The Mexicans were restless over the advent of the numerous Americans who now appeared in their settled valley, which, for more than a century and a half, had lain completely isolated from the outer world, a lone child of the Wilderness, a sort of dreamland where one day was like another day, and where years rolled into decades, even centuries, without any one knowing it. The Americans, quick, sharp, bluff, energetic, startled these slow people, yet the officials tried to impose on them. Trapping was permitted because the Mexicans did not know how to do it, but after the American had reaped a harvest it was not easy to get away with it, for by some flimsy subterfuge the furs might be confiscated and the trapper on a pretext thrown into prison, as in the case of the Patties in California. Nevertheless the American trapping operations quickly extended over all the New Mexican territory as well as over the region north of the forty-second parallel, still undetermined as to ownership. British mainly operated there. The ten years agreed upon in 1818 between Great Britain and the United States as to this tract expired without their being able to come to an understanding, and the agreement was renewed for a second ten years. Russia came to terms on her southern and eastern boundary, making treaties with the United States and Great Britain, the one with the latter establishing in 1825 the lines of Alaska that were inherited in 1867 by the United States, and only definitely settled in 1903. Matters relating to the Mexican country and to the Oregon region remained therefore for another decade without political change.
Prairie Dogs.
From Wonderland, 1901. Northern Pacific Railway.
The American trappers were not, however, deterred in the slightest degree by boundaries, or diplomacy, or the attempted impositions of the Mexican officials. They plunged, more actively than ever, into their pursuit of the unfortunate beaver, no matter where it led so long as they had rifle in hand, and incidentally they were performing the whole world a service by swinging open the gates of the Wilderness. Kit Carson, one soon to become familiar with almost every part of the vast region, began his exploits in New Mexico in 1826, at the age of seventeen. A whole brood of these remarkable characters appear to have been born at one particular period, as if planned expressly to be thrown at the beginning of their manhood into the vast Wilderness, to reduce it for travel by less dauntless spirits. Carson joined a party of these men to trap down the Gila and its branches in 1828, having spent the winter of 1826-27 at San Fernandez de Taos learning Spanish, so that he was able to converse with the Mexicans here and in California where they went trapping on the Sacramento, finally reaching Santa Fé again, where their furs were sold and the party disbanded. Carson was alert, cool, honourable, exact, with that abounding self-confidence that led him to balk at nothing, and, though so young, move rapidly to the lead. I knew a man of this type, who was so certain that nothing serious could possibly happen to him that he was perfectly nonchalant in every danger, but his eye was always alert, his movements quick as a tiger's, and his aim unflinching and sure.
One incident will serve to show this confidence and quickness of Carson. While on Green River an Amerind stole six horses belonging to the trader Robideau, who had employed him. Carson and a Ute pursued. The Ute's horse gave out and he would not continue on foot, so Carson went on alone thirty miles farther, and came up with the culprit. The thief saw him and rushed for shelter, but Carson fired so skilfully from his horse moving at full speed that he killed the wretch at once. His reputation for skill and daring had spread before he was fairly of age. He fell in with Fitzpatrick, Bridger, Sublette, Smith, and all the rest of the now famous coterie of mountain men who so brilliantly adorned this epoch in the Wilderness, and his career was filled with deeds of wild daring.[91] He engaged one winter to hunt for the men at Fort Davy Crockett, founded in Brown's Hole, and he then became familiar with the course of Green River in that vicinity, though he seems never to have cared to attempt the navigation of its impetuous torrent. The great rendezvous in Green River Valley also saw him often and he described it. At the selected place
"for the rendezvous, in the space of two or three miles upon either side of the river, the bottom spreads out in a broad prairie, and the luxuriant growth of grass, with the country open all about it, made the spot desirable for a large encampment.... A scattered growth of fine old trees furnishes shade at every camp, and immediately about the great tent they afford protection from the sun to parties of card players, or a 'Grocery Stand' at which the principal article of sale is 'whiskey by the glass,' and perhaps further on is a monte table, parties from several Indian tribes, and the pioneer of semi-civilisation—the backwoodsman—has come in with his traps, a few bags of flour, and possibly some cheese and butter, and the never-failing cask of whiskey."[92]
