INCIDENTS BEFORE THE WAR AND EARLY IMPRESSIONS.
On the second night after my arrival in El Paso I had my first experience of the manner of settling difficulties there. Samuel Schutz, still of El Paso, and one Tom Massie had had a misunderstanding about the rent of a house. My brother and I went across the river that afternoon, and on the way we met one Garver, a half-witted fellow, called “Clown,” who said he had been “fixing a canoe” at the river, and in a friendly way he advised us to return early because there would be some fun that night. We asked him what fun, and he replied: “Oh, killin’ a Dutchman!” That night, in front of the postoffice, I heard Massie say to a friend: “I have taken half a dozen drinks of straight brandy, but d—n me if I can get drunk.” I went into the postoffice and found an unusual crowd of men talking in low tones, and Mr. Schutz, in his shirt sleeves, was playing billiards with a friend. Presently Massie entered, and saying, “Mr. Schutz, you told a d—d lie,” presented a cocked pistol at that gentleman. There was no mistaking his intention. Murder was in his voice and in his face. Then there came from Mr. Schutz such a sound as I never heard before or since. It was not a shriek, or an outcry, for he did not distinctly articulate a single word. It was not exactly an expression of fear, but was more like a prolonged wail over some tragedy which had already occurred. But Schutz did the right thing, and quickly. He seized the barrel of Massie’s pistol and held it upward. Then commenced a struggle for life. Both were powerful men, and in their prime, one moved by hatred and revenge, and the other by the instinct of self-preservation. It was some seconds after they grappled before that strange sound ceased. Massie strove to bring his cocked pistol to bear on Schutz, and Schutz to move it in any other direction. Shocked and alarmed, and remembering my teaching about law and order, I stepped forward and said, “Gentlemen, would you see the man murdered?” Not a man moved. Massie finally let fall his pistol, drew a knife and drove it into Schutz’s shoulder. Schutz fled, but Massie recovered his pistol and fired two shots at him as he ran out through the front door. It was dark outside. Immediately after the shots Schutz stumbled over a water barrel and fell, and Massie, thinking him dead, crossed to Mexico in that canoe which Clown had “fixed.” Schutz was untouched by the bullets, and the knife wound was not serious.
The next day “Uncle Ben” Dowell gave me this advice: “My young friend, when you see anything of that kind going on in El Paso, don’t interfere. It is not considered good manners here.” The advice was well intended and worthy of careful consideration. Tom Massie returned to El Paso, but was not prosecuted.
Not long after the above occurrence, I saw a certain gambler shooting at another member of the profession in this same postoffice. A stray bullet killed an inoffensive by-stander. The coroner’s jury exonerated the killer, as they said the killing was clearly “accidental.” There was, of course, some sympathy for the innocent dead man, but most of it appeared to go to the gambler who had been so “unfortunate” as to kill the wrong man.
Of the Americans then at El Paso, some had left wives, or debts, or crimes behind them in “the States,” and had not come to the frontier to teach Sunday school. But there were good people here also, and for the few who were capable of doing business and willing to work, the opportunities were as good then and as profitable as they have ever been since that time. The products of the mines, crudely worked, in northern Mexico, were brought to El Paso and exchanged for merchandise or money. The military posts (forts) in northwest Texas and southern New Mexico were supplied with corn, flour, beef, hay, fuel, etc., by El Paso merchants and contractors.
The Overland Mail Company then operated a weekly line of mail coaches, drawn by six animals, between St. Louis and San Francisco. The time between these two cities was usually twenty-six days, the distance being 2,600 miles. These splendid Concord coaches (now almost gone out of use) carried the United States mail, for a Government subsidy, and usually four to nine through passengers, besides the driver and “conductor.” Changes of animals were made at “stations” built of rock or adobe, every twenty-five to forty miles, or wherever the company could find a stream, or spring, or water-hole. These coaches traveled day and night, in all kinds of weather.
El Paso was at this time (1858) the terminus of two other important stage routes—one from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the other from San Antonio, Texas. These were in every particular so similar to the greater “Overland” route that a description is unnecessary. There was also a stage line to Chihuahua.
These mail coaches were the forerunners of the “Limited Express” and the Pullman sleeper of the present day; and the rough, brave men who drove and managed them and protected the stations, fighting Indians the while, were the pioneers, the Daniel Boones and Simon Kentons of this frontier! They opened the way for the Southern Pacific, the Mexican Central, the “Sunset” and the Santa Fe.
Does the tenderfoot who now rides over these routes, in luxury and safety, appreciate the work of these men? I have heard more than one of them intimate that he would have done things much better than we did, if he had only arrived in time. I am very sure I have heard several of them say that they would have made and saved plenty of money, if they had only had our opportunities; and this appears to me the proper place for a few remarks on success and failure in life; if, indeed, any place is good for such a homily. By success I, of course mean what the majority of men mean by the word success—the accumulation of wealth.
