On Saturday morning, at Lake station, we got beyond the Indians, and into a land of plenty, or at all events a land of something, for we got milk from the station cow, and preserved fruits that had come round through Denver from Ohio and Kentucky. Not even on Saturday, however, could we get dinner, and as I missed the only antelope that came within reach, our supper was not much heavier than our breakfast.
Rolling through the Arrapahoe country, where it is proposed to make a reserve for the Cheyennes, at eight o‘clock on Saturday morning we caught sight of the glittering snows of Pike‘s Peak, a hundred and fifty miles away, and all the day we were galloping toward it, through a country swarming with rattlesnakes and vultures. Late in the evening, when we were drawing near to the first of the Coloradan farms, we came on a white wolf unconcernedly taking his evening prowl about the stock-yards. He sneaked along without taking any notice of us, and continued his thief-like walk with a bravery that seemed only to show that he had never seen man before; this might well be the case, if he came from the south, near the upper forks of the Arkansas.
All this, and the frequency of buffalo, I was unprepared for. I imagined that though the plains were uninhabited, the game had all been killed. On the contrary, the “Smoky district” was never known so thronged with buffalo as it is this year. The herds resort to it because there they are close to the water of the Platte River, and yet out of the reach of the traffic of the Platte road. The tracks they make in traveling to and fro across the plains are visible for years after they have ceased to use them. I have seen them as broad and as straight as the finest of Roman roads.
On Sunday, at two in the morning, we dashed into Denver; and as we reeled and staggered from our late prison, the ambulance, into the “cockroach corral” which does duty for the bar-room of the “Planters’ House,” we managed to find strength and words to agree that we would fix no time for meeting the next day. We expected to sleep for thirty hours; as it was, we met at breakfast at seven A.M., less than five hours from the time we parted. It is to-day that we feel exhausted; the exhilaration of the mountain air, and the excitement of frequent visits, carried us through yesterday. Dixon is suffering from strange blains and boils, caused by the unwholesome food.
We have been called upon here by Governor Gilpin and Governor Cummings, the opposition governors. The former is the elected governor of the State of Colorado which is to be, and would have been but for the fact that the President put his big toe (Western for veto) upon the bill; the latter, the Washington-sent governor of the Territory. Gilpin is a typical pioneer man, and the descendant of a line of such. He comes of one of the original Quaker stocks of Maryland, and he and his ancestors have ever been engaged in founding States. He himself, after taking an active share in the foundation of Kansas, commanded a regiment of cavalry in the Mexican war. After this, he was at the head of the pioneer army which explored the parcs of the Cordilleras and the Territory of Nevada. He it was who hit upon the glorious idea of placing Colorado half upon each side of the Sierra Madre. There never, in the history of the world, was a grander idea than this. Any ordinary pioneer or politician would have given Colorado the “natural” frontier, and have tried for the glory of the foundation of two States instead of one. The consequence would have been, lasting disunion between the Pacific and Atlantic States, and a possible future break-up of the country. As it is, this commonwealth, little as it at present is, links sea to sea, and Liverpool to Hong Kong.
The city swarms with Indians of the bands commanded by the chiefs Nevara and Collorego. They are at war with the six confederate tribes, and with the Pawnees—with all the plain Indians, in short. Now, as the Pawnees are also at war with the six tribes, there is a pretty triangular fight. They came in to buy arms, and fearful scoundrels they look. Short, flat-nosed, long-haired, painted in red and blue, and dressed in a gaudy costume, half Spanish, half Indian, which makes their filthiness appear more filthy by contrast, and themselves carrying only their Ballard and Smith-and-Wesson, but forcing the squaws to carry all their other goods, and papooses in addition, they present a spectacle of unmixed ruffianism which I never expect to see surpassed. Dixon and I, both of us, left London with “Lo! the poor Indian,” in all his dignity and hook-nosedness, elevated on a pedestal of nobility in our hearts. Our views were shaken in the East, but nothing revolutionized them so rapidly as our three days’ risk of scalping in the plains. John Howard and Mrs. Beecher Stowe themselves would go in for the Western “disarm at any price, and exterminate if necessary” policy if they lived long in Denver. One of the braves of Nevara‘s command brought in the scalp of a Cheyenne chief taken by him last month, and to-day it hangs outside the door of a pawnbroker‘s shop, for sale, fingered by every passer-by.
Many of the band were engaged in putting on their paint, which was bright vermilion, with a little indigo round the eye. This, with the sort of pigtail which they wear, gives them the look of the gnomes in the introduction to a London pantomime. One of them—Nevara himself, I was told—wore a sombrero with three scarlet plumes, taken probably from a Mexican, a crimson jacket, a dark-blue shawl, worn round the loins and over the arm in Spanish dancer fashion, and embroidered moccasins. His squaw was a vermilion-faced bundle of rags, not more than four feet high, staggering under buffalo hides, bow and arrows, and papoose. They move everywhere on horseback, and in the evening withdraw in military order, with advance and rear guard, to a camp at some distance from the town.
I inclose some prairie flowers, gathered in my walks round the city. Their names are not suited to their beauty; the large white one is “the morning blower,” the most lovely of all, save one, of the flowers of the plains. It grows with many branches to a height of some eighteen inches, and bears from thirty to fifty blooms. The blossoms are open up to a little after sunrise, when they close, seldom to open even after sunset. It is, therefore, peculiarly the early riser‘s flower; and if it be true that Nature doesn‘t make things in vain, it follows that Nature intended men—or, at all events, some men—to get up early, which is a point that I believe was doubtful hitherto.
For the one prairie flower which I think more beautiful than the blower I cannot find a name. It rises to about six inches above ground, and spreads in a circle of a foot across. Its leaf is thin and spare; its flower-bloom a white cup, about two inches in diameter; and its buds pink and pendulent.
All our garden annuals are to be found in masses acres in size upon the plains. Penstemon, coreopsis, persecaria, yucca, dwarf sumach, marigold, and sunflower, all are flowering here at once, till the country is ablaze with gold and red. The coreopsis of our gardens they call the “rosin-weed,” and say that it forms excellent food for sheep.