic basis, and in mass
meeting registers claims, hears and decides suits, and administers
summary justice. Since the Pike's Peak country was only a group of
mining camps, there proved to be little immediate need for a central
government, for in the local mining-district organizations all of
the most pressing needs of the communities could be satisfied. So
loyalty to the territory of Jefferson, in the districts outside
of Denver, waned during 1860, and in the summer of that year had
virtually disappeared. Its administration, however, held together.
Governor Steele made efforts to rehabilitate its authority, was himself
reëlected, and met another legislature in November.
When the thirty-sixth Congress met for its second session in December,
1860, the Jefferson organization was in the second year of its life,
yet in Congress there was no better prospect of quick action than there
had been since 1857. Indeed the election of Lincoln brought out the
eloquence of the slavery question with a renewed vigor that monopolized
the time and strength of Congress until the end of January. Had not
the departure of the southern members to their states cleared the way
for action, it is highly improbable that even this session would have
produced results of importance.
Grow had announced in the beginning of the session a territorial
platform similar to that which had been under debate for three
years. Until the close of January the southern valedictories held
the floor, but at last the admission of Kansas, on January 29, 1861,
revealed the fact that pro-slavery opposition had departed and that
the long-deferred territorial scheme could have a fair chance. On the
very day that Kansas was admitted, with its western boundary at the
twenty-fifth meridian from Washington, the Senate revived its bill No.
366 of the last session and took up its deliberation upon a territory
for Pike's Peak. Only by chance did the name Colorado remain attached
to the bill. Idaho was at one time adopted, but was amended out in
favor of the original name when the bill at last passed the Senate. The
boundaries were cut down from those which the territory had provided
for itself. Two degrees were taken from the north of the territory, and
three from the west. In this shape, between 37° and 41° north latitude,
and 25° and 32° of longitude west of Washington, the bill received the
signature of President Buchanan on February 28. The absence of serious
debate in the passage of this Colorado act is excellent evidence of the
merit of the scheme and the reasons for its being so long deferred.
President Buchanan, content with approving the bill, left the
appointment of the first officials for Colorado to his successor. In
the multitude of greater problems facing President Lincoln, this
was neglected for several weeks, but he finally commissioned General
William Gilpin as the first governor of the territory. Gilpin had long
known the mountain frontier; he had commanded a detachment on the
Santa Fé trail in the forties, and he had written prophetic books upon
the future of the country to which he was now sent. His loyalty was
unquestioned and his readiness to assume responsibility went so far as
perhaps to cease to be a virtue. He arrived in Denver on May 29, 1861,
and within a few days was ready to take charge of the government and to
receive from the hands of Governor Steele such authority as remained in
the provisional territory of Jefferson.
CHAPTER X
FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA
The Pike's Peak boom was only one in a series of mining episodes which,
within fifteen years of the discoveries in California, let in the
light of exploration and settlement upon hundreds of valleys scattered
over the whole of the Rocky Mountain West. The men who exploited
California had generally been amateur miners, acquiring skill by
bitter experience; but the next decade developed a professional class,
mobile as quicksilver, restless and adventurous as all the West, which
permeated into the most remote recesses of the mountains and produced
before the Civil War was over, as the direct result of their search for
gold, not only Colorado, but Nevada and Arizona, Idaho and Montana.
Activity was constant during these years all along the continental
divide. New camps were being born overnight, old ones were abandoned by
magic. Here and there cities rose and remained to mark success in the
search. Abandoned huts and half-worked diggings were scars covering a
fourth of the continent.
Colorado, in the summer of 1859, attracted the largest of migrations,
but while Denver was being settled there began, farther west, a boom
which for the present outdid it in significance. The old California
trail from Salt Lake crossed the Nevada desert and entered California
by various passes through the Sierra Nevadas. Several trading posts had
been planted along this trail by Mormons and others during the fifties,
until in 1854 the legislature of Utah had created a Carson County in
the west end of the territory for the benefit of the settlements along
the river of the same name. Small discoveries of gold were enough to
draw to this district a floating population which founded a Carson City
as early as 1858. But there were no indications of a great excitement
until after the finding of a marvellously rich vein of silver near Gold
Hill in the spring of 1859. Here, not far from Mt. Davidson and but a
few miles east of Lake Tahoe and the Sierras, was the famous Comstock
lode, upon which it was possible within five years to build a state.
The California population, already rushing about from one boom to
another in perpetual prospecting, seized eagerly upon this new district
in western Utah. The stage route by way of Sacramento and Placerville
was crowded beyond capacity, while hundreds marched over the mountains
on foot. "There was no difficulty in reaching the newly discovered
region of boundless wealth," asserted a journalistic visitor. "It lay
on the public highway to California, on the borders of the state. From
Missouri, from Kansas and Nebraska, from Pike's Peak and Salt Lake,
the tide of emigration poured in. Transportation from San Francisco was
easy. I made the trip myself on foot almost in the dead of winter, when
the mountains were covered with snow." Carson City had existed before
the great discovery. Virginia City, named for a renegade southerner,
nicknamed "Virginia," soon followed it, while the typical population of
the mining camps piled in around the two.
In 1860 miners came in from a larger area. The new pony express ran
through the heart of the fields and aided in advertising them east and
west. Colorado was only one year ahead in the public eye. Both camps
obtained their territorial acts within the same week, that of Nevada
receiving Buchanan's signature on March 2, 1861. All of Utah west of
the thirty-ninth meridian from Washington became the new territory
which, through the need of the union for loyal votes, gained its
admission as a state in three more years.
[Illustration: THE MINING CAMP
From a photograph of Bannack, Montana, in the sixties. Loaned by the
Montana Historical Society.]
The rush to Carson valley drew attention away from another mining
enterprise further south. In the western half of New Mexico, between
the Rio Grande and the Colorado, there had been successful mining ever
since the acquisition of the territory. The southwest boundary of the
United States after the Mexican War was defined in words that could
not possibly be applied to the face of the earth. This fact, together
with knowledge that an easy railway grade ran south of the Gila River,
had led in 1853 to the purchase of additional land from Mexico and
the definition of a better boundary in the Gadsden treaty. In these
lands of the Gadsden purchase old mines came to light in the years
immediately following. Sylvester Mowry and Charles D. Poston were most
active in promoting the mining companies which revived abandoned claims
and developed new ones near the old Spanish towns of Tubac and Tucson.
The region was too remote and life too hard for the individual miner
to have much chance. Organized mining companies here took the place of
the detached prospector of Colorado and Nevada. Disappointed miners
from California came in, and perhaps "the Vigilance Committee of San
Francisco did more to populate the new Territory than the silver mines.
Tucson became the headquarters of vice, dissipation, and crime.... It
was literally a paradise of devils." Excessive dryness, long distances,
and Apache depredation discouraged rapid growth, yet the surveys of the
early fifties and the passage of the overland mail through the camps in
1858 advertised the Arizona settlement and enabled it to live.
The outbreak of the Civil War extinguished for the time the Mowry
mines and others in the Santa Cruz Valley, holding them in check till
a second mineral area in western New Mexico should be found. United
States army posts were abandoned, confederate agents moved in, and
Indians became bold. The federal authority was not reëstablished until
Colonel J. H. Carleton led his California column across the Colorado
and through New Mexico to Tucson early in 1862. During the next two
years he maintained his headquarters at Santa Fé, carried on punitive
campaigns against the Navaho and the Apache, and encouraged mining.
The Indian campaigns of Carleton and his aides in New Mexico have
aroused much controversy. There were no treaty rights by which the
United States had privileges of colonization and development. It
was forcible entry and retention, maintained in the face of bitter
opposition. Carleton, with Kit Carson's assistance, waged a war
of scarcely concealed extermination. They understood, he reported
to Washington, "the direct application of force as a law. If its
application be removed, that moment they become lawless. This has been
tried over and over and over again, and at great expense. The purpose
now is never to relax the application of force with a people that can
no more be trusted than you can trust the wolves that run through
their mountains; to gather them together little by little, on to a
reservation, away from the haunts, and hills, and hiding-places of
their country, and then to be kind to them; there teach their children
how to read and write, teach them the arts of peace; teach them the
truths of Christianity. Soon they will acquire new habits, new ideas,
new modes of life; the old Indians will die off, and carry with them
all the latent longings for murdering and robbing; the young ones will
take their places without these longings; and thus, little by little,
they will become a happy and contented people."
Mowry's mines had been seized by Carleton at the start, as tainted with
treason. The whole Tucson district was believed to be so thoroughly
in sympathy with the confederacy that the commanding officer was much
relieved when rumors came of a new placer gold field along the left
bank of the Colorado River, around Bill Williams Creek. Thither the
population of the territory moved as fast as it could. Teamsters and
other army employees deserted freely. Carleton deliberately encouraged
surveying and prospecting, and wrote personally to General Halleck and
Postmaster-general Blair, congratulating them because his California
column had found the gold with which to suppress the confederacy. "One
of the richest gold countries in the world," he described it to be,
destined to be the centre of a new territorial life, and to throw into
the shade "the insignificant village of Tucson."
The population of the silver camp had begun to urge Congress to
provide a territory independent of New Mexico, immediately after the
development of the Mowry mines. Delegates and petitions had been sent
to Washington in the usual style. But congressional indifference to
new territories had blocked progress. The new discoveries reopened the
case in 1862 and 1863. Forgetful of his Indian wards and their rights,
the Superintendent of Indian Affairs had told of the sad peril of the
"unprotected miners" who had invaded Indian territory of clear title.
They would offer to the "numerous and warlike tribes" an irresistible
opportunity. The territorial act was finally passed on February 24,
1863, while the new capital was fixed in the heart of the new gold
field, at Fort Whipple, near which the city of Prescott soon appeared.
The Indian danger in Arizona was not ended by the erection of a
territorial government. There never came in a population large enough
to intimidate the tribes, while bad management from the start provoked
needless wars. Most serious were the Apache troubles which began in
1861 and ceased only after Crook's campaigns in the early seventies.
In this struggle occurred the massacre at Camp Grant in 1871, when
citizens of Tucson, with careful premeditation, murdered in cold
blood more than eighty Apache, men, women, and children. The degree
of provocation is uncertain, but the disposition of Tucson, as Mowry
has phrased it, was not such as to strengthen belief in the justice
of the attack: "There is only one way to wage war against the Apache.
A steady, persistent campaign must be made, following them to their
haunts--hunting them to the 'fastnesses of the mountains.' They must be
surrounded, starved into coming in, surprised or inveigled--by white
flags, or any other method, human or divine--and then put to death.
If these ideas shock any weak-minded individual who thinks himself
a philanthropist, I can only say that I pity without respecting his
mistaken sympathy. A man might as well have sympathy for a rattlesnake
or a tiger."
The mines of Arizona, though handicapped by climate and
inaccessibility, brought life into the extreme Southwest. Those of
Nevada worked the partition of Utah. Farther to the north the old
Oregon country gave out its gold in these same years as miners opened
up the valleys of the Snake and the head waters of the Missouri River.
Right on the crest of the continental divide appeared the northern
group of mining camps.
The territory of Washington had been cut away from Oregon at its own
request and with Oregon's consent in 1853. It had no great population
and was the subject of no agricultural boom as Oregon had been, but
the small settlements on Puget Sound and around Olympia were too far
from the Willamette country for convenient government. When Oregon was
admitted in 1859, Washington was made to include all the Oregon country
outside the state, embracing the present Washington and Idaho, portions
of Montana and Wyoming, and extending to the continental divide.
Through it ran the overland trail from Fort Hall almost to Walla Walla.
Because of its urging Congress built a new wagon road that was passable
by 1860 from Fort Benton, on the upper Missouri, to the junction of the
Columbia and Snake. Farther east the active business of the American
Fur Company had by 1859 established steamboat communication from St.
Louis to Fort Benton, so that an overland route to rival the old Platte
trail was now available.
In eastern Washington the most important of the Indians were the Nez
Percés, whose peaceful habits and friendly disposition had been noted
since the days of Lewis and Clark, and who had permitted their valley
of the Snake to become a main route to Oregon. Treaties with these had
been made in 1855 by Governor Stevens, in accordance with which most of
the tribe were in 1860 living on their reserve at the junction of the
Clearwater and Snake, and were fairly prosperous. Here as elsewhere was
the specific agreement that no whites save government employees should
be allowed in the Indian Country; but in the summer of 1861 the news
that gold had been found along the Clearwater brought the agreement to
naught. Gold had actually been discovered the summer before. In the
spring of 1861 pack trains from Walla Walla brought a horde of miners
east over the range, while steamboats soon found their way up the
Snake. In the fork between the Clearwater and Snake was a good landing
where, in the autumn of 1861, sprang up the new Lewiston, named in
honor of the great explorer, acting as centre of life for five thousand
miners in the district, and showing by its very existence on the Indian
reserve the futility of treaty restrictions in the face of the gold
fever. The troubles of the Indian department were great. "To attempt
to restrain miners would be, to my mind, like attempting to restrain
the whirlwind," reported Superintendent Kendall. "The history of
California, Australia, Frazer river, and even of the country of which I
am now writing, furnishes abundant evidence of the attractive power of
even only reported gold discoveries.
"The mines on Salmon river have become a fixed fact, and are equalled
in richness by few recorded discoveries. Seeing the utter impossibility
of preventing miners from going to the mines, I have refrained from
taking any steps which, by certain want of success, would tend to
weaken the force of the law. At the same time I as carefully avoided
giving any consent to unauthorized statements, and verbally instructed
the agent in charge that, while he might not be able to enforce the
laws for want of means, he must give no consent to any attempt to lay
out a town at the juncture of the Snake and Clearwater rivers, as he
had expressed a desire of doing."
Continued developments proved that Lewiston was in the centre of a
region of unusual mineral wealth. The Clearwater finds were followed
closely by discoveries on the Salmon River, another tributary of the
Snake, a little farther south. The Boisé mines came on the heels of
this boom, being followed by a rush to the Owyhee district, south of
the great bend of the Snake. Into these various camps poured the usual
flood of miners from the whole West. Before 1862 was over eastern
Washington had outgrown the bounds of the territorial government on
Puget Sound. Like the Pike's Peak diggings, and the placers of the
Colorado Valley, and the Carson and Virginia City camps, these called
for and received a new territorial establishment.
In 1860 the territories of Washington and Nebraska had met along a
common boundary at the top of the Rocky Mountains. Before Washington
was divided in 1863, Nebraska had changed its shape under the pressure
of a small but active population north of its seat of government. The
centres of population in Nebraska north of the Platte River represented
chiefly overflows from Iowa and Minnesota. Emigrating from these
states farmers had by 1860 opened the country on the left bank of the
Missouri, in the region of the Yankton Sioux. The Missouri traffic had
developed both shores of the river past Fort Pierre and Fort Union
to Fort Benton, by 1859. To meet the needs of the scattered people
here Nebraska had been partitioned in 1861 along the line of the
Missouri and the forty-third parallel. Dakota had been created out of
the country thus cut loose and in two years more shared in the fate
of eastern Washington. Idaho was established in 1863 to provide home
rule for the miners of the new mineral region. It included a great
rectangle, on both sides of the Rockies, reaching south to Utah and
Nebraska, west to its present western boundary at Oregon and 117°,
east to 104°, the present eastern line of Montana and Wyoming. Dakota
and Washington were cut down for its sake.
It seemed, in 1862 and 1863, as though every little rivulet in the
whole mountain country possessed its treasures to be given up to the
first prospector with the hardihood to tickle its soil. Four important
districts along the upper course of the Snake, not to mention hundreds
of minor ones, lent substance to this appearance. Almost before Idaho
could be organized its area of settlement had broadened enough to make
its own division in the near future a certainty. East of the Bitter
Root Mountains, in the head waters of the Missouri tributaries, came a
long series of new booms.
When the American Fur Company pushed its little steamer _Chippewa_ up
to the vicinity of Fort Benton in 1859, none realized that a new era
for the upper Missouri had nearly arrived. For half a century the fur
trade had been followed in this region and had dotted the country with
tiny forts and palisades, but there had been no immigration, and no
reason for any. The Mullan road, which Congress had authorized in 1855,
was in course of construction from Fort Benton to Walla Walla, but as
yet there were few immigrants to follow the new route. Considerably
before the territory of Idaho was created, however, the active
prospectors of the Snake Valley had crossed the range and inspected
most of the Blackfoot country in the direction of Fort Benton. They
had organized for themselves a Missoula County, Washington territory,
in July, 1862, an act which may be taken as the beginning of an
entirely new movement.
Two brothers, James and Granville Stuart, were the leaders in
developing new mineral areas east of the main range. After experience
in California and several years of life along the trails, they settled
down in the Deer Lodge Valley, and began to open up their mines in
1861. They accomplished little this year since the steamboat to Fort
Benton, carrying supplies, was burned, and their trip to Walla Walla
for shovels and picks took up the rest of the season. But early in
1862 they were hard and successfully at work. Reënforcements, destined
for the Salmon River mines farther west, came to them in June; one
party from Fort Benton, the other from the Colorado diggings, and both
were easily persuaded to stay and join in organizing Missoula County.
Bannack City became the centre of their operations.
Alder Gulch and Virginia City were, in 1863, a second focus for the
mines of eastern Idaho. Their deposits had been found by accident
by a prospecting party which was returning to Bannack City after an
unsuccessful trip. The party, which had been investigating the Big
Horn Mountains, discovered Alder Gulch between the Beaver Head and
Madison rivers, early in June. With an accurate knowledge of the
mining population, the discoverers organized the mining district and
registered their own claims before revealing the location of the new
diggings. Then came a stampede from Bannack City which gave to Virginia
City a population of 10,000 by 1864.
Another mining district, in Last Chance Gulch, gave rise in 1864 to
Helena, the last of the great boom towns of this period. Its situation
as well as its resources aided in the growth of Helena, which lay a
little west of the Madison fork of the Missouri, and in the direct line
from Bannack and Virginia City to Fort Benton. Only 142 miles of easy
staging above the head of Missouri River navigation, it was a natural
post on the main line of travel to the northwest fields.
The excitement over Bannack and Virginia and Helena overlapped in years
the period of similar boom in Idaho. It had begun even before Idaho had
been created. When this was once organized, the same inconveniences
which had justified it, justified as well its division to provide home
rule for the miners east of the Bitter Root range. An act of 1864
created Montana territory with the boundaries which the state possesses
to-day, while that part of Idaho south of Montana, now Wyoming, was
temporarily reattached to Dakota. Idaho assumed its present form. The
simultaneous development in all portions of the great West of rich
mining camps did much to attract public attention as well as population.
In 1863 nearly all of the camps were flourishing. The mountains were
occupied for the whole distance from Mexico to Canada, while the trails
were crowded with emigrants hunting for fortune. The old trails bore
much of the burden of migration as usual, but new spurs were opened
to meet new needs. In the north, the Mullan road had made easy travel
from Fort Benton to Walla Walla, and had been completed since 1862.
Congress authorized in 1864 a new road from eastern Nebraska, which
should run north of the Platte trail, and the war department had sent
out personally conducted parties of emigrants from the vicinity of St.
Paul. The Idaho and Montana mines were accessible from Fort Hall, the
former by the old emigrant road, the latter by a new northeast road to
Virginia City. The Carson mines were on the main line of the California
road. The Arizona fields were commonly reached from California, by way
of Fort Yuma.
The shifting population which inhabited the new territories invites
and at the same time defies description. It was made up chiefly of
young men. Respectable women were not unknown, but were so few in
number as to have little measurable influence upon social life. In
many towns they were in the minority, even among their sex, since the
easily won wealth of the camps attracted dissolute women who cannot
be numbered but who must be imagined. The social tone of the various
camps was determined by the preponderance of men, the absence of
regular labor, and the speculative fever which was the justification
of their existence. The political tone was determined by the nature
of the population, the character of the industry, and the remoteness
from a seat of government. Combined, these factors produced a type of
life the like of which America had never known, and whose picturesque
qualities have blinded the thoughtless into believing that it was
romantic. It was at best a hard bitter struggle with the dark places
only accentuated by the tinsel of gambling and adventure.
A single street meandering along a valley, with one-story huts
flanking it in irregular rows, was the typical mining camp. The saloon
and the general store, sometimes combined, were its representative
institutions. Deep ruts along the street bore witness to the heavy
wheels of the freighters, while horses loosely tied to all available
posts at once revealed the regular means of locomotion, and by the
careless way they were left about showed that this sort of property
was not likely to be stolen. The mining population centring here lived
a life of contrasts. The desolation and loneliness of prospecting and
working claims alternated with the excitement of coming to town. Few
decent beings habitually lived in the towns. The resident population
expected to live off the miners, either in way of trade, or worse.
The bar, the gambling-house, the dance-hall have been made too common
in description to need further account. In the reaction against
loneliness, the extremes of drunkenness, debauchery, and murder were
only too frequent in these places of amusement.
That the camps did not destroy themselves in their own frenzy is a
tribute to the solid qualities which underlay the recklessness and
shiftlessness of much of the population. In most of the camps there
came a time when decency finally asserted itself in the only possible
way to repress lawlessness. The rapidity with which these camps had
drawn their hundreds and their thousands into the fastnesses of the
territories carried them beyond the limits of ordinary law and regular
institutions. Law and the politician followed fast enough, but there
was generally an interval after the discovery during which such peace
prevailed as the community itself demanded. In absence of sheriff and
constable, and jail in which to incarcerate offenders, the vigilance
committee was the only protection of the new camp. Such summary justice
as these committees commonly executed is evidence of innate tendency
toward law and order, not of their defiance. The typical camp passed
through a period of peaceful exploitation at the start, then came
an era of invasion by hordes of miners and disreputable hangers-on,
with accompanying violence and crime. Following this, the vigilance
committee, in its stern repression of a few of the crudest sins, marks
the beginning of a reign of law.
The mining camps of the early sixties familiarized the United
States with the whole area of the nation, and dispelled most of the
remaining tradition of desert which hung over the mountain West. They
attracted a large floating population, they secured the completion of
the political map through the erection of new territories, and they
emphasized loudly the need for national transportation on a larger
scale than the trail and the stage coach could permit. But they did
not directly secure the presence of permanent population in the new
territories. Arizona and Nevada lost most of their inhabitants as soon
as the first flush of discovery was over. Montana, Idaho, and Colorado
declined rapidly to a fraction of their largest size. None of them was
successful in securing a large permanent population until agriculture
had gained firm foothold. Many indeed who came to mine remained to
plough, but the permanent populating of the Far West was the work
of railways and irrigation two decades later. Yet the mining camps
had served their purpose in revealing the nature of the whole of the
national domain.
CHAPTER XI
THE OVERLAND MAIL
Close upon the heels of the overland migrations came an organized
traffic to supply their needs. Oregon, Salt Lake, California, and all
the later gold fields, drew population away from the old Missouri
border, scattered it in little groups over the face of the desert, and
left it there crying for sustenance. Many of the new colonies were not
self-supporting for a decade or more; few of them were independent
within a year or two. In all there was a strong demand for necessities
and luxuries which must be hauled from the states to the new market
by the routes which the pioneers themselves had travelled. Greater
than their need for material supplies was that for intellectual
stimulus. Letters, newspapers, and the regular carriage of the mails
were constantly demanded of the express companies and the post-office
department. To meet this pressure there was organized in the fifties
a great system of wagon traffic. In the years from 1858 to 1869 it
reached its mighty culmination; while its possibilities of speed,
order, and convenience had only just come to be realized when the
continental railways brought this agency of transportation to an end.
The individual emigrant who had gathered together his family, his
flocks, and his household goods, who had cut away from the life at
home and staked everything on his new venture, was the unit in the
great migrations. There was no regular provision for going unless one
could form his own self-contained and self-supporting party. Various
bands grouped easily into larger bodies for common defence, but the
characteristic feature of the emigration was private initiative. The
home-seekers had no power in themselves to maintain communication
with the old country, yet they had no disposition to be forgotten or
to forget. Professional freighting companies and carriers of mails
appeared just as soon as the traffic promised a profit.
A water mail to California had been arranged even before the gold
discovery lent a new interest to the Pacific Coast. From New York
to the Isthmus, and thence to San Francisco, the mails were to be
carried by boats of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, which sent the
nucleus of its fleet around Cape Horn to Pacific waters in 1848. The
arrival of the first mail in San Francisco in February, 1849, commenced
the regular public communication between the United States and the
new colonies. For the places lying away from the coast, mails were
hauled under contract as early as 1849. Oregon, Utah, New Mexico, and
California were given a measure of irregular and unsatisfactory service.
There is little interest in the earlier phases of the overland mail
service save in that they foreshadowed greater things. A stage line
was started from Independence to Santa Fé in the summer of 1849;
another contract was let to a man named Woodson for a monthly carriage
to Salt Lake City. Neither of the carriers made a serious attempt to
stock his route or open stations. Their stages advanced under the same
conditions, and with little more rapidity than the ordinary emigrant
or freighter. Mormon interests organized a Great Salt Lake Valley
Carrying Company at about this time. For four or five years both
government and private industry were experimenting with the problems of
long-distance wagon traffic,--the roads, the vehicles, the stock, the
stations, the supplies. Most picturesque was the effort made in 1856,
by the War Department, to acclimate the Saharan camel on the American
desert as a beast of burden. Congress had appropriated $30,000 for the
experiment, in execution of which Secretary Davis sent Lieutenant H. C.
Wayne to the Levant to purchase the animals. Some seventy-five camels
were imported into Texas and tested near San Antonio. There is a long
congressional document filled with the correspondence of this attempt
and embellished with cuts of types of camels and equipment.
While the camels were yet browsing on the Texas plains, Congress made
a more definite movement towards supplying the Pacific Slope with
adequate service. It authorized the Postmaster-general in 1857 to call
for bids for an overland mail which, in a single organization, should
join the Missouri to Sacramento, and which should be subsidized to run
at a high scheduled speed. The service which the Postmaster-general
invited in his advertisement was to be semi-weekly, weekly, or
semi-monthly at his discretion; it was to be for a term of six years;
it was to carry through the mails in four-horse wagons in not more
than twenty-five days. A long list of bidders, including most of the
firms engaged in plains freighting, responded with their bids and
itineraries; from them the department selected the offer of a company
headed by one John Butterfield, and explained to the public in 1857 the
reasons for its choice. The route to which the Butterfield contract
was assigned began at St. Louis and Memphis, made a junction near the
western border of Arkansas, and proceeded thence through Preston,
Texas, El Paso, and Fort Yuma. For semi-weekly mails the company was
to receive $600,000 a year. The choice of the most southern of routes
required considerable explanation, since the best-known road ran
by the Platte and South Pass. In criticising this latter route the
Postmaster-general pointed out the cold and snow of winter, and claimed
that the experience of the department during seven years proved the
impossibility of maintaining a regular service here. A second available
road had been revealed by the thirty-fifth parallel survey, across
northern Texas and through Albuquerque, New Mexico; but this was
likewise too long and too severe. The best route, in his mind--the one
open all the year, through a temperate climate, suitable for migration
as well as traffic--was this southern route, via El Paso. It is well to
remember that the administration which made this choice was democratic
and of strong southern sympathies, and that the Pacific railway was
expected to follow the course of the overland mail.
The first overland coaches left the opposite ends of the line on
September 15, 1858. The east-bound stage carried an agent of the
Post-office Department, whose report states that the through trip to
Tipton, Missouri, and thence by rail to St. Louis, was made in 20 days,
18 hours, 26 minutes, actual time. "I cordially congratulate you upon
the result," wired President Buchanan to Butterfield. "It is a glorious
triumph for civilization and the Union. Settlements will soon follow
the course of the road, and the East and West will be bound together
by a chain of living Americans which can never be broken." The route
was 2795 miles long. For nearly all the way there was no settlement
upon which the stages could rely. The company built such stations as it
needed.
The vehicle of the overland mail, the most interesting vehicle of
the plains, was the coach manufactured by the Abbott-Downing Company
of Concord, New Hampshire. No better wagon for the purpose has been
devised. Its heavy wheels, with wide, thick tires, were set far apart
to prevent capsizing. Its body, braced with iron bands, and built of
stout white oak, was slung on leather thoroughbraces which took the
strain better and were more nearly unbreakable than any other springs.
Inside were generally three seats, for three passengers each, though
at times as many as fourteen besides the driver and messenger were
carried. Adjustable curtains kept out part of the rain and cold. High
up in front sat the driver, with a passenger or two on the box and a
large assortment of packages tucked away beneath his seat. Behind the
body was the triangular "boot" in which were stowed the passengers'
boxes and the mail sacks. The overflow of mail went inside under the
seats. Mr. Clemens tells of filling the whole body three feet deep with
mail, and of the passengers being forced to sprawl out on the irregular
bed thus made for them. Complaining letter-writers tell of sacks
carried between the axles and the body, under the coach, and of the
disasters to letters and contents resulting from fording streams. Drawn
by four galloping mules and painted a gaudy red or green, the coach
was a visible emblem of spectacular western advance. Horace Greeley's
coach, bright red, was once charged by a herd of enraged buffaloes and
overturned, to the discomfort and injury of the venerable editor.
It was no comfortable or luxurious trip that the overland passenger
had, with all the sumptuous equipment of the new route. The time
limit was twenty-five days, reduced in practice to twenty-two or
twenty-three, at the price of constant travel day and night, regardless
of weather or convenience. One passenger who declined to follow this
route has left his reason why. The "Southern, known as the Butterfield
or American Express, offered to start me in an ambulance from St.
Louis, and to pass me through Arkansas, El Paso, Fort Yuma on the
Gila River, in fact through the vilest and most desolate portion
of the West. Twenty-four mortal days and nights--twenty-five being
schedule time--must be spent in that ambulance; passengers becoming
crazy by whiskey, mixed with want of sleep, are often obliged to be
strapped to their seats; their meals, despatched during the ten-minute
halts, are simply abominable, the heats are excessive, the climate
malarious; lamps may not be used at night for fear of non-existent
Indians: briefly there is no end to this Via Mala's miseries." But the
alternative which confronted this traveller in 1860 was scarcely more
pleasant. "You may start by stage to the gold regions about Denver City
or Pike's Peak, and thence, if not accidentally or purposely shot, you
may proceed by an uncertain ox train to Great Salt Lake City, which
latter part cannot take less than thirty-five days."
Once upon the road, the passenger might nearly as well have been at
sea. There was no turning back. His discomforts and dangers became
inevitable. The stations erected along the trail were chiefly for the
benefit of the live stock. Horses and mules must be kept in good shape,
whatever happened to passengers. Some of the depots, "home stations,"
had a family in residence, a dwelling of logs, adobe, or sod, and
offered bacon, potatoes, bread, and coffee of a sort, to those who were
not too squeamish. The others, or "swing" stations, had little but a
corral and a haystack, with a few stock tenders. The drivers were often
drunk and commonly profane. The overseers and division superintendents
differed from them only in being a little more resolute and dangerous.
Freighting and coaching were not child's play for either passengers or
employees.
The Butterfield Overland Express began to work its six year contract
in September, 1858. Other coach and mail services increased the number
of continental routes to three by 1860. From New Orleans, by way of
San Antonio and El Paso, a weekly service had been organized, but its
importance was far less than that of the great route, and not equal to
that by way of the Great Salt Lake.
Staging over the Platte trail began on a large scale with the discovery
of gold near Pike's Peak in 1858. The Mormon mails, interrupted by the
Mormon War, had been revived; but a new concern had sprung up under the
name of the Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Company. The firm of
Jones and Russell, soon to give way to Russell, Majors, and Waddell,
had seen the possibilities of the new boom camps, and had inaugurated
regular stage service in May, 1859. Henry Villard rode out in the
first coach. Horace Greeley followed in June. After some experimenting
in routes, the line accepted a considerable part of the Platte trail,
leaving the road at the forks of the river. Here Julesburg came into
existence as the most picturesque home station on the plains. It was
at this station that Jack Slade, whom Mark Twain found to be a mild,
hospitable, coffee-sharing man, cut off the ears of old Jules, after
the latter had emptied two barrels of bird-shot into him. It was
"celebrated for its desperadoes," wrote General Dodge. "No twenty-four
hours passed without its contribution to Boots Hill (the cemetery whose
every occupant was buried in his boots), and homicide was performed in
the most genial and whole-souled way."
Before the Denver coach had been running for a year another enterprise
had brought the central route into greater prominence. Butterfield had
given California news in less than twenty-five days from the Missouri,
but California wanted more even than this, until the electric telegraph
should come. Senator Gwin urged upon the great freight concern the
starting of a faster service for light mails only. It was William H.
Russell who, to meet this supposed demand, organized a pony express,
which he announced to a startled public in the end of March. Across the
continent from Placerville to St. Joseph he built his stations from
nine to fifteen miles apart, nearly two hundred in all. He supplied
these with tenders and riders, stocked them with fodder and fleet
American horses, and started his first riders at both ends on the 3d of
April, 1860.
Only letters of great commercial importance could be carried by the
new express. They were written on tissue paper, packed into a small,
light saddlebag, and passed from rider to rider along the route. The
time announced in the schedule was ten days,--two weeks better than
Butterfield's best. To make it called for constant motion at top
speed, with horses trained to the work and changed every few miles.
The carriers were slight men of 135 pounds or under, whose nerve and
endurance could stand the strain. Often mere boys were employed in the
dangerous service. Rain or snow or death made no difference to the
express. Dangers of falling at night, of missing precipitous mountain
roads where advance at a walk was perilous, had to be faced. When
Indians were hostile, this new risk had to be run. But for eighteen
months the service was continued as announced. It ceased only when the
overland telegraph, in October, 1861, declared its readiness to handle
through business.
In the pony express was the spectacular perfection of overland service.
Its best record was some hours under eight days. It was conducted along
the well-known trail from St. Joseph to Forts Kearney, Laramie, and
Bridger; thence to Great Salt Lake City, and by way of Carson City to
Placerville and Sacramento. It carried the news in a time when every
day brought new rumors of war and disunion, in the pregnant campaign
of 1860 and through the opening of the Civil War. The records of its
riders at times approached the marvellous. One lad, William F. Cody,
who has since lived to become the personal embodiment of the Far West
as Buffalo Bill, rode more than 320 consecutive miles on a single
tour. The literature of the plains is full of instances of courage and
endurance shown in carrying through the despatches.
The Butterfield mail was transferred to the central route of the pony
express in the summer of 1861. For two and a half years it had run
steadily along its southern route, proving the entire practicability
of carrying on such a service. But its expense had been out of all
proportion to its revenue. In 1859 the Postmaster-general reported
that its total receipts from mails had been $27,229.94, as against a
cost of $600,000. It is not unlikely that the fast service would have
been dropped had not the new military necessity of 1861 forbidden any
act which might loosen the bonds between the Pacific and the Atlantic
states. Congress contemplated the approach of war and authorized early
in 1861 the abandonment of the southern route through the confederate
territory, and the transfer of the service to the line of the pony
express. To secure additional safety the mails were sent by way of
Davenport, Iowa, and Omaha, to Fort Kearney a few times, but Atchison
became the starting-point at last, while military force was used to
keep the route free from interference. The transfer worked a shortening
of from five to seven days over the southern route.
In the autumn of 1861, when the overland mail and the pony express were
both running at top speed along the Platte trail, the overland service
reached its highest point. In October the telegraph brought an end to
the express. "The Pacific to the Atlantic sends greeting," ran the
first message over the new wire, "and may both oceans be dry before a
foot of all the land that lies between them shall belong to any other
than one united country." Probably the pony express had done its share
in keeping touch between California and the Union. Certainly only its
national purpose justified its existence, since it was run at a loss
that brought ruin to Russell, its backer, and to Majors and Waddell,
his partners.
Russell, Majors, and Waddell, with the biggest freighting business of
the plains, had gone heavily into passenger and express service in
1859-1860. Russell had forced through the pony express against the
wishes of his partners, carried away from practical considerations
by the magnitude of the idea. The transfer of the southern overland
to their route increased their business and responsibility. The
future of the route steadily looked larger. "Every day," wrote the
Postmaster-general, "brings intelligence of the discovery of new
mines of gold and silver in the region traversed by this mail route,
which gives assurance that it will not be many years before it will
be protected and supported throughout the greater part of the route
by a civilized population." Under the name of the Central Overland,
California, and Pike's Peak Express the firm tried to keep up a
struggle too great for them. "Clean out of Cash and Poor Pay" is said
to have been an irreverent nickname coined by one of their drivers.
As their embarrassments steadily increased, their notes were given to
a rival contractor who was already beginning local routes to reach
the mining camps of eastern Washington. Ben Holladay had been the
power behind the company for several months before the courts gave him
control of their overland stage line in 1862. The greatest names in
this overland business are first Butterfield, then Russell, Majors, and
Waddell, and then Ben Holladay, whose power lasted until he sold out
to Wells, Fargo, and Company in 1866. Ben Holladay was the magnate of
the plains during the early sixties. A hostile critic, Henry Villard,
has written that he was "a genuine specimen of the successful Western
pioneer of former days, illiterate, coarse, pretentious, boastful,
false, and cunning." In later days he carried his speculation into
railways and navigation, but already his was the name most often heard
in the West. Mark Twain, who has left in "Roughing It" the best picture
of life in the Far West in this decade, speaks lightly of him when he
tells of a youth travelling in the Holy Land with a reverend preceptor
who was impressing upon him the greatness of Moses, "'the great guide,
soldier, poet, lawgiver of ancient Israel! Jack, from this spot where
we stand, to Egypt, stretches a fearful desert three hundred miles in
extent--and across that desert that wonderful man brought the children
of Israel!--guiding them with unfailing sagacity for forty years over
the sandy desolation and among the obstructing rocks and hills, and
landed them at last, safe and sound, within sight of this very spot. It
was a wonderful, wonderful thing to do, Jack. Think of it!"
