THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER

A CHRONICLE OF THE OLD WEST

By Emerson Hough

New Haven: Yale University Press

Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co. 

London: Humphrey Milford

Oxford University Press

1918

CONTENTS

 I. THE FRONTIER IN HISTORY II. THE RANGE III. THE CATTLE TRAILS IV. THE COWBOY V. THE MINES VI. PATHWAYS OF THE WEST VII. THE INDIAN WARS VIII. THE CATTLE KINGS IX. THE HOMESTEADER

 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER

Chapter I. The Frontier In History

The frontier! There is no word in the English language more stirring, more intimate, or more beloved. It has in it all the elan of the oldFrench phrase, En avant! It carries all of the old Saxon command, Forward!! It means all that America ever meant. It means the old hope ofa real personal liberty, and yet a real human advance in character andachievement. To a genuine American it is the dearest word in all theworld. 

What is, or was, the frontier? Where was it? Under what stars did itlie? Because, as the vague Iliads of ancient heroes or the nebulousrecords of the savage gentlemen of the Middle Ages make small specificimpingement on our consciousness today, so also even now begin the talesof our own old frontier to assume a haziness, an unreality, which makesthem seem less history than folklore. Now the truth is that the Americanfrontier of history has many a local habitation and many a name. Andthis is why it lies somewhat indefinite under the blue haze of theyears, all the more alluring for its lack of definition, like some oldmountain range, the softer and more beautiful for its own shadows. 

The fascination of the frontier is and has ever been an undying thing. Adventure is the meat of the strong men who have built the world forthose more timid. Adventure and the frontier are one and inseparable. They suggest strength, courage, hardihood--qualities beloved in mensince the world began--qualities which are the very soul of the UnitedStates, itself an experiment, an adventure, a risk accepted. Take awayall our history of political regimes, the story of the rise and fallof this or that partisan aggregation in our government; take away oursomewhat inglorious military past; but leave us forever the traditionof the American frontier! There lies our comfort and our pride. Therewe never have failed. There, indeed, we always realized our ambitions. There, indeed, we were efficient, before that hateful phrase was known. There we were a melting-pot for character, before we came to knowthat odious appellation which classifies us as the melting-pot of thenations. 

The frontier was the place and the time of the strong man, of theself-sufficient but restless individual. It was the home of the rebel, the protestant, the unreconciled, the intolerant, the ardent--andthe resolute. It was not the conservative and tender man who made ourhistory; it was the man sometimes illiterate, oftentimes uncultured, theman of coarse garb and rude weapons. But the frontiersmen were the truedreamers of the nation. They really were the possessors of a nationalvision. Not statesmen but riflemen and riders made America. The noblestconclusions of American history still rest upon premises which theylaid. 

But, in its broadest significance, the frontier knows no country. Itlies also in other lands and in other times than our own. When and whatwas the Great Frontier? We need go back only to the time of Drakeand the sea-dogs, the Elizabethan Age, when all North America was afrontier, almost wholly unknown, compellingly alluring to all boldmen. That was the day of new stirrings in the human heart. Some strangeimpulse seemed to act upon the soul of the braver and bolder Europeans;and they moved westward, nor could have helped that had they tried. Theylived largely and blithely, and died handsomely, those old Elizabethanadventurers, and they lie today in thousands of unrecorded graves upontwo continents, each having found out that any place is good enough fora man to die upon, provided that he be a man. 

The American frontier was Elizabethan in its quality--childlike, simple, and savage. It has not entirely passed; for both Elizabethan folk andElizabethan customs are yet to be found in the United States. Whilethe half-savage civilization of the farther West was roaring on itsway across the continent--while the day of the keelboatman and theplainsman, of the Indian-fighter and the miner, even the day of thecowboy, was dawning and setting--there still was a frontier left farbehind in the East, near the top of the mountain range which made thefirst great barrier across our pathway to the West. That frontier, thefrontier of Boone and Kenton, of Robertson and Sevier, still exists andmay be seen in the Cumberland--the only remaining part of America whichis all American. There we may find trace of the Elizabethan Age--idiomslost from English literature and American speech long ago. There we maysee the American home life as it went on more than a hundred yearsago. We may see hanging on the wall the long muzzle-loading rifle of anearlier day. We may see the spinning-wheel and the loom. The women stillmake in part the clothing for their families, and the men still maketheir own household furniture, their own farming implements, their ownboots. 

This overhanging frontier of America is a true survival of the days ofDrake as well as of the days of Boone. The people are at once godly andsavage. They breed freely; they love their homes; they are ever readyfor adventure; they are frugal, abstemious, but violent and strong. They carry on still the half-religious blood feuds of the old ScotchHighlands or the North of Ireland, whence they came. They reverencegood women. They care little for material accumulations. They believe inpersonal ease and personal independence. With them life goes on not inthe slow monotony of reiterated performance, but in ragged profile, withlarge exertions followed by large repose. Now that has been the fashionof the frontier in every age and every land of all the world. And so, by studying these people, we may even yet arrive at a just andcomprehensive notion of what we might call the "feel" of the oldfrontier. 

There exists, too, yet another Saxon frontier in a far-off portionof the world. In that strange country, Australia, tremendous unknownregions still remain, and the wild pastoral life of such regions bidsfair to exist yet for many years. A cattle king of Queensland heldat one time sixty thousand square miles of land. It is said that theaverage size of pastoral holdings in the northern territory of Australiais two hundred and seventy-five thousand acres. Does this not recall theold times of free range in the American West?

