Everything was primitive. Sawed lumber was unknown. The buildings were mainly of adobe. Vehicles were carretas (carts) with wheels hewn out of a cottonwood log, with an additional segment pinned on each edge and dressed into an irregular circle (see [page 177]), and required three or four yokes of oxen to draw them. Ploughs were no more than a log with a branch left on for a handle and a sharp stick attached for a share. Agriculture was correspondingly primitive in its returns, yet, thanks to irrigation, there was generally an abundance of what was needed. Sheep were bred in enormous numbers, as many as two hundred thousand to five hundred thousand being driven to market in one year. Horses and cattle were also numerous, and the skill of the vaquero, or herder, in riding and throwing the lasso was unsurpassed. No horse was too fractious to ride, and he could catch an animal by any limb he chose.
A favourite article of diet was the tortillas, made of corn boiled in water with a little lime till soft enough for the skin to come off. Then it was ground to a paste on the metate a flat stone, and formed into a thin cake, which was spread on a sheet of iron or copper, called a comal (comalli), and placed over the fire, where it baked in two or three minutes. A sort of thin mush called atole was a favourite drink, and there were also wine, and a sort of strong liquor called aguardiente or ratafia (Taos lightning). Taken all in all the American trapper did not have such a bad time in New Mexico after it left the hands of Spain, so far as the people were concerned, and had they despised the Mexicans less, matters would have been pleasanter, though, as Gregg says, the government was whimsical and oppressive, as much, however, to Mexicans as to Americans.
On the Gila.
Photograph by J. B. Lippincott.
A high tariff was laid on goods from the United States, though it was generally compromised on the Mexican frontier. When Governor Armijo, however, came in he imposed a tax of $500 on every waggon, no matter what its size or contents. The result was that waggons grew to the limit in proportions, and Armijo was obliged to go back to ad valorem assessments. Between the Missouri River and the mountains there were no settlements then, above Texas.
Thomas Forsyth, who had long experience among the people of the Wilderness, said he thought that in most misunderstandings the fault was with the white people. He told of a young agent on the Missouri River who cut off the ears of a half-breed because, when drunk, he had spoken disrespectfully of the Americans. Another agent on the Mississippi turned out of the guard-house an innocent Indian to others, his enemies, who butchered him in the presence of the whole garrison. Forsyth remarks, also: "In my intercourse with the Indians for the last forty years I never found that coercive measures ever had any good effect with them, but that conciliatory measures always tended to produce every purpose required."
The intercourse between the tribes of the Wilderness and the whites was rapidly increasing, and this period—1830 to 1840—saw many hard conflicts and much bloodshed, some of it, at least, entirely unnecessary. The whites came with the firm belief that every native was an enemy, and they sometimes took the precaution to shoot first and apologise, if at all, afterwards.
Trappers and traders were now operating over all the Wilderness excepting the portion which at present forms the central part of the State of Nevada. As yet this had not been traversed by any but Jedediah Smith for it was generally barren and streamless, with no beaver. Of course, much of the remainder was still unexplored, yet the general character was understood. Books on the fur trade are apt to give so little account of the trapping operations in the South-west that the reader obtains the impression that there was nothing done there, but while no large company operated, bands of trappers for years ranged the Gila and its tributaries, the lower Colorado, the Virgin, the Rio Grande, the Sevier, and other streams in the south-western country where beaver abounded and where some rich hauls were made, sometimes to be confiscated by the Mexican officials or lost through the difficulties of travel in that country.