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

by George Bird Grinnell

While the chief market at which the horses and mules were sold was St. Louis, yet on at least one occasion Hatcher took a herd of horses which had been bought wild from the Comanches and broken by the Mexicans at the fort over to Taos and Santa Fé, and sold them there. Occasionally they sold good broken horses to the Indians for robes.

It must be remembered that a large proportion of these horses purchased from the Indians, and especially from the Comanches, were wild horses taken by the Comanches from the great herds which ran loose on the ranches in Mexico. Practically all these horses bore Mexican brands.

After the emigration to California began, herds of horses and mules were sent up to the emigrant trail on the North Platte River, to be sold to emigrants on their way to California. On one occasion Hatcher, with a force of Mexican herders, was sent up there in charge of a great herd of horses and mules, and remained alongside the trail until he had disposed of all his animals. He carried back with him the gold and silver money received for them in leather panniers, packed on the backs of animals.

Before starting on another similar trip, Hatcher said to Colonel Bent: “It is useless to load down our animals with sugar, coffee and flour, to carry up there. We will take only enough to last us to the trail, and there we can buy all we need from the emigrants. Moreover, they have great numbers of broken-down horses, and it would be a good idea to buy these for little or nothing, and then drive them back here and let them get rested and fat, and then we can take them up there and sell them again.” The wisdom of this was at once apparent, and the suggestion was followed out.

Important members of the fort household were Chipita; Andrew Green, the bourgeois’s cook; the old French tailor, whose name is forgotten, and the carpenter and the blacksmith.

Chipita was the housekeeper and laundress, the principal woman at the post, and the one who, on the occasion of dances or other festivities, managed these affairs. She was a large, very good-natured, and kindly woman, and is said to have been half French and half Mexican. She spoke French readily. She was married to one of the employees of the fort.

Andrew Green, the black cook, has already been spoken of as having ultimately been set free.

The old French tailor had come up from New Orleans. He had a shop in one of the rooms of the fort, where he used to make and repair clothing for the men. Much of this clothing was of buckskin, which he himself dressed, for he was a good tanner.

In winter the teamsters and laborers usually spent their evenings in playing cards and checkers in the quarters by the light of tallow candles, the only lights they had to burn. These candles were made at the fort, Chipita doing the work. They were moulded of buffalo tallow, in old-fashioned tin moulds, perhaps a dozen in a set. The work of fixing the wicks in the moulds occupied considerable time. The tallow was then melted, the refuse skimmed from it, the fluid grease poured into the moulds, and the wicks, which hung from the top, were cut off with a pair of scissors. Then the moulds were dipped in a barrel of water standing by, to cool the candles, and presently they were quite hard, and could be removed from the moulds, ready for use.

In the winter Chipita would sometimes vary the monotony of the life by getting up a candy-pulling frolic, in which the laborers and teamsters all took part, and which was more or less a jollification. During the afternoon and evening the black New Orleans molasses, which was used in the Indian trade, was boiled, and after supper the people gathered in one of the rooms and pulled the candy. Candy such as this was a great luxury, and was eagerly eaten by those who could get it.