"'Forty years? Only three hundred miles?'" replied Jack. "'Humph! Ben
Holladay would have fetched them through in thirty-six hours!'"
Under Holladay's control the passenger and express service were
developed into what was probably the greatest one-man institution in
America. He directed not only the central overland, but spur lines with
government contracts to upper California, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.
He travelled up and down the line constantly himself, attending in
person to business in Washington and on the Pacific. The greatest
difficulties in his service were the Indians and progress as stated in
the railway. Man and nature could be fought off and overcome, but the
life of the stage-coach was limited before it was begun.
The Indian danger along the trails had steadily increased since the
commencement of the migrations. For many years it had not been large,
since there was room for all and the emigrants held well to the beaten
track. But the gold camps had introduced settlers into new sections,
and had sent prospectors into all the Indian Country. The opening of
new roads to the Pacific increased the pressure, until the Indians
began to believe that the end was at hand unless they should bestir
themselves. The last years of the overland service, between 1862 and
1868, were hence filled with Indian attacks. Often for weeks no coach
could go through. Once, by premeditation, every station for nearly two
hundred miles was destroyed overnight, Julesburg, the greatest of them
all, being in the list. The presence of troops to defend seemed only to
increase the zeal of the red men to destroy.
Besides these losses, which lessened his profits and threatened ruin,
Holladay had to meet competition in his own trade, and detraction as
well. Captain James L. Fiske, who had broken a new road through from
Minnesota to Montana, came east in 1863, "by the 'overland stage,'
travelling over the saline plains of Laramie and Colorado Territory
and the sand deserts of Nebraska and Kansas. The country was strewed
with the skeletons and carcases of cattle, and the graves of the early
Mormon and California pilgrims lined the roadside. This is the worst
emigrant route that I have ever travelled; much of the road is through
deep sand, feed is very scanty, a great deal of the water is alkaline,
and the snows in winter render it impassable for trains. The stage line
is wretchedly managed. The company undertake to furnish travellers with
meals, (at a dollar a meal,) but very frequently on arriving at a
station there was nothing to eat, the supplies had not been sent on. On
one occasion we fasted for thirty-six hours. The stages were sometimes
in a miserable condition. We were put into a coach one night with only
two boards left in the bottom. On remonstrating with the driver, we
were told to hold on by the sides."
At the close of the Civil War, however, Holladay controlled a monopoly
in stage service between the Missouri River and Great Salt Lake. The
express companies and railways met him at the ends of his link, but had
to accept his terms for intermediate traffic. In the summer of 1865
a competing firm started a Butterfield's Overland Despatch to run on
the Smoky Hill route to Denver. It soon found that Indian dangers here
were greater than along the Platte, and it learned how near it was to
bankruptcy when Holladay offered to buy it out in 1866. He had sent
his agents over the rival line, and had in his hand a more detailed
statement of resources and conditions than the Overland Despatch itself
possessed. He purchased easily at his own price and so ended this
danger of competition.
Such was the character of the overland traffic that any day might
bring a successful rival, or loss by accident. Holladay seems to have
realized that the advantages secured by priority were over, and that
the trade had seen its best day. In the end of 1866 he sold out his
lines to the greatest of his competitors, Wells, Fargo, and Company.
He sold out wisely. The new concern lost on its purchase through the
rapid shortening of the route. During 1866 the Pacific railway had
advanced so far that the end of the mail route was moved to Fort
Kearney in November. By May, 1869, some years earlier than Wells, Fargo
had estimated, the road was done. And on the completion of the Union
and Central Pacific railways the great period of the overland mail was
ended.
Parallel to the overland mail rolled an overland freight that lacked
the seeming romance of the former, but possessed quite as much of
real significance. No one has numbered the trains of wagons that
supplied the Far West. Santa Fé wagons they were now; Pennsylvania
or Pittsburg wagons they had been called in the early days of the
Santa Fé trade; Conestoga wagons they had been in the remoter time
of the trans-Alleghany migrations. But whatever their name, they
retained the characteristics of the wagons and caravans of the earlier
period. Holladay bought over 150 such wagons, organized in trains
of twenty-six, from the Butterfield Overland Despatch in 1866. Six
thousand were counted passing Fort Kearney in six weeks in 1865. One
of the drivers on the overland mail, Frank Root, relates that Russell,
Majors, and Waddell owned 6250 wagons and 75,000 oxen at the height of
their business. The long trains, crawling along half hidden in their
clouds of dust, with the noises of the animals and the profanity of
the drivers, were the physical bond between the sections. The mail and
express served politics and intellect; the freighters provided the
comforts and decencies of life.
The overland traffic had begun on the heels of the first migrations.
Its growth during the fifties and its triumphant period in the sixties
were great arguments in favor of the construction of railways to take
its place. It came to an end when the first continental railroad
was completed in 1869. For decades after this time the stages still
found useful service on branch lines and to new camps, and occasional
exhibition in the "Wild West Shows," but the railways were following
them closely, for a new period of American history had begun.
CHAPTER XII
THE ENGINEERS' FRONTIER
In a national way, the South struggling against the North prevented
the early location of a Pacific railway. Locally, every village on the
Mississippi from the Lakes to the Gulf hoped to become the terminus
and had advocates throughout its section of the country. The list of
claimants is a catalogue of Mississippi Valley towns. New Orleans,
Vicksburg, Memphis, Cairo, St. Louis, Chicago, and Duluth were all
entered in the competition. By 1860 the idea had received general
acceptance; no one in the future need urge its adoption, but the
greatest part of the work remained to be done.
Born during the thirties, the idea of a Pacific railway was of
uncertain origin and parentage. Just so soon as there was a railroad
anywhere, it was inevitable that some enterprising visionary should
project one in imagination to the extremity of the continent. The
railway speculation, with which the East was seething during the
administrations of Andrew Jackson, was boiling over in the young West,
so that the group of men advocating a railway to connect the oceans
were but the product of their time.
Greatest among these enthusiasts was Asa Whitney, a New York merchant
interested in the China trade and eager to win the commerce of the
Orient for the United States. Others had declared such a road to be
possible before he presented his memorial to Congress in 1845, but none
had staked so much upon the idea. He abandoned the business, conducted
a private survey in Wisconsin and Iowa, and was at last convinced that
"the time is not far distant when Oregon will become ... a separate
nation" unless communication should "unite them to us." He petitioned
Congress in January, 1845, for a franchise and a grant of land, that
the national road might be accomplished; and for many years he agitated
persistently for his project.
The annexation of Oregon and the Southwest, coming in the years
immediately after the commencement of Whitney's advocacy, gave new
point to arguments for the railway and introduced the sectional
element. So long as Oregon constituted the whole American frontage on
the Pacific it was idle to debate railway routes south of South Pass.
This was the only known, practicable route, and it was the course
recommended by all the projectors, down to Whitney. But with California
won, the other trails by El Paso and Santa Fé came into consideration
and at once tempted the South to make the railway tributary to its own
interests.
Chief among the politicians who fell in with the growing railway
movement was Senator Benton, who tried to place himself at its
head. "The man is alive, full grown, and is listening to what I
say (without believing it perhaps)," he declared in October, 1844,
"who will yet see the Asiatic commerce traversing the North Pacific
Ocean--entering the Oregon River--climbing the western slopes of the
Rocky Mountains--issuing from its gorges--and spreading its fertilizing
streams over our wide-extended Union!" After this date there was no
subject closer to his interest than the railway, and his advocacy
was constant. His last word in the Senate was concerning it. In 1849
he carried off its feet the St. Louis railroad convention with his
eloquent appeal for a central route: "Let us make the iron road, and
make it from sea to sea--States and individuals making it east of
the Mississippi, the nation making it west. Let us ... rise above
everything sectional, personal, local. Let us ... build the great
road ... which shall be adorned with ... the colossal statue of the
great Columbus--whose design it accomplishes, hewn from a granite mass
of a peak of the Rocky Mountains, overlooking the road ... pointing
with outstretched arm to the western horizon and saying to the flying
passengers, 'There is the East, there is India.'"
By 1850 it was common knowledge that a railroad could be built along
the Platte route, and it was believed that the mountains could be
penetrated in several other places, but the process of surveying
with reference to a particular railway had not yet been begun. It
is possible and perhaps instructive to make a rough grouping, in two
classes divided by the year 1842, of the explorations before 1853.
So late as Frémont's day it was not generally known whether a great
river entered the Pacific between the Columbia and the Colorado.
Prior to 1842 the explorations are to be regarded as "incidents"
and "adventures" in more or less unknown countries. The narratives
were popular rather than scientific, representing the experiences of
parties surveying boundary lines or locating wagon roads, of troops
marching to remote posts or chastising Indians, of missionaries and
casual explorers. In the aggregate they had contributed a large mass
of detailed but unorganized information concerning the country where
the continental railway must run. But Lieutenant Frémont, in 1842,
commenced the effort by the United States to acquire accurate and
comprehensive knowledge of the West. In 1842, 1843, and 1845 Frémont
conducted the three Rocky Mountain expeditions which established him
for life as a popular hero. The map, drawn by Charles Preuss for his
second expedition, confined itself in strict scientific fashion to the
facts actually observed, and in skill of execution was perhaps the best
map made before 1853. The individual expeditions which in the later
forties filled in the details of portions of the Frémont map are too
numerous for mention. At least twenty-five occurred before 1853, all
serving to extend both general and particular knowledge of the West. To
these was added a great mass of popular books, prepared by emigrants
and travellers. By 1853 there was good, unscientific knowledge of
nearly all the West, and accurate information concerning some portions
of it. The railroad enthusiasts could tell the general direction in
which the roads must run, but no road could well be located without a
more comprehensive survey than had yet been made.
The agitation of the Pacific railway idea was founded almost
exclusively upon general and inaccurate knowledge of the West. The
exact location of the line was naturally left for the professional
civil engineer, its popular advocate contented himself with general
principles. Frequently these were sufficient, yet, as in the case
of Benton, misinformation led to the waste of strength upon routes
unquestionably bad. But there was slight danger of the United States
being led into an unwise route, since in the diversity of routes
suggested there was deadlock. Until after 1850, in proportion as
the idea was received with unanimity, the routes were fought with
increasing bitterness. Whitney was shelved in 1852 when the choice of
routes had become more important than the method of construction.
In 1852-1853 Congress worked upon one of the many bills to construct
the much-desired railway to the Pacific. It was discovered that an
absolute majority in favor of the work existed, but the enemies of the
measure, virulent in proportion as they were in the minority, were
able to sow well-fertilized dissent. They admitted and gloried in
the intrigue which enabled them to command through the time-honored
method of division. They defeated the road in this Congress. But when
the army appropriation bill came along in February, 1853, Senator
Gwin asked for an amendment for a survey. He doubted the wisdom of a
survey, since, "if any route is reported to this body as the best,
those that may be rejected will always go against the one selected."
But he admitted himself to be as a drowning man who "will catch at
straws," and begged that $150,000 be allowed to the President for a
survey of the best routes from the Mississippi to the Pacific, the
survey to be conducted by the Corps of Topographical Engineers of the
regular army. To a non-committal measure like this the opposition could
make slight resistance. The Senate, by a vote of 31 to 16, added this
amendment to the army appropriation bill, while the House concurred in
nearly the same proportion. The first positive official act towards the
construction of the road was here taken.
Under the orders of Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, well-organized
exploring parties took to the field in the spring of 1853. Farthest
north, Isaac I. Stevens, bound for his post as first governor of
Washington territory, conducted a line of survey to the Pacific between
the parallels of 47° and 49°, north latitude. South of the Stevens
survey, four other lines were worked out. Near the parallels of 41° and
42°, the old South Pass route was again examined. Frémont's favorite
line, between 38° and 39°, received consideration. A thirty-fifth
parallel route was examined in great detail, while on this and another
along the thirty-second parallel the most friendly attentions of the
War Department were lavished. The second and third routes had few
important friends. Governor Stevens, because he was a first-rate
fighter, secured full space for the survey in his charge. But the
thirty-second and thirty-fifth parallel routes were those which were
expected to make good.
Governor Stevens left Washington on May 9, 1853, for St. Louis, where
he made arrangements with the American Fur Company to transport a large
part of his supplies by river to Fort Union. From St. Louis he ascended
the Mississippi by steamer to St. Paul, near which city Camp Pierce,
his first organized camp, had been established. Here he issued his
instructions and worked into shape his party,--to say nothing of his
172 half-broken mules. "Not a single full team of broken animals could
be selected, and well broken riding animals were essential, for most of
the gentlemen of the scientific corps were unaccustomed to riding." One
of the engineers dislocated a shoulder before he conquered his steed.
The party assigned to Governor Stevens's command was recruited with
reference to the varied demands of a general exploring and scientific
reconnaissance. Besides enlisted men and laborers, it included
engineers, a topographer, an artist, a surgeon and naturalist, an
astronomer, a meteorologist, and a geologist. Its two large volumes of
report include elaborate illustrations and appendices on botany and
seven different varieties of zoölogy in addition to the geographical
details required for the railway.
The expedition, in its various branches, attacked the northernmost
route simultaneously in several places. Governor Stevens led the
eastern division from St. Paul. A small body of his men, with much of
the supplies, were sent up the Missouri in the American Fur Company's
boat to Fort Union, there to make local observations and await the
arrival of the governor. United there the party continued overland
to Fort Benton and the mountains. Six years later than this it would
have been possible to ascend by boat all the way to Fort Benton, but
as yet no steamer had gone much above Fort Union. From the Pacific end
the second main division operated. Governor Stevens secured the recall
of Captain George B. McClellan from duty in Texas, and his detail in
command of a corps which was to proceed to the mouth of the Columbia
River and start an eastward survey. In advance of McClellan, Lieutenant
Saxton was to hurry on to erect a supply depot in the Bitter Root
Valley, and then to cross the divide and make a junction with the main
party.
From Governor Stevens's reports it would seem that his survey was a
triumphal progress. To his threefold capacities as commander, governor,
and Indian superintendent, nature had added a magnifying eye and
an unrestrained enthusiasm. No formal expedition had traversed his
route since the day of Lewis and Clark. The Indians could still be
impressed by the physical appearance of the whites. His vanity led him
at each success or escape from accident to congratulate himself on the
antecedent wisdom which had warded off the danger. But withal, his
report was thorough and his party was loyal. The _voyageurs_ whom he
had engaged received his special praise. "They are thorough woodsmen
and just the men for prairie life also, going into the water as
pleasantly as a spaniel, and remaining there as long as needed."
Across the undulating fertile plains the party advanced from St. Paul
with little difficulty. Its draught animals steadily improved in health
and strength. The Indians were friendly and honest. "My father," said
Old Crane of the Assiniboin, "our hearts are good; we are poor and have
not much.... Our good father has told us about this road. I do not
see how it will benefit us, and I fear my people will be driven from
these plains before the white men." In fifty-five days Fort Union was
reached. Here the American Fur Company maintained an extensive post
in a stockade 250 feet square, and carried on a large trade with "the
Assiniboines, the Gros Ventres, the Crows, and other migratory bands
of Indians." At Fort Union, Alexander Culbertson, the agent, became
the guide of the party, which proceeded west on August 10. From Fort
Union it was nearly 400 miles to Fort Benton, which then stood on the
left bank of the Missouri, some eighteen miles below the falls. The
country, though less friendly than that east of the Missouri, offered
little difficulty to the party, which covered the distance in three
weeks. A week later, September 8, a party sent on from Fort Benton met
Lieutenant Saxton coming east.
The chief problems of the Stevens survey lay west of Fort Benton,
in the passes of the continental divide. Lieutenant Saxton had left
Vancouver early in July, crossed the Cascades with difficulty, and
started up the Columbia from the Dalles on July 18. He reached Fort
Walla Walla on the 27th, and proceeded thence with a half-breed guide
through the country of the Spokan and the Coeur d'Alene. Crossing the
Snake, he broke his only mercurial barometer and was forced thereafter
to rely on his aneroid. Deviating to the north, he crossed Lake Pend
d'Oreille on August 10, and reached St. Mary's village, in the Bitter
Root Valley, on August 28. St. Mary's village, among the Flatheads, had
been established by the Jesuit fathers, and had advanced considerably,
as Indian civilization went. Here Saxton erected his supply depot,
from which he advanced with a smaller escort to join the main party.
Always, even in the heart of the mountains, the country exceeded his
expectations. "Nature seemed to have intended it for the great highway
across the continent, and it appeared to offer but little obstruction
to the passage of a railroad."
Acting on Saxton's advice, Governor Stevens reduced his party at Fort
Benton, stored much of his government property there, and started
west with a pack train, for the sake of greater speed. He moved on
September 22, anxious lest snow should catch him in the mountains. At
Fort Benton he left a detachment to make meteorological observations
during the winter. Among the Flatheads he left another under Lieutenant
Mullan. On October 7 he hurried on again from the Bitter Root Valley
for Walla Walla. On the 19th he met McClellan's party, which had been
spending a difficult season in the passes of the Cascade range. Because
of overcautious advice which McClellan here gave him, and since his
animals were tired out with the summer's hardships, he practically
ended his survey for 1853 at this point. He pushed on down the Columbia
to Olympia and his new territory.
The energy of Governor Stevens enabled him to make one of the first
of the Pacific railway reports. His was the only survey from the
Mississippi to the ocean under a single commander. Dated June 30, 1854,
it occupies 651 pages of Volume I of the compiled reports. In 1859 he
submitted his "narrative and final report" which the Senate ordered
Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, to communicate to it in February of
that year. This document is printed as supplement to Volume I, but
really consists of two large volumes which are commonly bound together
as Volume XII of the series. Like the other volumes of the reports,
his are filled with lithographs and engravings of fauna, flora, and
topography.
The forty-second parallel route was surveyed by Lieutenant E. G.
Beckwith, of the third artillery, in the summer of 1854. East of Fort
Bridger, the War Department felt it unnecessary to make a special
survey, since Frémont had traversed and described the country several
times and Stansbury had surveyed it carefully as recently as 1849-1850.
At the beginning of his campaign Beckwith was at Salt Lake. During
April he visited the Green River Valley and Fort Bridger, proving by
his surveys the entire practicability of railway construction here.
In May he skirted the south end of Great Salt Lake and passed along
the Humboldt to the Sacramento Valley. He had no important adventures
and was impressed most by the squalor of the digger Indians, whose
grass-covered, beehive-shaped "wick-ey-ups" were frequently seen. As
his band approached the Indians would fearfully cache their belongings
in the undergrowth. In the morning "it was indeed a novel and ludicrous
sight of wretchedness to see them approach their bush and attempt,
slyly (for they still tried to conceal from me what they were about),
to repossess themselves of their treasures, one bringing out a piece
of old buckskin, a couple of feet square, smoked, greasy, and torn;
another a half dozen rabbit-skins in an equally filthy condition,
sewed together, which he would swing over his shoulders by a
string--his only blanket or clothing; while a third brought out a blue
string, which he girded about him and walked away in full dress--one
of the lords of the soil." It needed no special emphasis in Beckwith's
report to prove that a railway could follow this middle route, since
thousands of emigrants had a personal knowledge of its conditions.
[Illustration: FORT SNELLING
From an old photograph, loaned by Horace B. Hudson, of Minneapolis.]
Beckwith, who started his forty-second parallel survey from Salt Lake
City, had reached that point as one of the officers in Gunnison's
unfortunate party. Captain J. W. Gunnison had followed Governor Stevens
into St. Louis in 1853. His field of exploration, the route of 38°-39°,
was by no means new to him since he had been to Utah with Stansbury
in 1849 and 1850, and had already written one of the best books upon
the Mormon settlement. He carried his party up the Missouri to a
fitting-out camp just below the mouth of the Kansas River, five miles
from Westport. Like other commanders he spent much time at the start
in "breaking in wild mules," with which he advanced in rain and mud on
June 23. For more than two weeks his party moved in parallel columns
along the Santa Fé road and the Smoky Hill fork of the Kansas. Near
Walnut creek on the Santa Fé road they united, and soon were following
the Arkansas River towards the mountains. At Fort Atkinson they found a
horde of the plains Indians waiting for Major Fitzpatrick to make a
treaty with them. Always their observations were taken with regularity.
One day Captain Gunnison spent in vain efforts to secure specimens of
the elusive prairie dog. On August 1, when they were ready to leave the
Arkansas and plunge southwest into the Sangre de Cristo range, they
were gratified "by a clear and beautiful view of the Spanish Peaks."
This thirty-ninth parallel route, which had been a favorite with
Frémont, crossed the divide near the head of the Rio Grande. Its
grades, which were difficult and steep at best, followed the Huerfano
Valley and Cochetopa Pass. Across the pass, Gunnison began his descent
of the arid alkali valley of the Uncompahgre,--a valley to-day about
to blossom as the rose because of the irrigation canal and tunnel
bringing to it the waters of the neighboring Gunnison River. With
heavy labor, intense heat, and weakening teams, Gunnison struggled on
through September and October towards Salt Lake in Utah territory. Near
Sevier Lake he lost his life. Before daybreak, on October 26, he and a
small detachment of men were surprised by a band of young Paiute. When
the rest of his party hurried up to the rescue, they found his body
"pierced with fifteen arrows," and seven of his men lying dead around
him. Beckwith, who succeeded to the command, led the remainder of the
party to Salt Lake City, where public opinion was ready to charge the
Mormons with the murder. Beckwith believed this to be entirely false,
and made use of the friendly assistance of Brigham Young, who persuaded
the chiefs of the tribe to return the instruments and records which had
been stolen from the party.
The route surveyed by Captain Gunnison passed around the northern end
of the ravine of the Colorado River, which almost completely separates
the Southwest from the United States. Farther south, within the United
States, were only two available points at which railways could cross
the cañon, at Fort Yuma and near the Mojave River. Towards these
crossings the thirty-fifth and thirty-second parallel surveys were
directed.
Second only to Governor Stevens's in its extent was the exploration
conducted by Lieutenant A. W. Whipple from Fort Smith on the Arkansas
to Los Angeles along the thirty-fifth parallel. Like that of Governor
Stevens this route was not the channel of any regular traffic, although
later it was to have some share in the organized overland commerce.
Here also was found a line that contained only two or three serious
obstacles to be overcome. Whipple's instructions planned for him to
begin his observations at the Mississippi, but he believed that the
navigable Arkansas River and the railways already projected in that
state made it needless to commence farther east than Fort Smith, on the
edge of the Indian Country. He began his survey on July 14, 1853. His
westward march was for two months up the right bank of the Canadian
River, as it traversed the Choctaw and Chickasaw reserves, to the
hundredth meridian, where it emerged from the panhandle of Texas, and
across the panhandle into New Mexico. After crossing the upper waters
of the Rio Pecos he reached the Rio Grande at Albuquerque, where his
party tarried for a month or more, working over their observations,
making local explorations, and sending back to Washington an account
of their proceedings thus far. Towards the middle of November they
started on toward the Colorado Chiquita and the Bill Williams Fork,
through "a region over which no white man is supposed to have passed."
The severest difficulties of the trip were found near the valley of the
Colorado River, which was entered at the junction of the Bill Williams
Fork and followed north for several days. A crossing here was made near
the supposed mouth of the Mojave River at a place where porphyritic
and trap dykes, outcropping, gave rise to the name of the Needles.
The river was crossed February 27, 1854, three weeks before the party
reached Los Angeles.
South of the route of Lieutenant Whipple, the thirty-second parallel
survey was run to the Fort Yuma crossing of the Colorado River. No
attempt was made in this case at a comprehensive survey under a single
leader. Instead, the section from the Rio Grande at El Paso to the
Red River at Preston, Texas, was run by John Pope, brevet captain in
the topographical engineers, in the spring of 1854. Lieutenant J. G.
Parke carried the line at the same time from the Pimas villages on the
Gila to the Rio Grande. West of the Pimas villages to the Colorado,
a reconnoissance made by Lieutenant-colonel Emory in 1847 was drawn
upon. The lines in California were surveyed by yet a different party.
Here again an easy route was discovered to exist. Within the states of
California and Oregon various connecting lines were surveyed by parties
under Lieutenant R. S. Williamson in 1855.
The evidence accumulated by the Pacific railway surveys began to pour
in upon the War Department in the spring of 1854. Partial reports
at first, elaborate and minute scientific articles following later,
made up a series which by the close of the decade filled the twelve
enormous volumes of the published papers. Rarely have efforts so great
accomplished so little in the way of actual contribution to knowledge.
The chief importance of the surveys was in proving by scientific
observation what was already a commonplace among laymen--that the
continent was traversable in many places, and that the incidental
problems of railway construction were in finance rather than in
engineering. The engineers stood ready to build the road any time and
almost anywhere.
The Secretary of War submitted to Congress the first instalment of his
report under the resolution of March 3, 1853, on February 27, 1855. As
yet the labors of compilation and examination of the field manuscripts
were by no means completed, but he was able to make general statements
about the probability of success. At five points the continental
divide had been crossed; over four of these railways were entirely
practicable, although the shortest of the routes to San Francisco ran
by the one pass, Cochetopa, where it would be unreasonable to construct
a road.
From the routes surveyed, Secretary Davis recommended one as "the most
practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi
River to the Pacific Ocean." In all cases cost, speed of construction,
and ease in operation needed to be ascertained and compared. The
estimates guessed at by the parties in the field, and revised by the
War Department, pointed to the southernmost as the most desirable
route. To reach this conclusion it was necessary to accuse Governor
Stevens of underestimating the cost of labor along his northern line;
but the figures as taken were conclusive. On this thirty-second
parallel route, declared the Secretary of War, "the progress of the
work will be regulated chiefly by the speed with which cross-ties
and rails can be delivered and laid.... The few difficult points ...
would delay the work but an inconsiderable period.... The climate on
this route is such as to cause less interruption to the work than on
any other route. Not only is this the shortest and least costly route
to the Pacific, but it is the shortest and cheapest route to San
Francisco, the greatest commercial city on our western coast; while
the aggregate length of railroad lines connecting it at its eastern
terminus with the Atlantic and Gulf seaports is less than the aggregate
connection with any other route."
The Pacific railway surveys had been ordered as the only step which
Congress in its situation of deadlock could take. Senator Gwin had long
ago told his fears that the advocates of the disappointed routes would
unite to hinder the fortunate one. To the South, as to Jefferson Davis,
Secretary of War, the thirty-second parallel route was satisfactory;
but there was as little chance of building a railway as there had been
in 1850. In days to come, discussion of railways might be founded upon
facts rather than hopes and fears, but either unanimity or compromise
was in a fairly remote future. The overland traffic, which was assuming
great volume as the surveys progressed, had yet nearly fifteen years
before the railway should drive it out of existence. And no railway
could even be started before war had removed one of the contesting
sections from the floor of Congress.
Yet in the years since Asa Whitney had begun his agitation the railways
of the East had constantly expanded. The first bridge to cross the
Mississippi was under construction when Davis reported in 1855. The
Illinois Central was opened in 1856. When the Civil War began, the
railway frontier had become coterminous with the agricultural frontier,
and both were ready to span the gap which separated them from the
Pacific.
CHAPTER XIII
THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD
It has been pointed out by Davis in his history of the Union Pacific
Railroad that the period of agitation was approaching probable success
when the latter was deferred because of the rivalry of sections and
localities into which the scheme was thrown. From about 1850 until 1853
it indeed seemed likely that the road would be built just so soon as
the terminus could be agreed upon. To be sure, there was keen rivalry
over this; yet the rivalry did not go beyond local jealousies and might
readily be compromised. After the reports of the surveys were completed
and presented to Congress the problem took on a new aspect which
promised postponement until a far greater question could be solved.
Slavery and the Pacific railroad are concrete illustrations of the two
horns of the national dilemma.
As a national project, the railway raised the problem of its
construction under national auspices. Was the United States, or
should it become, a nation competent to undertake the work? With no
hesitation, many of the advocates of the measure answered yes. Yet
even among the friends of the road the query frequently evoked the
other answer. Slavery had already taken its place as an institution
peculiar to a single section. Its defence and perpetuation depended
largely upon proving the contrary of the proposition that the Pacific
railroad demanded. For the purposes of slavery defence the United
States must remain a mere federation, limited in powers and lacking in
the attributes of sovereignty and nationality. Looking back upon this
struggle, with half a century gone by, it becomes clear that the final
answer upon both questions, slavery and railway, had to be postponed
until the more fundamental question of federal character had been
worked out. The antitheses were clear, even as Lincoln saw them in
1858. Slavery and localism on the one hand, railway and nationalism on
the other, were engaged in a vital struggle for recognition. Together
they were incompatible. One or the other must survive alone. Lincoln
saw a portion of the problem, and he sketched the answer: "I do not
expect the Union to be dissolved,--I do not expect the house to fall,
but I do expect it will cease to be divided."
The stages of the Pacific railroad movement are clearly marked
through all these squabbles. Agitation came first, until conviction
and acceptance were general. This was the era of Asa Whitney.
Reconnoissance and survey followed, in a decade covering approximately
1847-1857. Organization came last, beginning in tentative schemes which
counted for little, passing through a long series of intricate debates
in Congress, and being merged in the larger question of nationality,
but culminating finally in the first Pacific railroad bills of 1862 and
1864.
When Congress began its session of 1853-1854, most of the surveying
parties contemplated by the act of the previous March were still in
the field. The reports ordered were not yet available, and Congress
recognized the inexpediency of proceeding farther without the facts.
It is notable, however, that both houses at this time created select
committees to consider propositions for a railway. Both of these
committees reported bills, but neither received sanction even in the
house of its friends. The next session, 1854-1855, saw the great
struggle between Douglas and Benton.
Stephen A. Douglas, who had triumphantly carried through his
Kansas-Nebraska bill in the preceding May, started a railway bill in
the Senate in 1855. As finally considered and passed by the Senate,
his bill provided for three railroads: a Northern Pacific, from the
western border of Wisconsin to Puget Sound; a Southern Pacific, from
the western border of Texas to the Pacific; and a Central Pacific,
from Missouri or Iowa to San Francisco. They were to be constructed by
private parties under contracts to be let jointly by the Secretaries
of War and Interior and the Postmaster-general. Ultimately they were
to become the property of the United States and the states through
which they passed. The House of Representatives, led by Benton in the
interests of a central road, declined to pass the Douglas measure.
Before its final rejection, it was amended to please Benton and his
allies by the restriction to a single trunk line from San Francisco,
with eastern branches diverging to Lake Superior, Missouri or Iowa, and
Memphis.
During the two years following the rejection of the Douglas scheme
by the allied malcontents, the select committees on the Pacific
railways had few propositions to consider, while Congress paid little
attention to the general matter. Absorbing interest in politics,
the new Republican party, and the campaign of 1856 were responsible
for part of the neglect. The conviction of the dominant Democrats
that the nation had no power to perform the task was responsible
for more. The transition from a question of selfish localism to one
of national policy which should require the whole strength of the
nation for its solution was under way. The northern friends of the
railway were disheartened by the southern tendencies of the Democratic
administration which lasted till 1861. Jefferson Davis, as Secretary
of War, was followed by Floyd, of Virginia, who believed with his
predecessor that the southern was the most eligible route. At the same
time, Aaron V. Brown, of Tennessee, Postmaster-general, was awarding
the postal contract for an overland mail to Butterfield's southern
route in spite of the fact that Congress had probably intended the
central route to be employed.
Between 1857 and 1861 the debates of Congress show the difficulties
under which the railroad labored. Many bills were started, but few
could get through the committees. In 1859 the Senate passed a bill. In
1860 the House passed one which the Senate amended to death. In the
session of 1860-1861 its serious consideration was crowded out by the
incipiency of war.
Through the long years of debate over the organization of the road, the
nature of its management and the nature of its governmental aid were
much in evidence. Save only the Cumberland road the United States had
undertaken no such scheme, while the Cumberland road, vastly less in
magnitude than this, had raised enough constitutional difficulties to
last a generation. That there must be some connection between the road
and the public lands had been seen even before Whitney commenced his
advocacy. The nature of that connection was worked out incidentally to
other movements while the Whitney scheme was under fire.
The policy of granting lands in aid of improvements in transportation
had been hinted at as far back as the admission of Ohio, but it had not
received its full development until the railroad period began. To some
extent, in the thirties and forties, public lands had been allotted to
the states to aid in canal building, but when the railroad promoters
started their campaign in the latter decade, a new era in the history
of the public domain was commenced. The definitive fight over the
issue of land grants for railways took place in connection with the
Illinois Central and Mobile and Ohio scheme in the years from 1847 to
1850.
The demand for a central railroad in Illinois made its appearance
before the panic of 1837. The northwest states were now building their
own railroads, and this enterprise was designed to connect the Galena
lead country with the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi by a road
running parallel to the Mississippi through the whole length of the
state of Illinois. Private railways in the Northwest ran naturally from
east to west, seeking termini on the Mississippi and at the Alleghany
crossings. This one was to intersect all the horizontal roads, making
useful connections everywhere. But it traversed a country where yet
the prairie hen held uncontested sway. There was little population
or freight to justify it, and hence the project, though it guised
itself in at least three different corporate garments before 1845,
failed of success. No one of the multitude of transverse railways, on
whose junctions it had counted, crossed its right-of-way before 1850.
La Salle, Galena, and Jonesboro were the only villages on its line
worth marking on a large-scale map, while Chicago was yet under forty
thousand in population.
Men who in the following decade led the Pacific railway agitation
promoted the Illinois Central idea in the years immediately preceding
1850. Both Breese and Douglas of Illinois claimed the parentage of the
bill which eventually passed Congress in 1850, and by opening the way
to public aid for railway transportation commenced the period of the
land-grant railroads. Already in some of the canal grants the method
of aid had been outlined, alternate sections of land along the line
of the canal being conveyed to the company to aid it in its work. The
theory underlying the granting of alternate sections in the familiar
checker-board fashion was that the public lands, while inaccessible,
had slight value, but once reached by communication the alternate
sections reserved by the United States would bring a higher price than
the whole would have done without the canal, while the construction
company would be aided without expense to any one. The application of
this principle to railroads came rather slowly in a Congress somewhat
disturbed by a doubt as to its power to devote the public resources to
internal improvements. The sectional character of the Illinois Central
railway was against it until its promoters enlarged the scheme into a
Lake-to-Gulf railway by including plans for a continuation to Mobile
from the Ohio. With southern aid thus enticed to its support, the bill
became a law in 1850. By its terms, the alternate sections of land in
a strip ten miles wide were given to the interested states to be used
for the construction of the Illinois Central and the Mobile and Ohio.
The grants were made directly to the states because of constitutional
objections to construction within a state without its consent and
approval. It was twelve years before Congress was ready to give the
lands directly to the railroad company.
The decade following the Illinois Central grant was crowded with
applications from other states for grants upon the same terms. In this
period of speculative construction before the panic of 1857, every
western state wanted all the aid it could get. In a single session
seven states asked for nearly fourteen million acres of land, while
before 1857 some five thousand miles of railway had been aided by land
grants.
When Asa Whitney began his agitation for the Pacific railway, he asked
for a huge land grant, but the machinery and methods of the grants had
not yet become familiar to Congress. During the subsequent fifteen
years of agitation and survey the method was worked out, so that when
political conditions made it possible to build the road, there had
ceased to be great difficulty in connection with its subsidy.
The sectional problem, which had reached its full development in
Congress by 1857, prevented any action in the interest of a Pacific
railway so long as it should remain unchanged. As the bickerings
widened into war, the railway still remained a practical impossibility.
But after war had removed from Congress the representatives of the
southern states the way was cleared for action. When Congress met in
its war session of July, 1861, all agitation in favor of southern
routes was silenced by disunion. It remained only to choose among the
routes lying north of the thirty-fifth parallel, and to authorize the
construction along one of them of the railway which all admitted to be
possible of construction, and to which military need in preservation of
the union had now added an imperative quality.
The summer session of 1861 revived the bills for a Pacific railway,
and handed them over to the regular session of 1861-1862 as unfinished
business. In the lobby at this later session was Theodore D. Judah, a
young graduate of the Troy Polytechnic, who gave powerful aid to the
final settlement of route and means. Judah had come east in the autumn
in company with one of the newly elected California representatives.
During the long sea voyage he had drilled into his companion, who
happily was later appointed to the Pacific Railroad Committee, all of
the elaborate knowledge of the railway problem which he had acquired
in his advocacy of the railway on the Pacific Coast. California had
begun the construction of local railways several years before the war
broke out; a Pacific railway was her constant need and prayer. Her own
corporations were planned with reference to the time when tracks from
the East should cross her border and find her local creations waiting
for connections with them.
When the advent of war promised an early maturity for the scheme, a few
Californians organized the most significant of the California railways,
the Central Pacific. On June 28, 1861, this company was incorporated,
having for its leading spirits Judah, its chief engineer, and Collis
Potter Huntington, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, and Leland Stanford,
soon to be governor of the state. Its founders were all men of moderate
means, but they had the best of that foresight and initiative in which
the frontier was rich. Diligently through the summer of 1861 Judah
prospected for routes across the mountains into Utah territory, where
the new silver fields around Carson indicated the probable course of a
route. With his plans and profiles, he hurried on to Washington in the
fall to aid in the quick settlement of the long-debated question.
Judah's interest in a special California road coincided well with the
needs and desires of Congress. Already various bills were in the hands
of the select committees of both houses. The southern interest was
gone. The only remaining rivalries were among St. Louis, Chicago, and
the new Minnesota; while the first of these was tainted by the doubtful
loyalty of Missouri, and the last was embarrassed by the newness of its
territory and its lack of population. The Sioux were yet in control of
much of the country beyond St. Paul. Out of this rivalry Chicago and a
central route could emerge triumphant.