This strange antipodal civilization also retains a curious flavorof Elizabethan ideas. It does not plan for inordinate fortunes, thecontinual amassing of money, but it does deliberately plan for the useby the individual of his individual life. Australian business hours areshorter than American. Routine is less general. The individual takesupon himself a smaller load of effort. He is restive under monotony. Hesets aside a great part of his life for sport. He lives in a large andyoung day of the world. Here we may see a remote picture of our ownAmerican West--better, as it seems to me, than that reflected in therapid and wholly commercialized development of Western Canada, which isnot flavored by any age but this. 

But much of the frontier of Australia is occupied by men of means whohad behind them government aid and a semi-paternal encouragement intheir adventures. The same is true in part of the government-fosteredsettlement of Western Canada. It was not so with the American West. Herewas not the place of the rich man but of the poor man, and he had no oneto aid him or encourage him. Perhaps no man ever understood the AmericanWest who did not himself go there and make his living in that country, as did the men who found it and held it first. Each life on our oldfrontier was a personal adventure. The individual had no governmentbehind him and he lacked even the protection of any law. 

Our frontier crawled west from the first seaport settlements, afoot, onhorseback, in barges, or with slow wagon-trains. It crawled across theAlleghanies, down the great river valleys and up them yet again; and atlast, in days of new transportation, it leaped across divides, from oneriver valley to another. Its history, at first so halting, came to bevery swift--so swift that it worked great elisions in its own story. 

In our own day, however, the Old West generally means the old cowcountry of the West--the high plains and the lower foothills runningfrom the Rio Grande to the northern boundary. The still more ancientcattle-range of the lower Pacific Slope will never come into acceptanceas the Old West. Always, when we use these words, we think of buffaloplains and of Indians, and of their passing before the footmen andriders who carried the phantom flag of Drake and the Virgin Queen fromthe Appalachians to the Rockies--before the men who eventually made goodthat glorious and vaunting vision of the Virginia cavaliers, whose partyturned back from the Rockfish Gap after laying claim in the name of KingGeorge on all the country lying west of them, as far as the South Sea!

The American cow country may with very good logic arrogate to itselfthe title of the real and typical frontier of all the world. We callthe spirit of the frontier Elizabethan, and so it was; but even as theElizabethan Age was marked by its contact with the Spanish civilizationin Europe, on the high seas, and in both the Americas, so the lastfrontier of the American West also was affected, and largely, deeply, by Spanish influence and Spanish customs. The very phraseology of rangework bears proof of this. Scores of Spanish words are written indeliblyin the language of the Plains. The frontier of the cow-range never wasSaxon alone. 

It is a curious fact also, seldom if ever noted, that this Old West ofthe Plains was very largely Southern and not Northern on its Saxonside. No States so much as Kentucky and Tennessee and, later, Missouri--daughters of Old Virginia in her glory--contributed to theforces of the frontiersmen. Texas, farther to the south, put her stampindelibly upon the entire cattle industry of the West. Visionary, impractical, restless, adventurous, these later Elizabethanheroes--bowing to no yoke, insisting on their own rights and scorningoften the laws of others, yet careful to retain the best and mostadvantageous customs of any conquered country--naturally came from thosenearest Elizabethan countries which lay abandoned behind them. 

If the atmosphere of the Elizabethan Age still may be found inthe forgotten Cumberlands, let us lay claim to kinship with yonderroystering heroes of a gallant day; for this was ever the atmosphereof our own frontier. To feel again the following breezes of the GoldenHind, or see again, floating high in the cloudless skies, the sails ofthe Great Armada, was the privilege of Americans for a double decadewithin the memory of men yet living, in that country, so unfailinglybeloved, which we call the Old West of America. 

Chapter II. The Range

When, in 1803, those two immortal youths, Meriwether Lewis and WilliamClark, were about to go forth on their great journey across thecontinent, they were admonished by Thomas Jefferson that they would inall likelihood encounter in their travels, living and stalking about, the mammoth or the mastodon, whose bones had been found in the greatsalt-licks of Kentucky. We smile now at such a supposition; yet it wasnot unreasonable then. No man knew that tremendous country that laybeyond the mouth of the Missouri. 

The explorers crossed one portion of a vast land which was like tonothing they had ever seen--the region later to become the greatcattle-range of America. It reached, although they could know nothing ofthat, from the Spanish possessions on the south across a thousand milesof short grass lands to the present Canadian boundary line which certainobdurate American souls still say ought to have been at 54 degrees 40minutes, and not where it is! From the Rio Grande to "Fifty-four forty, "indeed, would have made nice measurements for the Saxon cattle-range. 

Little, however, was the value of this land understood by the explorers;and, for more than half a century afterwards, it commonly was supposedto be useless for the occupation of white men and suitable only as ahunting-ground for savage tribes. Most of us can remember the schoolmaps of our own youth, showing a vast region marked, vaguely, "The GreatAmerican Desert, " which was considered hopeless for any human industry, but much of which has since proved as rich as any land anywhere on theglobe. 

Perhaps it was the treeless nature of the vast Plains which carried thefirst idea of their infertility. When the first settlers of Illinois andIndiana came up from south of the Ohio River they had their choice oftimber and prairie lands. Thinking the prairies worthless--since landwhich could not raise a tree certainly could not raise crops--thesefirst occupants of the Middle West spent a generation or more, axe inhand, along the heavily timbered river-bottoms. The prairies were longin settling. No one then could have predicted that farm lands in thatregion would be worth three hundred dollars an acre or better, and thatthese prairies of the Mississippi Valley would, in a few generations, be studded with great towns and would form a part of the granary of theworld. 

