Carson to the Rescue

General Oliver O. Howard arrived in Arizona in 1872 with orders to make peace humanely with the Apache.  A deeply religious man, Howard was respected by most men who met him, including Thomas Jeffords.  The two men went to meet Cochise together and a truce was reached.  Cochise even agreed to go on a reservation if Jeffords was appointed Indian Agent for the Chiricahua Apache tribe.  Terms were met and the war seemed over.  It had cost the United States 1000 men and $40 million.  Cochise lived out his days in peace and died on June 8, 1874 with Jeffords at his side.

Meanwhile the Apache weren't the only trouble the white settlers had in the Southwest.  The Comanche and Kiowa had always been allies against the white men and other tribes, and during the Civil War it intensified.  In 1864, while the US was dealing with Cochise, the Kiowa and Comanche attacked a wagon train on the Santa Fe Trail, taking five small boys as hostages.  Kit Carson, a Union Officer then, took off in pursuit with 350 volunteers and 75 Ute scouts. 

At Adobe Walls, an abandoned trading post in the Texas Panhandle near the Canadian River, some 1000 Comanche and Kiowa waited.  The Indian numbers were offset by the Union's two howitzers.  The volunteers made an orderly retreat after burning down a Kiowa village as a parting gesture. 
Carson claimed victory with 2 dead and 10 wounded, but later admitted he was lucky to have gotten his men out of the Canadian River Valley.

Navajo also menaced the white settlers and the peaceful Pueblo  in New Mexico.  When the US troops has withdrawn for the Civil War, their attacks became bolder until Colonel Kit Carson led 400 men against them in 1863-1864.  Carson destroyed the Navajo flocks and gardens, then invaded the Canyon de Chelly stronghold.  3000 Indians were marched 300 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico where they were held for four years before being moved to a reservation.  The end of another proud civilization...

Next time...Sioux in Minnesota
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Today in Pioneer History:  On November 27, 1868, after being convicted of desertion and mistreatment of soldiers earlier in the year in a military court, the government had suspended Custer from rank and command for one year.  Without bothering to identify the village or do any reconnaissance, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads an early morning attack on a band of peaceful Cheyenne living with Chief Black Kettle massacring all of them.  Not a hero!

On the Trail with Fremont and Carson

John Charles Fremont and Kit Carson led an expedition in 1842 to map out the Oregon Trail.  They traveled the familiar route along the Platte River, crossed South Pass and explored the West River Range where they climbed the peak later named Mount Fremont.  These side trips were not part of Fremont's instructions but they were good promotion.  On the return trip Fremont rashly insisted on shooting the rapids on the Platte River in a rubber boat.  The boat overturned, records were lost along with costly scientific equipment and specimens.

Fremont did compile an accurate report of the expedition of the Oregon Trail with route maps and campsites for each day's journey.  It was also a colorful adventure story - starring Fremont and superscout Carson.  It was an immediate bestseller.  Was Fremont's purpose to write a great adventure or map out territory for the government?

A second expedition a year later attempted in vain to find a passage through the Central Rockies and explore the Great Salt Lake region ending at Marcus Whitman's Oregon mission.  Fremont and Carson picked up supplies at Fort Vancouver, followed the eastern foothills of the Cascades down to Nevada.  They then made a foolhardy crossing of the Sierra Nevada in midwinter barely making it through alive.  The final report, although it corrected some of the mistakes of earlier maps, contained many errors.  Nevertheless it was a immediate hit with the public...

Fremont and Carson were only half finished...

Next time...Expedition #3 and #4
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On March 27, 1911, In one of the darkest moments of America's industrial history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burns down, killing 145 workers. The tragedy led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of factory workers.

John Charles Fremont

We have discussed John Charles Fremont before in this blog but we will go into a bit more detail this time in context.  Fremont was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1813.  In 1818 his mother, brother and sister moved to Charleston, South Carolina where he grew up in genteel poverty

Fremont developed into a handsome young man who had a real love of danger, a flair for self-dramatization and a talent for attracting influential friends.  One of these friends paid for much of Fremont's education.  At the age of 25, Charles became a second lieutenant in the US Topographical Corps where he gained a reputation as a wilderness surveyor and mapmaker. 

As a young officer, Fremont attracted the attention of Thomas Hart Benton, one of the most powerful men in American politics at that time.  Fremont met Benton's 15 year old daughter, Jesse and the two fell in love.  Despite the parents very impassioned objections, they were married secretly in the fall of 1846. 
Benton forgave his new son-in-law and became his patron and protector, getting him an appointment as chief of an expedition map the new Oregon Trail.

Fremont had two main objectives in 1842.  One was to make the first accurate map of the Oregon Trail.  The second was to promote westward emigration.  He was joined on his expedition by a famous legendary frontiersman, Kit Carson.

Next time...on the trail with Carson and Fremont
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Today in Pioneer History:  On March 23, 1839, the initials "O.K." are first published in The Boston Morning Post. Meant as an abbreviation for "oll korrect," a popular slang misspelling of "all correct" at the time, OK steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans.

