Farnham's Travels in the Great Western Prairies, etc., part 1, May 21-October 16, 1839

by Thomas Jefferson Farnham

The walls of the fort, its bastions and houses, are constructed of adobies or unburnt bricks, cemented together with a mortar of clay. The lower floors of the building are made of clay, a little moistened and beaten hard with large wooden mallets; the upper floors of the two-story houses and the roofs of all are made in the same way and of the same material, and are supported by heavy transverse timbers covered with brush. The tops of the houses being flat and gravelled, furnish a fine promenade in the moonlight evenings of that charming climate. The number of men employed in the business of this establishment is supposed to be about sixty. Fifteen or twenty of them in charge of one of the owners, are employed in taking to market the buffalo robes, &c., which are gathered at the fort, {176} and in bringing back with them new stocks of goods for future purchases. Another party is employed in hunting buffalo meat in the neighbouring plains; and another in guarding the animals while they cut their daily food on the banks of the river. Others, under command of an experienced trader, goes into some distant Indian camp to trade. One or more of the owners, and one or another of these parties which chances to be at the post, defend it and trade, keep the books of the company, &c. Each of these parties encounters dangers and hardships, from which persons within the borders of civilization would shrink.

The country in which the fort is situated is in a manner the common field of several tribes, unfriendly alike to one another and the whites. The Eutaws and Cheyennes[111] of the mountains near Santa Fé, and the Pawnees of the great Platte, come to the Upper Arkansas to meet the buffalo in their annual migrations to the north; and on the trail of these animals follow up the Cumanches. And thus in the months of June, August, and September, there are in the neighbourhood of these traders from fifteen to twenty thousand savages ready and panting for {177} plunder and blood. If they engage in battling out old causes of contention among themselves, the Messrs. Bents feel comparatively safe in their solitary fortress. But if they spare each other's property and lives, they occasion great anxieties at Fort William; every hour of day and night is pregnant with danger. These untameable savages may drive beyond reach the buffalo on which the garrison subsists; may begirt the fort with their legions, and cut off supplies; may prevent them from feeding their animals upon the plains; may bring upon them starvation and the gnawing their own flesh at the door of death! All these are expectations, which as yet the ignorance alone of the Indians as to the weakness of the post, prevents from becoming realities. But at what moment some chieftain or white desperado may give them the requisite knowledge, is an uncertainty which occasions at Fort William many well-grounded fears for life and property.

Instances of the daring intrepidity of the Cumanches which occurred just before and after my arrival here, will serve to show the hazards and dangers of which I have spoken. About the middle of June, 1839, a band of sixty of them, under cover of {178} night, crossed the river, and concealed themselves among the bushes growing thickly on the bank near the place where the animals of the establishment feed during the day. No sentinel being on duty at the time, their presence was unobserved; and when morning came the Mexican horse-guard mounted his horse, and with the noise and shouting usual with that class of servants when so employed, drove his charge out of the fort, and riding rapidly from side to side of the rear of the band, urged them on, and soon had them nibbling the short dry grass in a little vale within grape-shot distance of the guns of the bastions. It is customary for a guard of animals about these trading-posts to take his station beyond his charge; and if they stray from each other, or attempt to stroll too far, to drive them together, and thus keep them in the best possible situation to be hurried hastily to the caral, should the Indians, or other evil persons, swoop down upon them. As there is constant danger of this, his horse is held by a long rope and grazes around him, that he may be mounted quickly, at the first alarm, for a retreat within the walls. The faithful guard at Bent's, on the morning of the disaster {179} I am relating, had dismounted after driving out his animals, and sat upon the ground, watching with the greatest fidelity for every call of duty, when these fifty or sixty Indians sprang from their hiding-places, ran upon the animals, yelling horribly, and attempted to drive them across the river. The guard, however, nothing daunted, mounted quickly, and drove his horse at full speed among them. The mules and horses hearing his voice amidst the frightening yells of the savages, immediately started at a lively pace for the fort; but the Indians were on all sides, and bewildered them. The guard still pressed them onward, and called for help; and on they rushed, despite the efforts of the Indians to the contrary. The battlements were covered with men. They shouted encouragement to the brave guard—"Onward! onward!" and the injunction was obeyed. He spurred his horse to his greatest speed from side to side, and whipped the hindermost of the band with his leading rope. He had saved every animal; he was within twenty yards of the open gate; he fell; three arrows from the bows of the Cumanches had cloven his heart. Relieved of him, the lords of the quiver gathered {180} their prey, and drove them to the borders of Texas, without injury to life or limb. I saw this faithful guard's grave. He had been buried a few days. The wolves had been digging into it. Thus forty or fifty mules and horses, and their best servant's life, were lost to the Messrs. Bents in a single day. I have been informed also that those horses and mules, which my company had taken great pleasure in recovering for them in the plains, were also stolen in a similar manner soon after my departure from the post; and that gentlemen owners were in hourly expectation of an attack upon the fort itself.

