Beyond the Old Frontier: Adventures of Indian-Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders

by George Bird Grinnell

KIT CARSON

From the painting in the Capitol at Denver, Colorado

Farnham while there heard this account of the event:

“About the middle of June, 1839, a band of sixty of them [Comanches] under cover of night crossed the river and concealed themselves among the bushes that grow thickly on the bank near the place where the animals of the establishment feed during the day. No sentinel being on duty at the time, their presence was unobserved: and when morning came the Mexican horse guard mounted his horse, and with the noise and shouting usual with that class of servants when so employed, rushed his charge out of the fort; and riding rapidly from side to side of the rear of the band, urged them on and soon had them nibbling the short dry grass in a little vale within grape shot distance of the guns of the bastion. It is customary for a guard of animals about these trading-posts to take his station beyond his charge; and if they stray from each other, or attempt to stroll too far, he drives them together, and thus keeps them in the best possible situation to be driven hastily to the corral, should the Indians, or other evil persons, swoop down upon them. And as there is constant danger of this, his horse is held by a long rope, and grazes around him, that he may be mounted quickly at the first alarm for a retreat within the walls. The faithful guard at Bent’s, on the morning of the disaster I am relating, had dismounted after driving out his animals, and sat upon the ground, watching with the greatest fidelity for every call of duty; when these 50 or 60 Indians sprang from their hiding places, ran upon the animals, yelling horribly, and attempted to drive them across the river. The guard, however, nothing daunted, mounted quickly, and drove his horse at full speed among them. The mules and horses hearing his voice amidst the frightening yells of the savages, immediately started at a lively pace for the fort; but the Indians were on all sides, and bewildered them. The guard still pressed them onward, and called for help; and on they rushed, despite the efforts of the Indians to the contrary. The battlements were covered with men. They shouted encouragement to the brave guard—‘Onward, onward,’ and the injunction was obeyed. He spurred his horse to his greatest speed from side to side and whipped the hindermost of the band with his leading rope. He had saved every animal: he was within 20 yards of the open gate: he fell: three arrows from the bows of the Comanches had cloven his heart, and, relieved of him, the lords of the quiver gathered their prey, and drove them to the borders of Texas, without injury to life or limb. I saw this faithful guard’s grave. He had been buried a few days. The wolves had been digging into it. Thus 40 or 50 mules and horses and their best servant’s life were lost to the Messrs. Bents in a single day.”

Long before this, in 1831, when the fort was still unfinished, Carson with twelve white employees went down the river to the Big Timbers to cut logs for use in the construction work. He had all the horses and mules belonging to the post with him, and while he and his men were at work, a party of sixty Crows crept up close to them, and coming out of the brush and timber drove off the herd. Carson and his men, all on foot, followed the Crows across the open prairie. With them were two mounted Cheyenne warriors, who had been visiting the camp when the Crows made their attack, but who luckily had both their ponies by them, and thus saved them. The Crows had not gone many miles before they halted, and camped in a thicket on the margin of a little stream, thinking that a party of twelve men would not dare to follow them on foot; therefore, when they beheld Carson and his men coming on their trail they were greatly astonished. They left the stolen animals behind them, and came boldly out on the open prairie to annihilate the venturesome white men, but all of Carson’s party had excellent rifles and one or two pistols apiece. Carson used to tell how surprised those Crows were when they charged down upon his men and were met by a stunning volley. They turned and made for the thicket, the whites following them at a run. Into the thicket went the Crows and in after them tumbled Carson and his men. Some spirited bushwhacking ensued, then out at the far edge of the thicket came the Crows, with Carson and his men still after them. Meantime, when the Crows had come out to charge the whites, the two mounted Cheyennes had quietly slipped round in the rear and run off all the captured horses, so now Carson’s men mounted and rode exultingly back to their camp, while the discomfited Crows plodded on homeward, nursing their wounds.

In the years before the great peace was made between the Kiowas and Comanches, and the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, the home country of the Southern Cheyennes lay chiefly between the Arkansas and the South Platte Rivers. In August many of them used to go east as far as the valley of the Republican, for the purpose of gathering winter supplies of choke-cherries and plums. In the autumn the Suhtai and the Hill people—Hĭs´sĭ-o-mē´ta-nē—went up west into the foothills of the mountains to kill mule-deer, which were plenty there, and at that season fat. All the different bands of Cheyennes used to make annual trips to the mountains for the purpose of securing lodge-poles. A cedar which grew there was also much employed in the manufacture of bows.

At this time the range of the Kiowas was from the Cimarron south to the Red River of Texas, on the ridge of the Staked Plains. They kept south in order to avoid, so far as possible, the raiding parties of Cheyennes and Arapahoes, who were constantly trying to take horses from them. In those days—and still earlier—the Kiowas used to make frequent trips north to visit their old friends and neighbors, the Crows, but when they did this they kept away to the westward, close to the mountains, in order to avoid the camps of the Cheyennes. Nevertheless, such travelling parties were occasionally met by the Cheyennes or Arapahoes, and fights occurred. It was in such a fight that an old woman, now (1912) known as White Cow Woman, or the Kiowa Woman, was captured. She was a white child, taken from the whites by the Kiowas when two or three years of age, and a year or two later captured from the Kiowas as stated by the Cheyennes. She is now supposed to be seventy-six or seventy-seven years old. The fight when she was captured took place in 1835, or three years before the great fight on Wolf Creek.

Before the Mexican War the Arkansas was the boundary between the United States and Mexico, and Bent’s Fort was, therefore, on the extreme border of the United States. In those days the Indians used to make raids into Mexican territory, sweeping off great herds of horses and mules. They also captured many Mexicans, and many a Comanche and Kiowa warrior owned two or three peons, whom he kept to herd his horses for him.