Old Friends - New Friends

Captain Walker and his men proceeded from Sunset Crater and crossed the Little Colorado River, turned north to the Moquis where they spend an instructive and agreeable week with the Hopis. Walker was impressed with their mesa topped villages, their architecture, their arts and crafts, and especially their  character.  "They were neat, clean, always keeping 2 or 3 years worth of provisions laid up for fear of famine" he recorded. 

Captain Walker continued eastward to the Rio Grande, then Albuquerque in June of 1851. Captain Joe then went alone to Santa Fe in the summer where he met up with old friend, Kit Carson.  He looked into the local market for livestock, but found it not very attractive.

In November, Walker started back to California with a few men, traveling a well established caravan trail. Is Captain Joe about ready to retire from the life of a mountain man?  Is this his last trek in the western wilderness?

Next time...Railroad Consultant?

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This Day in History:  On December 15, 1890, the great Sioux chief and holy man  Sitting Bull is killed by Indian police at the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota, after many years of successfully resisting white efforts to destroy him and the Sioux people.

Fremont's Survey

In 1842 Senator Thomas Benton (the Patrick Henry of Manifest Destiny) supported a survey of the wagon road across the Plains to the South Pass.  The South Pass had been traveled for 15 years, so this seemed a bit redundant.  The actual purpose of the survey was to increase public awareness and make it desirable to go west.

The surveyor's  job went to John Charles Fremont who just happened to be Senator Benton's son-in-law.  Captain Walker thought Fremont was a fool and a coward...I agree but let's just tell the story...

Charles Fremont was to become the Great Pathfinder, or the Great Publicist of the West, depending on your perspective, but he did have more influence than any single man on the overland migration of the 1840-50's.  He was a notable glory hound...

Fremont offered Walker the job of chief guide which Walker suggested Kit Carson instead, saying "Kit could guide him to any point he wanted to go".  After checking Carson's references, Fremont hired Carson.

Carson was well-qualified to guide an expedition like this one and was better suited to satisfy Fremont's temperamental requirements than Joe.  Carson would serve very well as far as the mission's real purpose was - publicizing and romanticizing the West.  He was an attractive and modest guy who provided Fremont the raw material to become the new Daniel Boone.

The Story of Fremont continues next time...

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This Day in History:  On this day in 1864, the town of Helena, Montana, is founded by four gold miners who struck it rich at the appropriately named "Last Chance Gulch."

Father DeSmet

April 30, 1840.  The Walker family packed their belongings into two lightweight wagons and set off for the West. They traveled for awhile with Father Pierre Jean DeSmet,  a Jesuit priest who by the time his life was ver would have traveled 125,000 miles in the interest of the Indian of the Rockies and Western Plains.

Kit Carson spoke of DeSmet  "I can say of him that if ever a man was good he is one...I am confident that his share of glory and happiness in the next world will be great."

 Next time...Rules of the Trail

Horse Thieves!

Prior to Captain Joe Walker and Joe Meek's arrival at Fort Crockett, a Sioux war party had raided the area and driven off 150 horses.  Unable to catch the rustlers, the men decided to invade a peaceful Snake camp and steal their horses instead.  40 horses were stolen in all.

Walker was furious about the theft and organized a posse of 30 men to go after the white rustlers. Included in Walker's posse?  Carson, Meek, Craig, and part of his California veterans who had left to go home but hadn't made it that far. 

They caught the rustlers on the Green River and captured the stolen horses, returning them to the Snake without bloodshed.

Next time...Walkara

Allied with the Indian Tribes

For a brief time before the settlers and soldiers arrived (12 years), the remaining mountain men lived well.  The elite group included Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Crazy Bill Williams, William Bent and Joe Walker.  They were scattered over a huge unsettled area from the central plains and upper Missouri to the Sonoran Desert and the Sierras.  They had one thing in common - they each had a special relationship with one or two of the important Indian nations.  The only white who remained and did well were established good businessmen and bartered with the Indians for pelts.

Their tribes included:

Bent and Carson --- Cheyenne and Arapaho
Bridger --- Shoshoni
Beckworth --- Crow
Williams --- Ute
Walker --- Snake

Next time...a Special Exception

Kit Carson

Kit Carson was probably the best known of the mountain men.  In the 1830s it was said that not even Daniel Boone was "so much on the move throughout a long and restless life" as Kit Carson.  

Carson was physically a small man, but inexhaustible which attests to the fact that he made the 3,000 miles journey from California territory to Washington through hostile Apache lands with the news of the Bear Flag Republic victory.

Before his death at Fort Lyon, Carson lay on his buffalo robe and demanded his pipe and a big dinner.  He was warned that both would probably kill him, to which he is said to have replied, "No matter.  Bring me some fust rate doin's, a buffalo steak, my pipe and a bowl of coffee".  After eating 2 pounds of meat and smoking his pipe, Carson died.  He received a funeral with general's honors and as he wished was buried at Taos.

Next time we start our journey with the greatest mountain man of them all, Joseph Walker.