The spring of 1862 witnessed a long debate over a Union Pacific
railroad to meet the new military needs of the United States as well
as to satisfy the old economic necessities. Why it was called "Union"
is somewhat in doubt. Bancroft thinks its name was descriptive of the
various local roads which were bound together in the single continental
scheme. Davis, on the contrary, is inclined to believe that the name
was in contrast to the "Disunion" route of the thirty-second parallel,
since the route chosen was to run entirely through loyal territory.
Whatever the reason, however, the Union Pacific Railroad Company was
incorporated on the 1st of July, 1862.
Under the act of incorporation a continental railway was to be
constructed by several companies. Within the limits of California, the
Central Pacific of California, already organized and well managed,
was to have the privilege. Between the boundary line of California
and Nevada and the hundredth meridian, the new Union Pacific was
to be the constructing company. On the hundredth meridian, at some
point between the Republican River in Kansas and the Platte River in
Nebraska, radiating lines were to advance to various eastern frontier
points, somewhat after the fashion of Benton's bill of 1855. Thus
the Leavenworth, Pawnee, and Western of Kansas was authorized to
connect this point with the Missouri River, south of the mouth of the
Kansas, with a branch to Atchison and St. Joseph in connection with
the Hannibal and St. Joseph of Missouri. The Union Pacific itself was
required to build two more connections; one to run from the hundredth
meridian to some point on the west boundary of Iowa, to be fixed by
the President of the United States, and another to Sioux City, Iowa,
whenever a line from the east should reach that place.
The aid offered for the construction of these lines was more generous
than any previously provided by Congress. In the first place, the
roads were entitled to a right-of-way four hundred feet wide, with
permission to take material for construction from adjacent parts of the
public domain. Secondly, the roads were to receive ten sections of land
for each mile of track on the familiar alternate section principle.
Finally, the United States was to lend to the roads bonds to the
amount of $16,000 per mile, on the level, $32,000 in the foothills,
and $48,000 in the mountains, to facilitate construction. If not
completed and open by 1876, the whole line was to be forfeited to the
United States. If completed, the loan of bonds was to be repaid out of
subsequent earnings.
The Central Pacific of California was prompt in its acceptance of the
terms of the act of July 1, 1862. It proceeded with its organization,
broke ground at Sacramento on February 22, 1863, and had a few miles of
track in operation before the next year closed. But the Union Pacific
was slow. "While fighting to retain eleven refractory states," wrote
one irritated critic of the act, "the nation permitted itself to be
cozened out of territory sufficient to form twelve new republics." Yet
great as were the offered grants, eastern capital was reluctant to put
life into the new route across the plains. That it could ever pay, was
seriously doubted. Chances for more certain and profitable investment
in the East were frequent in the years of war-time prosperity. Although
the railroad organized according to the terms of the law, subscribers
to the stock of the Union Pacific were hard to find, and the road
lay dormant for two more years until Congress revised its offer and
increased its terms.
In the session of 1863-1864 the general subject was again approached.
Writes Davis, "The opinion was almost universal that additional
legislation was needed to make the Act of 1862 effective, but the
point where the limit of aid to patriotic capitalists should be set
was difficult to determine." It was, and remained, the belief of the
opponents of the bill now passed that "lobbyists, male and female,
... shysters and adventurers" had much to do with the success of the
measure. In its most essential parts, the new bill of 1864 increased
the degree of government aid to the companies. The land grant was
doubled from ten sections per mile of track to twenty, and the road
was allowed to borrow of the general public, on first mortgage bonds,
money to the amount of the United States loan, which was reduced by a
self-denying ordinance to the status of a second mortgage. With these
added inducements, the Union Pacific was finally begun.
The project at last under way in 1864-1865, as Davis graphically
pictures it, "was thoroughly saturated and fairly dripping with the
elements of adventure and romance." But he overstates his case when he
goes on to remark that, "Before the building of the Pacific railway
most of the wide expanse of territory west of the Missouri was _terra
incognita_ to the mass of Americans." For twenty years the railway had
been under agitation; during the whole period population had crossed
the great desert in increasing thousands; new states had banked up
around its circumference, east, west, and south, while Kansas had been
thrust into its middle; new camps had dotted its interior. The great
West was by no means unknown, but with the construction of the railway
the American frontier entered upon its final phase.
CHAPTER XIV
THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR
That the fate of the outlying colonies of the United States should
have aroused grave concerns at the beginning of the Civil War is not
surprising. California and Oregon, Carson City, Denver, and the other
mining camps were indeed on the same continent with the contending
factions, but the degree of their isolation was so great that they
might as well have been separated by an ocean. Their inhabitants were
more mixed than those of any portion of the older states, while in
several of the communities the parties were so evenly divided as to
raise doubts of the loyalty of the whole. "The malignant secession
element of this Territory," wrote Governor Gilpin of Colorado, in
October, 1861, "has numbered 7,500. It has been ably and secretly
organized from November last, and requires extreme and extraordinary
measures to meet and control its onslaught." At best, the western
population was scanty and scattered over a frontier that still
possessed its virgin character in most respects, though hovering at
the edge of a period of transition. An English observer, hopeful for
the worst, announced in the middle of the war that "When that 'late
lamented institution,' the once United States, shall have passed
away, and when, after this detestable and fratricidal war--the most
disgraceful to human nature that civilization ever witnessed--the New
World shall be restored to order and tranquility, our shikaris will
not forget, that a single fortnight of comfortable travel suffices to
transport them from fallow deer and pheasant shooting to the haunts of
the bison and the grizzly bear. There is little chance of these animals
being 'improved off' the Prairies, or even of their becoming rare
during the lifetime of the present generation." The factors of most
consequence in shaping the course of the great plains during the Civil
War were those of mixed population, of ever present Indian danger, and
of isolation. Though the plains had no effect upon the outcome of the
war, the war furthered the work already under way of making known the
West, clearing off the Indians, and preparing for future settlement.
Like the rest of the United States the West was organized into
military divisions for whose good order commanding officers were made
responsible. At times the burden of military control fell chiefly upon
the shoulders of territorial governors; again, special divisions were
organized to meet particular needs, and generals of experience were
detached from the main armies to direct movements in the West.
Among the earliest of the episodes which drew attention to the western
departments was the resignation of Albert Sidney Johnston, commanding
the Department of the Pacific, and his rather spectacular flight
across New Mexico, to join the confederate forces. From various
directions, federal troops were sent to head him off, but he succeeded
in evading all these and reaching safety at the Rio Grande by August
1. Here he could take an overland stage for the rest of his journey.
The department which he abandoned included the whole West beyond the
Rockies except Utah and present New Mexico. The country between the
mountains and Missouri constituted the Department of the West. As the
war advanced, new departments were created and boundaries were shifted
at convenience. The Department of the Pacific remained an almost
constant quantity throughout. A Department of the Northwest, covering
the territory of the Sioux Indians, was created in September, 1862, for
the better defence of Minnesota and Wisconsin. To this command Pope was
assigned after his removal from the command of the Army of Virginia.
Until the close of the war, when the great leaders were distributed and
Sheridan received the Department of the Southwest, no detail of equal
importance was made to a western department.
The fighting on the plains was rarely important enough to receive
the dignified name of battle. There were plenty of marching and
reconnoitring, much police duty along the trails, occasional skirmishes
with organized troops or guerrillas, aggressive campaigns against
the Indians, and campaigns in defence of the agricultural frontier.
But the armies so occupied were small and inexperienced. Commonly
regiments of local volunteers were used in these movements, or returned
captives who were on parole to serve no more against the confederacy.
Disciplined veterans were rarely to be found. As a consequence of the
spasmodic character of the plains warfare and the inferior quality
of the troops available, western movements were often hampered and
occasionally made useless.
The struggle for the Rio Grande was as important as any of the military
operations on the plains. At the beginning of the war the confederate
forces seized the river around El Paso in time to make clear the way
for Johnston as he hurried east. The Tucson country was occupied about
the same time, so that in the fall of 1861 the confederate outposts
were somewhat beyond the line of Texas and the Rio Grande, with New
Mexico, Utah, and Colorado threatened. In December General Henry
Hopkins Sibley assumed command of the confederate troops in the upper
Rio Grande, while Colonel E. R. S. Canby, from Fort Craig, organized
the resistance against further extension of the confederate power.
Sibley's manifest intentions against the upper Rio Grande country,
around Santa Fé and Albuquerque, aroused federal apprehensions in the
winter of 1862. Governor Gilpin, at Denver, was already frightened at
the danger within his own territory, and scarcely needed the order
which came from Fort Leavenworth through General Hunter to reënforce
Canby and look after the Colorado forts. He took responsibility easily,
drew upon the federal treasury for funds which had not been allowed
him, and shortly had the first Colorado, and a part of the second
Colorado volunteers marching south to join the defensive columns. It is
difficult to define this march in terms applicable to movements of war.
At least one soldier in the second Colorado took with him two children
and a wife, the last becoming the historian of the regiment and
praising the chivalry of the soldiers, apparently oblivious of the fact
that it is not a soldier's duty to be child's nurse to his comrade's
family. But with wife and children, and the degree of individualism and
insubordination which these imply, the Pike's Peak frontiersmen marched
south to save the territory. Their patriotism at least was sure.
As Sibley pushed up the river, passing Fort Craig and brushing aside
a small force at Valverde, the Colorado forces reached Fort Union.
Between Fort Union and Albuquerque, which Sibley entered easily, was
the turning-point in the campaign. On March 26, 1862, Major J. M.
Chivington had a successful skirmish at Johnson's ranch in Apache
Cañon, about twenty miles southeast of Santa Fé. Two days later, at
Pigeon's ranch, a more decisive check was given to the confederates,
but Colonel John P. Slough, senior volunteer in command, fell back upon
Fort Union after the engagement, while the confederates were left
free to occupy Santa Fé. A few days later Slough was deposed in the
Colorado regiment, Chivington made colonel, and the advance on Santa Fé
begun again. Sibley, now caught between Canby advancing from Fort Craig
and Chivington coming through Apache Cañon from Fort Union, evacuated
Santa Fé on April 7, falling back to Albuquerque. The union troops,
taking Santa Fé on April 12, hurried down the Rio Grande after Sibley
in his final retreat. New Mexico was saved, and its security brought
tranquillity to Colorado. The Colorado volunteers were back in Denver
for the winter of 1862-1863, but Gilpin, whose vigorous and independent
support had made possible their campaign, had been dismissed from his
post as governor.
Along the frontier of struggle campaigns of this sort occurred from
time to time, receiving little attention from the authorities who were
directing weightier movements at the centre. Less formal than these,
and more provocative of bitter feeling, were the attacks of guerrillas
along the central frontier,--chiefly the Missouri border and eastern
Kansas. Here the passions of the struggle for Kansas had not entirely
cooled down, southern sympathizers were easily found, and communities
divided among themselves were the more intense in their animosities.
The Department of Kansas, where the most aggravated of these
guerrilla conflicts occurred, was organized in November, 1861, under
Major-general Hunter. From his headquarters at Leavenworth the
commanding officer directed the affairs of Kansas, Nebraska, Dakota,
Colorado, and "the Indian Territory west of Arkansas." The department
was often shifted and reshaped to meet the needs of the frontier. A
year later the Department of the Northwest was cut away from it, after
the Sioux outbreak, its own name was changed to Missouri, and the
states of Missouri and Arkansas were added to it. Still later it was
modified again. But here throughout the war continued the troubles
produced by the mixture of frontier and farm-lands, partisan whites and
Indians.
Bushwhacking, a composite of private murder and public attack, troubled
the Kansas frontier from an early period of the war. It was easily
aroused because of public animosities, and difficult to suppress
because its participating parties retired quickly into the body of
peace-professing citizens. In it, asserted General Order No. 13, of
June 26, 1862, "rebel fiends lay in wait for their prey to assassinate
Union soldiers and citizens; it is therefore ... especially directed
that whenever any of this class of offenders shall be captured, they
shall not be treated as prisoners of war but be summarily tried by
drumhead court-martial, and if proved guilty, be executed ... on the
spot."
In August, 1863, occurred Quantrill's notable raid into Kansas to
terrify the border which was already harassed enough. The old border
hatred between Kansas and Missouri had been intensified by the
"murders, robberies, and arson" which had characterized the irregular
warfare carried on by both sides. In western Missouri, loyal unionists
were not safe outside the federal lines; here the guerrillas came and
went at pleasure; and here, about August 18, Quantrill assembled a
band of some three hundred men for a foray into Kansas. On the 20th he
entered Kansas, heading at once for Lawrence, which he surprised on the
21st. Although the city arsenal contained plenty of arms and the town
could have mustered 500 men on "half an hour's notice," the guerrilla
band met no resistance. It "robbed most of the stores and banks, and
burned one hundred and eighty-five buildings, including one-fourth
of the private residences and nearly all of the business houses of
the town, and, with circumstances of the most fiendish atrocity,
murdered 140 unarmed men." The retreat of Quantrill was followed by
a vigorous federal pursuit and a partial devastation of the adjacent
Missouri counties. Kansas, indignant, was in arms at once, protesting
directly to President Lincoln of the "imbecility and incapacity" of
Major-general John M. Schofield, commanding the Department of the
Missouri, "whose policy has opened Kansas to invasion and butchery."
Instead of carrying out an unimpeded pursuit of the guerrillas,
Schofield had to devote his strength to keeping the state of Kansas
from declaring war against and wreaking indiscriminate vengeance upon
the state of Missouri. A year after Quantrill's raid came Price's
Missouri expedition, with its pitched battles near Kansas City and
Westport, and its pursuit through southern Missouri, where confederate
sympathizers and the partisan politics of this presidential year made
punitive campaigns anything but easy.
Carleton's march into New Mexico has already been described in
connection with the mining boom of Arizona. The silver mines of the
Santa Cruz Valley had drawn American population to Tubac and Tucson
several years before the war; while the confederate successes in the
upper Rio Grande in the summer of 1861 had compelled federal evacuation
of the district. Colonel E. R. S. Canby devoted the small force at his
command to regaining the country around Albuquerque and Santa Fé, while
the relief of the forts between the Rio Grande and the Colorado was
intrusted to Carleton's California Column. After May, 1862, Carleton
was firmly established in Tucson, and later he was given command of
the whole Department of New Mexico. Of fighting with the confederates
there was almost none. He prosecuted, instead, Apache and Navaho wars,
and exploited the new gold fields which were now found. In much of
the West, as in his New Mexico, occasional ebullitions of confederate
sympathizers occurred, but the military task of the commanders was easy.
The military problem of the plains was one of police, with the
extinction of guerrilla warfare and the pacification of Indians as its
chief elements. The careers of Canby, Carleton, and Gilpin indicate
the nature of the western strategic warfare, Schofield's illustrates
that of guerrilla fighting, the Minnesota outbreak that of the Indian
relations.
In the Northwest, where the agricultural expansion of the fifties
had worked so great changes, the pressure on the tribes had steadily
increased. In 1851 the Sioux bands had ceded most of their territory in
Minnesota, and had agreed upon a reduced reserve in the St. Peter's,
or Minnesota, Valley. But the terms of this treaty had been delayed
in enforcement, while bad management on the part of the United States
and the habitual frontier disregard of Indian rights created tense
feelings, which might break loose at any time. No single grievance
of the Indians caused more trouble than that over traders' claims.
The improvident savages bought largely of the traders, on credit, at
extortionate prices. The traders could afford the risk because when
treaties of cession were made, their influence was generally able to
get inserted in the treaty a clause for satisfying claims against
individuals out of the tribal funds before these were handed over to
the savages. The memory of the savage was short, and when he found that
his allowance, the price for his lands, had gone into the traders'
pockets, he could not realize that it had gone to pay his debts, but
felt, somehow, defrauded. The answer would have been to prevent trade
with the Indians on credit. But the traders' influence at Washington
was great. It would be an interesting study to investigate the
connection between traders' bills and agitation for new cessions, since
the latter generally meant satisfaction of the former.
Among the Sioux there were factional feelings that had aroused the
apprehensions of their agents before the war broke out. The "blanket"
Indians continually mocked at the "farmers" who took kindly to the
efforts of the United States for their agricultural civilization. There
was civil strife among the progressives and irreconcilables which made
it difficult to say what was the disposition of the whole nation. The
condition was so unstable that an accidental row, culminating in the
murder of five whites at Acton, in Meeker County, brought down the most
serious Indian massacre the frontier had yet seen.
There was no more occasion for a general uprising in 1862 than there
had been for several years. The wiser Indians realized the futility
of such a course. Yet Little Crow, inclined though he was to peace,
fell in with the radicals as the tribe discussed their policy; and
he determined that since a massacre had been commenced they had best
make it as thorough as possible. Retribution was certain whether they
continued war or not, and the farmer Indians were unlikely to be
distinguished from the blankets by angry frontiersmen. The attack fell
first upon the stores at the lower agency, twenty miles above Fort
Ridgely, whence refugee whites fled to Fort Ridgely with news of the
outbreak. All day, on the 18th of August, massacres occurred along
the St. Peter's, from near New Ulm to the Yellow Medicine River. The
incidents of Indian war were all there, in surprise, slaughter of women
and children, mutilation and torture.
The next day, Tuesday the 19th, the increasing bands fell upon the
rambling village of New Ulm, twenty-eight miles above Mankato, where
fugitives had gathered and where Judge Charles E. Flandrau hastily
organized a garrison for defence. He had been at St. Peter's when
the news arrived, and had led a relief band through the drenching
rain, reaching New Ulm in the evening. On Wednesday afternoon Little
Crow, his band still growing--the Sioux could muster some 1300
warriors--surprised Fort Ridgely, though with no success. On Thursday
he renewed the attack with a force now dwindling because of individual
plundering expeditions which drew his men to various parts of the
neighboring country. On Friday he attacked once more.
On Saturday the 23d Little Crow came down the river again to renew
his fight upon New Ulm, which, unmolested since Tuesday, had been
increasing its defences. Here Judge Flandrau led out the whites in
a pitched battle. A few of his men were old frontiersmen, cool and
determined, of unerring aim; but most were German settlers, recently
arrived, and often terrified by their new experiences. During the week
of horrors the depredations covered the Minnesota frontier and lapped
over into Iowa and Dakota. Isolated families, murdered and violated,
or led captive into the wilderness, were common. Stories of those who
survived these dangers form a large part of the local literature of
this section of the Northwest. At New Ulm the situation had become so
desperate that on the 25th Flandrau evacuated the town and led its
whole remaining population to safety at Mankato.
Long before the week of suffering was over, aid had been started to
the harassed frontier. Governor Ramsey, of Minnesota, hurried to
Mendota, and there organized a relief column to move up the Minnesota
Valley. Henry Hastings Sibley, quite different from him of Rio Grande
fame, commanded the column and reached St. Peter's with his advance
on Friday. By Sunday he had 1400 men with whom to quiet the panic
and restore peace and repopulate the deserted country. He was now
joined by Ignatius Donnelly, Lieutenant-governor, sent to urge greater
speed. The advance was resumed. By Friday, the 29th, they had reached
Fort Ridgely, passing through country "abandoned by the inhabitants;
the houses, in many cases, left with the doors open, the furniture
undisturbed, while the cattle ranged about the doors or through the
cultivated fields." The country had been settled up to the very edge
of the Fort Ridgely reserve. It was entirely deserted, though only
partially devastated. Donnelly commented in his report upon the
prayer-books and old German trunks of "Johann Schwartz," strewn upon
the ground in one place; and upon bodies found, "bloated, discolored,
and far gone in decomposition." The Indian agent, Thomas J. Galbraith,
who was at Fort Ridgely during the trouble, reported in 1863, that 737
whites were known to have been massacred.
Sibley, having reached Fort Ridgely, proceeded at first to reconnoitre
and bury the dead, then to follow the Indians and rescue the captives.
More than once the tribes had found that it was wise to carry off
prisoners, who by serving as hostages might mollify or prevent
punishment for the original outbreak. Early in September there were
pitched battles at Birch Coolie and Fort Abercrombie and Wood Lake.
At this last engagement, on September 23, Sibley was able not only
to defeat the tribes and take nearly 2000 prisoners, but to release
227 women and children, who had been the "prime object," from whose
"pursuit nothing could drive or divert him." The Indians were handed
over under arrest to Agent Galbraith to be conveyed first to the Lower
Agency, and then, in November, to Fort Snelling.
The punishment of the Sioux was heavy. Inkpaduta's massacre at Spirit
Lake was still remembered and unavenged. Sibley now cut them down in
battle in 1862, though Little Crow and other leaders escaped. In 1863,
Pope, who had been called to command a new department in the Northwest,
organized a general campaign against the tribes, sending Sibley up the
Minnesota River to drive them west, and Sully up the Missouri to head
them off, planning to catch and crush them between the two columns.
The manoeuvre was badly timed and failed, while punishment drifted
gradually into a prolonged war.
Civil retribution was more severe, and fell, with judicial irony, on
the farmer Sioux who had been drawn reluctantly into the struggle.
At the Lower Agency, at Redwood, the captives were held, while
more than four hundred of their men were singled out for trial for
murder. Nothing is more significant of the anomalous nature of the
Indian relation than this trial for murder of prisoners of war. The
United States held the tribes nationally to account, yet felt free to
punish individuals as though they were citizens of the United States.
The military commission sat at Redwood for several weeks with the
missionary and linguist, Rev. S. R. Riggs, "in effect, the Grand Jury
of the court." Three hundred and three were condemned to death by
the court for murder, rape, and arson, their condemnation starting a
wave of protest over the country, headed by the Indian Commissioner,
W. P. Dole. To the indignation of the frontier, naturally revengeful
and never impartial, President Lincoln yielded to the protests in the
case of most of the condemned. Yet thirty-eight of them were hanged on
a single scaffold at Mankato on December 26, 1862. The innocent and
uncondemned were punished also, when Congress confiscated all their
Minnesota reserve in 1863, and transferred the tribe to Fort Thompson
on the Missouri, where less desirable quarters were found for them.
All along the edge of the frontier, from Minnesota to the Rio Grande,
were problems that drew the West into the movement of the Civil War.
The situation was trying for both whites and Indians, but nowhere did
the Indians suffer between the millstones as they did in the Indian
Territory, where the Cherokee and Creeks, Choctaw and Chickasaw and
Seminole, had been colonized in the years of creation of the Indian
frontier. For a generation these nations had resided in comparative
peace and advancing civilization, but they were undone by causes which
they could not control.
The confederacy was no sooner organized than its commissioners demanded
of the tribes colonized west of Arkansas their allegiance and support,
professing to have inherited all the rights and obligations of the
United States. To the Indian leaders, half civilized and better, this
demand raised difficulties which would have been a strain on any
diplomacy. If they remained loyal to the United States, the confederate
forces, adjacent in Arkansas and Texas, and already coveting their
lands, would cut them to pieces. If they adhered to the confederacy and
the latter lost, they might anticipate the resentment of the United
States. Yet they were too weak to stand alone and were forced to go
one way or other. The resulting policy was temporizing and brought to
them a large measure of punishment from both sides, and the heavy
subsequent wrath of the United States.
John Ross, principal chief in the Cherokee nation, tried to maintain
his neutrality at the commencement of the conflict, but the fiction
of Indian nationality was too slight for his effort to be successful.
During the spring and summer of 1861 he struggled against the
confederate control to which he succumbed by August, when confederate
troops had overrun most of Indian Territory, and disloyal Indian agents
had surrendered United States property to the enemy. The war which
followed resembled the guerrilla conflicts of Kansas, with the addition
of the Indian element.
By no means all the Indians accepted the confederate control. When
the Indian Territory forts--Gibson, Arbuckle, Washita, and Cobb--fell
into the hands of the South, loyal Indians left their homes and sought
protection within the United States lines. Almost the only way to
fight a war in which a population is generally divided, is by means of
depopulation and concentration. Along the Verdigris River, in southeast
Kansas, these Indian refugees settled in 1861 and 1862, to the number
of 6000. Here the Indian Commissioner fed them as best he could, and
organized them to fight when that was possible. With the return of
federal success in the occupation of Fort Smith and western Arkansas
during the next two years, the natives began to return to their homes.
But the relation of their tribes to the United States was tainted. The
compulsory cession of their western lands which came at the close of
the conflict belongs to a later chapter and the beginnings of Oklahoma.
Here, as elsewhere, the condition of the tribes was permanently changed.
The great plains and the Far West were only the outskirts of the Civil
War. At no time did they shape its course, for the Civil War was, from
their point of view, only an incidental sectional contest in the East,
and merely an episode in the grander development of the United States.
The way is opening ever wider for the historian who shall see in this
material development and progress of civilization the central thread
of American history, and in accordance with it, retail the story.
But during the years of sectional strife the West was occasionally
connected with the struggle, while toward their close it passed rapidly
into a period in which it came to be the admitted centre of interest.
The last stand of the Indians against the onrush of settlement is a
warfare with an identity of its own.
CHAPTER XV
THE CHEYENNE WAR
It has long been the custom to attribute the dangerous restlessness of
the Indians during and after the Civil War to the evil machinations of
the Confederacy. It has been plausible to charge that agents of the
South passed among the tribes, inciting them to outbreak by pointing
out the preoccupation of the United States and the defencelessness of
the frontier. Popular narratives often repeat this charge when dealing
with the wars and depredations, whether among the Sioux of Minnesota,
or the Northwest tribes, or the Apache and Navaho, or the Indians of
the plains. Indeed, had the South been able thus to harass the enemy it
is not improbable that it would have done it. It is not impossible that
it actually did it. But at least the charge has not been proved. No one
has produced direct evidence to show the existence of agents or their
connection with the Confederacy, though many have uttered a general
belief in their reality. Investigators of single affairs have admitted,
regretfully, their inability to add incitement of Indians to the
charges against the South. If such a cause were needed to explain the
increasing turbulence of the tribes, it might be worth while to search
further in the hope of establishing it, but nothing occurred in these
wars which cannot be accounted for, fully, in facts easily obtained and
well authenticated.
Before 1861 the Indians of the West were commonly on friendly terms
with the United States. Occasional wars broke this friendship, and
frequent massacres aroused the fears of one frontier or another,
for the Indian was an irresponsible child, and the frontiersman was
reckless and inconsiderate. But the outbreaks were exceptional, they
were easily put down, and peace was rarely hard to obtain. By 1865
this condition had changed over most of the West. Warfare had become
systematic and widely spread. The frequency and similarity of outbreaks
in remote districts suggested a harmonious plan, or at least similar
reactions from similar provocations. From 1865, for nearly five years,
these wars continued with only intervals of truce, or professed peace;
while during a long period after 1870, when most of the tribes were
suppressed and well policed, upheavals occurred which were clearly to
be connected with the Indian wars. The reality of this transition from
peace to war has caused many to charge it to the South. It is, however,
connected with the culmination of the westward movement, which more
than explains it.
For a setting of the Indian wars some restatement of the events before
1861 is needed. By 1840 the agricultural frontier of the United States
had reached the bend of the Missouri, while the Indian tribes, with
plenty of room, had been pushed upon the plains. In the generation
following appeared the heavy traffic along the overland trails, the
advance of the frontier into the new Northwest, and the Pacific railway
surveys. Each of these served to compress the Indians and restrict
their range. Accompanying these came curtailing of reserves, shifting
of residences to less desirable grounds, and individual maltreatment to
a degree which makes marvellous the incapacity, weakness, and patience
of the Indians. Occasionally they struggled, but always they lost. The
scalped and mutilated pioneer, with his haystacks burning and his stock
run off, is a vivid picture in the period, but is less characteristic
than the long-suffering Indian, accepting the inevitable, and moving to
let the white man in.
The necessary results of white encroachment were destruction of game
and education of the Indian to the luxuries and vices of the white man.
At a time when starvation was threatening because of the disappearance
of the buffalo and other food animals, he became aware of the
superior diet of the whites and the ease with which robbery could be
accomplished. In the fifties the pressure continued, heavier than ever.
The railway surveys reached nearly every corner of the Indian Country.
In the next few years came the prospectors who started hundreds of
mining camps beyond the line of settlements, while the engineers
began to stick the advancing heads of railways out from the Missouri
frontier and into the buffalo range.
Even the Indian could see the approaching end. It needed no confederate
envoy to assure him that the United States could be attacked. His
own hunger and the white peril were persuading him to defend his
hunting-ground. Yet even now, in the widespread Indian wars of the
later sixties, uniformity of action came without much previous
coöperation. A general Indian league against the whites was never
raised. The general war, upon dissection and analysis, breaks up into a
multitude of little wars, each having its own particular causes, which,
in many instances, if the word of the most expert frontiersmen is to be
believed, ran back into cases of white aggression and Indian revenge.
The Sioux uprising of 1862 came a little ahead of the general wars,
with causes rising from the treaties of Mendota and Traverse des Sioux
in 1851. The plains situation had been clearly seen and succinctly
stated in this year. "We are constrained to say," wrote the men who
made these treaties, "that in our opinion _the time has come_ when the
extinguishment of the Indian title to this region should no longer
be delayed, if government would not have the mortification, on the
one hand, of confessing its inability to protect the Indian from
encroachment; or be subject to the painful necessity, upon the other,
of ejecting by force thousands of its citizens from a land which they
desire to make their homes, and which, without their occupancy and
labor, will be comparatively useless and waste." The other treaties
concluded in this same year at Fort Laramie were equally the fountains
of discontent which boiled over in the early sixties and gave rise at
last to one of the most horrible incidents of the plains war.
In the Laramie treaties the first serious attempt to partition the
plains among the tribes was made. The lines agreed upon recognized
existing conditions to a large extent, while annuities were pledged in
consideration of which the savages agreed to stay at peace, to allow
free migration along the trails, and to keep within their boundaries.
The Sioux here agreed that they belonged north of the Platte. The
Arapaho and Cheyenne recognized their area as lying between the Platte
and the Arkansas, the mountains and, roughly, the hundred and first
meridian. For ten years after these treaties the last-named tribes kept
the faith to the exclusion of attacks upon settlers or emigrants. They
even allowed the Senate in its ratification of the treaty to reduce the
term of the annuities from fifty years to fifteen.
In a way, the Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians lay off the beaten tracks
and apart from contact with the whites. Their home was in the triangle
between the great trails, with a mountain wall behind them that
offered almost insuperable obstacles to those who would cross the
continent through their domain. The Gunnison railroad survey, which
was run along the thirty-ninth parallel and through the Cochetopa
Pass, revealed the difficulty of penetrating the range at this point.
Accordingly, a decade which built up Oregon and California made little
impression on this section until in 1858 gold was discovered in Cherry
Creek. Then came the deluge.
Nearly one hundred thousand miners and hangers-on crossed the plains to
the Pike's Peak country in 1859 and settled unblushingly in the midst
of the Indian lands. They "possessed nothing more than the right of
transit over these lands," admitted the Peace Commissioners in 1868.
Yet they "took possession of them for the purpose of mining, and,
against the protest of the Indians, founded cities, established farms,
and opened roads. Before 1861 the Cheyenne and Arapaho had been driven
from the mountain regions down upon the waters of the Arkansas, and
were becoming sullen and discontented because of this violation of
their rights." The treaty of 1851 had guaranteed the Indians in their
possession, pledging the United States to prevent depredations by the
whites, but here, as in most similar cases, the guarantees had no
weight in the face of a population under way. The Indians were brushed
aside, the United States agents made no real attempts to enforce the
treaty, and within a few months the settlers were demanding protection
against the surrounding tribes. "The Indians saw their former homes and
hunting grounds overrun by a greedy population, thirsting for gold,"
continued the Commissioners. "They saw their game driven east to the
plains, and soon found themselves the objects of jealousy and hatred.
They too must go. The presence of the injured is too often painful to
the wrong-doer, and innocence offensive to the eyes of guilt. It now
became apparent that what had been taken by force must be retained
by the ravisher, and nothing was left for the Indian but to ratify a
treaty consecrating the act."
Instead of a war of revenge in which the Arapaho and Cheyenne strove to
defend their lands and to drive out the intruders, a war in which the
United States ought to have coöperated with the Indians, a treaty of
cession followed. On February 18, 1861, at Fort Wise, which was the new
name for Bent's old fort on the Arkansas, an agreement was signed by
which these tribes gave up much of the great range reserved for them in
1851, and accepted in its place, with what were believed to be greater
guarantees, a triangular tract bounded, east and northeast, by Sand
Creek, in eastern Colorado; on the south by the Arkansas and Purgatory
rivers; and extending west some ninety miles from the junction of Sand
Creek and the Arkansas. The cessions made by the Ute on the other
side of the range, not long after this, are another part of the same
story of mining aggression. The new Sand Creek reserve was designed to
remove the Arapaho and Cheyenne from under the feet of the restless
prospectors. For years they had kept the peace in the face of great
provocation. For three years more they put up with white encroachment
before their war began.
The Colorado miners, like those of the other boom camps, had been loud
in their demand for transportation. To satisfy this, overland traffic
had been organized on a large scale, while during 1862 the stage and
freight service of the plains fell under the control of Ben Holladay.
Early in August, 1864, Holladay was nearly driven out of business.
About the 10th of the month, simultaneous attacks were made along
his mail line from the Little Blue River to within eighty miles of
Denver. In the forays, stations were sacked and burned, isolated farms
were wiped out, small parties on the trails were destroyed. At Ewbank
Station, a family of ten "was massacred and scalped, and one of the
females, besides having suffered the latter inhuman barbarity, was
pinned to the earth by a stake thrust through her person, in a most
revolting manner; ... at Plum Creek ... nine persons were murdered,
their train, consisting of ten wagons, burnt, and two women and two
children captured.... The old Indian traders ... and the settlers ...
abandoned their habitations." For a distance of 370 miles, Holladay's
general superintendent declared, every ranch but one was "deserted and
the property abandoned to the Indians."
Fifteen years after the destruction of his stations, Holladay was still
claiming damages from the United States and presenting affidavits from
his men which revealed the character of the attacks. George H. Carlyle
told how his stage was chased by Indians for twenty miles, how he had
helped to bury the mutilated bodies of the Plum Creek victims, and how
within a week the route had to be abandoned, and every ranch from Fort
Kearney to Julesburg was deserted. The division agent told how property
had been lost in the hurried flight. To save some of the stock, fodder
and supplies had to be sacrificed,--hundreds of sacks of corn, scores
of tons of hay, besides the buildings and their equipment. Nowhere
were the Indians overbold in their attacks. In small bands they waited
their time to take the stations by surprise. Well-armed coaches might
expect to get through with little more than a few random shots, but
along the hilltops they could often see the savages waiting in safety
for them to pass. Indian warfare was not one of organized bodies and
formal manoeuvres. Only when cornered did the Indian stand to fight.
But in wild, unexpected descents the tribes fell upon the lines of
communication, reducing the frontier to an abject terror overnight.
The destruction of the stage route was not the first, though it was the
most general hostility which marked the commencement of a new Indian
war. Since the spring of 1864 events had occurred which in the absence
of a more rigorous control than the Indian Department possessed, were
likely to lead to trouble. The Cheyenne had been dissatisfied with the
Fort Wise treaty ever since its conclusion. The Sioux were carrying on
a prolonged war. The Arapaho, Comanche, and Kiowa were ready to be
started on the war-path. It was the old story of too much compression
and isolated attacks going unpunished. Whatever the merits of an
original controversy, the only way to keep the savages under control
was to make fair retribution follow close upon the commission of an
outrage. But the punishment needed to be fair.
In April, 1864, a ranchman named Ripley came into one of the camps on
the South Platte and declared that some Indians had stolen his stock.
Perhaps his statement was true; but it must be remembered that the
ranchman whose stock strayed away was prone to charge theft against
the Indians, and that there is only Ripley's own word that he ever had
any stock. Captain Sanborn, commanding, sent out a troop of cavalry
to recover the animals. They came upon some Indians with horses which
Ripley claimed as his, and in an attempt to disarm them, a fight
occurred in which the troop was driven off. Their lieutenant thought
the Indians were Cheyenne.
A few weeks after this, Major Jacob Downing, who had been in Camp
Sanborn inspecting troops, came into Denver and got from Colonel
Chivington about forty men, with whom "to go against the Indians."
Downing later swore that he found the Cheyenne village at Cedar Bluffs.
"We commenced shooting; I ordered the men to commence killing them....
They lost ... some twenty-six killed and thirty wounded.... I burnt up
their lodges and everything I could get hold of.... We captured about
one hundred head of stock, which was distributed among the boys."
On the 12th of June, a family living on Box Elder Creek, twenty miles
east of Denver, was murdered by the Indians. Hungate, his wife, and
two children were killed, the house burned, and fifty or sixty head
of stock run off. When the "scalped and horribly mangled bodies" were
brought into Denver, the population, already uneasy, was thrown into
panic by this appearance of danger so close to the city. Governor Evans
began at once to organize the militia for home defence and to appeal to
Washington for help.
By the time of the attack upon the stage line it was clear that an
Indian war existed, involving in varying degrees parts of the Arapaho,
Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa tribes. The merits of the causes which
provoked it were considerably in doubt. On the frontier there was no
hesitation in charging it all to the innate savagery of the tribes.
Governor Evans was entirely satisfied that "while some of the Indians
might yet be friendly, there was no hope of a general peace on the
plains, until after a severe chastisement of the Indians for these
depredations."
In restoring tranquillity the frontier had to rely largely upon its own
resources. Its own Second Colorado was away doing duty in the Missouri
campaign, while the eastern military situation presented no probability
of troops being available to help out the West. Colonel Chivington and
Governor John Evans, with the long-distance aid of General Curtis,
were forced to make their own plans and execute them.
As early as June, Governor Evans began his corrective measures,
appealing first to Washington for permission to raise extra troops,
and then endeavoring to separate the friendly and warlike Indians in
order that the former "should not fall victims to the impossibility
of soldiers discriminating between them and the hostile, upon whom
they must, to do any good, inflict the most severe chastisement." To
this end, and with the consent of the Indian Department, he sent out
a proclamation, addressed to "the friendly Indians of the Plains,"
directing them to keep away from those who were at war, and as
evidence of friendship to congregate around the agencies for safety.
