The Westward Movement

by Unknown

The next day we reached the Rio Grande del Norte. This we found frozen over, and we camped on the river bottom, which is thickly timbered with cottonwood and willow. Here my feet and those of several others were frozen—the result in part of wearing boots, for which I quickly substituted moccasins, with blanket wrappers, which are much warmer than socks, and which, with leggings of the same material, afford the best protection for the lower extremities against severe cold.

Continuing up the river two or three days, we again entered the mountains, which soon assumed a very rugged character. Nature, in the ascent towards the Sierra Madre, presents herself with all her features prominent and strongly marked, her figures bold and colossal. Our progress became slow and laborious. Our track lay through deep mountain gorges, amid towering precipices and beetling crags, and along steep declivities where at any other season it would have been next to impossible to travel, but where now the deep snow afforded a secure foothold. In making the ascent of some of these precipitous mountain sides, now and then a mule would lose its footing and go tumbling and rolling many feet down. My saddle mule took one of these tumbles. Losing her foothold, she got her rope hitched upon a large log which lay loosely balanced on the rocks, and, knocking me down and jerking the log clear over my head, they went tumbling down together. But fortunately no one was hurt. A great obstacle to our progress were the rapid, rough-bottomed, but boggy streams which we had frequently to encounter in the deep and narrow ravines, where the mules would get balked, half a dozen at a time, with their packs on. Then we had to wade in up to our middle among the floating ice in the freezing water to help them out.

The farther we went the more obstacles we had to encounter; difficulties beset us so thickly on every hand as we advanced that they threatened to thwart our expedition. The snow became deeper daily, and to advance was but adding dangers to difficulties. About one-third of the men were already more or less frost-bitten; every night some of the mules would freeze to death, and every day as many more would give out from exhaustion and be left on the trail.... Finally, on the 17th of December, after frequent ineffectual attempts, we found that we could force our way no farther. By our utmost endeavors with mauls and spades we could make but half a mile or a mile per day. The cold became more severe, and storms constant, so that nothing was visible at times through the thick driving snow. For days in succession we would labor to beat a trail a few hundred yards in length, but the next day the storm would leave no trace of the previous day's work. We were on the St. John Mountain, a section of the Sierra Madre and the main range of the Rocky Mountains proper. At an elevation of 11,000 feet the cold was so intense and the atmosphere so rare that respiration became difficult; the least exertion became laborious and fatiguing, and would sometimes cause the blood to start from lips and nose. The mercury in the thermometer stood 20° below zero, and the snow was here from four to thirty feet deep. When we built our camp-fires deep pits were formed by the melting of the snow, completely concealing the different messes from each other. Down in these holes we slept, spreading our blankets upon the snow, every morning crawling out from under a deep covering of snow which had fallen upon us during the night. The strong pine smoke,—for here there was no timber but pine,—together with the reflection from the snow, so affected our sight that at times we could scarcely see. The snow drifted over us continually, driven about by the violence of the chill blasts which swept over the mountains.

Besides ourselves and our mules, no vestige of animal life appeared here in this lofty and dreary solitude; not even the ravens uttered their hoarse cry, nor the wolves their hollow and dismal howl. Finally nearly the entire band of our one hundred mules had frozen to death. After remaining in this condition for five days without being able to move camp, the colonel [Frémont] determined to return as quickly as possible by a different course to the Rio Grande. There we had left game upon which we could subsist until a party, to be previously despatched, should return with relief. So on the 22d of December we commenced our move, crossing over the bleak mountain strewn with the frozen mules, and packing our baggage with us. We were more than a week moving our camp and equipage over the top of this mountain, a distance of two miles from our first camp. The day we began to move (our provisions having been all consumed, except a small portion of macaroni and sugar, reserved against hard times), we commenced to eat the carcasses of the frozen mules. It was hoped we might save the few that yet lived, but this proving impossible, we began to kill and eat the surviving ones. On Christmas Day the colonel despatched a party of four men, King, Croitzfeldt, Brackenridge, and Bill Williams, to proceed down the Rio del Norte with all possible speed to Albuquerque, where they were to procure provisions and mules to relieve us. He allowed them sixteen days to go and return. We made our Christmas and New Year's dinner on mule meat,—not the fattest, as may be judged,—and continued to feed upon it while it was within reach.... At last we reached the river, but we found no game; the deer and elk had been driven off by the deep snow. For days we had been anxiously looking for the return of King's party with relief. The time allotted him had already expired; day after day passed, but with no prospect of relief. We concluded that the party had been attacked by Indians, or that they had lost their way and had perished. The colonel, who had moved down to the river before us, waited two days longer, and then, taking just enough provision before it was all exhausted to last them along the river, himself started off with Mr. Preuss, Godey, Theodore (Godey's nephew), and Sanders, the colonel's servant-man, intending to find out what had become of the party and hasten them back, or, if our fears concerning them proved true, to push on himself to the nearest settlement and send relief. He left an order, which we scarcely knew how to interpret, to the effect that we must finish packing the baggage to the river, and hasten on down as speedily as possible to the mouth of Rabbit River where we would meet relief, and that if we wished to see him again we must be in a hurry about it, as he was going on to California.