But, if our early explorers, passing beyond the valley of the Missouri, found valueless the region of the Plains and the foothills, not so thewild creatures or the savage men who had lived there longer than sciencerecords. The buffalo then ranged from the Rio Grande to the Athabaska, from the Missouri to the Rockies, and beyond. No one seems to haveconcluded in those days that there was after all slight differencebetween the buffalo and the domestic ox. The native cattle, however, inuntold thousands and millions, had even then proved beyond peradventurethe sustaining and strengthening nature of the grasses of the Plains. 

Now, each creature, even of human species, must adjust itself to itsenvironment. Having done so, commonly it is disposed to love thatenvironment. The Eskimo and the Zulu each thinks that he has the bestland in the world: So with the American Indian, who, supported by thevast herds of buffalo, ranged all over that tremendous country whichwas later to be given over to the white man with his domestic cattle. No freer life ever was lived by any savages than by the Horse Indiansof the Plains in the buffalo days; and never has the world known aphysically higher type of savage. 

On the buffalo-range--that is to say, on the cattle-range which was tobe--Lewis and Clark met several bands of the Sioux--the Mandans andthe Assiniboines, the Blackfeet, the Shoshones. Farther south were thePawnees, the Kaws, the Otoes, the Osages, most of whom depended in partupon the buffalo for their living, though the Otoes, the Pawnees, theMandans, and certain others now and then raised a little corn or a fewsquashes to help out their bill of fare. Still farther south dwelt theKiowas, the Comanches, and others. The Arapahoes, the Cheyennes, theCrows, and the Utes, all hunters, were soon to come into the ken of thewhite man. Of such of these tribes as they met, the youthful captainsmade accounting, gravely and with extraordinary accuracy, but withoutdiscovering in this region much future for Americans. They wereexplorers and not industrial investigators. 

It was nearly half a century after the journey of Lewis and Clark thatthe Forty-Niners were crossing the Plains, whither, meanwhile, theMormons had trekked in search of a country where they might live as theyliked. Still the wealth of the Plains remained untouched. California wasin the eyes of the world. The great cow-range was overleaped. But, inthe early fifties, when the placer fields of California began to be lessnumerous and less rich, the half-savage population of the mines roaredon northward, even across our northern line. Soon it was to roll back. Next it worked east and southeast and northeast over the great dryplains of Washington and Oregon, so that, as readily may be seen, thecow-range proper was not settled as most of the West was, by a directlywestbound thrust of an eastern population; but, on the contrary, it wasapproached from several different angles--from the north, from the east, from the west and northwest, and finally from the south. 

The early, turbulent population of miners and adventurers was crude, lawless, and aggressive. It cared nothing whatever for the Indiantribes. War, instant and merciless, where it meant murder for the mostpart, was set on foot as soon as white touched red in that far westernregion. 

All these new white men who had crowded into the unknown country of thePlains, the Rockies, the Sierras, and the Cascades, had to be fed. Theycould not employ and remain content with the means by which the redman there had always fed himself. Hence a new industry sprang up in theUnited States, which of itself made certain history in that land. Thebusiness of freighting supplies to the West, whether by bull-train orby pack-train, was an industry sui generic, very highly specialized, and pursued by men of great business ability as well as by men of greathardihood and daring. 

Each of these freight trains which went West carried hanging on itsflank more and more of the white men. As the trains returned, more andmore was learned in the States of the new country which lay between theMissouri and the Rockies, which ran no man knew how far north, and noman could guess how far south. Now appears in history Fort Benton, onthe Missouri, the great northern supply post--just as at an earlier datethere had appeared Fort Hall, one of the old fur-trading posts beyondthe Rockies, Bent's Fort on the Arkansas, and many other outposts of thenew Saxon civilization in the West. 

Later came the pony express and the stage coach which made history andromance for a generation. Feverishly, boisterously, a strong, rugged, womanless population crowded westward and formed the wavering, nowadvancing, now receding line of the great frontier of American story. 

But for long there was no sign of permanent settlement on the Plains, and no one thought of this region as the frontier. The men therewho were prospecting and exploiting were classified as no more thanadventurers. No one seems to have taken a lesson from the Indian and thebuffalo. The reports of Fremont long since had called attention to thenourishing quality of those grasses of the high country, but the day ofthe cowboy had not yet dawned. There is a somewhat feeble story whichruns to the effect that in 1866 one of the great wagon-trains, caught bythe early snows of winter, was obliged to abandon its oxen on the range. It was supposed that, of course, the oxen must perish during the winter. But next spring the owners were surprised to find that the oxen, so farfrom perishing, had flourished very much--indeed, were fat and in goodcondition. So runs the story which is often repeated. It may be true, but to accredit to this incident the beginnings of the cattle industryin the Indian country would surely be going too far. The truth is thatthe cow industry was not a Saxon discovery. It was a Latin enterprise, flourishing in Mexico long before the first of these miners andadventurers came on the range. 

