After this affair, this “piebald” band of trappers wandered off to Monterey, on the coast of California, and on their return on horseback through an immense tract of the Root-Diggers’ country, he gives the further following accounts of their transactions:—
“In the course of their journey through the country of the poor Root-Diggers, there seems to have been an emulation between them, which could inflict the greatest outrages upon the natives. The trappers still considered them in the light of dangerous foes; and the Mexicans, very probably, charged them with the sin of horse-stealing; we have no other mode of accounting for the infamous barbarities, of which, according to their own story, they were guilty—hunting the poor Indians like wild beasts, and killing them without mercy—chasing their unfortunate victims at full speed; noosing them around the neck with their lasos, and then dragging them to death.”
It is due to Captain Bonneville, that the world should know that these cruel (not “savage”) atrocities were committed by his men, when they were on a Tour to explore the shores of the Great Salt Lake, and many hundreds of miles from him, and beyond his controul; and that in his work, both the Captain and the writer of the book have expressed in a proper way, their abhorrence of such fiendish transactions.
A part of the same “piebald mixture” of trappers, who were encamped in the Riccaree country, and trapping the beavers out of their streams, when, finding that the Riccarees had stolen a number of their horses one night, in the morning made prisoners of two of the Riccarees, who loitered into their camp, and probably without knowledge of the offence committed, when they were bound hand and foot as hostages, until every one of the horses should be returned.
“The mountaineers declared, that unless the horses were relinquished, the prisoners should be burned to death. To give force to their threat, a pyre of logs and faggots was heaped up and kindled into a blaze. The Riccarees released one horse, and then another; but finding that nothing but the relinquishment of all their spoils would purchase the lives of their captives, they abandoned them to their fate, moving off with many parting words and howlings, when the prisoners were dragged to the blazing pyre, and burnt to death in sight of their retreating comrades.
“Such are the savage cruelties that white men learn to practice, who mingle in savage life; and such are the acts that lead to terrible recrimination on the part of the Indians. Should we hear of any atrocities committed by the Riccarees upon captive white men; let this signal and recent provocation be born in mind. Individual cases of the kind dwell in the recollections of whole tribes—and it is a point of honour and conscience to revenge them.”[45]
To quote the author further———“The facts disclosed in the present work, clearly manifest the policy of establishing military posts, and a mounted force to protect our Traders in their journeys across the great Western wilds; and of pushing the outposts into the heart of the singular wilderness we have laid open, so as to maintain some degree of sway over the country, and to put an end to the kind of ‘black mail,’ levied on all occasions, by the savage ‘chivalry of the mountains’”!
The appalling cruelties in the above quotations require no comment; and I hope the author, as well as the Captain, who have my warmest approbation for having so frankly revealed them, will pardon me for having quoted them in this place, as one striking proof of the justice that may be reasonably expected, in prospect; and that may fairly be laid to the past proceedings of these great systems of trading with, and civilizing the savages; which have been carried on from the beginning of our settlements on the Atlantic Coast, to the present day—making first acquaintance with them, and first impressions of the glorious effects of civilization—and of the sum total of which, this instance is but a mere point; but with the singular merit which redounds to the honour of Captain Bonneville, that he has frankly told the whole truth; which, if as fully revealed of all other transactions in these regions, I am enabled to say, would shake every breast with ague-chills of abhorrence of civilized barbarities. From the above facts, as well as from others enumerated in the foregoing epistles, the discerning reader will easily see how prejudices are raised in the minds of the savage, and why so many murders of white people are heard of on the Frontier, which are uniformly attributed to the wanton cruelty and rapacity of the savage—which we denominate “Indian murders,” and “ruthless barbarities,” before we can condescend to go to the poor savage, and ask him for a reason, which there is no doubt he could generally furnish us.
From these, and hundreds of others that might be named, and equally barbarous, it can easily be seen, that white men may well feel a dread at every step they take in Indian realms, after atrocities like these, that call so loudly and so justly for revenge, in a country where there are no laws to punish; but where the cruel savage takes vengeance in his own way—and white men fall, in the Indian’s estimation, not as murdered, but executed, under the common law of their land.
Of the hundreds and thousands of such murders, as they are denominated by white men, who are the only ones to tell of them in the civilized world; it should also be kept in mind by the reader, who passes his sentence on them, that they are all committed on Indian ground—that the Indian hunts not, nor traps anywhere on white man’s soil, nor asks him for his lands—or molests the sacred graves where they have deposited the bones of their fathers, their wives and their little children.