About noon we met a party of Greasers, fifteen in number, who lived down in the valley of the Lumbay. Manuel's father was a member of the party. They had not seen each other for more than a year. When they met they hugged and kissed each other, a custom among the peon classes. We learned that a mountain lion had been killing their sheep, and they had gathered together to hunt it to its death, but so far had failed to stalk him, and were going back home.
From this camp, down the cañon, it was fifteen miles to the Mexican town of Lumbay, and a clear open trail all the way except now and then a tree that had fallen across it.
At this camp I saw the evidence of preceding generations of more than 200 years before. It was in the form of an acequia or irrigation ditch, and this ditch, to reach and water the fertile valley of the Lumbay, had followed from just a few rods above the head of the cañon, a sinuous, tortuous course, around the heads of gorges and fairly clinging to the face of perpendicular walls a distance of forty-five miles. This statement about the length of the ditch I want my readers to take as hearsay. But I personally saw enough of it to be convinced that it was a wonderful piece of engineering skill.
We prospected here three days, then broke camp for the valley proper, where we camped near a Catholic church. Here we saw a type of humanity that for downright superstition beats anything I ever heard of. During the season, if a cloud would appear and lightning and thunder accompanied it, they would hang an image of Christ in an exposed place, to appease the wrath of the storm king, hoping to avert a hail-storm. When there was an excessive drought they would fire off old muskets, beat drums and blow horns to bring rain. I saw this same thing done at Las Vegas. Many of the women were tattooed on face, neck, breast and arms, for indiscretions. In the rear of this church were two large piles of crosses. The timbers in them nearly as large as a railroad tie. When doing penance these superstitious beings of the peon class were compelled by their priests to shoulder these crosses and march around the church for a given length of time, according to the gravity of the sin committed. Another mode of punishment was for the penitent to walk bare-kneed on beans strewn on hard ground.
At this place was a water grist-mill of the most primitive kind. Also, was to be seen here the forked wood plow. The mode of grain-threshing was to place the bundles of grain on the ground in a circle and chase a band of goats around over the grain in a circle, until their feet had hulled the grain from the straw. While at this camp we feasted on roasting-ears, melons, string beans, cabbage, onions, and potatoes.
While here we all suddenly recovered from the "gold fever." The Apache Indians had gone on the war-path, and were terrorizing the people south of Santa Fé. We moved down to Santa Fé, sold our burros, and dissolved partnership. I then left Santa Fé, and went to Casa La Glorieta, and early in October I left Casa La Glorieta for the Panhandle of Texas.
In those days it was the custom of the Mexicans to go each fall to border New Mexico and Texas on "meat hunts." They would organize parties consisting of from fifteen to twenty-five men, never taking any women along, and they would take from four to ten wagons with from two to four yoke of oxen to the wagon. There would be from ten to fifteen lance horses, and each lancer would be armed with a lance-blade about fourteen inches long, fastened by sinews to a staff seven to eight feet long.
There was generally some elderly man in charge of each outfit. They were usually gone from six weeks to three months on these hunting trips, and would return with great loads of jerked dried buffalo meat, which found a ready sale.
While at La Glorieta, New Mexico, I became acquainted with Antonio Romero, whose family was among the higher class of Mexicans. He had had some dealing with my uncle, General Robert Mitchell, who had been Territorial Governor of New Mexico. Upon finding out that I was a relative of the general's, Romero invited me to partake of the hospitality of his home. His English was meager, but we could understand each other by engaging in a tedious conversation. He, upon learning that I wished to get to Fort Elliott, in the Panhandle of Texas, informed me that he and his son, two sons-in-law, and some neighbors, were going on a meat hunt and would be glad to have me accompany them; that we would go as far east as the "Adobe Walls," in the Panhandle of Texas, and that it was not far from there to Fort Elliott.
We left Romero's ranch on the 10th of October, 1874. We followed the old Santa Fé Trail to Bernal Springs, and from there followed a trail slightly southeastward, and came to the South Canadian river at old Fort Bascom, which had recently been abandoned as a military garrison, and was then being used as the headquarters for a large cattle ranch. Here we overtook another meat-hunting party from Galisteo, about eight miles below Bascom. Four lancers rode out from the Galisteo outfit and lanced two range steers. Others of their party went to the place of killing and got the meat.