Two days after the colonel left we had all assembled on the river. The last of our provisions had been consumed, and we had been living for several days upon parfleche. Our condition was perilous in the extreme. Starvation stared us in the face; to remain there longer was certain death. We held a consultation and determined to start down the river the next day and try to make our way to some settlement where we could get relief; in the mean time keeping as much together as possible, and hunting along as we went as our only chance of safety.

Now commenced a train of horrors which it is painful to force the mind to dwell upon, and which the memory shrinks from. Before we had proceeded far Manuel, a California Indian of the Cosumne tribe, who had his feet badly frozen, stopped and begged Mr. Vincent Haler to shoot him, and failing to meet death in this way turned back to the lodge at the camp we had left, there to await his fate. The same day Wise lay down on the ice and died; and the Indian boys, Joaquin and Gregorio, who came along afterward, having stopped back to get some wood for Manuel, seeing his body, covered it over with brush and snow. That night Carver, crazed by hunger, raved terribly all night, so that some in the camp with him became alarmed for their safety. He told them, if any would follow him back, he had a plan by which they might live. The next day he wandered off and we never saw him again. The next night Sorel, his system wrought upon by hunger, cold, and exhaustion, took a violent fit which lasted for some time, and to which succeeded an entire prostration of all his faculties. At the same time he was almost totally snow-blind. Poor fellow, the next day he traveled as long as his strength would allow, and then, telling us we would have to leave him, that he could go no farther, blind with snow he lay down on the river-bank to die. Moran soon joined him, and they never came up again. Late at night, arriving one by one, we all came into a camp together on the river-bank. Gloom and despondency were depicted on every face. Our condition had become perfectly desperate. We knew not what to do; the candles and parfleche had kept us alive thus far, but these were gone. Our appearance was most desolate as we sat in silence around the fires, in view of a fast approaching death by starvation, while hunger gnawed upon our vitals. Then Vincent Haler, to whom the colonel had left the charge of the camp, and whom for that reason we had allowed to have the chief direction, spoke up and told us that he then and there threw up all authority; that he could do nothing, and knew not what to advise; that he looked upon our condition as hopeless, but he would suggest, as the best advice he could give, that we break up into small parties, and, hunting along, make the best of our way down separately, each party making use of all the advantages that might fall in its way, so that if any should chance to get through to a settlement they could forward relief to the others.... It was curious to hear different men tell of the workings of the mind when they were starving. Some were constantly dreaming or imagining that they saw before them a bountiful feast, and would make selections of different dishes. Others engaged their minds with other thoughts. For my part, I kept my mind amused by entering continually into all the minutiæ of farming, or of some other systematic business which would keep up a train of thought, or by working a mental solution of mathematical problems, bringing in review the rudiments of some science, or by laying out plans for the future, all having a connection with home and after life. So in this way never allowing myself to think upon the hopelessness of our condition, yet always keeping my eyes open to every chance, I kept hope alive and never once suffered myself to despond. And to this course I greatly attribute my support, for there were stronger men who, by worrying themselves, doubtless hastened their death. Ten out of our party of thirty-three that entered the mountains had perished, and a few days more would have finished the others.

Late in the afternoon of February 9, cold, hungry, and weary, with no little joy we all at once hailed the sight of the little Pueblo of the Colorado. We raised a yell as we came in sight which made the Pueblanos stand out and gaze. In a few minutes, with their assistance, we struggled forward with them and sought the comfort which the place afforded.

In sight of Taos, and several miles to the southeast, at the mouth of a deep gorge or cañon by which the Taos River debouches from the mountains, is a walled town or pueblo, one of a great many of the same kind in this country, inhabited by the Pueblos or civilized Indians, a remnant of the race of Montezuma. They live in houses built of stone and earth, or of adobe, most of which at this place were three or four stories high, and some of which even attained the height of eleven stories, each story receding a few feet back from the front of the one below it, and each one reached by a ladder placed against the wall, communicating with the door on top, and capable of being let down or drawn up at pleasure. A high mud wall incloses the buildings, which front towards the center, and in the middle is a lofty church of the same material as the other buildings, with walls six feet thick.

At Taos we first heard with certainty of the abundance of gold in California, the first account of which had reached the States immediately before our departure, but was scarcely believed.