Well, during the ten years following my locating at El Paso, I was well and familiarly acquainted with at least fifty active, intelligent, educated young men, of whom it might have been predicted that they would succeed in life. These, if now living, would all have more than three-score years. Several of them died by the hands of the Indians, and some of them by the hands of their own countrymen, a number went to the bad or died early. Several of them lived beyond middle age and led brave, honorable and useful lives, but I recall only two who could be classed as successful men, according to the above test. True, some of them gained much money and spent it liberally and often charitably, or lost it, but according to the popular idea, a man to be successful must have plenty of money when he dies. And though he leaves no minor children or dependents, his neighbors will whisper at his funeral, “He died poor,” in much the same tone as one might say, “He was hanged.”
In order that the importance of these mail routes and other enterprises on this frontier may be appreciated, I must here state a fact which may seem strange to some of my readers. At that time this whole frontier was in the actual possession of savage Indians. The Americans and Mexicans were secure only near the military posts, or villages, or large settlements, and when they traveled from place to place, they traveled in companies strong enough for defense, or at night and by stealth, trusting to Providence, or luck, each according to his faith.
The men who, for whatever reasons, had made their way to this distant frontier, were nearly all men of character; not all of good character, certainly, but of positive, assertive individual character, with strong personality and self-reliance. (The weaklings remained at home.) Many of them were well bred and of more than ordinary intelligence, and maintaining the manners of gentlemen. Even the worst of these men are not to be classed with the professional “toughs” and “thugs” who came later with the railroads. They were neither assassins nor thieves nor robbers. Vices? Plenty; but they were not of the concealed or most degrading kinds. Violence? Yes, but such acts were usually the result of sudden anger or of a feeling that under the conditions then existing each man must right his own wrongs or they would never be righted. Their ideas of right and wrong were peculiar, but they had such ideas nevertheless. I knew a young man who was well liked and had good prospects, who violated confidence and attempted to betray his benefactor. The facts became known. Now, if he had shot a man because he did not like him much, anyhow, or if he had run away with his neighbor’s wife, his conduct might have been overlooked. But treachery? Ingratitude? Never! He became the most despised man in the community. The merchants and business men were certainly an exceptional class. Honorable, highly intelligent, charitable and gentlemanly. I could name a dozen gentlemen who were here even as far back as the “sixties,” from which list I believe any President might have selected an able cabinet. Not all of these were of my own race; and yet, even these did not hold themselves entirely aloof from the other classes. The times did not favor or permit such exclusiveness.
Common trials and dangers united the two races as one family, and the fact that one man was a Mexican and another an American was seldom mentioned, and I believe as seldom thought about. Each man was esteemed at his real worth, and I think our estimates of each other’s characters were generally more correct than in more artificial societies.
Spanish was the language of the country, but many of our Mexican friends spoke English well, and often conversations, and even sentences, were amusingly and expressively made up of a blending of words or phrases of both languages.
To the traveler, who had spent weeks crossing the dry and desert plains, this valley, with the grateful humidity of the atmosphere, the refreshing verdure, the perfume of the flowering shrubs, the rustling of the leaves of the cottonwood trees, and their cool shade, and in the spring or summer, the bloom of the many fruit trees, or the waving of grain fields, were all like a sight or breath of the Promised Land!
The people, the peasantry, were content and happy. To them, with their simple wants, it was a land of plenty. The failure of water in the Rio Grande has sadly changed all this. It may be said that this valley and the things here described were not in themselves beautiful, but only appeared so by contrast with the barren country over which the wanderer had traveled; and this may be true, but it is not wise to analyze too severely the things that give us pleasure. They are few enough at best.
Our currency was the Mexican silver dollar, then at par, and the Mexican ounce, a gold coin worth sixteen dollars.
There were no banks, and no drafts or checks except those given out by the paymasters and quartermasters of the United States Army.
Everybody loaned money when he had it, but only for accommodation. I knew of only one man in the whole valley who loaned money at interest or required security.
It was no unusual thing for merchants to loan large quantities of their goods, bales of prints and muslin and sacks of sugar and coffee to their neighbor merchants, to be repaid in kind when their wagon train arrived.
Carriages and buggies were considered as almost community property, and the man who refused to lend them was considered a bad neighbor.
Everybody had credit at “the store,” and everybody paid up—sooner or later.
There were no hotels. Travelers stopped at each other’s houses and even strangers were welcome there. Any one having any claim to gentility or education was cheerfully received and entertained by the officers at the army posts, and many, very many, by the collector of customs at El Paso.
There was one peculiar fact about the El Paso of those early days, for which I could never give any good reason.
Perhaps there were several reasons.
