Over the Santa Fé Trail, 1857

by William Barclay Napton

It was my first experience of traveling at night, on this journey. Toward midnight I became so sleepy that I could hardly sit on my horse, so dismounting, I walked and led him. Advancing to a point near the head of the trains I ventured to lie down on the ground to rest, as the trains were passing at least. Instantly my clothes were perforated with cactus needles which pricked me severely, and waking me thoroughly. In the darkness it was with great difficulty I could get the needles out. Mounting my horse again I rode some distance in advance of everybody, completely out of hearing of the trains, and riding thus alone, with nothing visible but the stars, a feeling of melancholy seized me, together with a sense of homesickness, with which I had not hitherto been troubled. Each day’s travel was increasing the distance between me, my home and my mother, to whom I was most dearly attached; and here amid the solitude, darkness and perfect quietude of the vast plains I began to reflect upon the dangers besetting me, and the uncertainty of ever returning to my home or seeing my relatives again.

The approach of morning and the rising of the sun soon dispelled these forebodings of evil and revived my spirits. Old Sol, like a ball of fire, emerged from the endless plain to the east of us, as from the ocean, soon overwhelming us with a flood of light such as I had never experienced before. During all that day’s march the heat was intense and the sunlight almost blinding, the kind of weather that creates the mirage of the plains. In the distance on either hand, fine lakes of clear water were seen glistening in the sun, sometimes appearing circular in shape, surrounded with the proper shores, the illusion being apparently complete, so much so that several times during the day I rode some distance seeking to ascertain if they were really lakes or not. I found them receding as I approached, and was unable to get any closer to them than when as a boy I set out to find the sack of gold at the end of the rainbow.

About midday we passed a great pile of bleached bones of mules that had been thrown up in a conical shaped heap by the passing trainmen, in the course of the ten years they had been lying there. They were the remains of 200 or 300 mules belonging to John S. Jones, a Missourian, a citizen of Pettis county, whom I knew personally. In 1847, and for many years afterward, Jones was engaged in freighting across the plains. In ’47, having obtained a contract from the government to transport freight for the troops at Santa Fé, he got a start late in the season, and had only reached the crossing of the Arkansas when he was overtaken by such deep snow and severely cold weather as to compel him to stop and go into quasi-winter quarters. While there, protected by such barracks for man and beast as could be hastily constructed, he received orders from the commander of the troops in New Mexico that he must hurry up with the supplies, orders of such urgency that they could not be disregarded. He had a mule train of thirty wagons. Orders were given to hitch up and start. The weather moderated the first day, but on the second they encountered a heavy and cold rain freezing as it fell, and were forced to go into corral. Intense cold followed and every one of the mules froze to death, huddling in the corral, during the night. Years afterwards, through the influence of Colonel Benton in the Senate and John G. Miller of Missouri in the House of Representatives an appropriation was made by Congress of $40,000 to pay Mr. Jones for the loss of his mules.

In the forenoon of the second day from the Arkansas we reached Sand creek, a tributary of the Cimarron, where we found a pool of stagnant water, not enough for the oxen, but sufficient for the trainmen to make coffee with, and there we camped. A few hours afterwards we struck the valley of the Cimarron, and, after riding up the bed of the apparently dry stream, we discovered a pool of clear water. The cattle were so famished that they ran into it, hitched to the wagons, their drivers being unable to restrain them, and it was with considerable difficulty that the wagons were afterwards pulled out of the mud.

VIII.
My First Antelope.

After reaching the Cimarron we began seeing herds of antelope in the distance. At first I tried “flagging” them. I had been told that on approaching within two or three hundred yards of them, concealed from their view behind an intervening ridge, these animals were possessed of such inordinate curiosity that they could be enticed to within gunshot of the hunter by tying a handkerchief on the end of a stick and elevating it in sight of the antelope, the hunter, of course, keeping concealed. I made several efforts at this plan of exciting their curiosity, and while some of them came toward me at first sight of the flag, their curiosity seemed counterbalanced by caution or incredulity, and in no instance could I get one to come near enough for a sure or safe shot. I then tried a rifle, with which I was also unsuccessful, not then being able to make a correct estimate of the distance between me and the antelope, a troublesome task, only to be acquired by experience and constant practice.

THEIR DRIVERS WERE UNABLE TO RESTRAIN THEM.

The old trail ran along up the valley of the Cimarron several days’ drive. A singular stream was the Cimarron; for the most part of the bed of the stream was sand, perfectly dry, but now and then, every mile or two, we found a hole of clear good water, except that it was slightly tinctured with alkali, a brackish, but not unpleasant taste. There were three fairly good springs along the road near the Cimarron, designated as the lower, middle and upper spring, and we camped near each of them as we passed. As we traveled up the valley squads of antelope could be seen viewing the train from the heights on either side of the valley.

Captain Chiles had along with him two shotguns, the smaller he had been using on buffalo, the other, an unusually large, double barrel, number 8 bore, very long in barrel and heavy, carrying easily twenty buck shot in each barrel. Armed with that big gun I would ride in the direction of the antelope, but at an angle indicating that I would pass them. Usually when I had gotten within three or four hundred yards of them they would quietly withdraw from view behind the ridge, whereat, I would turn the course of my horse and gallop as fast as I could, keeping the ridge between them and me until I had gotten within a short distance of the point of their disappearance. Then dismounting, I hastily followed them on foot. Often they would be found to have moved not out of the range of that big gun, and with it I killed many of them. That was the only plan of killing antelope by which I gained success. During this part of the journey we saw many wolves, and of many varieties, from the little coyote to the great gray wolf. They were all very shy, however, and difficult to approach within gun shot.