Something was known of the Spanish lands to the south through theexplorations of Pike, but more through the commerce of the prairies--theold wagon trade from the Missouri River to the Spanish cities of SanteFe and Chihuahua. Now the cow business, south of the Rio Grande, was already well differentiated and developed at the time the firstadventurers from the United States went into Texas and began to crowdtheir Latin neighbors for more room. There it was that our Saxonfrontiersmen first discovered the cattle industry. But thesesouthern and northern riflemen--ruthless and savage, yet strangelystatesmanlike--though they might betimes drive away the owners of theherds, troubled little about the herds themselves. There was a certainfascination to these rude strangers in the slow and easeful civilizationof Old Spain which they encountered in the land below them. Littleby little, and then largely and yet more largely, the warriors of SanJacinto reached out and began to claim lands for themselves--leaguesand uncounted leagues of land, which had, however, no market value. Wellwithin the memory of the present generation large tracts of good landwere bought in Texas for six cents an acre; some was bought for halfthat price in a time not much earlier. Today much of that land isproducing wealth; but land then was worthless--and so were cows. 

This civilization of the Southwest, of the new Republic of Texas, maybe regarded as the first enduring American result of contact with theSpanish industry. The men who won Texas came mostly from Kentucky andTennessee or southern Ohio, and the first colonizer of Texas was aVirginian, Stephen Fuller Austin. They came along the old Natchez Tracefrom Nashville to the Mississippi River--that highway which has so muchhistory of its own. Down this old winding trail into the greatest valleyof all the world, and beyond that valley out into the Spanish country, moved steadily the adventurers whose fathers had but recently crossedthe Appalachians. One of the strongest thrusts of the Americancivilization thus entered the cattle-range at its lower end, between theRio Grande and the Red River. 

In all the several activities, mining, freighting, scouting, soldiering, riding pony express, or even sheer adventuring for what might come, there was ever a trading back and forth between home-staying men andadventuring men. Thus there was an interchange of knowledge and ofcustoms between East and West, between our old country and ournew. There was an interchange, too, at the south, where our Saxoncivilization came in touch with that of Mexico. 

We have now to note some fundamental facts and principles of the cattleindustry which our American cattlemen took over ready-made from thehands of Mexico. 

The Mexicans in Texas had an abundance of small, hardy horses of Africanand Spanish breed, which Spain had brought into the New World--the samehorses that the Moors had brought into Spain--a breed naturally hardyand able to subsist upon dry food. Without such horses there couldhave been no cattle industry. These horses, running wild in herds, hadcrossed to the upper Plains. La Verendrye, and later Lewis and Clark, had found the Indians using horses in the north. The Indians, as we haveseen, had learned to manage the horse. Formerly they had used dogs todrag the travois, but now they used the "elk-dog, " as they first calledthe horse. 

In the original cow country, that is, in Mexico and Texas, countlessherds of cattle were held in a loose sort of ownership over wide andunknown plains. Like all wild animals in that warm country, they bredin extraordinary numbers. The southern range, indeed, has always beencalled the breeding range. The cattle had little value. He who wantedbeef killed beef. He who wanted leather killed cattle for their hides. But beyond these scant and infrequent uses cattle had no definite value. 

The Mexican, however, knew how to handle cows. He could ride a horse, and he could rope cattle and brand them. Most of the cattle of a widerange would go to certain water-holes more or less regularly, where theymight be roughly collected or estimated. This coming of the cattle tothe watering-places made it unnecessary for owners of cattle to acquireranch land. It was enough to secure the water-front where the cows mustgo to drink. That gave the owner all the title he needed. His right tothe increase he could prove by another phenomenon of nature, just asinevitable and invariable as that of thirst. The maternal instinct of acow and the dependence of the calf upon its mother gave the old rancherof immemorial times sufficient proof of ownership in the increase ofhis herd. The calf would run with its own mother and with no othercow through its first season. So that if an old Mexican ranchero saw acertain number of cows at his watering-places, and with them calves, he knew that all before him were his property--or, at least, he claimedthem as such and used them. 

Still, this was loose-footed property. It might stray away after all, or it might be driven away. Hence, in some forgotten time, our shrewdSpaniard invented a system of proof of ownership which has always lainat the very bottom of the organized cow industry; he invented the methodof branding. This meant his sign, his name, his trade-mark, his proof ofownership. The animal could not shake it off. It would not burn off inthe sun or wash off in the rain. It went with the animal and could notbe eradicated from the animal's hide. Wherever the bearer was seen, thebrand upon its hide provided certain identification of the owner. 

Now, all these basic ideas of the cow industry were old on the lowerrange in Texas when our white men first drifted thither. The cattleindustry, although in its infancy, and although supposed to have nogreat future, was developed long before Texas became a republic. Itnever, indeed, changed very much from that time until the end of its owncareer. 

One great principle was accepted religiously even in those early andcrude days. A man's cow was HIS cow. A man's brand was HIS brand. Theremust be no interference with his ownership. Hence certain other phasesof the industry followed inevitably. These cattle, these calves, eachbranded by the iron of the owner, in spite of all precautions, beganto mingle as settlers became more numerous; hence came the idea of theround-up. The country was warm and lazy. If a hundred or a thousand cowswere not collected, very well. If a calf were separated from its mother, very well. The old ranchers never quarreled among themselves. They neverwould have made in the South anything like a cattle association; it wasleft for the Yankees to do that at a time when cows had come to havefar greater values. There were few arguments in the first rodeos of thelower range. One rancher would vie with his neighbor in generosityin the matter of unbranded calves. Haggling would have been heldcontemptible. On the lower range in the old times no one cared muchabout a cow. Why should one do so? There was no market for cows--no onewho wished to buy them. If one tendered a Mexican cinquo pesos for ayearling or a two-year-old, the owner might perhaps offer the animal asa gift, or he might smile and say "Con mucho gusto" as he was handed afew pieces of silver. There were plenty of cows everywhere in the world!