Forts Lyons, Laramie, Larned, and Camp Collins were designated as
concentration points for the several tribes. "None but those who intend
to be friendly with the whites must come to these places. The families
of those who have gone to war with the whites must be kept away
from among the friendly Indians. The war on hostile Indians will be
continued until they are all effectually subdued." The Indians, frankly
at war, paid no attention to this invitation. Two small bands only
sought the cover of the agencies, and with their exception, so Governor
Evans reported on October 15, the proclamation "met no response from
any of the Indians of the plains."
The war parties became larger and more general as the summer advanced,
driving whites off the plains between the two trails for several
hundred miles. But as fall approached, the tribes as usual sought
peace. The Indians' time for war was summer. Without supplies, they
were unable to fight through the winter, so that autumn brought them
into a mood well disposed to peace, reservations, and government
rations. Major Colley, the agent on the Sand Creek reserve at Fort
Lyon, received an overture early in September. In a letter written for
them on August 29, by a trader, Black Kettle, of the Cheyenne, and
other chiefs declared their readiness to make a peace if all the tribes
were included in it. As an olive branch, they offered to give up seven
white prisoners. They admitted that five war parties, three Cheyenne
and two Arapaho, were yet in the field.
Upon receipt of Black Kettle's letter, Major E. W. Wynkoop, military
commander at Fort Lyon, marched with 130 men to the Cheyenne camp at
Bend of Timbers, some eighty miles northeast of Fort Lyons. Here he
found "from six to eight hundred Indian warriors drawn up in line
of battle and prepared to fight." He avoided fighting, demanded and
received the prisoners, and held a council with the chiefs. Here he
told them that he had no authority to conclude a peace, but offered to
conduct a group of chiefs to Denver, for a conference with Governor
Evans.
On September 28, Governor Evans held a council with the Cheyenne and
Arapaho chiefs brought in by Major Wynkoop; Black Kettle and White
Antelope being the most important. Black Kettle opened the conference
with an appeal to the governor in which he alluded to his delivery of
the prisoners and Wynkoop's invitation to visit Denver. "We have come
with our eyes shut, following his handful of men, like coming through
the fire," Black Kettle went on. "All we ask is that we may have peace
with the whites. We want to hold you by the hand. You are our father.
We have been travelling through a cloud. The sky has been dark ever
since the war began. These braves who are with me are all willing to do
what I say. We want to take good tidings home to our people, that they
may sleep in peace. I want you to give all these chiefs of the soldiers
here to understand that we are for peace, and that we have made peace,
that we may not be mistaken by them for enemies." To him Governor Evans
responded that this submission was a long time coming, and that the
nation had gone to war, refusing to listen to overtures of peace. This
Black Kettle admitted.
"So far as making a treaty now is concerned," continued Governor
Evans, "we are in no condition to do it.... You, so far, have had the
advantage; but the time is near at hand when the plains will swarm with
United States soldiers. I have learned that you understand that as the
whites are at war among themselves, you think you can now drive the
whites from this country; but this reliance is false. The Great Father
at Washington has men enough to drive all the Indians off the plains,
and whip the rebels at the same time. Now the war with the whites is
nearly through, and the Great Father will not know what to do with all
his soldiers, except to send them after the Indians on the plains. My
proposition to the friendly Indians has gone out; [I] shall be glad
to have them all come in under it. I have no new proposition to make.
Another reason that I am not in a condition to make a treaty is that
war is begun, and the power to make a treaty of peace has passed to
the great war chief." He further counselled them to make terms with
the military authorities before they could hope to talk of peace.
No prospect of an immediate treaty was given to the chiefs. Evans
disclaimed further powers, and Colonel Chivington closed the council,
saying: "I am not a big war chief, but all the soldiers in this
country are at my command. My rule of fighting white men or Indians
is to fight them until they lay down their arms and submit." The same
evening came a despatch from Major-general Curtis, at Fort Leavenworth,
confirming the non-committal attitude of Evans and Chivington: "I want
no peace till the Indians suffer more.... I fear Agent of the Interior
Department will be ready to make presents too soon.... No peace must be
made without my directions."
The chiefs were escorted home without their peace or any promise of it,
Governor Evans believing that the great body of the tribes was still
hostile, and that a decisive winter campaign was needed to destroy
their lingering notion that the whites might be driven from the plains.
Black Kettle had been advised at the council to surrender to the
soldiers, Major Wynkoop at Fort Lyon being mentioned as most available.
Many of his tribe acted on the suggestion, so that on October 20 Agent
Colley, their constant friend, reported that "nearly all the Arapahoes
are now encamped near this place and desire to remain friendly, and
make reparation for the damages committed by them."
The Indians unquestionably were ready to make peace after their fashion
and according to their ability. There is no evidence that they were
reconciled to their defeat, but long experience had accustomed them
to fighting in the summer and drawing rations as peaceful in the
winter. The young men, in part, were still upon the war-path, but the
tribes and the head chiefs were anxious to go upon a winter basis.
Their interpreter who had attended the conference swore that they left
Denver, "perfectly contented, deeming that the matter was settled,"
that upon their return to Fort Lyon, Major Wynkoop gave them permission
to bring their families in under the fort where he could watch them
better; and that "accordingly the chiefs went after their families and
villages and brought them in, ... satisfied that they were in perfect
security and safety."
While the Indians gathered around the fort, Major Wynkoop sent to
General Curtis for advice and orders respecting them. Before the
orders arrived, however, he was relieved from command and Major Scott
J. Anthony, of the First Colorado Cavalry, was detailed in his place.
After holding a conference with the Indians and Anthony, in which the
latter renewed the permission for the bands to camp near the fort, he
left Fort Lyons on November 26. Anthony meanwhile had become convinced
that he was exceeding his authority. First he disarmed the savages,
receiving only a few old and worn-out weapons. Then he returned these
and ordered the Indians away from Fort Lyons. They moved forty miles
away and encamped on Sand Creek.
The Colorado authorities had no idea of calling it a peace. Governor
Evans had scolded Wynkoop for bringing the chiefs in to Denver. He had
received special permission and had raised a hundred-day regiment for
an Indian campaign. If he should now make peace, Washington would think
he had misrepresented the situation and put the government to needless
expense. "What shall I do with the third regiment, if I make peace?" he
demanded of Wynkoop. They were "raised to kill Indians, and they must
kill Indians."
Acting on the supposition that the war was still on, Colonel Chivington
led the Third Colorado, and a part of the First Colorado Cavalry, from
900 to 1000 strong, to Fort Lyons in November, arriving two days
after Wynkoop departed. He picketed the fort, to prevent the news of
his arrival from getting out, and conferred on the situation with
Major Anthony, who, swore Major Downing, wished he would attack the
Sand Creek camp and would have done so himself had he possessed troops
enough. Three days before, Anthony had given a present to Black Kettle
out of his own pocket. As the result of the council of war, Chivington
started from Fort Lyon at nine o'clock, on the night of the 28th.
About daybreak on November 29 Chivington's force reached the Cheyenne
village on Sand Creek, where Black Kettle, White Antelope, and some
500 of their band, mostly women and children, were encamped in the
belief that they had made their peace. They had received no pledge of
this, but past practice explained their confidence. The village was
surrounded by troops who began to fire as soon as it was light. "We
killed as many as we could; the village was destroyed and burned,"
declared Downing, who further professed, "I think and earnestly
believe the Indians to be an obstacle to civilization, and should be
exterminated." White Antelope was killed at the first attack, refusing
to leave the field, stating that it was the fault of Black Kettle,
others, and himself that occasioned the massacre, and that he would
die. Black Kettle, refusing to leave the field, was carried off by his
young men. The latter had raised an American flag and a white flag in
his effort to stop the fight.
The firing began, swore interpreter Smith, on the northeast side of
Sand Creek, near Black Kettle's lodge. Driven thence, the disorderly
horde of savages retreated to War Bonnet's lodge at the upper end of
the village, some few of them armed but most making no resistance. Up
the dry bottom of Sand Creek they ran, with the troops in wild charge
close behind. In the hollows of the banks they sought refuge, but the
soldiers dragged them out, killing seventy or eighty with the worst
barbarities Smith had seen: "All manner of depredations were inflicted
on their persons; they were scalped, their brains knocked out; the men
used their knives, ripped open women, clubbed little children, knocked
them in the head with their guns, beat their brains out, mutilated
their bodies in every sense of the word." The affidavits of soldiers
engaged in the attack are printed in the government documents. They are
too disgusting to be more than referred to elsewhere.
Here at last was the culmination of the plains war of 1864 in the
"Chivington massacre," which has been the centre of bitter controversy
ever since its heroes marched into Denver with their bloody trophies.
It was without question Indian fighting at its worst, yet it was
successful in that the Indian hostilities stopped and a new treaty was
easily obtained by the whites in 1865. The East denounced Chivington,
and the Indian Commissioner described the event in 1865 as a butchery
"in cold blood by troops in the service of the United States."
"Comment cannot magnify the horror," said the _Nation_. The heart of
the question had to do with the matter of good faith. At no time did
the military or Colorado authorities admit or even appear to admit that
the war was over. They regarded the campaign as punitive and necessary
for the foundation of a secure peace. The Indians, on the other hand,
believed that they had surrendered and were anxious to be let alone.
Too often their wish in similar cases had been gratified, to the
prolongation of destructive wars. What here occurred was horrible from
any standard of civilized criticism. But even among civilized nations
war is an unpleasant thing, and war with savages is most merciful, in
the long run, when it speaks the savages' own tongue with no uncertain
accent. That such extreme measures could occur was the result of the
impossible situation on the plains. "My opinion," said Agent Colley,
"is that white men and wild Indians cannot live in the same country
in peace." With several different and diverging authorities over
them, with a white population wanting their reserves and anxious
for a provocation that might justify retaliation upon them, little
difficulties were certain to lead to big results. It was true that the
tribes were being dispossessed of lands which they believed to belong
to them. It was equally true that an Indian war could terrify a whole
frontier and that stern repression was its best cure. The blame which
was accorded to Chivington left out of account the terror in Colorado,
which was no less real because the whites were the aggressors. The
slaughter and mutilation of Indian women and children did much to
embitter Eastern critics, who did not realize that the only way to
crush an Indian war is to destroy the base of supplies,--the camp
where the women are busy helping to keep the men in the field; and who
overlooked also the fact that in the mêlée the squaws were quite as
dangerous as the bucks. Indiscriminate blame and equally indiscriminate
praise have been accorded because of the Sand Creek affair. The
terrible event was the result of the orderly working of causes over
which individuals had little control.
In October, 1865, a peace conference was held on the Little Arkansas at
which terms were agreed upon with Apache, Kiowa and Comanche, Arapaho
and Cheyenne, while the last named surrendered their reserve at Sand
Creek. For four years after this, owing to delays in the Senate and
ambiguity in the agreements, they had no fixed abode. Later they were
given room in the Indian Territory in lands taken from the civilized
tribes.
CHAPTER XVI
THE SIOUX WAR
The struggle for the possession of the plains worked the displacement
of the Indian tribes. At the beginning, the invasion of Kansas had
undone the work accomplished in erecting the Indian frontier. The
occupation of Minnesota led surely to the downfall and transportation
of the Sioux of the Mississippi. Gold in Colorado attracted multitudes
who made peace impossible for the Indians of the southern plains. The
Sioux of the northern plains came within the influence of the overland
march in the same years with similar results.
The northern Sioux, commonly known as the Sioux of the plains, and
distinguished from their relatives the Sioux of the Mississippi, had
participated in the treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851, had granted rights
of transit to the whites, and had been recognized themselves as nomadic
bands occupying the plains north of the Platte River. Heretofore they
had had no treaty relations with the United States, being far beyond
the frontier. Their people, 16,000 perhaps, were grouped roughly in
various bands: Brulé, Yankton, Yanktonai, Blackfoot, Hunkpapa, Sans
Arcs, and Miniconjou. Their dependence on the chase made them more
dependent on the annuities provided them at Laramie. As the game
diminished the annuity increased in relative importance, and scarcely
made a fair equivalent for what they lost. Yet on the whole, they
imitated their neighbors, the Cheyenne and Arapaho, and kept the peace.
Almost the only time that the pledge was broken was in the autumn of
1854. Continual trains of immigrants passing through the Sioux country
made it nearly impossible to prevent friction between the races in
which the blame was quite likely to fall upon the timorous homeseekers.
On August 17, 1854, a cow strayed away from a band of Mormons encamped
a few miles from Fort Laramie. Some have it that the cow was lame, and
therefore abandoned; but whatever the cause, the cow was found, killed,
and eaten by a small band of hungry Miniconjou Sioux. The charge of
theft was brought into camp at Laramie, not by the Mormons, but by The
Bear, chief of the Brulé, and Lieutenant Grattan with an escort of
twenty-nine men, a twelve-pounder and a mountain howitzer, was sent out
the next day to arrest the Indian who had slaughtered the animal. At
the Indian village the culprit was not forthcoming, Grattan's drunken
interpreter roughened a diplomacy which at best was none too tactful,
and at last the troops fired into the lodge which was said to contain
the offender. No one of the troops got away from the enraged Sioux,
who, after their anger had led them to retaliate, followed it up by
plundering the near-by post of the fur company. Commissioner Manypenny
believed that this action by the troops was illegal and unnecessary
from the start, since the Mormons could legally have been reimbursed
from the Indian funds by the agent.
No general war followed this outbreak. A few braves went on the
war-path and rumors of great things reached the East, but General
Harney, sent out with three regiments to end the Sioux war in 1855,
found little opposition and fought only one important battle. On the
Little Blue Water, in September, 1855, he fell upon Little Thunder's
band of Brulé Sioux and killed or wounded nearly a hundred of them.
There is some doubt whether this band had anything to do with the
Grattan episode, or whether it was even at war, but the defeat was,
as Agent Twiss described it, "a thunderclap to them." For the first
time they learned the mighty power of the United States, and General
Harney made good use of this object lesson in the peace council which
he held with them in March, 1856. The treaty here agreed upon was
never legalized, and remained only a sort of _modus vivendi_ for the
following years. The Sioux tribes were so loosely organized that the
authority of the chiefs had little weight; young braves did as they
pleased regardless of engagements supposed to bind the tribes. But the
lesson of the defeat lasted long in the memory of the plains tribes,
so that they gave little trouble until the wars of 1864 broke out.
Meanwhile Chouteau's old Fort Pierre on the Missouri was bought by the
United States and made a military post for the control of these upper
tribes.
Before the plains Sioux broke out again, the Minnesota uprising had led
the Mississippi Sioux to their defeat. Some were executed in the fall
of 1862, others were transported to the Missouri Valley; still others
got away to the Northwest, there to continue a profitless war that kept
up fighting for several years. Meanwhile came the plains war of 1864
in which the tribes south of the Platte were chiefly concerned, and in
which men at the centre of the line thought there were evidences of
an alliance between northern and southern tribes. Thus Governor Evans
wrote of "information furnished me, through various sources, of an
alliance of the Cheyenne and a part of the Arapahoe tribes with the
Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache Indians of the south, and the great family
of the Sioux Indians of the north upon the plains," and the Indian
Commissioner accepted the notion. But, like the question of intrigue,
this was a matter of belief rather than of proof; while local causes to
account for the disorder are easily found. Yet it is true that during
1864 and 1865 the northern Sioux became uneasy.
During 1865, though the causes likely to lead to hostilities were in
no wise changed, efforts were made to reach agreements with the plains
tribes. The Cheyenne, humbled at Sand Creek, were readily handled at
the Little Arkansas treaty in October. They there surrendered to the
United States all their reserve in Colorado and accepted a new one,
which they never actually received, south of the Arkansas, and bound
themselves not to camp within ten miles of the route to Santa Fé. On
the other side, "to heal the wounds caused by the Chivington affair,"
special appropriations were made by the United States to the widows and
orphans of those who had been killed. The Apache, Kiowa, and Comanche
joined in similar treaties. During the same week, in 1865, a special
commission made treaties of peace with nine of the Sioux tribes,
including the remnants of the Mississippi bands. "These treaties were
made," commented the Commissioner, "and the Indians, in spite of the
great suffering from cold and want of food endured during the very
severe winter of 1865-66, and consequent temptation to plunder to
procure the absolute necessaries of life, faithfully kept the peace."
In September, 1865, the steamer _Calypso_ struggled up the shallow
Missouri River, carrying a party of commissioners to Fort Sully, there
to make these treaties with the Sioux. Congress had provided $20,000
for a special negotiation before adjourning in March, 1865, and General
Sully, who was yet conducting the prolonged Sioux War, had pointed out
the place most suitable for the conference. The first council was held
on October 6.
The military authorities were far from eager to hold this council.
Already the breach between the military power responsible for policing
the plains and the civilian department which managed the tribes was
wide. Thus General Pope, commanding the Department of the Missouri,
grumbled to Grant in June that whenever Indian hostilities occurred,
the Indian Department, which was really responsible, blamed the
soldiers for causing them. He complained of the divided jurisdiction
and of the policy of buying treaties from the tribes by presents made
at the councils. In reference to this special treaty he had "only to
say that the Sioux Indians have been attacking everybody in their
region of country; and only lately ... attacked in heavy force Fort
Rice, on the upper Missouri, well fortified and garrisoned by four
companies of infantry with artillery. If these things show any desire
for peace, I confess I am not able to perceive it."
In future years this breach was to become wider yet. At Sand Creek the
military authorities had justified the attack against the criticism of
the local Indian agents and Eastern philanthropists. There was indeed
plenty of evidence of misconduct on both sides. If the troops were
guilty on the charge of being over-ready to fight--and here the words
of Governor Evans were prophetic, "Now the war ... is nearly through,
and the Great Father will not know what to do with all his soldiers,
except to send them after the Indians on the plains,"--the Indian
agents often succumbed to the opportunity for petty thieving. The case
of one of the agents of the Yankton Sioux illustrates this. It was his
custom each year to have the chiefs of his tribe sign general receipts
for everything sent to the agency. Thus at the end of the year he could
turn in Indians' vouchers and report nothing on hand. But the receipt
did not mean that the Indian had got the goods; although signed for,
these were left in the hands of the agent to be given out as needed.
The inference is strong that many of the supplies intended for and
signed for by the Indians went into the pocket of the agent. During the
third quarter of 1863 this agent claimed to have issued to his charges:
"One pair of bay horses, 7 years old; ... 1 dozen 17-inch mill files;
... 6 dozen Seidlitz powders; 6 pounds compound syrup of squills; 6
dozen Ayer's pills; ... 3 bottles of rose water; ... 1 pound of wax;
... 1 ream of vouchers; ... 1/2 M 6434 8-1/2-inch official envelopes;
... 4 bottles 8-ounce mucilage." So great was this particular agent's
power that it was nearly impossible to get evidence against him. "If
I do, he will fix it so I'll never get anything in the world and he
will drive me out of the country," was typical of the attitude of his
neighbors.
With jurisdiction divided, and with claimants for it quarrelling, it
is no wonder that the charges suffered. But the ill results came more
from the impossible situation than from abuse on either side. It needs
often to be reiterated that the heart of the Indian question was in the
infiltration of greedy, timorous, enterprising, land-hungry whites who
could not be restrained by any process known to American government. In
the conflict between two civilizations, the lower must succumb. Neither
the War Department nor the Indian Office was responsible for most of
the troubles; yet of the two, the former, through readiness to fight
and to hold the savage to a standard of warfare which he could not
understand, was the greater offender. It was not so great an offender,
however, as the selfish interests of those engaged in trading with the
Indians would make it out to be.
The Fort Sully conference, terminating in a treaty signed on October
10, 1865, was distinctly unsatisfactory. Many of the western Sioux did
not come at all. Even the eastern were only partially represented.
And among tribes in which the central authority of the chiefs was
weak, full representation was necessary to secure a binding peace. The
commissioners, after most pacific efforts, were "unable to ascertain
the existence of any really amicable feeling among these people towards
the government." The chiefs were sullen and complaining, and the treaty
which resulted did little more than repeat the terms of the treaty of
1851, binding the Indians to permit roads to be opened through their
country and to keep away from the trails.
It is difficult to show that the northern Sioux were bound by the
treaty of Fort Sully. The Laramie treaty of 1851 had never had full
force of law because the Senate had added amendments to it, which
all the signatory Indians had not accepted. Although Congress had
appropriated the annuities specified in the treaty the binding force
of the document was not great on savages. The Fort Sully treaty was
deficient in that it did not represent all of the interested tribes.
In making Indian treaties at all, the United States acted upon a
convenient fiction that the Indians had authorities with power to bind;
whereas the leaders had little control over their followers and after
nearly every treaty there were many bands that could claim to have
been left out altogether. Yet such as they were, the treaties existed,
and the United States proceeded in 1865 and 1866 to use its specified
rights in opening roads through the hunting-grounds of the Sioux.
The mines of Montana and Idaho, which had attracted notice and
emigration in the early sixties, were still the objective points of
a large traffic. They were somewhat off the beaten routes, being
accessible by the Missouri River and Fort Benton, or by the Platte
trail and a northern branch from near Fort Hall to Virginia City. To
bring them into more direct connection with the East an available route
from Fort Laramie was undertaken in 1865. The new trail left the main
road near Fort Laramie, crossed to the north side of the Platte, and
ran off to the northwest. Shortly after leaving the Platte the road got
into the charming foothill country where the slopes "are all covered
with a fine growth of grass, and in every valley there is either a
rushing stream or some quiet babbling brook of pure, clear snow-water
filled with trout, the banks lined with trees--wild cherry, quaking
asp, some birch, willow, and cottonwood." To the left, and not far
distant, were the Big Horn Mountains. To the right could sometimes be
seen in the distance the shadowy billows of the Black Hills. Running to
the north and draining the valley were the Powder and Tongue rivers,
both tributaries of the Yellowstone. Here were water, timber, and
forage, coal and oil and game. It was the garden spot of the Indians,
"the very heart of their hunting-grounds." In a single day's ride were
seen "bear, buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, rabbits, and sage-hens."
With little exaggeration it was described as a "natural source of
recuperation and supply to moving, hunting, and roving bands of all
tribes, and their lodge trails cross it in great numbers from north to
south." Through this land, keeping east of the Big Horn Mountains and
running around their northern end into the Yellowstone Valley, was to
run the new Powder River road to Montana. The Sioux treaties were to
have their severest testing in the selection of choice hunting-grounds
for an emigrant road, for it was one of the certainties in the opening
of new roads that game vanished in the face of emigration.
While the commissioners were negotiating their treaty at Fort Sully,
the first Powder River expedition, in its attempt to open this new road
by the short and direct route from Fort Laramie to Bozeman and the
Montana mines, was undoing their work. In the summer of 1865 General
Patrick E. Connor, with a miscellaneous force of 1600, including a
detachment of ex-Confederate troops who had enlisted in the United
States army to fight Indians, started from Fort Laramie for the mouth
of the Rosebuds on the Yellowstone, by way of the Powder River. Old
Jim Bridger, the incarnation of this country, led them, swearing
mightily at "these damn paper-collar soldiers," who knew so little of
the Indians. There was plenty of fighting as Connor pushed into the
Yellowstone, but he was relieved from command in September and the
troops were drawn back, so that there were no definitive results of the
expedition of 1865.
In 1866, in spite of the fact that the Sioux of this region, through
their leader Red Cloud, had refused to yield the ground or even to
treat concerning it, Colonel Henry B. Carrington was ordered by General
Pope to command the Mountain District, Department of the Platte, and to
erect and garrison posts for the control of the Powder River road. On
December 21 of this year, Captain W. J. Fetterman, of his command, and
seventy-eight officers and men were killed near Fort Philip Kearney in
a fight whose merits aroused nearly as much acrimonious discussion as
the Sand Creek massacre.
[Illustration: RED CLOUD AND PROFESSOR MARSH
From a cut lent by Professor Warren K. Moorehead, of Andover, Mass.]
The events leading up to the catastrophe at Fort Philip Kearney, a
catastrophe so complete that none of its white participants escaped
to tell what happened, were connected with Carrington's work in
building forts. He had been detailed for the work in the spring, and
after a conference at Fort Kearney, Nebraska, with General Sherman,
had marched his men in nineteen days to Fort Laramie. He reached Fort
Reno, which became his headquarters, on June 28. On the march, if his
orders were obeyed, his soldiers were scrupulous in their regard for
the Indians. His orders issued for the control of emigrants passing
along the Powder River route were equally careful. Thirty men were
to constitute the minimum single party; these were to travel with a
military pass, which was to be scrutinized by the commanding officer
of each post. The trains were ordered to hold together and were
warned that "nearly all danger from Indians lies in the recklessness
of travellers. A small party, when separated, either sell whiskey to
or fire upon scattering Indians, or get into disputes with them, and
somebody is hurt. An insult to an Indian is resented by the Indians
against the first white men they meet, and innocent travellers suffer."
Carrington's orders were to garrison Fort Reno and build new forts
on the Powder, Big Horn, and Yellowstone rivers, and cover the road.
The last-named fort was later cut away because of his insufficient
force, but Fort Philip Kearney and Fort C. F. Smith were located
during July and August. The former stood on a little plateau formed
between the two Pineys as they emerge from the Big Horn Mountains.
Its site was surveyed and occupied on July 15. Already Carrington was
complaining that he had too few men for his work. With eight companies
of eighty men each, and most of these new recruits, he had to garrison
his long line, all the while building and protecting his stockades
and fortifications. "I am my own engineer, draughtsman, and visit
my pickets and guards nightly, with scarcely a day or night without
attempts to steal stock." Worse than this, his military equipment was
inadequate. Only his band, specially armed for the expedition, had
Spencer carbines and enough ammunition. His main force, still armed
with Springfield rifles, had under fifty rounds to the man.
The Indians, Cheyenne and Sioux, were, all through the summer, showing
no sign of accepting the invasion of the hunting-grounds without a
fight. Yet Carrington reported on August 29 that he was holding them
off; that Fort C. F. Smith on the Big Horn had been occupied; that
parties of fifty well-armed men could get through safely if they were
careful. The Indians, he said, "are bent on robbery; they only fight
when assured of personal security and remunerative stealings; they are
divided among themselves."
With the sites for forts C. F. Smith and Philip Kearney selected,
the work of construction proceeded during the autumn. A sawmill,
sent out from the states, was kept hard at work. Wood was cut on the
adjacent hills and speedily converted into cabins and palisades
which approached completion before winter set in. It was construction
during a state of siege, however. Instead of pacifying the valley
the construction of the forts aggravated the Sioux hostility so that
constant watchfulness was needed. That the trains sent out to gather
wood were not seriously injured was due to rigorous discipline. The
wagons moved twenty or more at a time, with guards, and in two parallel
columns. At first sight of Indians they drove into corral and signalled
back to the lookouts at the fort for help. Occasionally men were indeed
cut out by the Indians, who in turn suffered considerable loss; but
Carrington reduced his own losses to a minimum. Friendly Indians were
rarely seen. They were allowed to come to the fort, by the main road
and with a white flag, but few availed themselves of the privilege. The
Sioux were up in arms, and in large numbers hung about the Tongue and
Powder river valleys waiting for their chance.
Early in December occurred an incident revealing the danger of
annihilation which threatened Carrington's command. At one o'clock on
the afternoon of the sixth a messenger reported to the garrison at Fort
Philip Kearney that the wood train was attacked by Indians four miles
away. Carrington immediately had every horse at the post mounted. For
the main relief he sent out a column under Brevet Lieutenant-colonel
Fetterman, who had just arrived at the fort, while he led in person a
flanking party to cut off the Indians' retreat. The mercury was below
zero. Carrington was thrown into the water of Peno Creek when his
horse stumbled through breaking ice. Fetterman's party found the wood
train in corral and standing off the attack with success. The savages
retreated as the relief approached and were pursued for five miles,
when they turned and offered battle. Just as the fighting began, most
of the cavalry broke away from Fetterman, leaving him and some fourteen
others surrounded by Indians and attacked on three sides. He held them
off, however, until Carrington came in sight and the Indians fled.
Why Lieutenant Bingham retreated with his cavalry and left Fetterman
in such danger was never explained, for the Indians killed him and
one of his non-commissioned officers, while several other privates
were wounded. The Indians, once the fight was over, disappeared among
the hills, and Carrington had no force with which to follow them. In
reporting the battle that night he renewed his requests for men and
officers. He had but six officers for the six companies at Fort Philip
Kearney. He was totally unable to take the aggressive because of the
defences which had constantly to be maintained.
In this fashion the fall advanced in the Powder River Valley. The forts
were finished. The Indian hostilities increased. The little, overworked
force of Carrington, chopping, building, guarding, and fighting,
struggled to fulfil its orders. If one should criticise Carrington,
the attack would be chiefly that he looked to defensive measures in the
Indian war. He did indeed ask for troops, officers, and equipment, but
his despatches and his own vindication show little evidence that he
realized the need for large reënforcements for the specific purpose of
a punitive campaign. More skilful Indian fighters knew that the Indians
could and would keep up indefinitely this sort of filibustering against
the forts, and that a vigorous move against their own villages was the
surest means to secure peace. In Indian warfare, even more perhaps
than in civilized, it is advantageous to destroy the enemy's base of
supplies.
The wood train was again attacked on December 21. About eleven o'clock
that morning the pickets reported the train "corralled and threatened
by Indians on Sullivant Hills, a mile and a half from the fort." The
usual relief party was at once organized and sent out under Fetterman,
who claimed the right to command it by seniority, and who was not
highest in the confidence of Colonel Carrington. He had but recently
joined the command, was full of enthusiasm and desire to hunt Indians,
and needed the admonition with which he left the fort: that he was
"fighting brave and desperate enemies who sought to make up by cunning
and deceit all the advantage which the white man gains by intelligence
and better arms." He was ordered to support and bring in the wood
train, this being all Carrington believed himself strong enough to do
and keep on doing. Any one could have had a fight at any time, and
Carrington was wise to issue the "peremptory and explicit" orders to
avoid pursuit beyond the summit of Lodge Trail Ridge, as needless and
unduly dangerous. Three times this order was given to Fetterman; and
after that, "fearing still that the spirit of ambition might override
prudence," says Carrington, "I crossed the parade and from a sentry
platform halted the cavalry and again repeated my precise orders."
With these admonitions, Fetterman started for the relief, leading a
party of eighty-one officers and men, picked and all well armed. He
crossed the Lodge Trail Ridge as soon as he was out of sight of the
fort and disappeared. No one of his command came back alive. The wood
train, before twelve o'clock, broke corral and moved on in safety,
while shots were heard beyond the ridge. For half an hour there was a
constant volleying; then all was still. Meanwhile Carrington, nervous
at the lack of news from Fetterman, had sent a second column, and two
wagons to relieve him, under Captain Ten Eyck. The latter, moving
along cautiously, with large bands of Sioux retreating before him,
came finally upon forty-nine bodies, including that of Fetterman.
The evidence of arrows, spears, and the position of bodies was that
they had been surrounded, surprised, and overwhelmed in their defeat.
The next day the rest of the bodies were reached and brought back.
Naked, dismembered, slashed, visited with indescribable indignities,
they were buried in two great graves; seventy-nine soldiers and two
civilians.
The Fetterman massacre raised a storm in the East similar in volume
to that following Sand Creek, two years before. Who was at fault, and
why, were the questions indignantly asked. Judicious persons were well
aware, wrote the _Nation_, that "our whole Indian policy is a system of
mismanagement, and in many parts one of gigantic abuse." The military
authorities tried to place the blame on Carrington, as plausible,
energetic, and industrious, but unable to maintain discipline or
inspire his officers with confidence. Unquestionably a part of this
was true, yet the letter which made the charge admitted that often the
Indians were better armed than the troops, and the critic himself,
General Cooke, had ordered Carrington: "You can only defend yourself
and trains, and emigrants, the best you can." The Indian Commissioner
charged it on the bad disposition of the troops, always anxious to
fight.
The issue broke over the number of Indians involved. Current reports
from Fort Philip Kearney indicated from 3000 to 5000 hostile
warriors, chiefly Sioux and led by Red Cloud of the Oglala tribe. The
Commissioner pointed out that such a force must imply from 21,000 to
35,000 Indians in all--a number that could not possibly have been in
the Powder River country. It is reasonable to believe that Fetterman
was not overwhelmed by any multitude like this, but that his own
rash disobedience led to ambush and defeat by a force well below
3000. Upon him fell the immediate responsibility; above him, the War
Department was negligent in detailing so few men for so large a task;
and ultimately there was the impossibility of expecting savage Sioux to
give up their best hunting-grounds as a result of a treaty signed by
others than themselves.
The fight at Fort Philip Kearney marked a point of transition in Indian
warfare. Even here the Indians were mostly armed with bows and arrows,
and were relying upon their superior numbers for victory. Yet a change
in Indian armament was under way, which in a few years was to convert
the Indian from a savage warrior into the "finest natural soldier in
the world." He was being armed with rifles. As the game diminished
the tribes found that the old methods of hunting were inadequate and
began the pressure upon the Indian Department for better weapons. The
department justified itself in issuing rifles and ammunition, on the
ground that the laws of the United States expected the Indians to
live chiefly upon game, which they could not now procure by the older
means. Hence came the anomalous situation in which one department
of the United States armed and equipped the tribes for warfare
against another. If arms were cut down, the tribes were in danger of
extinction; if they were issued, hostilities often resulted. After the
Fetterman massacre the Indian Office asserted that the hostile Sioux
were merely hungry, because the War Department had caused the issuing
of guns to be stopped. It was all an unsolvable problem, with bad
temper and suspicion on both sides.
A few months after the Fetterman affair Red Cloud tried again to wreck
a wood train near Fort Philip Kearney. But this time the escort erected
a barricade with the iron, bullet-proof bodies of a new variety of army
wagon, and though deserted by most of his men, Major James Powell, with
one other officer, twenty-six privates, and four citizens, lay behind
their fortification and repelled charge after charge from some 800
Sioux and Cheyenne. With little loss to himself he inflicted upon the
savages a lesson that lasted many years.
The Sioux and Cheyenne wars were links in the chain of Indian outbreaks
that stretched across the path of the westward movement, the overland
traffic and the continental railways. The Pacific railways had been
chartered just as the overland telegraph had been opened to the
Pacific coast. With this last, perhaps from reverence for the nearly
supernatural, the Indians rarely meddled. But as the railway advanced,
increasing compression and repression stirred the tribes to a series of
hostilities. The first treaties which granted transit--meaning chiefly
wagon transit--broke down. A new series of conferences and a new policy
were the direct result of these wars.
CHAPTER XVII
THE PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY
The crisis in the struggle for the control of the great plains may
fairly be said to have been reached about the time of the slaughter
of Fetterman and his men at Fort Philip Kearney. During the previous
fifteen years the causes had been shaping through the development of
the use of the trails, the opening of the mining territories, and
the agitation for a continental railway. Now the railway was not
only authorized and begun, but Congress had put a premium upon its
completion by an act of July, 1866, which permitted the Union Pacific
to build west and the Central Pacific to build east until the two
lines should meet. In the ensuing race for the land grants the roads
were pushed with new vigor, so that the crisis of the Indian problem
was speedily reached. In the fall of 1866 Ben Holladay saw the end of
the overland freighting and sold out. In November the terminus of the
overland mail route was moved west to Fort Kearney, Nebraska, whither
the Union Pacific had now arrived in its course of construction. No
wonder the tribes realized their danger and broke out in protest.
As the crisis drew near radical differences of opinion among those who
must handle the tribes became apparent. The question of the management
by the War Department or the Interior was in the air, and was raised
again and again in Congress. More fundamental was the question of
policy, upon which the view of Senator John Sherman was as clear as
any. "I agree with you," he wrote to his brother William, in 1867,
"that Indian wars will not cease until all the Indian tribes are
absorbed in our population, and can be controlled by constables instead
of soldiers." Upon another phase of management Francis A. Walker
wrote a little later: "There can be no question of national dignity
involved in the treatment of savages by a civilized power. The proudest
Anglo-Saxon will climb a tree with a bear behind him.... With wild men,
as with wild beasts, the question whether to fight, coax, or run is a
question merely of what is safest or easiest in the situation given."
That responsibility for some decided action lay heavily upon the whites
may be implied from the admission of Colonel Henry Inman, who knew the
frontier well--"that, during more than a third of a century passed on
the plains and in the mountains, he has never known of a war with the
hostile tribes that was not caused by broken faith on the part of the
United States or its agents." A professional Indian fighter, like Kit
Carson, declared on oath that "as a general thing, the difficulties
arise from aggressions on the part of the whites."
In Congress all the interests involved in the Indian problem found
spokesmen. The War and Interior departments had ample representation;
the Western members commonly voiced the extreme opinion of the
frontier; Eastern men often spoke for the humanitarian sentiment that
saw much good in the Indian and much evil in his treatment. But withal,
when it came to special action upon any situation, Congress felt its
lack of information. The departments best informed were partisan and
antagonistic. Even to-day it is a matter of high critical scholarship
to determine, with the passions cooled off, truth and responsibility
in such affairs as the Minnesota outbreak, and the Chivington or the
Fetterman massacre. To lighten in part its feeling of helplessness
in the midst of interested parties Congress raised a committee of
seven, three of the Senate and four of the House, in March, 1865, to
investigate and report on the condition of the Indian tribes. The joint
committee was resolved upon during a bitter and ill-informed debate
on Chivington; while it sat, the Cheyenne war ended and the Sioux
broke out; the committee reported in January, 1867. To facilitate its
investigation it divided itself into three groups to visit the Pacific
Slope, the southern plains, and the northern plains. Its report, with
the accompanying testimony, fills over five hundred pages. In all the
storm centres of the Indian West the committee sat, listened, and
questioned.