Our little village was better known, or, rather, it had greater notoriety and elicited more interest and inquiry, than any other town in the United States of twenty times its population. I know this from my own experience during my visits to Eastern cities, and the same statement was made by every El Paso wanderer on returning home. I mean that a gentleman registering from El Paso in any of the great cities received more attention and was more questioned about his town than one from San Antonio or Denver.
It seemed impossible to go anywhere without meeting an army officer or some one who had lived at El Paso, or some stranger who had heard of the little hamlet and was eager to learn more.
In spite of privations, our little village seemed to have an unaccountable fascination for every one who saw it, refined American ladies as well as the less fastidious and sterner sex.
This was my El Paso. To me it was like the Deserted Village to Goldsmith.
The new El Paso got away from me. Que sea por Dios.
Our merchandise and supplies were brought from St. Louis, a distance of sixteen hundred miles, or from Port Lavaca, Texas, a distance of nine hundred miles, by large trains of immense freight wagons, “Schooners of the Plains,” drawn by fourteen to eighteen mules, usually four abreast, at a cost of twelve and one-half to fifteen cents per pound for freight only. These trains were usually accompanied by twenty-five to forty men, including the drivers, all of whom were well armed, and stood guard like soldiers.
The “wagonmaster” was a character of importance and authority, and a hunter was usually employed to procure fresh meat and to look out for Indians and for Indian “sign.” These trains, like the stage coaches, were often attacked by Indians, but because of the greater number of men and better means of defense, they were not so frequently “taken in” as the latter.
I quote here the prices of a few of the articles purchased by me of El Paso merchants during the “sixties,” having preserved the original bills: One common No. 7 kitchen stove, $125; ham and bacon, 75 cents per pound; coffee, 75 cents per pound; sugar, 60 cents per pound; lard, 40 cents per pound; candles, 75 cents per pound; one-half ream letter paper, $4; nails, 50 cents per pound; matches, 12½ cents per box; tobacco, $2 per pound; calico (print), 50 cents per yard; bleached muslin, 75 cents per yard; unbleached muslin, 50 cents per yard; coal oil, $5 per gallon; alcohol, $8 per gallon; lumber, rough sawed, 12½ cents per foot; empty whiskey barrels, $5 each; starch, 50 cents per pound. But if we paid high prices, we also received high prices for what we had to sell. I will here state briefly a few of my own business experiences. I made large quantities of wine from the El Paso grape, and sold it readily at $5 per gallon, $200 per barrel of forty gallons. For two years I furnished the Government with all the vinegar and salt used in the Military Department of New Mexico, vinegar at $1.70 per gallon, and salt at 17 cents per pound, delivered at El Paso. Vinegar, four thousand gallons, and salt, one thousand bushels. The vinegar was manufactured from the El Paso grape, and the salt was brought from a natural salt lake, one hundred and twenty-five miles northeast of El Paso, and ground at Harts Mills, near El Paso, and sacked here.
The Government had previously been hauling these articles from St. Louis, a distance of sixteen hundred miles. My partner, Don Juan Zubiran, and myself one day delivered three hundred head of beef cattle to the Government at Las Cruces, New Mexico, at 18 cents per pound on the hoof—$90 per head. For a year I delivered beef on the block to the troops at Fort Bliss at 22 cents per pound.
I will now give some items from the other side of my ledger. Three hundred head of cattle belonging to my partner, Mr. Norboe, and myself were taken by Indians in Arizona in 1865, and half of our herders killed. These cattle were being driven to California, where there was then a good market. A white man, also a partner, got away with $11,000 worth of my cattle at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, by selling them and running away with the money.
Another partner, an honest man, died my debtor to the amount of $14,000. This would not have occurred had the gentleman not become insane and unable to settle his large and complicated business.
From the day of my first arrival at El Paso, I determined to make the place my permanent home, and I have never had any desire to change that choice. From the first I foresaw the prospective importance of the place, and many a still, lonesome night have I listened to the roaring of the waters over the dam at Harts Mill, a mile above the village, and tried to fancy it the rumbling of railroad trains, which were then fifteen hundred miles away. No, I do not claim to have foreseen that El Paso would be the center of so many railroads, but I felt sure that the first road to the Pacific Ocean would pass through El Paso, and so it would, had it not been for the Rebellion. I would not claim to have had this foresight, did not my letters to my friends during those early years (some of which are still extant) bear out the statement. I probably wrote more and spoke more about the certain future of El Paso than any one who ever lived here. I did more. I proved my faith by my acts. For ten years, amid all the folly and extravagance and vices of my bachelor youth, I kept one object constantly in view: to acquire and hold and pay taxes on a sufficient number of town lots to make me reasonably independent when the railroads should come, and for a time I owned more desirable property in El Paso than any other individual ever owned except the proprietors of the town tract.