Let us, therefore, give the old Spaniard full credit alike inpicturesque romance and in the organized industry of the cow. Thewestbound thrust which came upon the upper part of the range in the daysof more shrewd and exacting business methods was simply the best-knownand most published phase of frontier life in the cow country; hence wehave usually accepted it as typical. It would not be accurate to saythat the cattle industry was basically much influenced or governed bynorthern or eastern men. In practically all of its great phenomena thefrontier of the old cow-range was southern by birth and growth. 

There lay, then, so long unused, that vast and splendid land so soon towrite romantic history of its own, so soon to come into the admirationor the wonder of a great portion of the earth--a land of fascinatinginterest to the youth of every country, and a region whose story holdsa charm for young and old alike even today. It was a region royal inits dimensions. Far on the west it was hedged by the gray-sided andwhite-topped mountains, the Rockies. Where the buffalo once lived, thecattle were to live, high up in the foothills of this great mountainrange which ran from the Rio Grande to Canada. On the east, where laythe Prairies rather than the Plains, it was a country waving with highnative grasses, with many brilliant flowers hiding among them, thesweet-William, the wild rose, and often great masses of the yellowsunflower. 

From the Rio Grande to the Athabaska, for the greater part, thefrontier sky was blue and cloudless during most of the year. Therainfall was not great. The atmosphere was dry. It was a cheerfulcountry, one of optimism and not of gloom. In the extreme south, alongthe Rio Grande, the climate was moister, warmer, more enervating; buton the high steppes of the middle range in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, western Nebraska, there lay the finest out-of-doors country, man'scountry the finest of the earth. 

But for the time, busy with more accustomed things, mining andfreighting and fighting and hunting and trading and trapping, weAmericans who had arrived upon the range cared little for cows. Theupper thrust of the great herds from the south into the north had notbegun. It was after the Civil War that the first great drives of cattlefrom the south toward the north began, and after men had learned inthe State of Texas that cattle moved from the Rio Grande to the upperportions of the State and fed on the mesquite grass would attain greaterstature than in the hot coast country. Then swiftly, somewhat luridly, there leaped into our comprehension and our interest that strangecountry long loosely held under our flag, the region of the Plains, theregion which we now call the Old West. 

In great bands, in long lines, slowly, towheaded, sore-footed, the vastgatherings of the prolific lower range moved north, each cow with itstitle indelibly marked upon its hide. These cattle were now going totake the place of those on which the Indians had depended for theirliving these many years. A new day in American history had dawned. 

Chapter III. The Cattle Trails

The customary method of studying history by means of a series of eventsand dates is not the method which we have chosen to employ in this studyof the Old West. Speaking generally, our minds are unable to assimilatea condensed mass of events and dates; and that is precisely what wouldbe required of us if we should attempt here to follow the ways ofconventional history. Dates are at best no more than milestones on thepathway of time; and in the present instance it is not the milestonesbut the road itself with which we are concerned. Where does the roadbegin? Why comes it hither? Whither does it lead? These are the realquestions. 

Under all the exuberance of the life of the range there lay a steadybusiness of tremendous size and enormous values. The "uproariousiniquity" of the West, its picturesqueness, its vividness--these werebut froth on the stream. The stream itself was a steady and somberflood. Beyond this picturesqueness of environment very few have cared togo, and therefore sometimes have had little realization of the vastnessof the cowboy's kingdom, the "magnitude of the interests in his care, orthe fortitude, resolution, and instant readiness essential to his dailylife. " The American cowboy is the most modern representative of a humanindustry that is second to very few in antiquity. 

Julius Caesar struck the note of real history: Quorum pars magnafui--"Of which I was a great part. " If we are to seek the actual truth, we ought most to value contemporary records, representations made by menwho were themselves a part of the scenes which they describe. In thatway we shall arrive not merely upon lurid events, not alone upon thestereotyped characters of the "Wild West, " but upon causes which aremuch more interesting and immensely more valuable than any merelytitillating stories from the weirdly illustrated Apocrypha of theWest. We must go below such things if we would gain a just and lastingestimate of the times. We ought to look on the old range neither as aplayground of idle men nor as a scene of hysterical and contorted humanactivities. We ought to look upon it from the point of view of its usesto mankind. The explorers found it a wilderness, the home of the red manand the buffalo. What were the underlying causes of its settlement anddevelopment?

There is in history no agency so wondrous in events, no workinginstrumentality so great as transportation. The great seeking of allhuman life is to find its level. Perhaps the first men traveledby hollowed logs down stream. Then possibly the idea of a sail wasconceived. Early in the story of the United States men made commercialjourneys from the head of the Ohio to the mouth of the Mississippiby flatboats, and came back by keelboats. The pole, the cordelle, thepaddle, and the sail, in turn helped them to navigate the great streamswhich led out into the West. And presently there was to come thattremendous upheaval wrought by the advent of the iron trails which, scorning alike waterways and mountain ranges, flung themselves almostdirectly westward across the continent. 

The iron trails, crossing the northern range soon after the Civil War, brought a market to the cattle country. Inevitably the men of thelower range would seek to reach the railroads with what they had tosell--their greatest natural product, cattle on the hoof. This was theprimary cause of the great northbound drives already mentioned, thegreatest pastoral phenomena in the story of the world. 