The _Report on the Condition of the Indian Tribes_ gave a doleful view
of the future from the Indians' standpoint. General Pope was quoted
to the effect that the savages were rapidly dying off from wars,
cruel treatment, unwise policy, and dishonest administration, "and by
steady and resistless encroachments of the white emigration towards
the west, which is every day confining the Indians to narrower limits,
and driving off or killing the game, their only means of subsistence."
To this catalogue of causes General Carleton, who must have believed
his war of Apache and Navaho extermination a potent handmaid of
providence, added: "The causes which the Almighty originates, when in
their appointed time He wills that one race of man--as in races of
lower animals--shall disappear off the face of the earth and give place
to another race, and so on, in the great cycle traced out by Himself,
which may be seen, but has reasons too deep to be fathomed by us. The
races of mammoths and mastodons, and the great sloths, came and passed
away; the red man of America is passing away!"
The committee believed that the wars with their incidents of slaughter
and extermination by both sides, as occasion offered, were generally
the result of white encroachments. It did not fall in with the growing
opinion that the control of the tribes should be passed over to the War
Department, but recommended instead a system of visiting boards, each
including a civilian, a soldier, and an Assistant Indian Commissioner,
for the regular inspection of the tribes. The recommendation of the
committee came to naught in Congress, but the information it gathered,
supplementing the annual reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs
and the special investigations of single wars, gave much additional
weight to the belief that a crisis was at hand.
Meanwhile, through 1866 and 1867, the Cheyenne and Sioux wars dragged
on. The Powder River country continued to be a field of battle, with
Powell's fight coming in the summer of 1867. In the spring of 1867
General Hancock destroyed a Cheyenne village at Pawnee Fork. Eastern
opinion came to demand more forcefully that this fighting should stop.
Western opinion was equally insistent that the Indian must go, while
General Sherman believed that a part of its bellicose demand was due to
a desire for "the profit resulting from military occupation." Certain
it was that war had lasted for several years with no definite results,
save to rouse the passions of the West, the revenge of the Indians, and
the philanthropy of the East. The army had had its chance. Now the time
had come for general, real attempts at peace.
The fortieth Congress, beginning its life on March 4, 1867, actually
began its session at that time. Ordinarily it would have waited until
December, but the prevailing distrust of President Johnson and his
reconstruction ideas induced it to convene as early as the law allowed.
Among the most significant of its measures in this extra session was
"Mr. Henderson's bill for establishing peace with certain Indian
tribes now at war with the United States," which, in the view of the
_Nation_, was a "practical measure for the security of travel through
the territories and for the selection of a new area sufficient to
contain all the unsettled tribes east of the Rocky Mountains." Senator
Sherman had informed his brother of the prospect of this law, and the
General had replied: "The fact is, this contact of the two races has
caused universal hostility, and the Indians operate in small, scattered
bands, avoiding the posts and well-guarded trains and hitting little
parties who are off their guard. I have a much heavier force on the
plains, but they are so large that it is impossible to guard at all
points, and the clamor for protection everywhere has prevented our
being able to collect a large force to go into the country where we
believe the Indians have hid their families; viz. up on the Yellowstone
and down on the Red River." Sherman believed more in fighting than in
treating at this time, yet he went on the commission erected by the
act of July 20, 1867. By this law four civilians, including the Indian
Commissioner, and three generals of the army, were appointed to collect
and deal with the hostile tribes, with three chief objects in view:
to remove the existing causes of complaint, to secure the safety of
the various continental railways and the overland routes, and to work
out some means for promoting Indian civilization without impeding the
advance of the United States. To this last end they were to hunt for
permanent homes for the tribes, which were to be off the lines of all
the railways then chartered,--the Union Pacific, the Northern Pacific,
and the Atlantic and Pacific.
The Peace Commission, thus organized, sat for fifteen months. When
it rose at last, it had opened the way for the railways, so far as
treaties could avail. It had persuaded many tribes to accept new and
more remote reserves, but in its debates and negotiations the breach
between military and civil control had widened, so that the Commission
was at the end divided against itself.
On August 6, 1867, the Commission organized at St. Louis and discussed
plans for getting into touch with the tribes with whom it had to treat.
"The first difficulty presenting itself was to secure an interview with
the chiefs and leading warriors of these hostile tribes. They were
roaming over an immense country, thousands of miles in extent, and much
of it unknown even to hunters and trappers of the white race. Small
war parties constantly emerging from this vast extent of unexplored
country would suddenly strike the border settlements, killing the men
and carrying off into captivity the women and children. Companies of
workmen on the railroads, at points hundreds of miles from each other,
would be attacked on the same day, perhaps in the same hour. Overland
mail coaches could not be run without military escort, and railroad
and mail stations unguarded by soldiery were in perpetual danger. All
safe transit across the plains had ceased. To go without soldiers was
hazardous in the extreme; to go with them forbade reasonable hope of
securing peaceful interviews with the enemy." Fortunately the Peace
Commission contained within itself the most useful of assistants.
General Sherman and Commissioner Taylor sent out word to the Indians
through the military posts and Indian agencies, notifying the tribes
that the Commissioners desired to confer with them near Fort Laramie in
September and Fort Larned in October.
The Fort Laramie conference bore no fruit during the summer of 1867.
After inspecting conditions on the upper Missouri the Commissioners
proceeded to Omaha in September and thence to North Platte station
on the Union Pacific Railroad. Here they met Swift Bear of the Brulé
Sioux and learned that the Sioux would not be ready to meet them until
November. The Powder River War was still being fought by chiefs who
could not be reached easily and whose delegations must be delayed. When
the Commissioners returned to Fort Laramie in November, they found
matters little better. Red Cloud, who was the recognized leader of the
Oglala and Brulé Sioux and the hostile northern Cheyenne, refused even
to see the envoys, and sent them word: "that his war against the whites
was to save the valley of the Powder River, the only hunting ground
left to his nation, from our intrusion. He assured us that whenever
the military garrisons at Fort Philip Kearney and Fort C. F. Smith
were withdrawn, the war on his part would cease." Regretfully, the
Commissioners left Fort Laramie, having seen no savages except a few
non-hostile Crows, and having summoned Red Cloud to meet them during
the following summer, after asking "a truce or cessation of hostilities
until the council could be held."
The southern plains tribes were met at Medicine Lodge Creek some eighty
miles south of the Arkansas River. Before the Commissioners arrived
here General Sherman was summoned to Washington, his place being taken
by General C. C. Augur, whose name makes the eighth signature to the
published report. For some time after the Commissioners arrived the
Cheyenne, sullen and suspicious, remained in their camp forty miles
away from Medicine Lodge. But the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache came to
an agreement, while the others held off. On the 21st of October these
ceded all their rights to occupy their great claims in the Southwest,
the whole of the two panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and agreed to
confine themselves to a new reserve in the southwestern part of Indian
Territory, between the Red River and the Washita, on lands taken from
the Choctaw and Chickasaw in 1866.
The Commissioners could not greatly blame the Arapaho and Cheyenne for
their reluctance to treat. These had accepted in 1861 the triangular
Sand Creek reserve in Colorado, where they had been massacred by
Chivington in 1864. Whether rightly or not, they believed themselves
betrayed, and the Indian Office sided with them. In 1865, after Sand
Creek, they exchanged this tract for a new one in Kansas and Indian
Territory, which was amended to nothingness when the Senate added to
the treaty the words, "no part of the reservation shall be within the
state of Kansas." They had left the former reserve; the new one had not
been given them; yet for two years after 1865 they had generally kept
the peace. Sherman travelled through this country in the autumn of 1866
and "met no trouble whatever," although he heard rumors of Indian wars.
In 1867, General Hancock had destroyed one of their villages on the
Pawnee Fork of the Arkansas, without provocation, the Indians believed.
After this there had been admitted war. The Indians had been on the
war-path all the time, plundering the frontier and dodging the military
parties, and were unable for some weeks to realize that the Peace
Commissioners offered a change of policy. Yet finally these yielded
to blandishment and overture, and signed, on October 28, a treaty
at Medicine Lodge. The new reserve was a bit of barren land nearly
destitute of wood and water, and containing many streams that were
either brackish or dry during most of the year. It was in the Cherokee
Outlet, between the Arkansas and Cimarron rivers.
The Medicine Lodge treaties were the chief result of the summer's
negotiations. The Peace Commission returned to Fort Laramie in the
following spring to meet the reluctant northern tribes. The Sioux, the
Crows, and the Arapaho and Cheyenne who were allied with them, made
peace after the Commissioners had assented to the terms laid down by
Red Cloud in 1867. They had convinced themselves that the occupation of
the Powder River Valley was both illegal and unjust, and accordingly
the garrisons had been drawn out of the new forts. Much to the anger of
Montana was this yielding. "With characteristic pusillanimity," wrote
one of the pioneers, years later, denouncing the act, "the government
ordered all the forts abandoned and the road closed to travel." In the
new Fort Laramie treaty of April 29, 1868, it was specifically agreed
that the country east of the Big Horn Mountains was to be considered as
unceded Indian territory; while the Sioux bound themselves to occupy
as their permanent home the lands west of the Missouri, between the
parallels of 43° and 46°, and east of the 104th meridian--an area
coinciding to-day with the western end of South Dakota. Thus was begun
the actual compression of the Sioux of the plains.
The treaties made by the Peace Commissioners were the most important,
but were not the only treaties of 1867 and 1868, looking towards the
relinquishment by the Indians of lands along the railroad's right
of way. It had been found that rights of transit through the Indian
Country, such as those secured at Laramie in 1851, were insufficient.
The Indian must leave even the vicinity of the route of travel, for
peace and his own good.
Most important of the other tribes shoved away from the route were the
Ute, Shoshoni, and Bannock, whose country lay across the great trail
just west of the Rockies. The Ute, having given their name to the
territory of Utah, were to be found south of the trail, between it and
the lower waters of the Colorado. Their western bands were earliest
in negotiation and were settled on reserves, the most important being
on the Uintah River in northeast Utah, after 1861. The Colorado Ute
began to treat in 1863, but did not make definite cessions until
1868, when the southwestern third of Colorado was set apart for them.
Active life in Colorado territory was at the start confined to the
mountains in the vicinity of Denver City, while the Indians were pushed
down the slopes of the range on both sides. But as the eastern Sand
Creek reserve soon had to be abolished, so Colorado began to growl at
the western Ute reserve and to complain that indolent savages were
given better treatment than white citizens. The Shoshoni and Bannock
ranged from Fort Hall to the north and were visited by General Augur
at Fort Bridger in the summer of 1868. As the results of his gifts
and diplomacy the former were pushed up to the Wind River reserve in
Wyoming territory, while the latter were granted a home around Fort
Hall.
The friction with the Indians was heaviest near the line of the old
Indian frontier and tended to be lighter towards the west. It was
natural enough that on the eastern edge of the plains, where the
tribes had been colonized and where Indian population was most dense,
the difficulties should be greatest. Indeed the only wars which were
sufficiently important to count as resistance to the westward movement
were those of the plains tribes and were fought east of the continental
divide. The mountain and western wars were episodes, isolated from the
main movements. Yet these great plains that now had to be abandoned
had been set aside as a permanent home for the race in pursuance of
Monroe's policy. In the report of the Peace Commissioners all agreed
that the time had come to change it.
The influence of the humanitarians dominated the report of the
Commissioners, which was signed in January, 1868. Wherever possible,
the side of the Indian was taken. The Chivington massacre was an
"indiscriminate slaughter," scarcely paralleled in the "records of
the Indian barbarity"; General Hancock had ruthlessly destroyed the
Cheyenne at Pawnee Fork, though himself in doubt as to the existence
of a war: Fetterman had been killed because "the civil and military
departments of our government cannot, or will not, understand each
other." Apologies were made for Indian hostility, and the "revolting"
history of the removal policy was described. It had been the result of
this policy to promote barbarism rather than civilization. "But one
thing then remains to be done with honor to the nation, and that is to
select a district, or districts of country, as indicated by Congress,
on which all the tribes east of the Rocky mountains may be gathered.
For each district let a territorial government be established, with
powers adapted to the ends designed. The governor should be a man of
unquestioned integrity and purity of character; he should be paid
such salary as to place him above temptation." He should be given
adequate powers to keep the peace and enforce a policy of progressive
civilization. The belief that under American conditions the Indian
problem was insoluble was confirmed by this report of the Peace
Commissioners, well informed and philanthropic as they were. After
their condemnation of an existing removal policy, the only remedy which
they could offer was another policy of concentration and removal.
The Commissioners recommended that the Indians should be colonized on
two reserves, north and south of the railway lines respectively. The
southern reserve was to be the old territory of the civilized tribes,
known as Indian Territory, where the Commissioners thought a total of
86,000 could be settled within a few years. A northern district might
be located north of Nebraska, within the area which they later allotted
to the Sioux; 54,000 could be colonized here. Individual savages might
be allowed to own land and be incorporated among the citizens of the
Western states, but most of the tribes ought to be settled in the two
Indian territories, while this removal policy should be the last.
Upon the vexed question of civilian or military control the
Commissioners were divided. They believed that both War and Interior
departments were too busy to give proper attention to the wards, and
recommended an independent department for the Indians. In October,
1868, they reversed this report and, under military influence,
spoke strongly for the incorporation of the Indian Office in the
War Department. "We have now selected and provided reservations for
all, off the great roads," wrote General Sherman to his brother in
September, 1868. "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 travellers 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." Although it was the
tendency of military control to provoke Indian wars, the army was near
the truth in its notion that Indians and whites could not live together.
The way across the continent was opened by these treaties of 1867 and
1868, and the Union Pacific hurried to take advantage of it. The other
Pacific railways, Northern Pacific and Atlantic and Pacific, were so
slow in using their charters that hope in their construction was
nearly abandoned, but the chief enterprise neared completion before the
inauguration of President Grant. The new territory of Wyoming, rather
than the statue of Columbus which Benton had foreseen, was perched upon
the summit of the Rockies as its monument.
Intelligent easterners had difficulty in keeping pace with western
development during the decade of the Civil War. The United States
itself had made no codification of Indian treaties since 1837, and
allowed the law of tribal relations to remain scattered through a
thousand volumes of government documents. Even Indian agents and
army officers were often as ignorant of the facts as was the general
public. "All Americans have some knowledge of the country west of the
Mississippi," lamented the _Nation_ in 1868, but "there is no book
of travel relating to those regions which does more than add to a
mass of very desultory information. Few men have more than the most
unconnected and unmethodical knowledge of the vast expanse of territory
which lies beyond Kansas.... [By] this time Leavenworth must have
ceased to be in the West; probably, as we write, Denver has become an
Eastern city, and day by day the Pacific Railroad is abolishing the
marks that distinguish Western from Eastern life.... A man talks to us
of the country west of the Rocky Mountains, and while he is talking,
the Territory of Wyoming is established, of which neither he nor his
auditors have before heard."
[Illustration: THE WEST IN 1863
The mining booms had completed the territorial divisions of the
Southwest. In 1864 Idaho was reduced and Montana created. Wyoming
followed in 1868.]
In that division of the plains which was sketched out in the fifties,
the great amorphous eastern territories of Kansas and Nebraska met on
the summit of the Rockies the great western territories of Washington,
Utah, and New Mexico. The gold booms had broken up all of these.
Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Dakota, Colorado, had found their
excuses for existence, while Kansas and Nevada entered the Union, with
Nebraska following in 1867. Between the thirty-seventh and forty-first
parallels Colorado fairly straddled the divide. To the north, in the
region of the great river valleys,--Green, Big Horn, Powder, Platte,
and Sweetwater,--the precious metals were not found in quantities which
justified exploitation earlier than 1867. But in that year moderate
discoveries on the Sweetwater and the arrival of the terminal camps of
the Union Pacific gave plausibility to a scheme for a new territory.
The Sweetwater mines, without causing any great excitement, brought a
few hundred men to the vicinity of South Pass. A handful of towns was
established, a county was organized, a newspaper was brought into life
at Fort Bridger. If the railway had not appeared at the same time, the
foundation for a territory would probably have been too slight. But the
Union Pacific, which had ended at Julesburg early in 1867, extended its
terminus to a new town, Cheyenne, in the summer, and to Laramie City in
the spring of 1868.
Cheyenne was laid out a few weeks before the Union Pacific advanced
to its site. It had a better prospect of life than had most of the
mushroom cities that accompanied the westward course of the railroad,
because it was the natural junction point for Denver trade. Colorado
had been much disappointed at its own failure to induce the Union
Pacific managers to put Denver City on the main line of the road, and
felt injured when compelled to do its business through Cheyenne. But
just because of this, Cheyenne grew in the autumn of 1867 with a
rapidity unusual even in the West. It was not an orderly or reputable
population that it had during the first months of its existence, but,
to its good fortune, the advance of the road to Laramie drew off the
worst of the floating inhabitants early in 1868. Cheyenne was left with
an overlarge town site, but with some real excuse for existence. Most
of the terminal towns vanished completely when the railroad moved on.
A new territory for the country north of Colorado had been talked about
as early as 1861. Since the creation of Montana territory in 1864, this
area had been attached, obviously only temporarily, to Dakota. Now,
with the mining and railway influences at work, the population made
appeal to the Dakota legislature and to Congress for independence.
"Without opposition or prolonged discussion," as Bancroft puts it, the
new territory was created by Congress in July, 1868. It was called
Wyoming, just escaping the names of Lincoln and Cheyenne, and received
as bounds the parallels of 41° and 45°, and the meridians of 27° and
34°, west of Washington.
For several years after the Sioux treaties of 1868 and the erection of
Wyoming territory, the Indians of the northern plains kept the peace.
The routes of travel had been opened, the white claim to the Powder
River Valley had been surrendered, and a great northern reserve had
been created in the Black Hills country of southern Dakota. All these,
by lessening contact, removed the danger of Indian friction. But
the southern tribes were still uneasy,--treacherous or ill-treated,
according as the sources vary,--and one more war was needed before they
could be compelled to settle down.
CHAPTER XVIII
BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID
Of the four classes of persons whose interrelations determined the
condition of the frontier, none admitted that it desired to provoke
Indian wars. The tribes themselves consistently professed a wish to
be allowed to remain at peace. The Indian agents lost their authority
and many of their perquisites during war time. The army and the
frontiersmen denied that they were belligerent. "I assert," wrote
Custer, "and all candid persons familiar with the subject will sustain
the assertion, that of all classes of our population the army and
the people living on the frontier entertain the greatest dread of an
Indian war, and are willing to make the greatest sacrifices to avoid
its horrors." To fix the responsibility for the wars which repeatedly
occurred, despite the protestations of amiability on all sides, calls
for the examination of individual episodes in large number. It is
easier to acquit the first two classes than the last two. There are
enough instances in which the tribes were persuaded to promise and keep
the peace to establish the belief that a policy combining benevolence,
equity, and relentless firmness in punishing wrong-doers, white or red,
could have maintained friendly relations with ease. The Indian agents
were hampered most by their inability to enforce the laws intrusted
to them for execution, and by the slowness of the Senate in ratifying
agreements and of Congress in voting supplies. The frontiersmen, with
their isolated homesteads lying open to surprise and destruction,
would seem to be sincere in their protestations; yet repeatedly
they thrust themselves as squatters upon lands of unquieted Indian
title, while their personal relations with the red men were commonly
marked by fear and hatred. The army, with greater honesty and better
administration than the Indian Bureau, overdid its work, being unable
to think of the Indians as anything but public enemies and treating
them with an arbitrary curtness that would have been dangerous even
among intelligent whites. The history of the southwest Indians, after
the Sand Creek massacre, illustrates well how tribes, not specially
ill-disposed, became the victims of circumstances which led to their
destruction.
After the battle at Sand Creek, the southwest tribes agreed to a
series of treaties in 1865 by which new reserves were promised them
on the borderland of Kansas and Indian Territory. These treaties were
so amended by the Senate that for a time the tribes had no admitted
homes or rights save the guaranteed hunting privileges on the plains
south of the Platte. They seem generally to have been peaceful during
1866, in spite of the rather shabby treatment which the neglect
of Congress procured for them. In 1867 uneasiness became apparent.
Agent E. W. Wynkoop, of Sand Creek fame, was now in charge of the
Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Apache tribes in the vicinity of Fort Larned,
on the Santa Fé trail in Kansas. In 1866 they had "complained of the
government not having fulfilled its promises to them, and of numerous
impositions practised upon them by the whites." Some of their younger
braves had gone on the war-path. But Wynkoop claimed to have quieted
them, and by March, 1867, thought that they were "well satisfied and
quiet, and anxious to retain the peaceful relations now existing."
The military authorities at Fort Dodge, farther up the Arkansas and
near the old Santa Fé crossing, were less certain than Wynkoop that
the Indians meant well. Little Raven, of the Arapaho, and Satanta,
"principal chief" of the Kiowa, were reported as sending in insulting
messages to the troops, ordering them to cut no more wood, to leave
the country, to keep wagons off the Santa Fé trail. Occasional thefts
of stock and forays were reported along the trail. Custer thought that
there was "positive evidence from the agents themselves" that the
Indians were guilty, the trouble only being that Wynkoop charged the
guilt on the Kiowa and Comanche, while J. H. Leavenworth, agent for
these tribes, asserted their innocence and accused the wards of Wynkoop.
The Department of the Missouri, in which these tribes resided, was
under the command of Major-general Winfield Scott Hancock in the spring
of 1867. With a desire to promote the tranquillity of his command,
Hancock prepared for an expedition on the plains as early as the roads
would permit. He wrote of this intention to both of the agents, asking
them to accompany him, "to show that the officers of the government are
acting in harmony." His object was not necessarily war, but to impress
upon the Indians his ability "to chastise any tribes who may molest
people who are travelling across the plains." In each of the letters he
listed the complaints against the respective tribes--failure to deliver
murderers, outrages on the Smoky Hill route in 1866, alliances with
the Sioux, hostile incursions into Texas, and the specially barbarous
Box murder. In this last affair one James Box had been murdered by the
Kiowas, and his wife and five daughters carried off. The youngest of
these, a baby, died in a few days, the mother stated, and they "took
her from me and threw her into a ravine." Ultimately the mother and
three of the children were ransomed from the Kiowas after Mrs. Box and
her eldest daughter, Margaret, had been passed around from chief to
chief for more than two months. Custer wrote up this outrage with much
exaggeration, but the facts were bad enough.
With both agents present, Hancock advanced to Fort Larned. "It is
uncertain whether war will be the result of the expedition or not,"
he declared in general orders of March 26, 1867, thus admitting that
a state of war did not at that time exist. "It will depend upon the
temper and behavior of the Indians with whom we may come in contact. We
go prepared for war and will make it if a proper occasion presents."
The tribes which he proposed to visit were roaming indiscriminately
over the country traversed by the Santa Fé trail, in accordance with
the treaties of 1865, which permitted them, until they should be
settled upon their reserves, to hunt at will over the plains south
of the Platte, subject only to the restriction that they must not
camp within ten miles of the main roads and trails. It was Hancock's
intention to enforce this last provision, and more, to insist "upon
their keeping off the main lines of travel, where their presence is
calculated to bring about collisions with the whites."
The first conference with the Indians was held at Fort Larned, where
the "principal chiefs of the Dog Soldiers of the Cheyennes" had been
assembled by Agent Wynkoop. Leavenworth thought that the chiefs here
had been very friendly, but Wynkoop criticised the council as being
held after sunset, which was contrary to Indian custom and calculated
"to make them feel suspicious." At this council General Hancock
reprimanded the chiefs and told them that he would visit their village,
occupied by themselves and an almost equal number of Sioux; which
village, said Wynkoop, "was 35 miles from any travelled road." "Why
don't he confine the troops to the great line of travel?" demanded
Leavenworth, whose wards had the same privilege of hunting south of the
Arkansas that those of Wynkoop had between the Arkansas and the Platte.
So long as they camped ten miles from the roads, this was their right.
Contrary to Wynkoop's urgings, Hancock led his command from Fort
Larned on April 13, 1867, moving for the main Arapaho, Cheyenne, and
Sioux village on Pawnee Fork, thirty-five miles west of the post. With
cavalry, infantry, artillery, and a pontoon train, it was hard for him
to assume any other appearance than that of war. Even the General's
particular assurance, as Custer puts it, "that he was not there to
make war, but to promote peace," failed to convince the chiefs who had
attended the night council. It was not a pleasant march. The snow was
nearly a foot deep, fodder was scarce, and the Indian disposition was
uncertain. Only a few had come in to the Fort Larned conference, and
none appeared at camp after the first day's march. After this refusal
to meet him, Hancock marched on to the village, in front of which he
found some three hundred Indians drawn up in battle array. Fighting
seemed imminent, but at last Roman Nose, Bull Bear, and other chiefs
met Hancock between the lines and agreed upon an evening conference. It
developed that the men alone were left at the Indian camp. Women and
children, with all the movables they could handle, had fled out upon
the snowy plains at the approach of the troops. Fear of another Sand
Creek had caused it, said Wynkoop. But Hancock chose to regard this
as evidence of a treacherous disposition, demanded that the fugitives
return at once, and insisted upon encamping near the village against
the protest of the chiefs. Instead of bringing back their people, the
men themselves abandoned the village that evening, while Hancock,
learning of the flight, surrounded and took possession of it. The next
morning, April 15, Custer was sent with cavalry in pursuit of the
flying bands. Depredations occurring to the north of Pawnee Fork within
a day or two, Hancock burned the village in retaliation and proceeded
to Fort Dodge. Wynkoop insisted that the Cheyenne and Arapaho had been
entirely innocent and that these injuries had been committed by the
Sioux. "I have no doubt," he wrote, "but that they think that war has
been forced upon them."
When Hancock started upon the plains, there was no war, but there was
no doubt about its existence as the spring advanced. When the Peace
Commissioners of this year came with their protestations of benevolence
for the Great Father, it was small wonder that the Cheyenne and Arapaho
had to be coaxed into the camp on the Medicine Lodge Creek. And when
the treaties there made failed of prompt execution by the United
States, the war naturally dragged on in a desultory way during 1868 and
1869.
In the spring of 1868 General Sheridan, who had succeeded Hancock in
command of the Department of the Missouri, visited the posts at Fort
Larned and Fort Dodge. Here on Pawnee and Walnut creeks most of the
southwest Indians were congregated. Wynkoop, in February and April,
reported them as happy and quiet. They were destitute, to be sure, and
complained that the Commissioners at Medicine Lodge had promised them
arms and ammunition which had not been delivered. Indeed, the treaty
framed there had not yet been ratified. But he believed it possible to
keep them contented and wean them from their old habits. To Sheridan
the situation seemed less happy. He declined to hold a council with
the complaining chiefs on the ground that the whole matter was yet in
the hands of the Peace Commission, but he saw that the young men were
chafing and turbulent and that frontier hostilities would accompany the
summer buffalo hunt.
There is little doubt of the destitution which prevailed among the
plains tribes at this time. The rapid diminution of game was everywhere
observable. The annuities at best afforded only partial relief, while
Congress was irregular in providing funds. Three times during the
spring the Commissioner prodded the Secretary of the Interior, who in
turn prodded Congress, with the result that instead of the $1,000,000
asked for $500,000 were, in July, 1868, granted to be spent not by the
Indian Office, but by the War Department. Three weeks later General
Sherman created an organization for distributing this charity, placing
the district south of Kansas in command of General Hazen. Meanwhile,
the time for making the spring issues of annuity goods had come. It
was ordered in June that no arms or ammunition should be given to the
Cheyenne and Arapaho because of their recent bad conduct; but in July
the Commissioner, influenced by the great dissatisfaction on the part
of the tribes, and fearing "that these Indians, by reason of such
non-delivery of arms, ammunition, and goods, will commence hostilities
against the whites in their vicinity, modified the order and
telegraphed Agent Wynkoop that he might use his own discretion in the
matter: "If you are satisfied that the issue of the arms and ammunition
is necessary to preserve the peace, and that no evil will result from
their delivery, let the Indians have them." A few days previously on
July 20, Wynkoop had issued the ordinary supplies to his Arapaho and
Apache, his Cheyenne refusing to take anything until they could have
the guns as well. "They felt much disappointed, but gave no evidence of
being angry ... and would wait with patience for the Great Father to
take pity upon them." The permission from the Commissioner was welcomed
by the agent, and approved by Thomas Murphy, his superintendent. Murphy
had been ordered to Fort Larned to reënforce Wynkoop's judgment. He
held a council on August 1 with Little Raven and the Arapaho and
Apache, and issued them their arms. "Raven and the other chiefs then
promised that these arms should never be used against the whites, and
Agent Wynkoop then delivered to the Arapahoes 160 pistols, 80 Lancaster
rifles, 12 kegs of powder, 1-1/2 keg of lead, and 15,000 caps; and to
the Apaches he gave 40 pistols, 20 Lancaster rifles, 3 kegs of powder,
1/2 keg of lead, and 5000 caps." The Cheyenne came in a few days later
for their share, which Wynkoop handed over on the 9th. "They were
delighted at receiving the goods," he reported, "particularly the
arms and ammunition, and never before have I known them to be better
satisfied and express themselves as being so well contented." The
fact that within three days murders were committed by the Cheyenne on
the Solomon and Saline forks throws doubt upon the sincerity of their
protestations.
The war party which commenced the active hostilities of 1868 at a time
so well calculated to throw discredit upon the wisdom of the Indian
Office, had left the Cheyenne village early in August, "smarting
under their _supposed_ wrongs," as Wynkoop puts it. They were mostly
Cheyenne, with a small number of Arapaho and a few visiting Sioux,
about 200 in all. Little Raven's son and a brother of White Antelope,
who died at Sand Creek, were with them; Black Kettle is said to have
been their leader. On August 7 some of them spent the evening at Fort
Hays, where they held a powwow at the post. "Black Kettle loves his
white soldier brothers, and his heart feels glad when he meets them
and shakes their hands in friendship," is the way the post-trader,
Hill P. Wilson, reported his speech. "The white soldiers ought to be
glad all the time, because their ponies are so big and so strong,
and because they have so many guns and so much to eat.... All other
Indians may take the war trail, but Black Kettle will forever keep
friendship with his white brothers." Three nights later they began to
kill on Saline River, and on the 11th they crossed to the Solomon. Some
fifteen settlers were killed, and five women were carried off. Here
this particular raid stopped, for the news had got abroad, and the
frontier was instantly in arms. Various isolated forays occurred, so
that Sheridan was sure he had a general war upon his hands. He believed
nearly all the young men of the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Arapaho, and Comanche
to be in the war parties, the old women, men, and children remaining
around the posts and professing solicitous friendship. There were 6000
potential warriors in all, and that he might better devote himself to
suppressing them, Sheridan followed the Kansas Pacific to its terminus
at Fort Hays and there established his headquarters in the field.
The war of 1868 ranged over the whole frontier south of the Platte
trail. It influenced the Peace Commission, at its final meeting in
October, 1868, to repudiate many of the pacific theories of January
and recommend that the Indians be handed over to the War Department.
Sheridan, who had led the Commission to this conclusion, was in the
field directing the movement. His policy embraced a concentration of
the peaceful bands south of the Arkansas, and a relentless war against
the rest. It is fairly clear that the war need not have come, had it
not been for the cross-purposes ever apparent between the Indian Office
and the War Department, and even within the War Department itself.
At Fort Hays, Sheridan prepared for war. He had, at the start, about
2600 men, nearly equally divided among cavalry and infantry. Believing
his force too small to cover the whole plains between Fort Hays and
Denver, he called for reënforcements, receiving a part of the Fifth
Cavalry and a regiment of Kansas volunteers. With enthusiasm this last
addition was raised among the frontiersmen, where Indian fighting was
popular; the governor of the state resigned his office to become its
colonel. September and October were occupied in getting the troops
together, keeping the trails open for traffic, and establishing, about
a hundred miles south of Fort Dodge, a rendezvous which was known
as Camp Supply. It was the intention to protect the frontier during
the autumn, and to follow up the Indian villages after winter had
fallen, catching the tribes when they would be concentrated and at a
disadvantage.
On October 15, 1868, Sherman, just from the Chicago meeting of the
Peace Commissioners and angry because he had there been told that the
army wanted war, gave Sheridan a free hand for the winter campaign. "As
to 'extermination,' it is for the Indians themselves to determine. We
don't want to exterminate or even to fight them.... The present war ...
was begun and carried on by the Indians in spite of our entreaties and
in spite of our warnings, and the only question to us is, whether we
shall allow the progress of our western settlements to be checked, and
leave the Indians free to pursue their bloody career, or accept their
war and fight them.... We ... accept the war ... and hereby resolve to
make its end final.... I will say nothing and do nothing to restrain
our troops from doing what they deem proper on the spot, and will allow
no mere vague general charges of cruelty and inhumanity to tie their
hands, but will use all the powers confided to me to the end that these
Indians, the enemies of our race and of our civilization, shall not
again be able to begin and carry on their barbarous warfare on any kind
of pretext that they may choose to allege."
The plan of campaign provided that the main column, Custer in immediate
command, should march from Fort Hays directly against the Indians, by
way of Camp Supply; two smaller columns were to supplement this, one
marching in on Indian Territory from New Mexico, and the other from
Fort Lyon on the old Sand Creek reserve. Detachments of the chief
column began to move in the middle of November, Custer reaching the
depot at Camp Supply ahead of the rest, while the Kansas volunteers
lost themselves in heavy snow-storms. On November 23 Custer was ordered
out of Camp Supply, on the north fork of the Canadian, to follow a
fresh trail which led southwest towards the Washita River, near the
eastern line of Texas. He pushed on as rapidly as twelve inches of snow
would allow, discovering in the early morning of November 27 a large
camp in the valley of the Washita.
It was Black Kettle's camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho that they had found
in a strip of heavy timber along the river. After reconnoitring Custer
divided his force into four columns for simultaneous attacks upon the
sleeping village. At daybreak "my men charged the village and reached
the lodges before the Indians were aware of our presence. The moment
the charge was ordered the band struck up 'Garry Owen,' and with cheers
that strongly reminded me of scenes during the war, every trooper,
led by his officer, rushed towards the village." For several hours a
promiscuous fight raged up and down the ravine, with Indians everywhere
taking to cover, only to be prodded out again. Fifty-one lodges in
all fell into Custer's hands; 103 dead Indians, including Black
Kettle himself, were found later. "We captured in good condition 875
horses, ponies, and mules; 241 saddles, some of very fine and costly
workmanship; 573 buffalo robes, 390 buffalo skins for lodges, 160
untanned robes, 210 axes, 140 hatchets, 35 revolvers, 47 rifles, 535
pounds of powder, 1050 pounds of lead, 4000 arrows and arrowheads, 75
spears, 90 bullet moulds, 35 bows and quivers, 12 shields, 300 pounds
of bullets, 775 lariats, 940 buckskin saddle-bags, 470 blankets, 93
coats, 700 pounds of tobacco."
As the day advanced, Custer's triumph seemed likely to turn into
defeat. The Cheyenne village proved to be only the last of a long
string of villages that extended down the Washita for fifteen miles
or more, and whose braves rode up by hundreds to see the fight. A
general engagement was avoided, however, and with better luck and more
discretion than he was one day to have, Custer marched back to Camp
Supply on December 3, his band playing gayly the tune of battle, "Garry
Owen." The commander in his triumphal procession was followed by his
scouts and trailers, and the captives of his prowess--a long train of
Indian widows and orphans.
The decisive blow which broke the power of the southwest tribes had
been struck, and Black Kettle had carried on his last raid,--if indeed
he had carried on this one at all--but as the reports came in it became
evident that the merits of the triumph were in doubt. The Eastern
humanitarians were shocked at the cold-blooded attack upon a camp of
sleeping men, women, and children, forgetting that if Indians were to
be fought this was the most successful way to do it, and was no shock
to the Indians' own ideals of warfare and attack. The deeper question
was whether this camp was actually hostile, whether the tribes had not
abandoned the war-path in good faith, whether it was fair to crush a
tribe that with apparent earnestness begged peace because it could not
control the excesses of some of its own braves. It became certain, at
least, that the War Department itself had fallen victim to that vice
with which it had so often reproached the Indian Office--failure to
produce a harmony of action among several branches of the service.
The Indian Office had no responsibility for the battle of the Washita.
It had indeed issued arms to the Cheyenne in August, but only with
the approval of the military officer commanding Forts Larned and
Dodge, General Alfred Sully, "an officer of long experience in Indian
affairs." In the early summer all the tribes had been near these forts
and along the Santa Fé trail. After Congress had voted its half million
to feed the hungry, Sherman had ordered that the peaceful hungry among
the southern tribes should be moved from this locality to the vicinity
of old Fort Cobb, in the west end of Indian Territory on the Washita
River.
During September, while Sheridan was gathering his armament at Fort
Hays, Sherman was ordering the agents to take their peaceful charges
to Fort Cobb. With the major portion of the tribes at war it would
be impossible for the troops to make any discrimination unless there
should be an absolute separation between the well-disposed and the
warlike. He proposed to allow the former a reasonable time to get to
their new abode and then beg the President for an order "declaring all
Indians who remain outside of their lawful reservations" to be outlaws.
He believed that by going to war these tribes had violated their
hunting rights. Superintendent Murphy thought he saw another Sand Creek
in these preparations. Here were the tribes ordered to Fort Cobb; their
fall annuity goods were on the way thither for distribution; and now
the military column was marching in the same direction.