Well, the greater portion of this valuable property was taken from me by corrupt courts and officials and by faithless lawyers and supposed friends, and by other means which I may or may not refer to in these writings. If any man says he would have defended himself and his rights better or more courageously than I did, I can only reply that I think I was fortunate to escape with my life! After all this, more than a hundred strangers (who never owned enough of mother earth to be buried in) have said to me: “You have been here a long time, Mr. Mills, and if you had only known what El Paso would be you could have bought town property very cheap and could have been wealthy,” etc., etc. Then, for a moment, homicidal thoughts come into my mind. But it would do no good to kill such a man. A fool or two more or less in the world, or even in a community, would make no perceptible difference. There are so many!
It has been said these men of the frontier in those early days led indolent, idle lives in a “Sleepy Hollow,” and that is true in a way.
The conditions were such that constant toil and endeavor were almost impossible. A train of wagons would arrive from Mexico with silver or other products and in a few days the El Paso merchant would sell or exchange thousands of dollars’ worth of goods, and then for weeks he might not have a customer worthy of his attention.
Another man would labor almost incessantly night and day for a time in filling some Government contract, and then for months, perhaps, no other opportunity would offer for the exercise of his energy. It was “enforced idleness.” But in the long run these men expended as much effort, physical and mental, in chasing the nimble dollar as the most plodding, methodical Chicago business man of today.
Profits were often great and risks were always great. I do not think the desire for money, for its own sake, was as strong as in older communities, and this led to what we called liberality and what the wise call extravagance. If any man had devoted all his energies to accumulating and hoarding money he would have been viewed with disfavor by his neighbors, and at that time men were in many ways dependent upon the good will of their fellows.
If any gentleman did not care to bet on the horse race or to “sit in” at the poker game, no one criticised his peculiarity, because each granted to the other the right he claimed for himself, to do as he pleased about such amusements. But if such a one gave out that he thus refrained because he feared to set a bad example to others or because he feared Divine wrath, his sincerity would have been doubted, and frankness and candor were rated among the essential virtues.
Within the memory of men still living there occurred an incident which illustrates men’s views of law and order in those days. A certain desperado had been getting drunk and riding into stores and saloons and firing his pistols at random in the streets and threatening people’s lives, till the “good citizens” became weary. Finally he took a snap shot at the popular member of the Legislature, Mr. Jeff Hall, on the main street. This was too much. In a few moments fifteen or twenty of the aforesaid “good citizens” were chasing him over town with shotguns, rifles and pistols. The desperado was brought to earth in the corral of the old Central Hotel—“Hell’s half acre”—pierced by many missiles. Then there was an animated dispute among the above mentioned good citizens as to who had fired the fatal shot. One claimed to have done the work with his shotgun. Another said that such small ammunition at long range could not kill such a man, but that it was his rifle shot in the neck that did it. A third said that he had dispatched the deceased with three body shots from his sixshooter, and so on.
At last “Uncle Ben” Dowell said: “Gentlemen, some day some judge or other may come along and be holding court, and some of us may have trouble about this business.” Thereupon they organized a coroner’s jury, composed of the identical men who did the shooting, and sat upon the corpse and agreed upon a verdict, to the effect that “Deceased came to his death by gunshot wounds from the hands of parties unknown.”
It was about this time that an El Paso merchant, still living in this valley, had a little experience with the rough Americans here, mostly gamblers. There were many of the latter class.
At this time the fraternity were broke, and some of them had pawned their pistols with this merchant for money. But finally one of them reported to the “boys” that Mr. —— had refused to make any more loans on pistols. “How did you approach him?” was asked.
“Why, I presented the handle of my pistol and asked him to loan me $25 on it.” “Idiot,” said “Snap” Mitchell, the leader, “you don’t know how to soak a pistol; watch me.” So “Snap” went to the store and presenting the muzzle of his pistol asked for a loan. He got it, and went away with the pistol also.
I believe my friend remembers the transaction. Later this same merchant was called upon by a party of secessionists, who accused him of being a —— abolitionist, and talked to him seriously about the penalty, which was hanging. My friend was a foreigner and did not understand our language as well as he does now. I asked him what he said to them when they threatened to hang him, and he replied: “Well, I told them that I had no ‘scruples’.” Of course, he meant that he had no preference for either the Union or Confederate cause. It is certain that he did not mean that he had no scruples about being hanged!
An officer of volunteers bought goods of this same merchant, refused to pay him, swindled him, and because asked to pay called him a —— Jew and other pet names, and finally sent him a formal challenge to fight a duel. The merchant came to me greatly agitated, and declared that he would rather die than suffer such indignities, and asked my advice. I knew that he was in earnest, and the officer was notified to appear at sunrise at the graveyard on the hill, distance ten paces, double-barreled shotguns loaded with buckshot, to fire at the word. The officer declined, declaring the terms “barbarous,” and that ended his career as a valiant son of Mars.