Like so many of the Americans of that time brought up to the frontier life, he was perfectly familiar with every danger, and with all the peculiarities of the Amerind character; and he was of dauntless courage and limitless perseverance. Nothing ever baulked this type of man, of whom Daniel Boone was a fine specimen. Battered and thrust down by fortune till it would seem impossible for anything human to rise above the circumstances, they mastered them as if merely remounting a mustang from which they had momentarily been unseated. So it was that Pursley ploughed his way to Santa Fé with no original intention of going there. Some of the Kansa tribe having stolen the horses of his party, Pursley happened to see his own being ridden by one of that tribe to water. Without a moment's hesitation, Pursley pursued him, and discovering that he could not get the horse, ripped open the animal's bowels with his hunting knife. The Kansa thereupon tried to shoot him, but the gun missed fire, and Pursley, with the knife, chased the man into the camp, where he was unable to get him because he hid in a tent surrounded by women and children. Other white men were there at the moment and saw the whole thing. The chiefs of the tribe were so much astonished and delighted at Pursley's courage that they caused all the horses to be returned to him.
New Mexican Cart.
Drawing by Julian Scott.
From Bulletin of the Eleventh Census.
He and his partners then went back to their cache intending to take their goods to St. Louis, but a second time their horses were stolen. Thereupon they built a canoe and sailed down the Osage, but when near its mouth they were capsized, and with the exception of their arms and ammunition, lost everything they possessed. Just at this disheartening moment along came a barge bound for the upper Missouri. Pursley joined this company, and arriving in the Mandan country, he was sent on an expedition to trade with some Paducas and Kiowas. They were all driven by Sioux into the mountains at the head of the Platte. The natives with whom they were, some two thousand in number, desired to trade with the Spaniards, but not knowing how they might be received, they finally sent Pursley with his white men, and two of their own kind, to Santa Fé to interview Governor Allencaster. The latter not objecting to their trading, the two Amerinds returned with that information to their waiting brethren, while Pursley and his men, having been rather dubious about ever arriving again among whites, were quite content to remain in the Spanish towns. They arrived in June, 1805, and Pursley took up the practice of his trade of carpenter, earning considerable money by it. He had been in the habit of making his own gunpowder in Kentucky, and tried doing it here, but on his operations being discovered he came near being hung. He was forbidden to write, but was told he could have a passport whenever he wanted it, though they exacted security that he would not leave without permission.
Another man, whose name was soon to be written for all time upon the face of this particular region, was at this moment preparing for the first of two important undertakings.
A Rocky Mountain Torrent.