In the meantime General W. B. Hazen had arrived at Fort Cobb on
November 7 and had immediately voiced his fear that "General Sheridan,
acting under the impression of hostiles, may attack bands of Comanche
and Kiowa before they reach this point." He found, however, most of
these tribes, who had not gone to war this season, encamped within
reach on the Canadian and Washita rivers,--5000 of the Comanche and
1500 of the Kiowa. Within a few days Cheyenne and Arapaho began to join
the settlements in the district, Black Kettle bringing in his band to
the Washita, forty miles east of Antelope Hills, and coming in person
to Fort Cobb for an interview with General Hazen on November 20.
"I have always done my best," he protested, "to keep my young men
quiet, but some will not listen, and since the fighting began I have
not been able to keep them all at home. But we all want peace." To
which added Big Mouth, of the Arapaho: "I came to you because I wish
to do right.... I do not want war, and my people do not, but although
we have come back south of the Arkansas, the soldiers follow us and
continue fighting, and we want you to send out and stop these soldiers
from coming against us."
To these, General Hazen, fearful as he was of an unjust attack,
responded with caution. Sherman had spoken of Fort Cobb in his orders
to Sheridan, as "aimed to hold out the olive branch with one hand
and the sword in the other. But it is not thereby intended that any
hostile Indians shall make use of that establishment as a refuge from
just punishment for acts already done. Your military control over
that reservation is as perfect as over Kansas, and if hostile Indians
retreat within that reservation, ... they may be followed even to
Fort Cobb, captured, and punished." It is difficult to see what could
constitute the fact of peaceful intent if coming in to Fort Cobb did
not. But Hazen gave to Black Kettle cold comfort: "I am sent here as
a peace chief; all here is to be peace; but north of the Arkansas is
General Sheridan, the great war chief, and I do not control him; and he
has all the soldiers who are fighting the Arapahoes and Cheyennes....
If the soldiers come to fight, you must remember they are not from me,
but from that great war chief, and with him you must make peace....
I cannot stop the war.... You must not come in again unless I send
for you, and you must keep well out beyond the friendly Kiowas and
Comanches." So he sent the suitors away and wrote, on November 22,
to Sherman for more specific instructions covering these cases. He
believed that Black Kettle and Big Mouth were themselves sincere, but
doubted their control over their bands. These were the bands which
Custer destroyed before the week was out, and it is probable that
during the fight they were reënforced by braves from the friendly
lodges of Satanta's Kiowa and Little Raven's Arapaho.
Whatever might have been a wise policy in treating semi-hostile Indian
tribes, this one was certainly unsatisfactory. It is doubtful whether
the war was ever so great as Sherman imagined it. The injured tribes
were unquestionably drawn to Fort Cobb by a desire for safety; the army
was in the position of seeming to use the olive branch to assemble
the Indians in order that the sword might the better disperse them.
There is reasonable doubt whether Black Kettle had anything to do with
the forays. Murphy believed in him and cited many evidences of his
friendly disposition, while Wynkoop asserted positively that he had
been encamped on Pawnee Fork all through the time when he was alleged
to have been committing depredations on the Saline. The army alone had
been no more successful in producing obvious justice than the army and
Indian Office together had been. Yet whatever the merits of the case,
the power of the Cheyenne and their neighbors was permanently gone.
During the winter of 1868-1869 Sheridan's army remained in the
vicinity of Fort Cobb, gathering the remnants of the shattered tribes
in upon their reservation. The Kiowa and Comanche were placed at last
on the lands awarded them at the Medicine Lodge treaties, while the
Arapaho and Cheyenne once more had their abiding-place changed in
August, 1869, and were settled down along the upper waters of the
Washita, around the valley of their late defeat.
The long controversy between the War and Interior departments over the
management of the tribes entered upon a new stage with the inauguration
of Grant in 1869. One of the earliest measures of his administration
was a bill erecting a board of civilian Indian commissioners to advise
the Indian Department and promote the civilization of the tribes. A
generous grant of two millions accompanied the act. More care was used
in the appointment of agents than had hitherto been taken, and the
immediate results seemed good when the Commissioner wrote his annual
report in December, 1869. But the worst of the troubles with the
Indians of the plains was over, so that without special effort peace
could now have been the result.
CHAPTER XIX
THE FIRST OF THE RAILWAYS
Twenty years before the great tribes of the plains made their last
stand in front of the invading white man overland travel had begun;
ten years before, Congress, under the inspiration of the prophetic
Whitney and the leadership of more practical men, had provided for a
survey of railroad routes along the trails; on the eve of the struggle
the earliest continental railway had received its charter; and the
struggle had temporarily ceased while Congress, in 1867, sent out its
Peace Commission to prepare an open way. That the tribes must yield
was as inevitable as it was that their yielding must be ungracious and
destructive to them. Too weak to compel their enemy to respect their
rights, and uncertain what their rights were, they were too low in
intelligence to realize that the more they struggled, the worse would
be their suffering. So they struggled on, during the years in which
the iron band was put across the continent. Its completion and their
subjection came in 1869.
After years of tedious debate the earliest of the Pacific railways was
chartered in 1862. The withdrawal of southern claims had made possible
an agreement upon a route, while the spirit of nationality engendered
by the Civil War gave to the project its final impetus. Under the
management of the Central Pacific of California, the Union Pacific, and
two or three border railways, provision was made for a road from the
Iowa border to California. Land grants and bond subsidies were for two
years dangled before the capitalists of America in the vain attempt to
entice them to construct it. Only after these were increased in 1864
did active organization begin, while at the end of 1865 but forty miles
of the Union Pacific had been built.
Building a railroad from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean was
easily the greatest engineering feat that America had undertaken. In
their day the Cumberland Road, and the Erie Canal, and the Pennsylvania
Portage Railway had ranked among the American wonders, but none of
these had been accompanied by the difficult problems that bristled
along the eighteen hundred miles of track that must be laid across
plain and desert, through hostile Indian country and over mountains.
Worse yet, the road could hope for little aid from the country through
which it ran. Except for the small colonies at Carson, Salt Lake, and
Denver, the last of which it missed by a hundred miles, its course lay
through unsettled wilderness for nearly the whole distance. Like the
trusses of a cantilever, its advancing ends projected themselves across
the continent, relying, up to the moment of joining, upon the firm
anchorage of the termini in the settled lands of Iowa and California.
Equally trying, though different in variety, were the difficulties
attendant upon construction at either end.
The impetus which Judah had given to the Central Pacific had started
the western end of the system two years ahead of the eastern, but had
not produced great results at first. It was hard work building east
into the Sierra Nevadas, climbing the gullies, bridging, tunnelling,
filling, inch by inch, to keep the grade down and the curvature out.
Twenty miles a year only were completed in 1863, 1864, and 1865,
thirty in 1866, and forty-six in 1867--one hundred and thirty-six
miles during the first five years of work. Nature had done her best
to impede the progress of the road by thrusting mountains and valleys
across its route. But she had covered the mountains with timber and
filled them with stone, so that materials of construction were easily
accessible along all of the costliest part of the line. Bridges and
trestles could be built anywhere with local material. The labor problem
vexed the Central Pacific managers at the start. It was a scanty
and inefficient supply of workmen that existed in California when
construction began. Like all new countries, California possessed more
work than workmen. Economic independence was to be had almost for the
asking. Free land and fertile soil made it unnecessary for men to work
for hire. The slight results of the first five years were due as much
to lack of labor as to refractory roadway or political opposition. But
by 1865 the employment of Chinese laborers began. Coolies imported
by the thousand and ably directed by Charles Crocker, who was the
most active constructor, brought a new rapidity into construction. "I
used to go up and down that road in my car like a mad bull," Crocker
dictated to Bancroft's stenographer, "stopping along wherever there
was anything amiss, and raising Old Nick with the boys that were not
up to time." With roadbed once graded new troubles began. California
could manufacture no iron. Rolling stock and rails had to be imported
from Europe or the East, and came to San Francisco after the costly sea
voyage, _via_ Panama or the Horn. But the men directing the Central
Pacific--Stanford, Crocker, Huntington, and the rest--rose to the
difficulties, and once they had passed the mountains, fairly romped
across the Nevada desert in the race for subsidies.
The eastern end started nearer to a base of supplies than did the
California terminus, yet until 1867 no railroad from the East reached
Council Bluffs, where the President had determined that the Union
Pacific should begin. There had been railway connection to the Missouri
River at St. Joseph since 1859, and various lines were hurrying across
Iowa in the sixties, but for more than two years of construction the
Union Pacific had to get rolling stock and iron from the Missouri
steamers or the laborious prairie schooners. Until its railway
connection was established its difficulty in this respect was only less
great than that of the Central Pacific. The compensation of the Union
Pacific came, however, in its roadbed. Following the old Platte trail,
flat and smooth as the best highways, its construction gangs could
do the light grading as rapidly as the finished single track could
deliver the rails at its growing end. But for the needful culverts and
trestles there was little material at hand. The willows and Cottonwood
lining the river would not do. The Central Pacific could cut its wood
as it needed it, often within sight of its track. The Union Pacific had
to haul much of its wood and stone, like its iron, from its eastern
terminus.
The labor problem of the Union Pacific was intimately connected with
the solution of its Indian problem. The Central Pacific had almost no
trouble with the decadent tribes through whom it ran, but the Union
Pacific was built during the very years when the great plains were
most disturbed and hostile forays were most frequent. Its employees
contained large elements of the newly arrived Irish and of the recently
discharged veterans of the Civil War. General Dodge, who was its chief
engineer, has described not only the military guards who "stacked their
arms on the dump and were ready at a moment's warning to fall in and
fight," but the military capacity of the construction gangs themselves.
The "track train could arm a thousand men at a word," and from chief
constructor down to chief spiker "could be commanded by experienced
officers of every rank, from general to a captain. They had served five
years at the front, and over half of the men had shouldered a musket
in many battles. An illustration of this came to me after our track had
passed Plum Creek, 200 miles west of the Missouri River. The Indians
had captured a freight train and were in possession of it and its
crews." Dodge came to the rescue in his car, "a travelling arsenal,"
with twenty-odd men, most of whom were strangers to him; yet "when I
called upon them to fall in, to go forward and retake the train, every
man on the train went into line, and by his position showed that he was
a soldier.... I gave the order to deploy as skirmishers, and at the
command they went forward as steadily and in as good order as we had
seen the old soldiers climb the face of Kenesaw under fire."
By an act passed in July, 1866, Congress did much to accelerate the
construction of the road. Heretofore the junction point had been in the
Nevada Desert, a hundred and fifty miles east of the California line.
It was now provided that each road might build until it met the other.
Since the mountain section, with the highest accompanying subsidies,
was at hand, each of the companies was spurred on by its desire to get
as much land and as many bonds as possible. The race which began in the
autumn of 1866 ended only with the completion of the track in 1869. A
mile a day had seemed like quick work at the start; seven or eight a
day were laid before the end.
The English traveller, Bell, who published his _New Tracks in North
America_ in 1869, found somewhere an enthusiastic quotation admirably
descriptive of the process. "Track-laying on the Union Pacific is a
science," it read, "and we pundits of the Far East stood upon that
embankment, only about a thousand miles this side of sunset, and backed
westward before that hurrying corps of sturdy operatives with mingled
feelings of amusement, curiosity, and profound respect. On they came.
A light car, drawn by a single horse, gallops up to the front with its
load of rails. Two men seize the end of a rail and start forward, the
rest of the gang taking hold by twos until it is clear of the car. They
come forward at a run. At the word of command, the rail is dropped in
its place, right side up, with care, while the same process goes on at
the other side of the car. Less than thirty seconds to a rail for each
gang, and so four rails go down to the minute! Quick work, you say, but
the fellows on the U. P. are tremendously in earnest. The moment the
car is empty it is tipped over on the side of the track to let the next
loaded car pass it, and then it is tipped back again; and it is a sight
to see it go flying back for another load, propelled by a horse at full
gallop at the end of 60 or 80 feet of rope, ridden by a young Jehu,
who drives furiously. Close behind the first gang come the gaugers,
spikers, and bolters, and a lively time they make of it. It is a grand
Anvil Chorus that these sturdy sledges are playing across the plains.
It is in a triple time, three strokes to a spike. There are ten spikes
to a rail, four hundred rails to a mile, eighteen hundred miles to San
Francisco. That's the sum, what is the quotient? Twenty-one million
times are those sledges to be swung--twenty-one million times are they
to come down with their sharp punctuation, before the great work of
modern America is complete!"
Handling, housing, and feeding the thousands of laborers who built
the road was no mean problem. Ten years earlier the builders of the
Illinois Central had complained because their road from Galena and
Chicago to Cairo ran generally through an uninhabited country upon
which they could not live as they went along. Much more the continental
railways, building rapidly away from the settlements, were forced to
carry their dwellings with them. Their commissariat was as important as
their general offices.
An acquaintance of Bell told of standing where Cheyenne now is and
seeing a long freight train arrive "laden with frame houses, boards,
furniture, palings, old tents, and all the rubbish" of a mushroom city.
"The guard jumped off his van, and seeing some friends on the platform,
called out with a flourish, 'Gentlemen, here's Julesburg.'" The head of
the serpentine track, sometimes indeed "crookeder than the horn that
was blown around the walls of Jericho," was the terminal town; its
tongue was the stretch of track thrust a few miles in advance of the
head; repeatedly as the tongue darted out the head followed, leaving
across the plains a series of scars, marking the spots where it had
rested for a time. Every few weeks the town was packed upon a freight
train and moved fifty or sixty miles to the new end of the track. Its
vagrant population followed it. It was at Julesburg early in 1867; at
Cheyenne in the end of the year; at Laramie City the following spring.
Always it was the most disreputably picturesque spot on the anatomy of
the railroad.
In the fall of 1868 "Hell on Wheels," as Samuel Bowles, editor of
the _Springfield Republican_, appropriately designated the terminal
town, was at Benton, Wyoming, six hundred and ninety-eight miles from
Omaha and near the military reservation at Fort Steele. In the very
midst of the gray desert, with sand ankle-deep in its streets, the
town stood dusty white--"a new arrival with black clothes looked like
nothing so much as a cockroach struggling through a flour barrel."
A less promising location could hardly have been found, yet within
two weeks there had sprung up a city of three thousand people with
ordinances and government suited to its size, and facilities for vice
ample for all. The needs of the road accounted for it: to the east the
road was operating for passengers and freight; to the west it was yet
constructing track. Here was the end of rail travel and the beginning
of the stage routes to the coast and the mines. Two years earlier the
similar point had been at Fort Kearney, Nebraska.
The city of tents and shacks contained, according to the count of John
H. Beadle, a peripatetic journalist, twenty-three saloons and five
dance houses. It had all the worst details of the mining camp. Gambling
and rowdyism were the order of day and night. Its great institution
was the "'Big Tent,' sometimes, with equal truth but less politeness,
called the 'Gamblers' Tent.'" This resort was a hundred feet long by
forty wide, well floored, and given over to drinking, dancing, and
gambling. The sumptuous bar provided refreshment much desired in a dry
alkali country; all the games known to the professional gambler were in
full blast; women, often fair and well-dressed, were there to gather in
what the bartender and faro-dealer missed. Whence came these people,
and how they learned their trade, was a mystery to Bowles. "Hell would
appear to have been raked to furnish them," he said, "and to it they
must have naturally returned after graduating here, fitted for its
highest seats and most diabolical service."
Behind the terminal town real estate disappointments, like beads,
were strung along the cord of rails. In advance of the construction
gangs land companies would commonly survey town sites in preparation
for a boom. Brisk speculation in corner lots was a form of gambling
in which real money was often lost and honest hopes were regularly
shattered. Each town had its advocates who believed it was to be the
great emporium of the West. Yet generally, as the railroad moved on,
the town relapsed into a condition of deserted prairie, with only the
street lines and débris to remind it of its past. Omaha, though Beadle
thought in 1868 that no other "place in America had been so well lied
about," and Council Bluffs retained a share of greatness because of
their strategic position at the commencement of the main line. Tied
together in 1872 by the great iron bridge of the Union Pacific, their
relations were as harmonious as those of the cats of Kilkenny, as they
quarrelled over the claims of each to be the real terminus. But the
future of both was assured when the eastern roads began to run in to
get connections with the West. Cheyenne, too, remained a city of some
consequence because the Denver Pacific branched off at this point
to serve the Pike's Peak region. But the names of most of the other
one-time terminal towns were writ in sand.
The progress of construction of the road after 1866 was rapid enough.
At the end of 1865, though the Central Pacific had started two years
before the Union Pacific, it had completed only sixty miles of track,
to the latter's forty. During 1866 the Central Pacific built thirty
laborious miles over the mountains, and in 1867, forty-six miles, while
in the same two years the Union Pacific built five hundred. In 1868,
the western road, now past its worst troubles, added more than 360 to
its mileage; the Union Pacific, unchecked by the continental divide,
making a new record of 425. By May 10, 1869, the line was done, 1776
miles from Omaha to Sacramento. For the last sixteen months of the
continental race the two roads together had built more than two and a
half miles for every working day. Never before had construction been
systematized so highly or the rewards for speed been so great.
Whether regarded as an economic achievement or a national work, the
building of the road deserved the attention it received; yet it was
scarcely finished before the scandal-monger was at work. Beadle had
written a chapter full of "floridly complimentary notices" of the
men who had made possible the feat, but before he went to press
their reputations were blasted, and he thought it safest "to mention
no names." "Never praise a man," he declared in disgust, "or name
your children after him, till he is dead." Before the end of Grant's
first administration the _Crédit Mobilier_ scandal proved that men,
high in the national government, had speculated in the project whose
success depended on their votes. That many of them had been guilty of
indiscretion, was perfectly clear, but they had done only what many of
their greatest predecessors had done. Their real fault was made more
prominent by their misfortune in being caught by an aroused national
conscience which suddenly awoke to heed a call that it had ever
disregarded in the past.
The junction point for the Union Pacific and Central Pacific had been
variously fixed by the acts of 1862 and 1864. In 1866 it was left open
to fortune or enterprise, and had not Congress intervened in 1869 it
might never have existed. In their rush for the land grants the two
rivals hurried on their surveys to the vicinity of Great Salt Lake,
where their advancing ends began to overlap, and continued parallel
for scores of miles. Congress, noticing their indisposition to agree
upon a junction, intervened in the spring of 1869, ordering the two to
bring their race to an end at Promontory Point, a few miles northwest
of Ogden on the shore of the lake. Here in May, 1869, the junction was
celebrated in due form.
Since the "Seneca Chief" carried DeWitt Clinton from Buffalo to the
Atlantic in 1825, it has been the custom to make the completion of
a new road an occasion for formal celebration. On the 10th of May,
1869, the whole United States stood still to signalize the junction
of the tracks. The date had been agreed upon by the railways on short
notice, and small parties of their officials, Governor Stanford for the
Central Pacific and President Dillon for the Union Pacific, had come
to the scene of activities. The latter wrote up the "Driving the Last
Spike" for one of the magazines twenty years later, telling how General
Dodge worked all night of the 9th, laying his final section, and how
at noon on the appointed day the last two rails were spiked to a tie
of California laurel. The immediate audience was small, including few
beyond the railway officials, but within hearing of the telegraphic
taps that told of the last blows of the sledge-hammer was much of the
United States. President Dillon told the story as it was given in the
leading paragraph of the _Nation_ of the Thursday after. "So far as
we have seen them," wrote Godkin's censor of American morals, "the
speeches, prayers, and congratulatory telegrams ... all broke down
under the weight of the occasion, and it is a relief to turn from them
to the telegrams which passed between the various operators, and to
get their flavor of business and the West. 'Keep quiet,' the Omaha man
says, when the operators all over the Union begin to pester him with
questions. 'When the last spike is driven at Promontory Point, we will
say "Done."' By-and-by he sends the word, 'Hats off! Prayer is being
offered.' Then at the end of thirteen minutes he says, apparently with
a sense of having at last come to business: 'We have got done praying.
The spike is about to be presented.' ... Before sunset the event was
celebrated, not very noisily but very heartily, throughout the country.
Chicago made a procession seven miles long; New York hung out bunting,
fired a hundred guns, and held thanksgiving services in Trinity;
Philadelphia rang the old Liberty Bell; Buffalo sang the 'Star-spangled
Banner'; and many towns burnt powder in honor of the consummation of
a work which, as all good Americans believe, gives us a road to the
Indies, a means of making the United States a halfway house between
the East and West, and last, but not least, a new guarantee of the
perpetuity of the Union as it is."
No single event in the struggle for the last frontier had a greater
significance for the immediate audience, or for posterity, than this
act of completion. Bret Harte, poet of the occasion, asked the question
that all were framing:--
"What was it the Engines said,
Pilots touching, head to head
Facing on the single track,
Half a world behind each back?"
But he was able to answer only a part of it. His western engine
retorted to the eastern:--
"'You brag of the East! _You_ do?
Why, _I_ bring the East to _you_!
All the Orient, all Cathay,
Find through me the shortest way;
And the sun you follow here
Rises in my hemisphere.
Really,--if one must be rude,--
Length, my friend, ain't longitude.'"
The oriental trade of Whitney and Benton yet dazzled the eyes of the
men who built the road, blinding them to the prosaic millions lying
beneath their feet. The East and West were indeed united; but, more
important, the intervening frontier was ceasing to divide. When the
road was undertaken, men thought naturally of the East and the Pacific
Coast, unhappily separated by the waste of the mountains and the desert
and the Indian Country. The mining flurries of the early sixties raised
a hope that this intervening land might not all be waste. As the
railway had advanced, settlement had marched with it, the two treading
upon the heels of the Peace Commissioners sent out to lure away the
Indians. With the opening of the road the new period of national
assimilation of the continent had begun. In fifteen years more, as
other roads followed, there had ceased to be any unbridgeable gap
between the East and West, and the frontier had disappeared.
CHAPTER XX
THE NEW INDIAN POLICY
Through the negotiations of the Peace Commissioners of 1867 and 1868,
and the opening of the Pacific railway in 1869, the Indians of the
plains had been cleanly split into two main groups which had their
centres in the Sioux reserve in southwest Dakota and the old Indian
Territory. The advance of a new wave of population had followed along
the road thus opened, pushing settlements into central Nebraska and
Kansas. Through the latter state the Union Pacific, Eastern Division,
better known as the Kansas Pacific, had been thrust west to Denver,
where it arrived before 1870 was over. With this advance of civilized
life upon the plains it became clear that the old Indian policy
was gone for good, and that the idea of a permanent country, where
the tribes, free from white contact, could continue their nomadic
existence, had broken down. The old Indian policy had been based upon
the permanence of this condition, but with the white advance troops
for police had been added, while the loud bickerings between the
military authorities, thus superimposed, and the Indian Office, which
regarded itself as the rightful custodian of the problem, proved
to be the overture to a new policy. Said Grant, in his first annual
message in 1869: "No matter what ought to be the relations between
such [civilized] settlements and the aborigines, the fact is they do
not harmonize well, and one or the other has to give way in the end.
A situation which looks to the extinction of a race is too horrible
for a nation to adopt without entailing upon itself the wrath of all
Christendom and engendering in the citizen a disregard for human life
and the rights of others, dangerous to society. I see no substitute for
such a system, except in placing all the Indians on large reservations,
as rapidly as it can be done, and giving them absolute protection
there."
The vexed question of civilian or military control had reached the
bitterest stage of its discussion when Grant became President. For five
years there had been general wars in which both departments seemed
to be badly involved and for which responsibility was hard to place.
There were many things to be said in favor of either method of control.
Beginning with the establishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in
1832, the office had been run by the War Department for seventeen
years. In this period the idea of a permanent Indian Country had been
carried out; the frontier had been established in an unbroken line of
reserves from Texas to Green Bay; and the migration across the plains
had begun. But with the creation of the Interior Department in 1849
the Indian Bureau had been transferred to civilian hands. As yet the
Indian war was so exceptional that it was easy to see the arguments in
favor of a peace policy. It was desired, and honestly too, though the
results make this conviction hard to hold, to treat the Indian well,
to keep the peace, and to elevate the savages as rapidly as they would
permit it. However the government failed in practice and in controlling
the men of the frontier, there is no doubt about the sincerity of its
general intent. Had there been no Oregon and no California, no mines
and no railways, and no mixture of slavery and politics, the hope might
not have failed of realization. Even as it was, the civilian bureau
had little trouble with its charges for nearly fifteen years after
its organization. In general the military power was called upon when
disorder passed beyond the control of the agent; short of that time the
agent remained in authority.
As a means of introducing civilization among the tribes the agents
were more effective than army officers could be. They were, indeed,
underpaid, appointed for political reasons, and often too weak to
resist the allurements of immorality or dishonesty; but they were
civilians. Their ideals were those of industry and peace. Their terms
of service were often too short for them to learn the business, but
they were not subject to the rapid shifting and transfer which made up
a large part of army life. Army officers were better picked and trained
than the agents, but their ambitions were military, and they were
frequently unable to understand why breaches of formal discipline were
not always matters of importance.
The strong arguments in favor of military control were founded largely
on the permanency of tenure in the army. Political appointments were
fewer, the average of personal character and devotion was higher. Army
administration had fewer scandals than had that of the Indian Bureau.
The partisan on either side in the sixties was prone to believe that
his favorite branch of the service was honest and wise, while the
other was inefficient, foolish, and corrupt. He failed to see that
in the earliest phase of the policy, when there was no friction, and
consequently little fighting, the problem was essentially civilian;
that in the next period, when constant friction was provoking wars,
it had become military; and that finally, when emigration and
transportation had changed friction into overwhelming pressure, the
wars would again cease. A large share of the disputes were due to
the misunderstandings as to whether, in particular cases, the tribes
should be under the bureau or the army. On the whole, even when the
tribes were hostile, army control tended to increase the cost of
management and the chance of injustice. There never was a time when
a few thousand Indian police, with the ideals of police rather than
those of soldiers, could not have done better than the army did. But
the student, attacking the problem from afar, is as unable to solve it
fully and justly as were its immediate custodians. He can at most steer
in between the badly biassed "Century of Dishonor" of Mrs. Jackson,
and the outrageous cry of the radical army and the frontier, that the
Indian must go.
The demand of the army for the control of the Indians was never
gratified. Around 1870 its friends were insistent that since the army
had to bear the knocks of the Indian policy,--knocks, they claimed,
generally due to mistakes of the bureau,--it ought to have the whole
responsibility and the whole credit. The inertia which attaches to
federal reforms held this one back, while the Indian problem itself
changed in the seventies so as to make it unnecessary. Once the great
wars of the sixties were done the tribes subsided into general peace.
Their vigorous resistance was confined to the years when the last great
wave of the white advance was surging over them. Then, confined to
their reservations, they resumed the march to civilization.
From the commencement of his term, Grant was willing to aid in at once
reducing the abuses of the Indian Bureau and maintaining a peace policy
on the plains. The Peace Commission of 1867 had done good work, which
would have been more effective had coöperation between the army and the
bureau been possible. Congress now, in April, 1869, voted two millions
to be used in maintaining peace on the plains, "among and with the
several tribes ... to promote civilization among said Indians, bring
them, where practicable, upon reservations, relieve their necessities,
and encourage their efforts at self-support." The President was
authorized at the same time to erect a board of not more than ten men,
"eminent for their intelligence and philanthropy," who should, with the
Secretary of the Interior, and without salary, exercise joint control
over the expenditures of this or any money voted for the use of the
Indian Department.
The Board of Indian Commissioners was designed to give greater wisdom
to the administration of the Indian policy and to minimize peculation
in the bureau. It represented, in substance, a triumph of the peace
party over the army. "The gentlemen who wrote the reports of the
Commissioners revelled in riotous imaginations and discarded facts,"
sneered a friend of military control; but there was, more or less, a
distinct improvement in the management of the reservation tribes after
1869; although, as the exposures of the Indian ring showed, corruption
was by no means stopped. One way in which the Commissioners and Grant
sought to elevate the tone of agency control was through the religious,
charitable, and missionary societies. These organizations, many of
which had long maintained missionary schools among the more civilized
tribes, were invited to nominate agents, teachers, and physicians
for appointment by the bureau. On the whole these appointments were
an improvement over the men whom political influence had heretofore
brought to power. Fifteen years later the Commissioner and the board
were again complaining of the character of the agents; but there was an
increasing standard of criticism.
In its annual reports made to the Secretary of the Interior in 1869,
and since, the board gave much credit to the new peace policy. In
1869 it looked forward with confidence "to success in the effort to
civilize the nomadic tribes." In 1871 it described "the remarkable
spectacle seen this fall, on the plains of western Nebraska and
Kansas and eastern Colorado, of the warlike tribes of the Sioux of
Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, hunting peacefully for buffalo without
occasioning any serious alarm among the thousands of white settlers
whose cabins skirt the borders of both sides of these plains." In 1872,
"the advance of some of the tribes in civilization and Christianity
has been rapid, the temper and inclination of all of them has greatly
improved.... They show a more positive intention to comply with their
own obligations, and to accept the advice of those in authority over
them, and are in many cases disproving the assertion, that adult
Indians cannot be induced to work." In 1906, in its _38th Annual
Report_, there was still most marked improvement, "and for the last
thirty years the legislation of Congress concerning Indians, their
education, their allotment and settlement on lands of their own, their
admission to citizenship, and the protection of their rights makes,
upon the whole, a chapter of political history of which Americans may
justly be proud."
The board of Indian Commissioners believed that most of the obvious
improvement in the Indian condition was due to the substitution of
a peace policy for a policy of something else. It made a mistake in
assuming that there had ever been a policy of war. So far as the United
States government had been concerned the aim had always been peace
and humanity, and only when over-eager citizens had pushed into the
Indian Country to stir up trouble had a war policy been administered.
Even then it was distinctly temporary. The events of the sixties
had involved such continuous friction and necessitated such severe
repression that contemporaries might be pardoned for thinking that war
was the policy rather than the cure. But the resistance of the tribes
would generally have ceased by 1870, even without the new peace policy.
Every mile of western railway lessened the Indians' capacity for
resistance by increasing the government's ability to repress it. The
Union Pacific, Northern Pacific, Atlantic and Pacific, Texas Pacific,
and Southern Pacific, to say nothing of a multitude of private roads
like the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, the Denver and Rio Grande,
the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé, and the Missouri, Kansas, and
Texas, were the real forces which brought peace upon the plains. Yet
the board was right in that its influence in bringing closer harmony
between public opinion and the Indian Bureau, and in improving the
tone of the bureau, had made the transformation of the savage into the
citizen farmer more rapid.
Two years after the erection of the Board of Indian Commissioners
Congress took another long step towards a better condition by
ordering that no more treaties with the Indian tribes should be made
by President and Senate. For more than two years before 1871 no
treaty had been made and ratified, and now the policy was definitely
changed. For ninety years the Indians had been treated as independent
nations. Three hundred and seventy treaties had been concluded with
various tribes, the United States only once repudiating any of them.
In 1863, after the Sioux revolt, it abrogated all treaties with the
tribes in insurrection; but with this exception, it had not applied
to Indian relations the rule of international law that war terminates
all existing treaties. The relation implied by the treaty had been
anomalous. The tribes were at once independent and dependent. No
foreign nation could treat with them; hence they were not free. No
state could treat with them, and the Indian could not sue in United
States courts; hence they were not Americans. The Supreme Court in the
Cherokee cases had tried to define their unique status, but without
great success. It was unfortunate for the Indians that the United
States took their tribal existence seriously. The agreements had always
a greater sanctity in appearance than in fact. Indians honestly unable
to comprehend the meaning of the agreement, and often denying that they
were in any wise bound by it, were held to fulfilment by the power
of the United States. The United States often believed that treaty
violation represented deliberate hostility of the tribes, when it
signified only the unintelligence of the savage and his inclination to
follow the laws of his own existence. Attempts to enforce treaties thus
violated led constantly to wars whose justification the Indian could
not see.
The act of March 3, 1871, prohibited the making of any Indian treaty in
the future. Hereafter when agreements became necessary, they were to be
made, much as they had been in the past, but Congress was the ratifying
power and not the Senate. The fiction of an independence which had held
the Indians to a standard which they could not understand was here
abandoned; and quite as much to the point, perhaps, the predominance of
the Senate in Indian affairs was superseded by control by Congress as a
whole. In no other branch of internal administration would the Senate
have been permitted to make binding agreements, but here the fiction
had given it a dominance ever since the organization of the government.
In the thirty-five years following the abandonment of the Indian
treaties the problems of management changed with the ascending
civilization of the national wards. General Francis A. Walker, Indian
Commissioner in 1872, had seen the dawn of the "the day of deliverance
from the fear of Indian hostilities," while his successors in office
saw his prophecy fulfilled. Five years later Carl Schurz, as Secretary
of the Interior, gave his voice and his aid to the improvement of
management and the drafting of a positive policy. His application
of the merit system to Indian appointments, which was a startling
innovation in national politics, worked a great change after the petty
thievery which had flourished in the presidency of General Grant.
Grant had indeed desired to do well, and conditions had appreciably
bettered, yet his guileless trust had enabled practical politicians to
continue their peculations in instances which ranged from humble agents
up to the Cabinet itself. Schurz not only corrected much of this,
but the first report of his Commissioner, E. A. Hayt, outlined the
preliminaries to a well-founded civilization. Besides the continuance
of concentration and education there were four policies which stood
out in this report--economy in the administration of rations, that
the Indians might not be pauperized; a special code of law for the
Indian reserves; a well-organized Indian police to enforce the laws;
and a division of reserve lands into farms which should be assigned to
individual Indians in severalty. The administration of Secretary Schurz
gave substance to all these policies.
The progress of Indian education and civilization began to be a
real thing during Hayes's presidency. Most of the wars were over,
permanency in residence could be relied on to a considerable degree,
the Indians could better be counted, tabulated, and handled. In
1880, the last year of Schurz in the Interior Department, the Indian
Office reported an Indian population of 256,127 for the United
States, excluding Alaska. Of these, 138,642 were described as wearing
citizen's dress, while 46,330 were able to read. Among them had been
erected both boarding and day schools, 72 of the former and 321 of the
latter. "Reports from the reservations" were "full of encouragement,
showing an increased and more regular attendance of pupils and a
growing interest in education on the part of parents." Interest in
the problem of Indian education had been aroused in the East as well
as among the tribes during the preceding year or two, because of the
experiment with which the name of R. H. Pratt was closely connected.
The non-resident boarding school, where the children could be taken
away from the tribe and educated among whites, had become a factor in
Carlisle, Hampton, and Forest Grove. Lieutenant Pratt had opened the
first of these with 147 students in November, 1879. His design had been
to give to the boys and girls the rudiments of education and training
in farming and mechanic arts. His experience had already, in 1880,
shown this to be entirely practicable. The boys, uniformed and drilled
as soldiers, under their own sergeants and corporals, marched to the
music of their own band. Both sexes had exhibited at the Cumberland
County Agricultural Fair, where prizes were awarded to many of them for
quilts, shirts, pantaloons, bread, harness, tinware, and penmanship.
Many of the students had increased their knowledge of white customs by
going out in the summers to work in the fields or kitchens of farmers
in the East. Here, too, they had shown the capacity for education and
development which their bitterest frontier enemies had denied. In 1906
there were twenty-five of these schools with more than 9000 students in
attendance.
It was one thing, however, to take the brighter Indian children away
from home and teach them the ways of white men, and quite another
to persuade the main tribe to support itself by regular labor. The
ration system was a pauperizing influence that removed the incentive
to work. Trained mechanics, coming home from Carlisle, or Hampton, or
Haskell, found no work ready for them, no customers for their trade,
and no occupation but to sit around with their relatives and wait for
rations. Too much can be made of the success of Indian education, but
the progress was real, if not rapid or great. The Montana Crows, for
instance, were, in 1904, encouraged into agricultural rivalry by a
county fair. Their congenital love for gambling was converted into
competition over pumpkins and live stock. In 1906 they had not been
drawing rations for nearly two years. While their settling down was
but a single incident in tribal education and not a general reform,
it indicated at least a change in emphasis in Indian conditions since
the warlike sixties. The brilliant green placard which announced their
county fair for 1906 bears witness to this:--
"CROWS, WAKE UP!
"Your Big Fair Will Take Place Early in October.
"Begin Planting for it Now.
"Plant a Good Garden.
"Put in Wheat and Oats.
Get Your Horses, Cattle, Pigs, and Chickens in Shape to Bring to
the Fair.
Cash Prizes and Badges will be awarded to Indians Making Best
Exhibits.
"Get Busy. Tell Your Neighbor to Go Home and Get Busy, too.
"_Committee._"
A great practical obstruction in the road of economic independence
for the Indians was the absence of a legal system governing their
relations, and more particularly securing to them individual ownership
of land. Treated as independent nations by the United States, no
attempt had been made to pass civil or even criminal laws for them,
while the tribal organizations had been too primitive to do much of
this on their own account. Individual attempts at progress were often
checked by the fact that crime went unpunished in the Indian Country.
An Indian police, embracing 815 officers and men, had existed in 1880,
but the law respecting trespassers on Indian lands was inadequate, and
Congress was slow in providing codes and courts for the reservations.
The Secretary of the Interior erected agency courts on his own
authority in 1883; Congress extended certain laws over the tribes in
1885; and a little later provided salaries for the officials of the
agency courts.
An act passed in 1887 for the ownership of lands in severalty by
Indians marked a great step towards solidifying Indian civilization.
There had been no greater obstacle to this civilization than communal
ownership of land. The tribal standard was one of hunting, with
agriculture as an incidental and rather degrading feature. Few of
the tribes had any recognition of individual ownership. The educated
Indian and the savage alike were forced into economic stagnation by the
system. Education could accomplish little in face of it. The changes of
the seventies brought a growing recognition of the evil and repeated
requests that Congress begin the breaking down of the tribal system
through the substitution of Indian ownership.