The same liability to the loss of life and property attends the trading expeditions to the encampments of the tribes.

An anecdote of this service was related to me. An old trapper was sent from this fort to the Eutaw camp, with a well-assorted stock of goods, and a body of men to guard it. After a tedious march among the snows and swollen streams and declivities of the mountain, he came in sight of the village. It was situated in a sunken valley, among the hideously dark cliffs of the Eutaw mountains; and so small was it, and so deep, that the overhanging heights {181} not only protected it from the blasts of approaching winter, but drew to their frozen embrace the falling snows, and left this valley its grasses and flowers, while their own awful heads were glittering with perpetual frosts.

The traders encamped upon a small swell of land that overlooked the smoking wigwams, and sent a deputation to the chiefs to parley for the privilege of opening a trade with the tribe. They were received with great haughtiness by those monarchs of the wilderness, and were asked "why they had dared to enter the Eutaw mountains without their permission." Being answered that they "had travelled from the fort to that place, in order to ask their highnesses' permission to trade with the Eutaws," the principal chief replied, that no permission had been given to them to come there, nor to remain. The interview ended, and the traders returned to their camp with no very pleasant anticipations as to the result of their expedition. Their baggage was placed about for breastworks; their animals drawn in nearer, and tied firmly to stakes; and a patrol guard stationed, as the evening shut in. Every preparation for the attack, which appeared determined upon on the part of the Indians, being {182} made, they waited for the first ray of day—a signal of dreadful havoc among all the tribes—with the determined anxiety which fills the bosom, sharpens the sight, nerves the arm, and opens the ear to the slightest rustle of a leaf, so remarkably, among the grave, self-possessed, and brave traders of the Great Prairie and Mountain Wilderness.

During the first part of the night the Indians hurrying to and fro through the village, their war speeches and war dances, and the painting their faces with red and black, in alternate stripes, and an occasional scout warily approaching the camp of the whites, indicated an appetite for a conflict that appeared to fix, with prophetic certainty, the fate of the traders. Eight hundred Indians to fifty whites, made fearful odds. The morning light streamed faintly up the east at last. The traders held their rifles with the grasp of dying men. Another and another beam kindled on the dark blue vault, and one by one quenched the stars. The silence of the tomb rested on the world. They breathed heavily, with teeth set in terrible resolution. The hour—the moment—had arrived! Behind a projecting ledge, the dusky forms of three or four hundred Eutaws undulated near the ground, like herds {183} of bears intent on their prey. They approached the ledge, and for an instant lay flat on their faces, and motionless. Two or three of them gently raised their heads high enough to look over upon the camp of the whites.