The southern herds at that time had no market at their doors. They hadto go to the market, and they had to go on foot. That meant that theymust be driven northward by cattle handlers who had passed their daysin the wild life of the lower range. These cowmen of course took theircharacter and their customs northward with them, and so they werediscovered by those enthusiastic observers, newly arrived by rail, whomthe cowmen were wont to call "pilgrims. "

Now the trail of the great cattle drives--the Long Trail-was a thing oftremendous importance of itself and it is still full of interest. As itmay not easily be possible for the author to better a description of itthat was written some twenty years ago, that description is here againset down. *

 * "The Story of the Cowboy, " by E. Hough. Appleton. 1897. Reprinted by permission. 

The braiding of a hundred minor pathways, the Long Trail lay like a vastrope connecting the cattle country of the South with that of the North. Lying loose or coiling, it ran for more than two thousand miles alongthe eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, sometimes close in at theirfeet, again hundreds of miles away across the hard tablelands or thewell-flowered prairies. It traversed in a fair line the vast land ofTexas, curled over the Indian Nations, over Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana, and bent in wide overlapping circles as far westas Utah and Nevada; as far east as Missouri, Iowa, even Illinois; and asfar north as the British possessions. Even today you may trace plainlyits former course, from its faint beginnings in the lazy land ofMexico, the Ararat of the cattle-range. It is distinct across Texas, andmultifold still in the Indian lands. Its many intermingling paths stillscar the iron surface of the Neutral Strip, and the plows have notburied all the old furrows in the plains of Kansas. Parts of the pathstill remain visible in the mountain lands of the far North. You maysee the ribbons banding the hillsides today along the valley of theStillwater, and along the Yellowstone and toward the source of theMissouri. The hoof marks are beyond the Musselshell, over the Bad Landsand the coulees and the flat prairies; and far up into the land ofthe long cold you may see, even today if you like, the shadow of thatunparalleled pathway, the Long Trail of the cattle-range. History has noother like it. 

The Long Trail was surveyed and constructed in a century and a day. Over the Red River of the South, a stream even today perhaps known butvaguely in the minds of many inhabitants of the country, thereappeared, almost without warning, vast processions of strange hornedkine--processions of enormous wealth, owned by kings who paid notribute, and guarded by men who never knew a master. Whither these werebound, what had conjured them forth, whence they came, were questionsin the minds of the majority of the population of the North and Eastto whom the phenomenon appeared as the product of a day. The answer tothese questions lay deep in the laws of civilization, and extended farback into that civilization's history. The Long Trail was finished in aday. It was begun more than a century before that day, and came forwardalong the very appointed ways of time. . . . Thus, far down in the vagueSouthwest, at some distant time, in some distant portion of old, mysterious Mexico, there fell into line the hoof prints which made thefirst faint beginnings of the Long Trail, merely the path of a halfnomadic movement along the line of the least resistance. 

The Long Trail began to deepen and extend. It received then, as itdid later, a baptism of human blood such as no other pathway of thecontinent has known. The nomadic and the warlike days passed, andthere ensued a more quiet and pastoral time. It was the beginning of afeudalism of the range, a barony rude enough, but a glorious one, albeit it began, like all feudalism, in large-handed theft and generousmurdering. The flocks of these strong men, carelessly interlapping, increased and multiplied amazingly. They were hardly looked upon aswealth. The people could not eat a tithe of the beef; they could notuse a hundredth of the leather. Over hundreds and hundreds of miles ofownerless grass lands, by the rapid waters of the mountains, by theslow streams of the plains or the long and dark lagoons of the low coastcountry the herds of tens grew into droves of hundreds and thousandsand hundreds of thousands. This was really the dawning of the Americancattle industry. 

Chips and flakes of the great Southwestern herd began to be seen in theNorthern States. As early as 1857 Texas cattle were driven to Illinois. In 1861 Louisiana was, without success, tried as an outlet. In 1867a venturous drover took a herd across the Indian Nations, bound forCalifornia, and only abandoned the project because the Plains Indianswere then very bad in the country to the north. In 1869 several herdswere driven from Texas to Nevada. These were side trails of the maincattle road. It seemed clear that a great population in the North neededthe cheap beef of Texas, and the main question appeared to be one oftransportation. No proper means for this offered. The Civil War stoppedalmost all plans to market the range cattle, and the close of that warfound the vast grazing lands of Texas covered fairly with millions ofcattle which had no actual or determinate value. They were sorted andbranded and herded after a fashion, but neither they nor their increasecould be converted into anything but more cattle. The cry for a marketbecame imperative. 

Meantime the Anglo-Saxon civilization was rolling swiftly toward theupper West. The Indians were being driven from the Plains. A solid armywas pressing behind the vanguard of soldier, scout, and plainsman. Therailroads were pushing out into a new and untracked empire. They carriedthe market with them. The market halted, much nearer, though still somehundred of miles to the north of the great herd. The Long Trail tappedno more at the door of Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, but leaped northagain definitely, this time springing across the Red River and up to therailroads, along sharp and well-defined channels deepened in the year of1866 alone by the hoofs of more than a quarter of a million cattle. 

In 1871, only five years later, over six hundred thousand cattle crossedthe Red River for the Northern markets. Abilene, Newton, Wichita, Ellsworth, Great Bend, Dodge, flared out into a swift and sometime evilblossoming. Thus the men of the North first came to hear of the LongTrail and the men who made it, although really it had begun long ago andhad been foreordained to grow. 