In isolated cases and by special treaty provisions a few of the Indians
had been permitted to acquire lands and be blended in the body of
American citizens. But no general statute existed until the passage
of the Dawes bill in February, 1887. In this year the Commissioner
estimated that there were 243,299 Indians in the United States,
occupying a total of 213,117 square miles of land, nearly a section
apiece. By the Dawes bill the President was given authority to divide
the reserves among the Indians located on them, distributing the
lands on the basis of a quarter section or 160 acres to each head
of a family, an eighth section to single adults and orphans, and a
sixteenth to each dependent child. It was provided also that when the
allotments had been made, tribal ownership should cease, and the title
to each farm should rest in the individual Indian or his heirs. But to
forestall the improvident sale of this land the owner was to be denied
the power to mortgage or dispose of it for at least twenty-five years.
The United States was to hold it in trust for him for this time.
Besides allowing the Indian to own his farm and thus take his
step toward economic independence, the Dawes bill admitted him to
citizenship. Once the lands had been allotted, the owners came within
the full jurisdiction of the states or territories where they lived,
and became amenable to and protected by the law as citizens of the
United States.
The policy which had been recommended since the time of Schurz became
the accepted policy of the United States in 1887. "I fail to comprehend
the full import of the allotment act if it was not the purpose of the
Congress which passed it and the Executive whose signature made it
a law ultimately to dissolve all tribal relations and to place each
adult Indian on the broad platform of American citizenship," wrote
the Commissioner in 1887. For the next twenty years the reports of
the office were filled with details of subdivision of reserves and
the adjustment of the legal problems arising from the process. And in
the twenty-first year the old Indian Country ceased to exist as such,
coming into the Union as the state of Oklahoma.
The progress of allotment under the Dawes bill steadily broke down the
reserves of the so-called Indian Territory. Except the five civilized
tribes, Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles, the
inhabitants who had been colonized there since the Civil War wanted to
take advantage of the act. The civilized tribes preferred a different
and more independent system for themselves, and retained their tribal
identity until 1906. In the transition it was found that granting
citizenship to the Indian in a way increased his danger by opening him
to the attack of the liquor dealer and depriving him of some of the
special protection of the Indian Office. To meet this danger, as the
period of tribal extinction drew near, the Burke act of 1906 modified
and continued the provisions of the Dawes bill. The new statute
postponed citizenship until the expiration of the twenty-five-year
period of trust, while giving complete jurisdiction over the allottee
to the United States in the interim. In special cases the Secretary of
the Interior was allowed to release from the period of guardianship
and trusteeship individual Indians who were competent to manage their
own affairs, but for the generality the period of twenty-five years
was considered "not too long a time for most Indians to serve their
apprenticeship in civic responsibilities."
Already the opening up to legal white settlement had begun. In the
Dawes bill it was provided that after the lands had been allotted in
severalty the undivided surplus might be bought by the United States
and turned into the public domain for entry and settlement. Following
this, large areas were purchased in 1888 and 1889, to be settled in
1890. The territory of Oklahoma, created in this year in the western
end of Indian Territory, and "No Man's Land," north of Texas, marked
the political beginning of the end of Indian Territory. It took nearly
twenty years to complete it, through delays in the process of allotment
and sale; but in these two decades the work was done thoroughly, the
five civilized tribes divided their own lands and abandoned tribal
government, and in November, 1908, the state of Oklahoma was admitted
by President Roosevelt.
The Indian relations, which were most belligerent in the sixties, had
changed completely in the ensuing forty years. In part the change was
due to a greater and more definite desire at Washington for peace, but
chiefly it was environmental, due to the progress of settlement and
transportation which overwhelmed the tribes, destroying their capacity
to resist and embedding them firmly in the white population. Oklahoma
marked the total abandonment of Monroe's policy of an Indian Country.
CHAPTER XXI
THE LAST STAND OF CHIEF JOSEPH AND SITTING BULL
The main defence of the last frontier by the Indians ceased with the
termination of the Indian wars of the sixties. Here the resistance had
most closely resembled a general war with the tribes in close alliance
against the invader. With this obstacle overcome, the work left to
be done in the conquest of the continent fell into two main classes:
terminating Indian resistance by the suppression of sporadic outbreaks
in remote byways and letting in the population. The new course of the
Indian problem after 1869 led it speedily away from the part it had
played in frontier advance until it became merely one of many social or
race problems in the United States. It lost its special place as the
great illustration of the difficulties of frontier life. But although
the new course tended toward chronic peace, there were frequent
relapses, here and there, which produced a series of Indian flurries
after 1869. Never again do these episodes resemble, however remotely, a
general Indian war.
Human nature did not change with the adoption of the so-called peace
policy. The government had constantly to be on guard against the
dishonest agent, while improved facilities in communication increased
the squatters' ability to intrude upon valuable lands. The Sioux treaty
of 1868, whereby the United States abandoned the Powder River route and
erected the great reserve in Dakota, west of the Missouri River, was
scarcely dry before rumors of the discovery of gold in the Black Hills
turned the eyes of prospectors thither.
Early in 1870 citizens of Cheyenne and the territory of Wyoming
organized a mining and prospecting company that professed an intention
to explore the Big Horn country in northern Wyoming, but was believed
by the Sioux to contemplate a visit to the Black Hills within their
reserve. The local Sioux agent remonstrated against this, and General
C. C. Augur was sent to Cheyenne to confer with the leaders of the
expedition. He found Wyoming in a state of irritation against the
Sioux treaty, which left the Indians in control of their Powder River
country--the best third of the territory. He sympathized with the
frontiersmen, but finally was forced by orders from Washington to
prevent the expedition from starting into the field. Four years later
this deferred reconnoissance took place as an official expedition under
General Custer, with "great excitement among the whole Sioux." The
approach from the northeast of the Northern Pacific, which had reached
a landing at Bismarck on the Missouri before the panic of 1873, still
further increased the apprehension of the tribes that they were to be
dispossessed. The Indian Commissioner, in the end of 1874, believed
that no harm would come of the expedition since no great gold finds
had been made, but the Montana historian was nearer the truth when
he wrote: "The whole Sioux nation was successfully defied." It was a
clear violation of the tribal right, and necessarily emboldened the
frontiersmen to prospect on their own account.
[Illustration: POSITION OF RENO ON THE LITTLE BIG HORN
From a photograph made by Mr. W. R. Bowlin, of Chicago, and reproduced
by his permission]
Still further to disquiet the Sioux, and to give countenance to the
disgruntled warrior bands that resented the treaties already made, came
the mismanagement of the Red Cloud agency. Professor O. C. Marsh, of
Yale College, was stopped by Red Cloud, while on a geological visit to
the Black Hills, in November, 1874, and was refused admission to the
Indian lands until he agreed to convey to Washington samples of decayed
flour and inferior rations which the Indian agent was issuing to the
Oglala Sioux. With some time at his disposal, Professor Marsh proceeded
to study the new problem thus brought to his notice, and accumulated
a mass of evidence which seemed to him to prove the existence of big
plots to defraud the government, and mismanagement extending even to
the Secretary of the Interior. He published his charges in pamphlet
form, and wrote letters of protest to the President, in which he
maintained that the Indian officials were trying harder to suppress
his evidence than to correct the grievances of the Sioux. He managed
to stir up so much interest in the East that the Board of Indian
Commissioners finally appointed a committee to investigate the affairs
of the Red Cloud agency. The report of the committee in October, 1875,
whitewashed many of the individuals attacked by Professor Marsh, and
exonerated others of guilt at the expense of their intelligence,
but revealed abuses in the Indian Office which might fully justify
uneasiness among the Sioux.
To these tribes, already discontented because of their compression
and sullen because of mismanagement, the entry of miners into the
Black Hills country was the last straw. Probably a thousand miners
were there prospecting in the summer of 1875, creating disturbances
and exaggerating in the Indian mind the value of the reserve, so that
an attempt by the Indian Bureau to negotiate a cession in the autumn
came to nothing. The natural tendency of these forces was to drive the
younger braves off the reserve, to seek comfort with the non-treaty
bands that roamed at will and were scornful of those that lived in
peace. Most important of the leaders of these bands was Sitting Bull.
In December the Indian Commissioner, despite the Sioux privilege to
pursue the chase, ordered all the Sioux to return to their reserves
before February 1, 1876, under penalty of being considered hostile. As
yet the mutterings had not broken out in war, and the evidence does not
show that conflict was inevitable. The tribes could not have got back
on time had they wanted to; but their failure to return led the Indian
Office to turn the Sioux over to the War Department. The army began by
destroying a friendly village on the 17th of March, a fact attested not
by an enemy of the army, but by General H. H. Sibley, of Minnesota, who
himself had fought the Sioux with marked success in 1862.
With war now actually begun, three columns were sent into the field to
arrest and restrain the hostile Sioux. Of the three commanders, Cook,
Gibbon, and Custer, the last-named was the most romantic of fighters.
He was already well known for his Cheyenne campaigns and his frontier
book. Sherman had described him in 1867 as "young, _very_ brave, even
to rashness, a good trait for a cavalry officer," and as "ready and
willing now to fight the Indians." La Barge, who had carried some
of Custer's regiment on his steamer _De Smet_, in 1873, saw him as
"an officer ... clad in buckskin trousers from the seams of which a
large fringe was fluttering, red-topped boots, broad sombrero, large
gauntlets, flowing hair, and mounted on a spirited animal." His showy
vanity and his admitted courage had already got him into more than one
difficulty; now on June 25, 1876, his whole column of five companies,
excepting only his battle horse, Comanche, and a half-breed scout, was
destroyed in a battle on the Little Big Horn. If Custer had lived,
he might perhaps have been cleared of the charge of disobedience, as
Fetterman might ten years before, but, as it turned out, there were
many to lay his death to his own rashness. The war ended before 1876
was over, though Sitting Bull with a small band escaped to Canada,
where he worried the Dominion Government for several years. "I know of
no instance in history," wrote Bishop Whipple of Minnesota, "where a
great nation has so shamelessly violated its solemn oath." The Sioux
were crushed, their Black Hills were ceded, and the disappointed tribes
settled down to another decade of quiescence.
In 1877 the interest which had made Sitting Bull a hero in the
Centennial year was transferred to Chief Joseph, leader of the
non-treaty Nez Percés, in the valley of the Snake. This tribe had been
a friendly neighbor of the overland migrations since the expedition
of Lewis and Clark. Living in the valleys of the Snake and its
tributaries, it could easily have hindered the course of travel along
the Oregon trail, but the disposition of its chiefs was always good.
In 1855 it had begun to treat with the United States and had ceded
considerable territory at the conference held by Governor Stevens with
Chief Lawyer and Chief Joseph.
The exigencies of the Civil War, failure of Congress to fulfil treaty
stipulations, and the discovery of gold along the Snake served to
change the character of the Nez Percés. Lawyer's annuity of five
hundred dollars, as Principal Chief, was at best not royal, and when
its vouchers had to be cashed in greenbacks at from forty-five to
fifty cents on the dollar, he complained of hardship. It was difficult
to persuade the savage that a depreciated greenback was as good as
money. Congress was slow with the annuities promised in 1855. In 1861,
only one Indian in six could have a blanket, while the 4393 yards of
calico issued allowed under two yards to each Indian. The Commissioner
commented mildly upon this, to the effect that "Giving a blanket to one
Indian works no satisfaction to the other five, who receive none." The
gold boom, with the resulting rise of Lewiston, in the heart of the
reserve, brought in so many lawless miners that the treaty of 1855 was
soon out of date.
In 1863 a new treaty was held with Chief Lawyer and fifty other
headmen, by which certain valleys were surrendered and the bounds of
the Lapwai reserve agreed upon. Most of the Nez Percés accepted this,
but Chief Joseph refused to sign and gathered about him a band of
unreconciled, non-treaty braves who continued to hunt at will over the
Wallowa Valley, which Lawyer and his followers had professed to cede.
It was an interesting legal point as to the right of a non-treaty chief
to claim to own lands ceded by the rest of his tribe. But Joseph,
though discontented, was not dangerous, and there was little friction
until settlers began to penetrate into his hunting-grounds. In 1873,
President Grant created a Wallowa reserve for Joseph's Nez Percés,
since they claimed this chiefly as their home. But when they showed no
disposition to confine themselves to its limits, he revoked the order
in 1875. The next year a commission, headed by the Secretary of the
Interior, Zachary Chandler, was sent to persuade Joseph to settle down,
but returned without success. Joseph stood upon his right to continue
to occupy at pleasure the lands which had always belonged to the Nez
Percés, and which he and his followers had never ceded. The commission
recommended the segregation of the medicine-men and dreamers,
especially Smohalla, who seemed to provide the inspiration for Joseph,
and the military occupation of the Wallowa Valley in anticipation of an
outbreak by the tribe against the incoming white settlers. These things
were done in part, but in the spring of 1877, "it becoming evident to
Agent Monteith that all negotiations for the peaceful removal of Joseph
and his band, with other non-treaty Nez Percé Indians, to the Lapwai
Indian reservation in Idaho must fail of a satisfactory adjustment,"
the Indian Office gave it up, and turned the affair over to General O.
O. Howard and the War Department.
The conferences held by Howard with the leaders, in May, made it clear
to them that their alternatives were to emigrate to Lapwai or to fight.
At first Howard thought they would yield. Looking Glass and White
Bird picked out a site on the Clearwater to which the tribe agreed to
remove at once; but just before the day fixed for the removal, the
murder of one of the Indians near Mt. Idaho led to revenge directed
against the whites and the massacre of several. War immediately
followed, for the next two months covering the borderland of Idaho
and Montana with confusion. A whole volume by General Howard has been
devoted to its details. Chief Joseph himself discussed it in the
_North American Review_ in 1879. Dunn has treated it critically in
his _Massacres of the Mountains_, and the Montana Historical Society
has published many articles concerning it. Considerably less is known
of the more important wars which preceded it than of this struggle of
the Nez Percés. In August the fighting turned to flight, Chief Joseph
abandoning the Salmon River country and crossing into the Yellowstone
Valley. In seventy-five days Howard chased him 1321 miles, across the
Yellowstone Park toward the Big Horn country and the Sioux reserve.
Along the swift flight there were running battles from time to time,
while the fugitives replenished their stores and stock from the country
through which they passed. Behind them Howard pressed; in their front
Colonel Nelson A. Miles was ordered to head them off. Miles caught
their trail in the end of September after they had crossed the Missouri
River and had headed for the refuge in Canada which Sitting Bull had
found. On October 3, 1877, he surprised the Nez Percé camp on Snake
Creek, capturing six hundred head of stock and inflicting upon Joseph's
band the heaviest blow of the war. Two days later the stubborn chief
surrendered to Colonel Miles.
"What shall be done with them?" Commissioner Hayt asked at the end of
1877. For once an Indian band had conducted a war on white principles,
obeying the rules of war and refraining from mutilation and torture.
Joseph had by his sheer military skill won the admiration and respect
of his military opponents. But the murders which had inaugurated the
war prevented a return of the tribe to Idaho. To exile they were sent,
and Joseph's uprising ended as all such resistances must. The forcible
invasion of the territory by the whites was maintained; the tribe was
sent in punishment to malarial lands in Indian Territory, where they
rapidly dwindled in number. There has been no adequate defence of the
policy of the United States from first to last.
The Modoc of northern California, and the Apache of Arizona and New
Mexico fought against the inevitable, as did the Sioux and the Nez
Percés. The former broke out in resistance in the winter of 1872-1873,
after they had long been proscribed by California opinion. In March of
1873 they made their fate sure by the treacherous murder of General E.
R. S. Canby and other peace commissioners sent to confer with them.
In the war which resulted the Modoc, under Modoc Jack and Scar-Faced
Charley, were pursued from cave to ravine among the lava beds of the
Modoc country until regular soldiers finally corralled them all. Jack
was hanged for murder at Fort Klamath in October, but Charley lived to
settle down and reform with a portion of the tribe in Indian Territory.
The Apache had always been a thorn in the flesh of the trifling
population of Arizona and New Mexico, and a nuisance to both army and
Indian Office. The Navaho, their neighbors, after a hard decade with
Carleton and the Bosque Redondo, had quieted down during the seventies
and advanced towards economic independence. But the Apache were long
in learning the virtues of non-resistance. Bell had found in Arizona
a young girl whose adventures as a fifteen-year-old child served to
explain the attitude of the whites. She had been carried off by Indians
who, when pressed by pursuers, had stripped her naked, knocked her
senseless with a tomahawk, pierced her arms with three arrows and a leg
with one, and then rolled her down a ravine, there to abandon her. The
child had come to, and without food, clothes, or water, had found her
way home over thirty miles of mountain paths. Such episodes necessarily
inspired the white population with fear and hatred, while the continued
residence of the sufferers in the Indians' vicinity illustrates the
persistence of the pressure which was sure to overwhelm the tribes in
the end. Tucson had retaliated against such excesses of the red men
by equal excesses of the whites. Without any immediate provocation,
fourscore Arivapa Apache, who had been concentrated under military
supervision at Camp Grant, were massacred in cold blood.
General George Crook alone was able to bring order into the Arizona
frontier. From 1871 to 1875 he was there in command,--"the beau-ideal
Indian fighter," Dunn calls him. For two years he engaged in constant
campaigns against the "incorrigibly hostile," but before 1873 was over
he had most of his Apache pacified, checked off, and under police
supervision. He enrolled them and gave to each a brass identification
check, so that it might be easier for his police to watch them. The
tribes were passed back to the Indian Office in 1874, and Crook
was transferred to another command in 1875. Immediately the Indian
Commissioner commenced to concentrate the scattered tribes, but was
hindered by hostilities among the Indians themselves quite as bitter as
their hatred for the whites. First Victorio, and then Geronimo was the
centre of the resistance to the concentration which placed hereditary
enemies side by side. They protested against the sites assigned them,
and successfully defied the Commissioner to carry out his orders. Crook
was brought back to the department in 1882, and after another long war
gradually established peace.
Sitting Bull, who had fled to Canada in 1876, returned to Dakota in the
early eighties in time to witness the rapid settlement of the northern
plains and the growth of the territories towards statehood. After his
revolt the Black Hills had been taken away from the tribe, as had
been the vague hunting rights over northern Wyoming. Now as statehood
advanced in the later eighties, and as population piled up around the
edges of the reserve, the time was ripe for the medicine-men to preach
the coming of a Messiah, and for Sitting Bull to increase his personal
following. Bad crops which in these years produced populism in Kansas
and Nebraska, had even greater menace for the half-civilized Indians.
Agents and army officers became aware of the undercurrent of danger
some months before trouble broke out.
The state of South Dakota was admitted in November, 1889. Just a year
later the Bureau turned the Sioux country over to the army, and General
Nelson A. Miles proceeded to restore peace, especially in the vicinity
of the Rosebud and Pine Ridge agencies. The arrest of Sitting Bull,
who claimed miraculous powers for himself, and whose "ghost shirts"
were supposed to give invulnerability to his followers, was attempted
in December. The troops sent out were resisted, however, and in the
mêlée the prophet was killed. The war which followed was much noticed,
but of little consequence. General Miles had plenty of troops and
Hotchkiss guns. Heliograph stations conveyed news easily and safely.
But when orders were issued two weeks after the death of Sitting Bull
to disarm the camp at Wounded Knee, the savages resisted. The troops
within reach, far outnumbered, blazed away with their rapid-fire guns,
regardless of age or sex, with such effect that more than two hundred
Indian bodies, mostly women and children, were found dead upon the
field.
With the death of Sitting Bull, turbulence among the Indians,
important enough to be called resistance, came to an end. There had
been many other isolated cases of outbreak since the adoption of the
peace policy in 1869. There were petty riots and individual murders
long after 1890. But there were, and could be, no more Indian wars.
Many of the tribes had been educated to half-civilization, while lands
in severalty had changed the point of view of many tribesmen. The
relative strength of the two races was overwhelmingly in favor of the
whites.
CHAPTER XXII
LETTING IN THE POPULATION[3]
[3] This chapter follows, in part, F. L. Paxson, "The Pacific
Railroads and the Disappearance of the Frontier in
America," in Ann. Rep. of the Am. Hist. Assn., 1907, Vol.
I, pp. 105-118.
"Veil them, cover them, wall them round--
Blossom, and creeper, and weed--
Let us forget the sight and the sound,
The smell and the touch of the breed!"
Thus Kipling wrote of "Letting in the Jungle," upon the Indian village.
The forces of nature were turned loose upon it. The gentle deer nibbled
at the growing crops, the elephant trampled them down, and the wild
pig rooted them up. The mud walls of the thatched huts dissolved in
the torrents, and "by the end of the Rains there was roaring Jungle
in full blast on the spot that had been under plough not six months
before." The white man worked the opposite of this on what remained of
the American desert in the last fifteen years of the history of the old
frontier. In a decade and a half a greater change came over it than the
previous fifty years had seen, and before 1890, it is fair to say that
the frontier was no more.
The American frontier, the irregular, imaginary line separating the
farm lands and the unused West, had become nearly a circle before
the compromise of 1850. In the form of a wedge with receding flanks
it had come down the Ohio and up the Missouri in the last generation.
The flanks had widened out in the thirties as Arkansas, and Missouri,
and Iowa had received their population. In the next ten years Texas
and the Pacific settlements had carried the line further west until
the circular shape of the frontier was clearly apparent by the middle
of the century. And thus it stood, with changes only in detail, for a
generation more. In whatever sense the word "frontier" is used, the
fact is the same. If it be taken as the dividing line, as the area
enclosed, or as the domain of the trapper and the rancher, the frontier
of 1880 was in most of its aspects the frontier of 1850.
The pressure on the frontier line had increased steadily during these
thirty years. Population moved easily and rapidly after the Civil War.
The agricultural states abutting on the line had grown in size and
wealth, with a recognition of the barrier that became clearer as more
citizens settled along it. East and south, it was close to the rainfall
line which divides easy farming country from the semi-arid plains;
west, it was a mountain range. In either case the country enclosed was
too refractory to yield to the piecemeal process which had conquered
the wilderness along other frontiers, while its check to expansion
and hindrance to communication became of increasing consequence as
population grew.
Yet the barrier held. By 1850 the agricultural frontier was pressing
against it. By 1860 the railway frontier had reached it. The former
could not cross it because of the slight temptation to agriculture
offered by the lands beyond; the latter was restrained by the
prohibitive cost of building railways through an entirely unsettled
district. Private initiative had done all it could in reclaiming the
continent; the one remaining task called for direct national aid.
The influences operating upon this frontier of the Far West, though
not making it less of a barrier, made it better known than any of the
earlier frontiers. In the first place, the trails crossed it, with the
result that its geography became well known throughout the country.
No other frontier had been the site of a thoroughfare for many years
before its actual settlement. Again, the mining discoveries of the
later fifties and sixties increased general knowledge of the West, and
scattered groups of inhabitants here and there, without populating it
in any sense. Finally the Indian friction produced the series of Indian
wars which again called the wild West to the centre of the stage for
many years.
All of these forces served to advertise the existence of this frontier
and its barrier character. They had coöperated to enlarge the railway
movement, as it respected the Pacific roads, until the Union Pacific
was authorized to meet the new demand; and while the Union Pacific
was under construction, other roads to meet the same demands were
chartered and promoted. These roads bridged and then dispelled the
final barrier.
Congress provided the legal equipment for the annihilation of the
entire frontier between 1862 and 1871. The charter acts of the Northern
Pacific, the Atlantic and Pacific, the Texas Pacific, and the Southern
Pacific at once opened the way for some five new continental lines and
closed the period of direct federal aid to railway construction. The
Northern Pacific received its charter on the same day that the Union
Pacific was given its double subsidy in 1864. It was authorized to
join the waters of Lake Superior and Puget Sound, and was to receive a
land grant of twenty sections per mile in the states and forty in the
territories through which it should run. In the summer of 1866 a third
continental route was provided for in the South along the line of the
thirty-fifth parallel survey. This, the Atlantic and Pacific, was to
build from Springfield, Missouri, by way of Albuquerque, New Mexico,
to the Pacific, and to connect, near the eastern line of California,
with the Southern Pacific, of California. It likewise was promised
twenty sections of land in the states and forty in the territories.
The Texas Pacific was chartered March 3, 1871, as the last of the land
grant railways. It received the usual grant, which was applicable only
west of Texas; within that state, between Texarkana and El Paso, it
could receive no federal aid since in Texas there were no public lands.
Its charter called for construction to San Diego, but the Southern
Pacific, building across Arizona and New Mexico, headed it off at El
Paso, and it got no farther.
To these deliberate acts in aid of the Pacific railways, Congress
added others in the form of local or state grants in the same years,
so that by 1871 all that the companies could ask for the future was
lenient interpretation of their contracts. For the first time the
federal government had taken an active initiative in providing for
the destruction of a frontier. Its resolution, in 1871, to treat no
longer with the Indian tribes as independent nations is evidence of a
realization of the approaching frontier change.
The new Pacific railways began to build just as the Union Pacific was
completed and opened to traffic. In the cases of all, the development
was slow, since the investing public had little confidence in the
existence of a business large enough to maintain four systems,
or in the fertility of the semi-arid desert. The first period of
construction of all these roads terminated in 1873, when panic brought
transportation projects to an end, and forbade revival for a period of
five years.
Jay Cooke, whose Philadelphia house had done much to establish public
credit during the war and had created a market of small buyers
for investment securities on the strength of United States bonds,
popularized the Northern Pacific in 1869 and 1870. Within two years he
is said to have raised thirty millions for the construction of the
road, making its building a financial possibility. And although he
may have distorted the isotherm several degrees in order to picture
his farm lands as semi-tropical in their luxuriance, as General
Hazen charged, he established Duluth and Tacoma, gave St. Paul her
opportunity, and had run the main line of track through Fargo, on the
Red, to Bismarck, on the Missouri, more than three hundred and fifty
miles from Lake Superior, before his failure in 1873 brought expansion
to an end.
For the Northwest, the construction of the Northern Pacific was of
fundamental importance. The railway frontier of 1869 left Minnesota,
Dakota, and much of Wisconsin beyond its reach. The potential grain
fields of the Red River region were virgin forest, and on the main
line of the new road, for two thousand miles, hardly a trace of
settled habitation existed. The panic of 1873 caught the Union
Pacific at Bismarck, with nearly three hundred miles of unprofitable
track extending in advance of the railroad frontier. The Atlantic
and Pacific and Texas Pacific were less seriously overbuilt, but not
less effectively checked. The former, starting from Springfield,
had constructed across southwestern Missouri to Vinita, in Indian
Territory, where it arrived in the fall of 1871. It had meanwhile
acquired some of the old Missouri state-aided roads, so as to get track
into St. Louis. The panic forced it to default, Vinita remained its
terminus for several years, and when it emerged from the receiver's
hands, it bore the new name of St. Louis and San Francisco.
The Texas Pacific represented a consolidation of local lines which
expected, through federal incorporation, to reach the dignity of a
continental railroad. It began its construction towards El Paso from
Shreveport, Louisiana, and Texarkana, on the state line, and reached
the vicinity of Dallas and Fort Worth before the panic. It planned to
get into St. Louis over the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern, and
into New Orleans over the New Orleans Pacific. The borderland of Texas,
Arkansas, and Missouri became through these lines a centre of railway
development, while in the near-by grazing country the meat-packing
industries shortly found their sources of supply.
The panic which the failure of Jay Cooke precipitated in 1873 could
scarcely have been deferred for many years. The waste of the Civil War
period, and the enthusiasm for economic development which followed it,
invited the retribution that usually follows continued and widespread
inflation. Already the completion of a national railway system was
foreshadowed. Heretofore the western demand had been for railways at
any cost, but the Granger activities following the panic gave warning
of an approaching period when this should be changed into a demand for
regulation of railroads. But as yet the frontier remained substantially
intact, and until its railway system should be completed the Granger
demand could not be translated into an effective movement for federal
control. It was not until 1879 that the United States recovered from
the depression following the crisis. In that year resumption marked the
readjustment of national currency, reconstruction was over, and the
railways entered upon the last five years of the culminating period in
the history of the frontier. When the five years were over, five new
continental routes were available for transportation.
The Texas and Pacific had hardly started its progress across Texas when
checked by the panic in the vicinity of Fort Worth. When it revived,
it pushed its track towards Sierra Blanca and El Paso, aided by a land
grant from the state. Beyond Texas it never built. Corporations of
California, Arizona, and New Mexico, all bearing the name of Southern
Pacific, constructed the line across the Colorado River and along the
Gila, through lands acquired by the Gadsden Purchase of 1853. Trains
were running over its tracks to St. Louis by January, 1882, and to
New Orleans by the following October. In the course of this Southern
Pacific construction, connection had been made with the Atchison,
Topeka, and Santa Fé at Deming, New Mexico, in March, 1881, but
through lack of harmony between the roads their junction was of little
consequence.
[Illustration: THE PACIFIC RAILROADS, 1884
This map shows only the main lines of the continental railroads
in 1884, and omits the branch lines and local roads which existed
everywhere and were specially thick in the Mississippi and lower
Missouri valleys.]
The owners of the Southern Pacific opened an additional line through
southern Texas in the beginning of 1883. Around the Galveston,
Harrisburg, and San Antonio, of Texas, they had grouped other lines
and begun double construction from San Antonio west, and from El Paso,
or more accurately Sierra Blanca, east. Between El Paso and Sierra
Blanca, a distance of about ninety miles, this new line and the Texas
and Pacific used the same track. In later years the line through San
Antonio and Houston became the main line of the Southern Pacific.
A third connection of the Southern Pacific across Texas was operated
before the end of 1883 over its Mojave extension in California and the
Atlantic and Pacific from the Needles to Albuquerque. The old Atlantic
and Pacific had built to Vinita, gone into receivership, and come out
as St. Louis and San Francisco. But its land grant had remained unused,
while the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé had reached Albuquerque and
had exhausted its own land grant, received through the state of Kansas
and ceasing at the Colorado line. Entering Colorado, the latter had
passed by Las Animas and thrown a branch along the old Santa Fé trail
to Santa Fé and Albuquerque. Here it came to an agreement with the
St. Louis and San Francisco, by which the two roads were to build
jointly under the Atlantic and Pacific franchise, from Albuquerque
into California. They built rapidly; but the Southern Pacific, not
relishing a rival in its state, had made use of its charter privilege
to meet the new road on the eastern boundary of California. Hence its
Mojave branch was waiting at the Needles when the Atlantic and Pacific
arrived there; and the latter built no farther. Upon the completion of
bridges over the Colorado and Rio Grande this third eastern connection
of the Southern Pacific was completed so that Pullman cars were running
through into St. Louis on October 21, 1883.
The names of Billings and Villard are most closely connected with the
renascence of the Northern Pacific. The panic had stopped this line at
the Missouri River, although it had built a few miles in Washington
territory, around its new terminal city of Tacoma. The illumination of
crisis times had served to discredit the route as effectively as Jay
Cooke had served to boom it with advertisements in his palmy days. The
existence of various land grant railways in Washington and Oregon made
the revival difficult to finance since its various rivals could offer
competition by both water and rail along the Columbia River, below
Walla Walla. Under the presidency of Frederick Billings construction
revived about 1879, from Mandan, opposite Bismarck on the Missouri,
and from Wallula, at the junction of the Columbia and Snake. From
these points lines were pushed over the Pend d'Oreille and Missouri
divisions towards the continental divide. Below Wallula, the Columbia
Valley traffic was shared by agreement with the Oregon Railway and
Navigation Company, which, under the presidency of Henry Villard, owned
the steamship and railway lines of Oregon. As the time for opening the
through lines approached, the question of Columbia River competition
increased in serious aspect. Villard solved the problem through the
agency of his famous blind pool, which still stands remarkable in
railway finance. With the proceeds of the pool he organized the Oregon
and Transcontinental as a holding company, and purchased a controlling
interest in the rival roads. With harmony of plan thus insured, he
assumed the presidency of the Northern Pacific in 1881, in time to
complete and celebrate the opening of its main line in 1883. His
celebration was elaborate, yet the _Nation_ remarked that the "mere
achievement of laying a continuous rail across the continent has long
since been taken out of the realm of marvels, and the country can
never feel again the thrill which the joining of the Central and Union
Pacific lines gave it."
The land grant railways completed these four eastern connections across
the frontier in the period of culmination. Private capital added a
fifth in the new route through Denver and Ogden, controlled by the
Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy and the Denver and Rio Grande. The
Burlington, built along the old Republican River trail to Denver, had
competed with the Union Pacific for the traffic of that point since
June, 1882. West of Denver the narrow gauge of the Denver and Rio
Grande had been advancing since 1870.
General William J. Palmer and a group of Philadelphia capitalists had,
in 1870, secured a Colorado charter for their Denver and Rio Grande.
Started in 1871, it had reached the new settlement at Colorado Springs
that autumn, and had continued south in later years. Like other roads
it had progressed slowly in the panic years. In 1876 it had been met at
Pueblo by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé. From Pueblo it contested
successfully with this rival for the grand cañon of the Arkansas,
and built up that valley through the Gunnison country and across the
old Ute reserve, to Grand Junction. From the Utah line it had been
continued to Ogden by an allied corporation. A through service to
Ogden, inaugurated in the summer of 1883, brought competition to the
Union Pacific throughout its whole extent.
The continental frontier, whose isolation the Union Pacific had
threatened in 1869, was easily accessible by 1884. Along six different
lines between New Orleans and St. Paul it had been made possible to
cross the sometime American desert to the Pacific states. No longer
could any portion of the republic be considered as beyond the reach
of civilization. Instead of a waste that forbade national unity in
its presence, a thousand plains stations beckoned for colonists, and
through lines of railway iron bound the nation into an economic and
political unit. "As the railroads overtook the successive lines of
isolated frontier posts, and settlements spread out over country no
longer requiring military protection," wrote General P. H. Sheridan in
1882, "the army vacated its temporary shelters and marched on into
remote regions beyond, there to repeat and continue its pioneer work.
In rear of the advancing line of troops the primitive 'dug-outs' and
cabins of the frontiersmen, were steadily replaced by the tasteful
houses, thrifty farms, neat villages, and busy towns of a people who
knew how best to employ the vast resources of the great West. The
civilization from the Atlantic is now reaching out toward that rapidly
approaching it from the direction of the Pacific, the long intervening
strip of territory, extending from the British possessions to Old
Mexico, yearly growing narrower; finally the dividing lines will
entirely disappear and the mingling settlements absorb the remnants
of the once powerful Indian nations who, fifteen years ago, vainly
attempted to forbid the destined progress of the age." The deluge of
population realized by Sheridan, and let in by the railways, had, by
1890, blotted the uninhabited frontier off the map. Local spots yet
remained unpeopled, but the census of 1890 revealed no clear division
between the unsettled West and the rest of the United States.
New states in plains and mountains marked the abolition of the last
frontier as they had the earlier. In less than ten years the gap
between Minnesota and Oregon was filled in: North Dakota and South
Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Washington. In 1890, for the
first time, a solid band of states connected the Atlantic and Pacific.
Farther south, the Indian Country succumbed to the new pressure. The
Dawes bill released a fertile acreage to be distributed to the land
hungry who had banked up around the borders of Kansas, Arkansas, and
Texas. Oklahoma, as a territory, appeared in 1890, while in eighteen
more years, swallowing up the whole Indian Country, it had taken its
place as a member of the Union. Between the northern tier of states
and Oklahoma, the middle West had grown as well. Kansas, Nebraska, and
Colorado, the last creating eleven new counties in its eastern third
in 1889, had seen their population densify under the stimulus of easy
transportation. Much of the settlement had been premature, inviting
failure, as populism later showed, but it left no area in the United
States unreclaimed, inaccessible, and large enough to be regarded as a
national frontier. The last frontier, the same that Long had described
as the American Desert in 1820, had been won.
NOTE ON THE SOURCES
The fundamental ideas upon which all recent careful work in western
history has been based were first stated by Frederick J. Turner, in
his paper on _The Significance of the Frontier in American History_,
in the _Annual Report of the Am. Hist. Assn._, 1893. No comprehensive
history of the trans-Mississippi West has yet appeared; Randall
Parrish, _The Great Plains_ (2d ed., Chicago, 1907), is at best only a
brief and superficial sketch; the histories of the several far western
states by Hubert Howe Bancroft remain the most useful collection of
secondary materials upon the subject. R. G. Thwaites, _Rocky Mountain
Exploration_ (N.Y., 1904); O. P. Austin, _Steps in the Expansion of
our Territory_ (N.Y., 1903); H. Gannett, _Boundaries of the United
States and of the Several States and Territories_ (_Bulletin of the
U.S. Geological Survey_, No. 226, 1904); and _Organic Acts for the
Territories of the United States with Notes thereon_ (56th Cong., 1st
sess., Sen. Doc. 148), are also of use.
The local history of the West must yet be collected from many varieties
of sources. The state historical societies have been active for many
years, their more important collections comprising: _Publications of
the Arkansas Hist. Assn._, _Annals of Iowa_, _Iowa Hist. Record_, _Iowa
Journal of Hist. and Politics_, _Collections of the Minnesota Hist.
Soc._, _Trans. of the Kansas State Hist. Soc._, _Trans. and Rep. of
the Nebraska Hist. Soc._, _Proceedings of the Missouri Hist. Soc._,
_Contrib. to the Hist. Soc. of Montana_, _Quart. of the Oregon Hist.
Soc._, _Quart. of the Texas State Hist. Assn._, _Collections of the
Wisconsin State Hist. Soc._ The scattered but valuable fragments to be
found in these files are to be supplemented by the narratives contained
in the histories of the single states or sections, the more important
of these being: T. H. Hittell, _California_; F. Hall, _Colorado_; J.
C. Smiley, _Denver_ (an unusually accurate and full piece of local
history); W. Upham, _Minnesota in Three Centuries_; G. P. Garrison,
_Texas_; E. H. Meany, _Washington_; J. Schafer, _Hist. of the Pacific
Northwest_; R. G. Thwaites, _Wisconsin_, and the _Works_ of H. H.
