Colorado—The Bright Romance of American History

by F. C. Grable

The echoes of Liberty Bell, ringing out our independence and ringing in the Continental Congress, had not ceased their reverberations, when the curtain that Coronado's defeat had rung down more than two centuries before, was again lifted, and we behold a new stage with a new setting, that had been prepared by the Church of Rome. Padre Junthero Serra who, as President of the California Missions, had for so long urged upon the Church the importance of laying out a route from the settlement of Santa Fe to the West, finally prevailed. Friar Francisco Andasio Dominquez, and Friar Sylvester Velez de Escalante, were selected for this undertaking, and on July 29, 1776, started from Santa Fe with eight soldiers and guides. Their route took them out of New Mexico, into Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. They were gone one summer, passed through the present site of Salt Lake City and laid out a route that could be followed. Otherwise their trip was wholly unproductive of any beneficial or permanent results. There are stations adjoining each other on the Rio Grande Railroad between Delta and Grand Junction named "Dominquez" and "Escalante" for these two explorers. If the laurels of Coronado's discovery are ever successfully removed from his crown, his mantle will fall upon the shoulders of these two Friars.

So we come to the close of the century with the glorious dawn breaking all along the East, glowing in the heavens, shining over the people, over the farms and the mills, over the towns and the country, bringing prosperity and contentment to thousands. Its beams are resting on our own Declaration of Independence; on our own Continental Congress; on the benign countenance of the revered Washington, as he bids the people an affectionate adieu in the stirring words of his great farewell address, from which we quote this noble sentiment—and may it abide with us forever:

"Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to the grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that heaven may continue to use the choicest token of its beneficence—that your Union and brotherly affection may be perpetual, that the free constitution which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained, that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue, that in fine the happiness of the people of these states under the auspices of liberty may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, affection and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it."

How rapidly we have passed over these three hundred years, from the days of the great Queen Isabella, to the time of the immortal Washington! How lightly we have moved along, flitting here and there, as the bee gathers honey for the comb, picking out events that seemed essential in the preparation of the frame work for our picture; passing by the great events of history, past the smiling and the weeping, past the feasting and the hungering, past the living and the dying—of all those who smiled and wept, who feasted and hungered, who lived and died, in that crowded three hundred years of human endeavor!

And now for our picture: A simple picture of simple events, simply painted, with touches of human nature colorings, of the everyday joys and sorrows, of the hopes and disappointments that came to us out of the great West beyond the Mississippi River—in that portion of the marvellous century just closed, the most wonderful century of this most wonderful world!

CHAPTER IV.

LIEUTENANT PIKE.

1803 Enters the great Napoleon. He is in the midst of his never-ending wars. He is fighting England and having a hard time. Spain has ceded the Louisiana Territory to France, Louisiana as it was then, with its one million square miles of territory, and not Louisiana as it is now, with less than fifty thousand square miles, only one-twentieth its original size. Napoleon sold us Louisiana in 1803, because he needed the Sixteen Million Dollars we paid him for it, and it is said that he stated, that in this transfer of territory he would make us so powerful as a nation, that we would accomplish the downfall of England, his hereditary enemy, after he was in his grave. St. Louis had been started by the early French Fur Traders in 1764, and it took it forty-one years to reach a population of two hundred and fifty families. They had called it "Pain Court," which means, "short of bread."