By this time, 1867 and 1868, the northern portions of the regionimmediately to the east of the Rocky Mountains had been sufficientlycleared of their wild inhabitants to admit a gradual though precarioussettlement. It had been learned yet again that the buffalo grass andthe sweet waters of the far North would fatten a range broadhorn to astature far beyond any it could attain on the southern range. TheLong Trail pushed rapidly even farther to the north where there stillremained "free grass" and a new market. The territorial ranges neededmany thousands of cattle for their stocking, and this demand took alarge part of the Texas drive which came to Abilene, Great Bend, andFort Dodge. Moreover, the Government was now feeding thousands of itsnew red wards, and these Indians needed thousands of beeves for rations, which were driven from the southern range to the upper army posts andreservations. Between this Government demand and that of the territorialstock ranges there was occupation for the men who made the saddle theirhome. 

The Long Trail, which had previously found the black corn lands ofIllinois and Missouri, now crowded to the West, until it had reachedUtah and Nevada, and penetrated every open park and mesa and valley ofColorado, and found all the high plains of Wyoming. Cheyenne and Laramiebecame common words now, and drovers spoke as wisely of the dangers ofthe Platte as a year before they had mentioned those of the Red Riveror the Arkansas. Nor did the Trail pause in its irresistible push tothe north until it had found the last of the five great transcontinentallines, far in the British provinces. Here in spite of a long season ofice and snow the uttermost edges of the great herd might survive, in acertain percentage at least, each year in an almost unassisted strugglefor existence, under conditions different enough, it would seem, fromthose obtaining at the opposite extreme of the wild roadway over whichthey came. 

The Long Trail of the cattle-range was done! By magic the cattleindustry had spread over the entire West. Today many men think of thatindustry as belonging only to the Southwest, and many would considerthat it was transferred to the North. Really it was not transferredbut extended, and the trail of the old drive marks the line of thatextension. 

Today the Long Trail is replaced by other trails, product of the swiftdevelopment of the West, and it remains as the connection, now for themost part historical only, between two phases of an industry which, inspite of differences of climate and condition, retain a similarity inall essential features. When the last steer of the first herd was driveninto the corral at the Ultima Thule of the range, it was the pony of theAmerican cowboy which squatted and wheeled under the spur and burst downthe straggling street of the little frontier town. Before that time, andsince that time, it was and has been the same pony and the same man whohave traveled the range, guarding and guiding the wild herds, from theromantic to the commonplace days of the West. 

Chapter IV. The Cowboy

The Great West, vast and rude, brought forth men also vast and rude. Wepass today over parts of that matchless region, and we see the red hillsand ragged mountain-fronts cut and crushed into huge indefinite shapes, to which even a small imagination may give a human or more than humanform. It would almost seem that the same great hand which chiseled outthese monumental forms had also laid its fingers upon the people of thisregion and fashioned them rude and ironlike, in harmony with the sternfaces set about them. 

Of all the babes of that primeval mother, the West, the cowboy wasperhaps her dearest because he was her last. Some of her children livedfor centuries; this one for not a triple decade before he began tobe old. What was really the life of this child of the wild region ofAmerica, and what were the conditions of the experience that bore him, can never be fully known by those who have not seen the West with wideeyes--for the cowboy was simply a part of the West. He who does notunderstand the one can never understand the other. 

If we care truly to see the cowboy as he was and seek to give our wishthe dignity of a real purpose, we should study him in connection withhis surroundings and in relation to his work. Then we shall see him notas a curiosity but as a product--not as an eccentric driver of hornedcattle but as a man suited to his times. 

Large tracts of that domain where once the cowboy reigned supreme havebeen turned into farms by the irrigator's ditch or by the dry-farmer'splan. The farmer in overalls is in many instances his own stockmantoday. On the ranges of Arizona, Wyoming, and Texas and parts of Nevadawe may find the cowboy, it is true, even today: but he is no longer theHomeric figure that once dominated the plains. In what we say as tohis trade, therefore, or his fashion in the practice of it, we speakin terms of thirty or forty years ago, when wire was unknown, when theround-up still was necessary, and the cowboy's life was indeed that ofthe open. 

By the costume we may often know the man. The cowboy's costume washarmonious with its surroundings. It was planned upon lines ofsuch stern utility as to leave no possible thing which we may calldispensable. The typical cowboy costume could hardly be said to containa coat and waistcoat. The heavy woolen shirt, loose and open at theneck, was the common wear at all seasons of the year excepting winter, and one has often seen cowboys in the winter-time engaged in work aboutthe yard or corral of the ranch wearing no other cover for the upperpart of the body but one or more of these heavy shirts. If the cowboywore a coat he would wear it open and loose as much as possible. Ifhe wore a "vest" he would wear it slouchily, hanging open or partlyunbuttoned most of the time. There was a reason for this slouchy habit. The cowboy would say that the vest closely buttoned about the body wouldcause perspiration, so that the wearer would quickly chill upon ceasingexercise. If the wind were blowing keenly when the cowboy dismounted tosit upon the ground for dinner, he would button up his waistcoat and bewarm. If it were very cold he would button up his coat also. 

The cowboy's boots were of fine leather and fitted tightly, with lightnarrow soles, extremely small and high heels. Surely a more irrationalfoot-covering never was invented; yet these tight, peaked cowboy bootshad a great significance and may indeed be called the insignia of acalling. There was no prouder soul on earth than the cowboy. He wasproud of being a horseman and had a contempt for all human beings whowalked. On foot in his tight-toed boots he was lost; but he wished itto be understood that he never was on foot. If we rode beside him andwatched his seat in the big cow saddle we found that his high and narrowheels prevented the slipping forward of the foot in the stirrup, intowhich he jammed his feet nearly full length. If there was a fall, thecowboy's foot never hung in the stirrup. In the corral roping, afoot, his heels anchored him. So he found his little boots not sounserviceable and retained them as a matter of pride. Boots made forthe cowboy trade sometimes had fancy tops of bright-colored leather. TheLone Star of Texas was not infrequent in their ornamentation. 