Bancroft.
The comprehensive collection of geographic data for the West is
the _Reports of Explorations and Surveys for a Railroad from the
Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean_, made by the War Department and
published by Congress in twelve huge volumes, 1855-. The most important
official predecessors of this survey left the following reports: E.
James, _Account of an Expedition from Pittsburg to the Rocky Mountains,
performed in the Years 1819, 1820, ... under the Command of Maj. S.
H. Long_ (Phila., 1823); J. C. Frémont, _Report of the Exploring
Expeditions to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and
North California in the Years 1843-'44_ (28th Cong., 2d sess., Sen.
Doc. 174); W. H. Emory, _Notes of a Military Reconnoissance from Ft.
Leavenworth ... to San Diego ..._ (30th Cong., 1st sess., Ex. Doc.
41); H. Stansbury, _Exploration and Survey of the Valley of the Great
Salt Lake of Utah ..._ (32d Cong., 1st sess., Sen. Ex. Doc. 3). From
the great number of personal narratives of western trips, those of
James O. Pattie, John B. Wyeth, John K. Townsend, and Joel Palmer may
be selected as typical and useful. All of these, as well as the James
narrative of the Long expedition, are reprinted in the monumental R.
G. Thwaites, _Early Western Travels_, which does not, however, give
any aid for the period after 1850. Later travels of importance are J.
I. Thornton, _Oregon and California in 1848 ..._ (N.Y., 1849); Horace
Greeley, _An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the
Summer of 1859_ (N.Y., 1860); R. F. Burton, _The City of the Saints,
and across the Rocky Mountains to California_ (N.Y., 1862); R. B.
Marcy, _The Prairie Traveller, a Handbook for Overland Expeditions_
(edited by R. F. Burton, London, 1863); F. C. Young, _Across the
Plains in '65_ (Denver, 1905); Samuel Bowles, _Across the Continent_
(Springfield, 1861); Samuel Bowles, _Our New West, Records of Travels
between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean_ (Hartford, 1869);
W. A. Bell, _New Tracks in North America_ (2d ed., London, 1870); J.
H. Beadle, _The Undeveloped West, or Five Years in the Territories_
(Phila., 1873).
The classic account of traffic on the plains is Josiah Gregg, _Commerce
of the Prairies, or the Journal of a Santa Fé Trader_ (many editions,
and reprinted in Thwaites); H. M. Chittenden, _History of Steamboat
Navigation on the Missouri River_ (N.Y., 1903), and _The American Fur
Trade of the Far West_ (N.Y., 1902), are the best modern accounts. A
brilliant sketch is C. F. Lummis, _Pioneer Transportation in America,
Its Curiosities and Romance_ (_McClure's Magazine_, 1905). Other works
of use are Henry Inman, _The Old Santa Fé Trail_ (N.Y., 1898); Henry
Inman and William F. Cody, _The Great Salt Lake Trail_ (N.Y., 1898);
F. A. Root and W. E. Connelley, _The Overland Stage to California_
(Topeka, 1901); F. G. Young, _The Oregon Trail_, in _Oregon Hist. Soc.
Quarterly_, Vol. I; F. Parkman, _The Oregon Trail_.
Railway transportation in the Far West yet awaits its historian.
Some useful antiquarian data are to be found in C. F. Carter, _When
Railroads were New_ (N.Y., 1909), and there are a few histories
of single roads, the most valuable being J. P. Davis, _The Union
Pacific Railway_ (Chicago, 1894), and E. V. Smalley, _History
of the Northern Pacific Railroad_ (N.Y., 1883). L. H. Haney, _A
Congressional History of Railways in the United States to 1850_; J.
B. Sanborn, _Congressional Grants of Lands in Aid of Railways_, and
B. H. Meyer, _The Northern Securities Case_, all in the _Bulletins_
of the University of Wisconsin, contain much information and useful
bibliographies. The local historical societies have published many
brief articles on single lines. There is a bibliography of the
continental railways in F. L. Paxson, _The Pacific Railroads and the
Disappearance of the Frontier in America_, in _Ann. Rep. of the Am.
Hist. Assn._, 1907. Their social and political aspects may be traced in
J. B. Crawford, _The Crédit Mobilier of America_ (Boston, 1880) and E.
W. Martin, _History of the Granger Movement_ (1874). The sources, which
are as yet uncollected, are largely in the government documents and the
files of the economic and railroad periodicals.
For half a century, during which the Indian problem reached and
passed its most difficult places, the United States was negligent
in publishing compilations of Indian laws and treaties. In 1837 the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs published in Washington, _Treaties
between the United States of America and the Several Indian Tribes,
from 1778 to 1837: with a copious Table of Contents_. After this date,
documents and correspondence were to be found only in the intricate
sessional papers and the _Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs_, which accompanied the reports of the Secretary of War,
1832-1849, and those of the Secretary of the Interior after 1849. In
1902 Congress published C. J. Kappler, _Indian Affairs, Laws, and
Treaties_ (57th Cong., 1st sess., Sen. Doc. 452). Few historians have
made serious use of these compilations or reports. Two other government
documents of great value in the history of Indian negotiations are,
Thomas Donaldson, _The Public Domain_ (47th Cong., 2d sess., H. Misc.
Doc. 45, Pt. 4), and C. C. Royce, _Indian Land Cessions in the United
States_ (with many charts, in 18th _Ann. Rep. of the Bureau of Am.
Ethnology_, Pt. 2, 1896-1897). Most special works on the Indians
are partisan, spectacular, or ill informed; occasionally they have
all these qualities. A few of the most accessible are: A. H. Abel,
_History of the Events resulting in Indian Consolidation West of the
Mississippi_ (in _Ann. Rep. of the Am. Hist. Assn._, 1906, an elaborate
and scholarly work); J. P. Dunn, _Massacres of the Mountains, a
History of the Indian Wars of the Far West_ (N.Y., 1886; a relatively
critical work, with some bibliography); R. I. Dodge, _Our Wild Indians
..._ (Hartford, 1883); G. E. Edwards, _The Red Man and the White Man
in North America from its Discovery to the Present Time_ (Boston,
1882; a series of Lowell Institute lectures, by no means so valuable
as the pretentious title would indicate); I. V. D. Heard, _History
of the Sioux War and Massacres of 1862 and 1863_ (N.Y., 1863; a
contemporary and useful narrative); O. O. Howard, _Nez Perce Joseph,
an Account of his Ancestors, his Lands, his Confederates, his Enemies,
his Murders, his War, his Pursuit and Capture_ (Boston, 1881; this
is General Howard's personal vindication); Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson,
_A Century of Dishonor, a Sketch of the United States Government's
Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes_ (N.Y., 1881; highly colored
and partisan); G. W. Manypenny, _Our Indian Wards_ (Cincinnati, 1880;
by a former Indian Commissioner); L. E. Textor, _Official Relations
between the United States and the Sioux Indians_ (Palo Alto, 1896; one
of the few scholarly and dispassionate works on the Indians); F. A.
Walker, _The Indian Question_ (Boston, 1874; three essays by a former
Indian Commissioner); C. T. Brady, _Indian Fights and Fighters_ and
_Northwestern Fights and Fighters_ (N.Y., 1907; two volumes in his
series of _American Fights and Fighters_, prepared for consumers of
popular sensational literature, but containing much valuable detail,
and some critical judgments).
Nearly every incident in the history of Indian relations has been made
the subject of investigations by the War and Interior departments. The
resulting collections of papers are to be found in the congressional
documents, through the indexes. They are too numerous to be listed
here. The searcher should look for reports from the Secretary of
War, the Secretary of the Interior, or the Postmaster-general, for
court-martial proceedings, and for reports of special committees of
Congress. Dunn gives some classified lists in his _Massacres of the
Mountains_.
There is a rapidly increasing mass of individual biography and
reminiscence for the West during this period. Some works of this class
which have been found useful here are: W. M. Meigs, _Thomas Hart
Benton_ (Phila., 1904); C. W. Upham, _Life, Explorations, and Public
Services of John Charles Frémont_ (40th thousand, Boston, 1856); S.
B. Harding, _Life of George B. Smith, Founder of Sedalia, Missouri_
(Sedalia, 1907); P. H. Burnett, _Recollections and Opinions of an Old
Pioneer_ (N.Y., 1880; by one who had followed the Oregon trail and
had later become governor of California); A. Johnson, _S. A. Douglas_
(N.Y., 1908; one of the most significant biographies of recent years);
H. Stevens, _Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens_ (Boston, 1900); R. S.
Thorndike, _The Sherman Letters_ (N.Y., 1894; full of references
to frontier conditions in the sixties); P. H. Sheridan, _Personal
Memoirs_ (London, 1888; with a good map of the Indian war of 1867-1868,
which the later edition has dropped); E. P. Oberholtzer, _Jay Cooke,
Financier of the Civil War_ (Phila., 1907; with details of Northern
Pacific railway finance); H. Villard, _Memoirs_ (Boston, 1904; the life
of an active railway financier); Alexander Majors, _Seventy Years on
the Frontier_ (N.Y., 1893; the reminiscences of one who had belonged
to the great firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell); G. R. Brown,
_Reminiscences of William M. Stewart of Nevada_ (1908).
Miscellaneous works indicating various types of materials which
have been drawn upon are: O. J. Hollister, _The Mines of Colorado_
(Springfield, 1867; a miners' handbook); S. Mowry, _Arizona and Sonora_
(3d ed., 1864; written in the spirit of a mining prospectus); T. B.
H. Stenhouse, _The Rocky Mountain Saints_ (London, 1874; a credible
account from a Mormon missionary who had recanted without bitterness);
W. A. Linn, _The Story of the Mormons_ (N.Y., 1902; the only critical
history of the Mormons, but having a strong Gentile bias); T. J.
Dimsdale, _The Vigilantes of Montana, or Popular Justice in the Rocky
Mountains_ (2d ed., Virginia City, 1882; a good description of the
social order of the mining camp).
INDEX
Acton, Minnesota, Sioux massacre at, 235.
Alder Gulch mines, Idaho, 168.
Anthony, Major Scott J., 259.
Apache Indians, 247, 267, 268, 292, 312;
treaty of 1853 with, 124;
troubles with, in Arizona, 162-163;
last struggles of, against whites, 368-369.
Arapaho Indians, 247, 248, 252, 256 ff., 263, 267, 292;
Medicine Lodge treaty with, 292-293;
issue of arms to, 312-313;
join in war of 1868, 313-318;
Custer's defeat of, 317-318.
Arapahoe, county of, 141.
Arickara Indians, treaties of 1851 with, 123-124.
Arizona, beginnings of, 158 ff.;
erection of territory of, 162.
Arkansas, boundaries of, 28-29;
admission as a state, 40.
Army, question of control of Indian affairs by, 324-344.
Assiniboin Indians, treaties of 1851 with, 123-124.
Atchison, Senator, 129.
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railway, 347, 384.
Atlantic and Pacific Railway, 375, 376, 377;
becomes the St. Louis and San Francisco, 378.
Augur, General C. C., 292, 295, 359.
Auraria settlement, Colorado, 142.
Bannack City, mining centre, 168.
Bannock Indians, 295.
Beadle, John H., on western railways and their builders, 332-333, 335.
Bear Flag Republic, the, 105.
Becknell, William, 56.
Beckwith, Lieut. E. G., Pacific railway survey by, 203-206.
Bell, English traveller, on railway building in the West, 329-331.
Benton, Thomas Hart, 58;
interest of, in railways, 193-194.
Bent's Fort, 65, 66.
Billings, Frederick, 382.
Blackfoot Indians, 264.
Black Hawk, Colorado, village of, 145.
Black Hawk, Indian chief, 17.
Black Hawk War, 21, 25-26, 37.
Black Hills, discovery of gold in, 359;
troubles with Indians resulting from discovery, 361 ff.
Black Kettle, Indian chief, 255-261;
leads war party in 1868, 313;
death of, 317.
Blind pool, Villard's, 383.
Boisé mines, 165.
Boulder, Colorado, 145.
Bowles, Samuel, on railway terminal towns, 332, 333.
Box family outrage, 307.
Bridge across the Mississippi, the first, 210.
Bridger, "Jim," 274.
Brown, John, murder of Kansans by, 134.
Brulé Sioux Indians, 264, 266.
Bull Bear, Indian chief, 309.
Bureau of Indian Affairs, 31, 123, 341 ff.
Burlington, capital of Iowa territory, 45;
description of, in 1840, 47-48.
Burnett, governor of California, 117.
Bushwhacking in Kansas during Civil War, 231.
Butterfield, John, mail and express route of, 177 ff.
Byers, Denver editor, 144;
quoted, 149, 150.
Caddo Indians, 28.
California, early American designs on, 104-105;
becomes American possession, 105;
discovery of gold in, and results, 108-113;
population in 1850, 117;
local railways constructed in, 219;
Central Pacific Railway in, 220, 222.
Camels, experiment with, in Texas, 176.
Camp Grant massacre, 162.
Canals, land grants in aid of, 215, 217.
Canby, E. R. S., 228, 233;
murder of, 367.
Carleton, Colonel J. H., 160, 233.
Carlyle, George H., 250-251.
Carrington, Colonel Henry B., 274-275.
Carson, Kit, 285.
Carson City, 157-158.
Carson County, 157.
Cass, Lewis, 21, 23.
Census of Indians, in 1880, 351.
Central City, Colorado, 145.
Central Overland, California, and Pike's Peak Express, 186.
Central Pacific of California Railway, 220, 222;
description of construction of, 325-335.
Cherokee Indians, 28-29.
Cherokee Neutral Strip, 29.
Cheyenne, founding of, 301;
consequence of, as a railway junction, 334.
Cheyenne Indians, massacre of, at Sand Creek, 260-261;
assigned lands in Indian Territory, 263;
Medicine Lodge treaty with, 292-293;
issue of arms to, 312-313;
begin war against whites in 1868, 313;
Custer's defeat of, 317-318.
Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railway, 383.
Chickasaw Indians, 28-29.
Chief Joseph, leader of Nez Percé Indians, 363-365;
military skill shown by, in retreat of Nez Percés, 366-367.
Chief Lawyer, 363-364.
Chinese labor for railway building, 326-327.
Chippewa Indians, 26-27.
Chittenden, Hiram Martin, 70-71, 93.
Chivington, J. M., 229-230, 257;
massacre of Indians at Sand Creek by, 260-261.
Civil War, the West during the, 225 ff.
Claims associations, 47.
Clark, Governor, 20, 21, 25.
Clemens, S. L., quoted, 186-187.
Cody, William F., 184.
Colley, Major, Indian agent, 255, 258, 262.
Colorado, first settlements in, 142-145;
movement for separate government for, 146 ff.;
Senate bill for erection of territory of, 151, 154;
boundaries of, 154;
admission of, and first governor, 154-155;
during the Civil War, 228-230.
Colorado-Idaho plan, 151.
Comanche Indians, 28, 124, 252, 253, 263, 267, 268, 292.
Comstock lode, the, 157.
Conestoga wagons, 41, 64.
Connor, General Patrick E., 274.
Cooke, Jay, railway promotion and later failure of, 376-377.
Cooper, Colonel, 57.
Council Bluffs, importance of, as a railway terminus, 334.
Council Grove, rendezvous of Santa Fé traders, 59, 63-64.
_Crédit Mobilier_, the, 335.
Creek Indians, 28-29.
Crocker, Charles, 220;
activity of, as a railway builder, 327.
Crook, General George, 368-369.
Crow Indians, treaties of 1851 with, 123-124.
Culbertson, Alexander, 200.
Cumberland Road, 41, 215, 325.
Custer, General, 304, 306, 307 ff., 310, 316, 359;
commands in attack on Cheyenne, 316-318;
romantic character of, and death in Sioux war, 362.
Dakota, erection and growth of territory of, 166-167;
Idaho created from a part of, 167.
Dawes bill of 1887, for division of lands among Indians, 354-355;
effect of, on Indian reserves, 356.
Delaware Indians, settlement of, in the West, 24, 127.
Demoine County created, 42.
Denver, settlement of, 142;
early caucuses and conventions at, 147-149.
Denver and Rio Grande Railway, 383-384.
Desert, tradition of a great American, 11-13;
disappearance of tradition, 119;
Kansas formed out of a portion of, 137;
final conquest by railways of region known as, 384-386.
Digger Indians, 203-204.
Dillon, President, 336.
Dodge, Henry, 35-36, 37-38, 44, 328-329.
Dole, W. P., Indian Commissioner, 239.
Donnelly, Ignatius, 237.
Douglas, Stephen A., 128, 213-214.
Downing, Major Jacob, 252, 260.
Dubuque, lead mines at, 34;
as a mining camp, 42.
Dubuque County created, 42.
Education of Indians, 351-352.
Emigrant Aid Society, 130.
Emory, Lieut.-Col., survey by, 208.
Erie Canal, 10, 21, 24, 38, 325.
Evans, Governor, war against Indians conducted by, 253 ff.;
quoted, 269.
Ewbank Station massacre, 250.
Fairs, agricultural, for Indians, 352-353.
Falls line, 5.
Far West, Mormon headquarters at, 90.
Fetterman, Captain W. J., 274, 277-278, 279;
slaughter of, by Indians, 280-281.
Fiske, Captain James L., 188.
Fitzpatrick, Indian agent, 122-124.
Fort Armstrong, purchase at, of Indian lands, 26.
Fort Benton, 163, 164.
Fort Bridger, 301.
Fort C. F. Smith, 275-277.
Fort Hall, 74.
Fort Kearney, 78.
Fort Laramie, 78, 121;
treaties with Indians signed at, in 1851, 123-124;
conference of Peace Commission with Indians held at (1867), 291.
Fort Larned, conference with Indians at, 308.
Fort Leavenworth, 24, 59.
Fort Philip Kearney, Indian fight at (1866), 274-275;
extermination of Fetterman's party at, 280-282.
Fort Pierre, 267.
Fort Ridgely, Sioux attack on, 235-236.
Fort Snelling, 33-34, 48.
Fort Sully conference, 271-272, 273.
Fort Whipple, 162.
Fort Winnebago, 35.
Fort Wise, treaty with Indians signed at, 249.
Forty-niners, 109-118.
Fox Indians, 21, 25, 26, 127.
Flandrau, Judge Charles E., 236-237.
Franklin, town of, 63.
Freighting on the plains, 174 ff.
Frémont, John C., 58;
explorations of, beyond the Rockies, 73-75, 195;
senator from California, 117.
Fur traders, pioneer western, 70-71.
Galbraith, Thomas J., Indian agent, 238.
Geary, John W., 135.
Georgetown, Colorado, 145.
Geronimo, Indian chief, 369.
Gilpin, William, first governor of Colorado Territory, 155;
quoted, 225;
responsibility assumed by, during the Civil War, 228-229.
Gold, discovery of, in California, 108-113;
in Pike's Peak region, 141-142;
in the Black Hills, 359-361.
Grattan, Lieutenant, 265.
Great American desert. _See_ Desert.
Great Salt Lake. _See_ Salt Lake.
Great Salt Lake Valley Carrying Company, 176.
Greeley, Horace, western adventures of, 145, 179, 182.
Gregg, Josiah, 61-62.
Grosventre Indians, treaties of 1851 with, 123-124.
Guerrilla conflicts during the Civil War, 230-233.
Gunnison, Captain J. W., 204-205.
Hancock, General W. S., 306-311.
Hand-cart incident in Mormon emigration, 100-101.
Harney, General, 266.
Harte, Bret, verses by, 338.
Hayt, E. A., Indian Commissioner, 350.
Hazen, General W. B., 320-321.
Helena, growth of city of, 169.
Highland settlement, Colorado, 142.
Holladay, Ben, 186-190, 284;
losses from Indians by, 250.
Hopkins, Mark, 220.
Howard, General O. O., 365-366.
Hungate family, murder of, by Indians, 253.
Hunkpapa Indians, 264.
Hunter, General, in charge of Department of Kansas during Civil War,
230-231.
Huntington, Collis P., 220.
Idaho, proposed name for Colorado, 151, 154;
establishment of territory of, 166-167.
Idaho Springs, settlement of, 145.
Illinois, opening of, to whites, 21.
Illinois Central Railroad, 210, 216-218.
Independence, town of, 63;
outfitting post of traders, 71;
Mormons at, 89-90.
Indian agents, position of, in regard to Indian affairs, 304-305;
question regarding, as opposed to military control of Indians,
342-343.
Indian Bureau, creation of, 31;
transference from War Department to the Interior, 123;
history of the, 341 ff.
Indian Commissioners, Board of, created in 1869, 345.
Indian Intercourse Act, 31.
Indian Territory, position of Indians in, during the Civil War,
240-241;
breaking up of, following allotment of lands to individual Indians,
357.
Indians, numbers of, in United States, 14;
governmental policy regarding, 16 ff.;
Monroe's policy of removal of, to western lands, 18-19;
treaties of 1825 with, 19-20;
allotment of territory among, on western frontier, 20-30;
troubles with, resulting from Oregon, California, and Mormon
emigrations, 119-123;
fresh treaties with at Upper Platte agency in 1851, 123-124;
further cession of lands in Indian Country by, in 1854, 127;
treatment of, by Arizona settlers, 162-163;
danger to overland mail and express business from, 187-188, 250;
Digger Indians, 203-204;
the Sioux war in Minnesota, 234 ff.;
effect of the Civil War on, 240-242;
causes of restlessness of, during Civil War, 234 ff.;
antagonism of, aroused by advance westward of whites, 244-252;
conditions leading to Sioux war, 264 ff.;
war with plains Sioux (1866), 273-283;
the discussion as to proper treatment of, 284-288;
appointment of Peace Commissioner of 1867 to end Cheyenne and Sioux
troubles, 289-290;
Medicine Lodge treaties concluded with, 292-293;
report and recommendations of Peace Commission, 296-298;
interval of peace with, 302-303;
continued troubles with, and causes, 304 ff.;
war begun by Arapahoes and Cheyenne in 1868, 313;
war of 1868, 313-318;
President Grant appoints board of civilian Indian commissioners,
323, 341 ff.;
railway builders' troubles with, 328-329;
question of civilian or military control of, 342-344;
Board of Commissioners, appointed for (1869), 345;
Congress decides to make no more treaties with, 348;
mistaken policy of treaties, 348-349;
census of, in 1880, 351;
agricultural fairs for, 352-353;
individual ownership of land by, 354-357;
effect of allotment of lands among, on Indian reserves, 356-357;
end of Monroe's policy, 357;
last struggles of the Sioux, Nez Percés, and Apaches, 361-371.
Inkpaduta's massacre, 51.
Inman, Colonel Henry, quoted, 285.
Iowa, Indian lands out of which formed, 26;
territory of, organized, 45.
Iowa Indians, 127.
Jackson, Helen Hunt, work by, 344.
Jefferson, early name of state of Colorado, 147, 149, 151, 153, 155.
Johnston, Albert Sidney, commands army against Mormons, 102;
escapes to the South, on opening of the Civil War, 226-227.
Jones and Russell, firm of, 181.
Judah, Theodore D., 219, 220, 326.
Julesburg, station on overland mail route, 182, 331.
Kanesville, Iowa, founding of, 95.
Kansa Indians, 19, 20, 24.
Kansas, reasons for settlement of, 124-125;
creation of territory of, 129;
the slavery struggle in, 129-131;
squatters on Indian lands in, 131-132;
further contests between abolition and pro-slave parties, 132-136;
admission to the union in 1861, 136;
boundaries of, 138;
during the Civil War, 230-233.
Kansas-Nebraska bill, 128-129.
Kansas Pacific Railway, 340.
Kaskaskia Indians, 30, 127.
Kaw Indians. _See_ Kansa Indians.
Kearny, Stephen W., 65-66, 78.
Kendall, Superintendent of Indian department, quoted, 165.
Keokuk, Indian chief, 25.
Kickapoo Indians, 24, 127.
Kiowa Indians, 252, 253, 263, 267, 268, 292, 306.
Kirtland, Ohio, temporary headquarters of Mormons, 88.
Labor question in railway construction, 326-327.
Lake-to-Gulf railway scheme, 217.
Land, allotment of, to Indians as individuals, 354-357.
Land grants in aid of railways, 215-218, 222, 325, 329, 336, 375.
Land titles, pioneers' difficulties over, 46-47.
Larimer, William, 147, 152.
Last Chance Gulch, Idaho, mining district, 169.
Lawrence, Amos A., 130.
Lawrence, Kansas, settlement of, 130-131;
visit of Missouri mob to, 134;
Quantrill's raid on, 232.
Lead mines about Dubuque, 34-35.
Leavenworth, J. H., Indian agent, 306, 308-309.
Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Company, 181.
Leavenworth constitution, 135-136.
Lecompton constitution, 135-136.
Lewiston, Washington, founding of, 164.
Linn, Senator, 72-73.
Liquor question in Oregon, 81-82.
Little Big Horn, battle of the, 362.
Little Blue Water, defeat of Brulé Sioux at, 266.
Little Crow, Sioux chief, 235-239.
Little Raven, Indian chief, 306.
Long, Major Stephen H., 11.
McClellan, George B., survey for Pacific railway by, 199.
Madison, Wisconsin, development of, 44, 45.
Mails, carriage of, to frontier points, 174 ff.
Manypenny, George W., 126, 266.
Marsh, O. C., bad treatment of Indians revealed by, 360-361.
Marshall, James W., 108-109.
Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, 130.
Medicine Lodge Creek, conference with Indians at, 292-293.
Menominee Indians, 27.
Methodist missionaries to western Indians, 72.
Mexican War, Army of the West in the, 65-66.
Miami Indians, 30, 127.
Michigan, territory and state of, 39-40.
Miles, General Nelson A., as an Indian fighter, 366, 370.
Milwaukee, founding of, 44.
Mines, trails leading to, 169-170.
Miniconjou Indians, 265.
Mining, lead, 34-35, 42;
gold, 108-113, 141-142, 156-157, 359-361;
silver, 157 ff.
Mining camps, description of, 170-173.
Minnesota, organization of, as a territory, 48-49;
Sioux war in, in 1862, 234 ff.
Missionaries, pioneer, 72;
civilization and education of Indians by, 345-346.
Missoula County, Washington Territory, 168.
Missouri Indians, 127.
Modoc Indians, last war of the, 367.
Modoc Jack, 367.
Mojave branch of Southern Pacific Railway, 381-382.
Monroe's policy toward Indians, 18-19;
end of, 357.
Montana, creation of territory of, 169.
Montana settlement, Colorado, 142.
Monteith, Indian Agent, 365.
Mormons, the, 86 ff., 102.
Mowry, Sylvester, 159, 161.
Mullan Road, the, 167, 170.
Murphy, Thomas, Indian superintendent, 312.
Nauvoo, Mormon settlement of, 91-94.
Navaho Indians, 243, 368.
Nebraska, movement for a territory of, 125;
creation of territory of, 129;
boundaries of, 138.
Neutral Line, the, 21.
Nevada, beginnings of, 156-158;
territory of, organized, 158.
New Mexico, the early trade to, 53-69;
boundaries of, in 1854, 139;
during the Civil War, 229-230.
New Ulm, Minnesota, fight with Sioux Indians at, 236-237.
Nez Percé Indians, 164, 363-365;
precipitation of war with, in 1877, 365-366;
defeat and disposal of tribe, 366-367.
Niles, Hezekiah, 60, 79.
Noland, Fent, 42-43.
No Man's Land, 357.
Northern Pacific Railway, 375, 376, 377, 382-383.
Oglala Sioux, 281, 291, 360.
Oklahoma, 357, 386.
Omaha, cause of growth of, 334.
Omaha Indians, 25.
Oregon, fur traders and early pioneers, in, 70-72;
emigration to, in 1844-1847, 75-76;
provisional government organized by settlers in, 79-80;
region included under name, 83-84;
territory of, organized (1848), 85;
population in 1850, 117;
boundaries of, in 1854, 139;
territory of Washington cut from, 163;
railway lines in, 382-383.
Oregon trail, 70-85;
course of the, 78-79;
the Mormons on the, 86 ff.
Osage Indians, 19, 20.
Oto Indians, 127.
Ottawa Indians, 27.
Overland mail, the, 174 ff.
Owyhee mining district, 165.
Paiute Indians, murder of Captain Gunnison by, 205.
Palmer, General William J., 383.
Panic, of 1837, 43-44;
of 1857, 51-52;
of 1873, 377-379.
Parke, Lieut. J. G., survey for Pacific railway by, 207-208.
Peace Commission of 1867, to conclude Cheyenne and Sioux wars,
289-290;
Medicine Lodge treaties concluded by, 292-293;
report of, quoted, 296-298.
Pennsylvania Portage Railway, 325.
Peoria Indians, 30, 127.
Piankashaw Indians, 30, 127.
Pike, Zebulon M., 19, 34, 55.
Pike's Peak, discovery of gold about, 141-142;
the rush to, 142-145;
reaction from boom, 145-146;
origin of Colorado Territory in the Pike's Peak boom, 146-155.
"Pike's Peak Guide," the, 144.
Plum Creek massacre, 250.
Pony express, 158, 182-185.
Pope, Captain John, survey by, 207.
Popular sovereignty, doctrine of, 128.
Poston, Charles D., 159.
Potawatomi Indians, 26-27.
Powder River expedition, 273-274.
Powder River war with Indians, 276-283.
Powell, Major James, 283.
Prairie du Chien, treaty made with Indians at, 20-21;
second treaty of (1830), 25.
Prairie schooners, 64.
Pratt, R. H., education of Indians attempted by, 351.
Price's Missouri expedition, 233.
Quantrill's raid into Kansas, 231-232.
Quapaw Indians, 29.
Railways, early craze for building, 40;
advance of, in the fifties, 51;
first thoughts about a Pacific road, 192 ff.;
surveys for Pacific, 192 ff., 197-203;
bearing of slavery question on transcontinental, 211-214;
Senator Douglas's bill, 213-214;
land grants in aid of, 215-218, 222, 325, 329, 336, 375;
Indian hostilities caused by advance of the, 283;
description of construction of Central Pacific and Union Pacific
roads, 325-335;
scandals connected with building of roads, 335;
description of formal junction of Central Pacific and Union
Pacific, 336-337;
effect of roads in bringing peace upon the plains, 347;
charter acts of the Northern Pacific, Atlantic and Pacific, Texas
Pacific, and Southern Pacific, 375;
slow development of the later Pacific roads, 376;
the five new continental routes and their connections, 379-382;
Northern Pacific, 382-383;
Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, 383;
Denver and Rio Grande, 383-384;
disappearance of frontier through extension of lines of, and
conquest of Great American Desert, 384-386.
Ration system, pauperization of Indians by, 352.
Real estate speculation along western railways, 333-334.
Red Cloud, Indian chief, 274, 281, 283, 291-292, 294, 360.
Reeder, Andrew H., governor of Kansas Territory, 131-133.
_Report on the Condition of the Indian Tribes_, 286-287.
Rhodes, James Ford, cited, 128.
Riggs, Rev. S. R., 239.
Riley, Major, 59-60.
Rio Grande, struggle for the, in Civil War, 228-230.
Robinson, Dr. Charles, 130;
elected governor of Kansas, 133.
_Rocky Mountain News_, the, 144, 150.
Roman Nose, Indian chief, 309.
Ross, John, Cherokee chief, 241.
Russell, William H., 181, 182, 185.
Russell, Majors, and Waddell, firm of, 181.
St. Charles settlement, Colorado, 142;
merged into Denver, 146.
St. Paul, Sioux Indian reserve at, 19;
early fort near site of, 33-34;
first settlement at, 49.
Saline River raid by Indians, 313, 314.
Salt Lake, Frémont's visit to, 74;
settlement of Mormons at, 96;
population of, in 1850, 117-118.
Sand Creek, massacre of Cheyenne Indians at, 260-261.
Sans Arcs Indians, 264.
Santa Fé, trade with, 53-69.
Santa Fé trail, Indians along the, 20;
beginnings of the (1822), 56-58;
course of the, 64-65.
Satanta, Kiowa Indian chief, 306.
Sauk Indians, 21, 25, 26, 127.
Saxton, Lieutenant, 199, 201.
Scandals, railway-building, 335.
Scar-faced Charley, Modoc Indian leader, 367.
Schofield, General John M., 232.
Schools for Indians, 351-352.
Schurz, Carl, policy of, toward Indians, 350.
Seminole Indians, 28-29.
Seneca Indians, 29.
Shannon, Wilson, governor of Kansas, 133, 134.
Shawnee Indians, 23-24, 127.
Sheridan, General, in command against Indians, 310-323;
quoted, 384-385.
Sherman, John, quoted on Indian matters, 285, 289.
Sherman, W. T., quoted, 143-144, 298;
instructions issued to Sheridan by, in Indian war of 1868, 316.
Shoshoni Indians, 123-124, 295.
Sibley, General H. H., 228, 237-238, 362.
Silver mining, 157 ff.
Sioux Indians, treaty of 1825 affecting the, 21;
location of, in 1837, 27;
surrender of lands in Minnesota by, 49;
treaties of 1851 with, 123-124;
war with, in Minnesota, in 1862, 234 ff.;
trial and punishment of, for Minnesota outrages, 239-240;
bands composing the plains Sioux, 264-265;
war with the plains Sioux in 1866, 264-283;
lands assigned to, by Fort Laramie treaty of 1868, 294;
sources of irritation between white settlers and, in 1870, 359;
disturbance of, by discovery of gold in the Black Hills, 359, 361;
war with, in 1876, 362-363;
crushing of, by United States forces, 363.
Sitting Bull, 361;
career of, as leader of insurgent Sioux, 362-363;
settles in Canada, 363;
returns to United States, 369;
death of, 370.
Slade, Jack, 182.
Slavery question, in territories, 128 ff.;
bearing of, on transcontinental railway question, 211-214.
Slough, Colonel John P., 229-230.
Smith, Joseph, 87, 90-93.
Smohalla, medicine-man, 365.
Sod breaking, Iowa, 46.
Solomon River raid, 313, 314.
Southern Pacific Railway, 375-376, 379, 381.
South Pass, the gateway to Oregon, 70.
Southport, founding of, 44.
Spirit Lake massacre, 51.
Stanford, Leland, 220, 336.
Stansbury, Lieutenant, survey by, 112, 113, 203;
quoted, 114-115.
Steamboats as factors in emigration, 40-41, 49.
Steele, Robert W., governor of Jefferson Territory (Colorado), 150,
152, 153, 155.
Stevens, Isaac I., 197-203.
Stuart, Granville and James, 168.
Subsidies to railways, 222, 325, 329, 375.
_See_ Land grants.
Sully, General Alfred, 268, 319.
Surveys for Pacific railway, 192 ff.
Sutter, John A., 104, 107-109.
Sweetwater mines, 301.
Telegraph system, inauguration of transcontinental, 185;
freedom of, from Indian interference, 283.
Ten Eyck, Captain, 280.
Texas, railway building in, 375-376, 377 ff.
Texas Pacific Railway, 375-376, 378, 379.
Thayer, Eli, 129-130.
Tippecanoe, battle of, 17.
Topeka constitution, 133.
Traders, wrongs done to Indians by, 234-235.
Treaties with Indians, 19-20, 123-124, 292-293;
fallacy of, 348-349.
_See_ Indians.
Tucson, 159, 160.
Union Pacific Railway, the, 211 ff.;
reason for name, 221;
incorporation of company, 221;
route of, 221-222;
land grants in aid of, 222 (_see_ Land grants);
financing of project, 222-223;
progress in construction of, 298-299, 301;
description of construction of, 325-335.
Utah, territory of, organized, 101-102;
boundaries of, 139;
partition of Nevada from, 157 ff.;
derivation of name from Ute Indians, 295.
Victorio, Indian chief, 369.
Vigilance committees in mining camps, 172.
Villard, Henry, 145, 182, 186, 382-383.
Vinita, terminus of Atlantic and Pacific road, 377.
Virginia City, 158, 168-169.
Wagons, Conestoga, 41, 64;
overland mail coaches, 178-179;
numbers employed in overland freight business, 190.
Wakarusa War, 133-134.
Walker, General Francis A., 285, 349.
Walker, Robert J., 135.
Washington, creation of territory of, 163;
mining in, 164-166;
a part of Idaho formed from, 166-167.
Washita, battle of the, 317-318.
Wayne, Anthony, 8, 17.
Wea Indians, 30, 127.
Wells, Fargo, and Company, 186, 190.
Whipple, Lieut. A. W., survey for Pacific railway by, 206-207.
White, Dr. Elijah, 75-76.
White Antelope, Indian chief, 256, 260, 313.
Whitman, Marcus, 72, 77, 80-81.
Whitney, Asa, 193, 212.
Willamette provisional government, 79-80.
Williams, Beverly D., 149.
Williamson, Lieut. R. S., survey by, 208.
Wilson, Hill P., Indian trader, 314.
Winnebago Indians, 26.
Wisconsin, opening of, to whites, 21;
territory of, organized, 44.
Wounded Knee, Indian fight at, 370.
Wyeth, Nathaniel J., 72.
Wynkoop, E. W., 255-259, 306, 310, 312-313.
Wyoming, territory of, 299, 302.
Yankton Sioux, the, 25, 166, 264.
Yerba Buena, village of, later San Francisco, 105.
Young, Brigham, 93-94, 96, 97 ff., 206;
made governor of Utah Territory, 101-102.
* * * * * *
Transcribers' note:
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were
not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unpaired
quotation marks were retained. For example, the paragraph beginning
on page 311 with "There is little doubt" and ending on page 313 with
"sincerity of their protestations" contains an unpaired quotation
mark.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.
Text uses both "reconnaissance" and "reconnoissance"; both retained.
Text mostly uses "Santa Fé", so three occurrences of "Sante Fé" have
been changed.
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