Even then the power of this strange animal was amazing, and for a minute it seemed as though he must draw his captors into the river; but, at a shout from the cacique, the three hunters followed his example, swung their horses round, and spurred them so terrifically that they towed the quarry back, foot by foot, till he fell over on his side with all the breath strangled out of him. Then the cacique, as the first to get his lasso “home,” handed the thong to another hunter, dismounted, and gave the tapir his quietus with his spear.
CHAPTER XII
INDIAN WARFARE IN CALIFORNIA
One of America’s great naval commanders—Captain Henry Augustus Wise—made use of the opportunity afforded him by the Mexican War of 1846-7 to collect material for a very engrossing account of some Indians concerning whom little was then known: the coast Comanches of Lower California and Mexico. The Captain—a cousin of Governor Wise of Virginia, and an intimate friend of Rear-Admiral Wilkes—was at that time second lieutenant of the man-of-war Independence, a steamship which was cruising between San Francisco and the Gulf of California.
His first acquaintance with the Western redskins was when he was sent ashore at Monterey, a hundred and twenty miles south of San Francisco, to reconnoitre the country and offer protection—or, if need be, a means of escape—to any United States subjects settled in the district. Let it be remembered that the California of that day was vastly different even from the California of two years later. Its hidden gold was only known to the Comanches and other Shoshonee tribes, and a few Mexican Spaniards; Monterey was still the capital, while “Frisco” was but a little 155 market-town; above all, the Yankees had as yet scarce more than a foothold in the state, the greater part of it being (till the end of that war) under Mexican sway; and the coast Indians had not yet had their own virtues knocked out of them and replaced by the vices of the white diggers of ’49.
Lieutenant Wise and his boat’s crew, on leaving the town, began to make their way down-country between the coast and the Buonaventura River, relying for hospitality mainly on the American settlers, many of whom did a thriving and regular trade in skins. They found the district tolerably quiet, though there were reports of various fierce battles between the Comanches and their old enemies the Apaches, many of the latter being, it was said, in the pay of the Mexicans. It was at a trappers’ camp that Wise heard this piece of news, a queer little circle of log-huts erected on a wide clearing in one of the river forests which they came upon by accident late one afternoon. The trappers—all of them American or American-Irish—gave a very cordial welcome to the little party, though they would not at first admit the necessity for their offer of protection.
“See here,” said one of them. “The Mexicans are shifting down south right hard, and all you’re likely to see, you’ve seen in Monterey. Your ship, or else some other, has bombarded Santa Barbara already; and, like as not, is clearing San Diego out by now. As for the redskins, take an old stager’s advice and let ’em fight it out theirselves. There’s one lot we’d like very well to get hold of, but the rest we don’t vally a cuss.”
“Who are they?” asked Wise, sitting down to the 156 meal of grilled deer’s meat that was set before him.