The day had broken over half the firmament; the rifles of the traders were levelled from behind the baggage, and glistened faintly; a crack—a whoop—a shout—a rout! The scalp of one of the peepers over the ledge had been bored by the whistling lead from one of the rifles—the chief warrior had fallen. The Indians retreated to their camp, and the whites retained their position, each watching the others movements. The position of the traders was such as could command the country within long rifle-shot on all sides; the Indians, therefore, declined an attack. The number of their foes, and perhaps some prudential consideration as to having an advantageous location, prevented the traders from making an assault. Well would it have been for them had they continued to be careful. About nine o'clock, the warlike appearance gave place to signs of peace. Thirty or forty unarmed Indians, denuded of clothing and of paint, came towards the {184} camp of the traders, singing and dancing, and bearing the Sacred Calumet, or Great Pipe of Peace. A chief bore it who had acted as lieutenant to the warrior that had been shot. Its red marble bowl, its stem broad and long, and carved into hieroglyphics of various colours and significations, and adorned with feathers of beautiful birds, was soon recognized by the traders, and secured the bearer and his attendants a reception into their camp. Both parties seated themselves in a great circle; the pipe was filled with tobacco and herbs from the venerated medicine bag; the well-kindled coal was reverently placed upon the bowl; its sacred stem was then turned towards the heavens, to invite the Great Spirit to the solemn assembly, and to implore his aid; it was then turned towards the earth, to avert the influence of malicious demons; it was then borne in a horizontal position, till it completed a circle, to call to their help in the great smoke, the beneficent invisible agents which live on the earth, in the waters, and the upper air; the chief took two whiffs, and blew the smoke first towards heaven, and then round upon the ground; and so did others, until all had inhaled the smoke—the breath of Indian {185} fidelity—and blown it to the earth and heaven, loaded with the pious vows that are supposed to mingle with it while it curls among the lungs near the heart. The chief then rose and said, in the Spanish language, which the Eutaws east of the mountains speak well, "that he was anxious that peace might be restored between the parties; that himself and people were desirous that the traders should remain with them; and that if presents were made to him to the small amount of £140, no objection would remain to the proposed proceedings of the whites; but on no account could they enter the Eutaw country without paying tribute in some form. They were in the Eutaw country, the tribute was due, they had killed a Eutaw chief, and the blood of a chief was due; but that the latter could be compromised by a prompt compliance with his proposition in regard to the presents."

The chief trader was explicit in his reply. "That he had come into the country to sell goods, not to give them away; that no tribute could be paid to him or to any other Eutaw; and that if fighting were a desideratum with the chief and his people, he would do his part to make {186} it sufficiently lively to be interesting." The council broke up tumultuously. The Indians carried back the wampum belts to their camp, held war councils, and whipt and danced around posts painted red, and recounted their deeds of valour, and showed high in air, as they leaped in the frenzy of mimic warfare, the store of scalps that garnished the doors of the family lodges; and around their camp-fires the following night were seen features distorted with the most ghastly wrath. Indeed, the savages appeared resolved to destroy the whites. And as they were able, by their superior numbers to do so, it was deemed advisable to get beyond their reach, with all practicable haste.

At midnight, therefore, when the fires had smouldered low, the traders saddled in silent haste, bound their bales upon their pack-mules, and departed while the wolves were howling the hour; and succeeded by the dawn of day in reaching a gorge where they had expected the Indians (if they had discovered their departure in season to reach it) would oppose their retreat. On reconnoitering, however, it was found clear; and with joy they entered the defile, and beheld from its eastern opening, the wide cold plains, and the sun rising, red and cheerful, {187} on the distant outline of the morning sky. A few days after, they reached the post—not a little glad that their flesh was not rotting with many who had been less successful than themselves, in escaping death at the hands of the Eutaws. For the insults, robberies, and murders, committed by this and other tribes, the traders Bents have sought opportunities to take well-measured vengeance: and liberally and bravely have they often dealt it out. But the consequence seems to have been the exciting of the bitterest enmity between the parties; which results in a little more inconvenience to the traders than to the Indians; for the latter, to gratify their propensity to steal, and their hatred to the former, make an annual levy upon the cavy-yard of the fortress, which, as it contains usually from eighty to one hundred horses, mules, &c., furnishes to the men of the tomahawk a very comfortable and satisfactory retribution for the inhibition of the owners of them upon their immemorial right to rob and murder, in manner and form as prescribed by the customs of their race.