The curious pride of the horseman extended also to his gloves. Thecowboy was very careful in the selection of his gloves. They were madeof the finest buckskin, which could not be injured by wetting. Generallythey were tanned white and cut with a deep cuff or gauntlet from whichhung a little fringe to flutter in the wind when he rode at full speedon horseback. 

The cowboy's hat was one of the typical and striking features of hiscostumes. It was a heavy, wide, white felt hat with a heavy leatherband buckled about it. There has been no other head covering devised sosuitable as the Stetson for the uses of the Plains, although high andheavy black hats have in part supplanted it today among stockmen. Theboardlike felt was practically indestructible. The brim flapped a littleand, in time, was turned up and perhaps held fast to the crown by athong. The wearer might sometimes stiffen the brim by passing a thongthrough a series of holes pierced through the outer edge. He coulddepend upon his hat in all weathers. In the rain it was an umbrella; inthe sun a shield; in the winter he could tie it down about his ears withhis handkerchief. 

Loosely thrown about the cowboy's shirt collar was a silk kerchief. Itwas tied in a hard knot in front, and though it could scarcely be saidto be devoted to the uses of a neck scarf, yet it was a great comfort tothe back of the neck when one was riding in a hot wind. It was sure tobe of some bright color, usually red. Modern would-be cowpunchers do notwillingly let this old kerchief die, and right often they over-play it. For the cowboy of the "movies, " however, let us register an unqualifiedcontempt. The real range would never have been safe for him. 

A peculiar and distinctive feature of the cowboy's costume was his"chaps" (chaparejos). The chaps were two very wide and full-lengthtrouser-legs made of heavy calfskin and connected by a narrow beltor strap. They were cut away entirely at front and back so that theycovered only the thigh and lower legs and did not heat the body asa complete leather garment would. They were intended solely as aprotection against branches, thorns, briers, and the like, but they wereprized in cold or wet weather. Sometimes there was seen, more often onthe southern range, a cowboy wearing chaps made of skins tanned withthe hair on; for the cowboy of the Southwest early learned that goatskinleft with the hair on would turn the cactus thorns better than any othermaterial. Later, the chaps became a sort of affectation on the part ofnew men on the range; but the old-time cowboy wore them for use, not asa uniform. In hot weather he laid them off. 

In the times when some men needed guns and all men carried them, nopistol of less than 44-caliber was tolerated on the range, the solidframed 45-caliber being the one almost universally used. The barrelwas eight inches long, and it shot a rifle cartridge of forty grainsof powder and a blunt-ended bullet that made a terrible missile. Thisweapon depended from a belt worn loose resting upon the left hip andhanging low down on the right hip so that none of the weight came uponthe abdomen. This was typical, for the cowboy was neither fancy gunmannor army officer. The latter carries the revolver on the left, the buttpointing forward. 

An essential part of the cow-puncher's outfit was his "rope. " This wascarried in a close coil at the side of the saddle-horn, fastened by oneof the many thongs scattered over the saddle. In the Spanish country itwas called reata and even today is sometimes seen in the Southwest madeof rawhide. In the South it was called a lariat. The modern rope is awell-made three-quarter-inch hemp rope about thirty feet in length, witha leather or rawhide eye. The cowboy's quirt was a short heavy whip, thestock being of wood or iron covered with braided leather and carrying alash made of two or three heavy loose thongs. The spur in the old dayshad a very large rowel with blunt teeth an inch long. It was oftenornamented with little bells or oblongs of metal, the tinkling of whichappealed to the childlike nature of the Plains rider. Their use was tolock the rowel. 

His bridle--for, since the cowboy and his mount are inseparable, wemay as well speak of his horse's dress also--was noticeable for itstremendously heavy and cruel curbed bit, known as the "Spanish bit. " Butin the ordinary riding and even in the exciting work of the old round-upand in "cutting out, " the cowboy used the bit very little, nor exertedany pressure on the reins. He laid the reins against the neck of thepony opposite to the direction in which he wished it to go, merelyturning his hand in the direction and inclining his body in the sameway. He rode with the pressure of the knee and the inclination of thebody and the light side-shifting of both reins. The saddle was themost important part of the outfit. It was a curious thing, this saddledeveloped by the cattle trade, and the world has no other like it. Itsgreat weight--from thirty to forty pounds--was readily excusable whenone remembers that it was not only seat but workbench for the cowman. A light saddle would be torn to pieces at the first rush of a maddenedsteer, but the sturdy frame of a cow-saddle would throw the heaviestbull on the range. The high cantle would give a firmness to the cowboy'sseat when he snubbed a steer with a sternness sufficient to send itrolling heels over head. The high pommel, or "horn, " steel-forged andcovered with cross braids of leather, served as anchor post for thissame steer, a turn of the rope about it accomplishing that purpose atonce. The saddle-tree forked low down over the pony's back so that thesaddle sat firmly and could not readily be pulled off. The great broadcinches bound the saddle fast till horse and saddle were practically onefabric. The strong wooden house of the old heavy stirrup protectedthe foot from being crushed by the impact of the herd. The form of thecow-saddle has changed but little, although today one sees a shorterseat and smaller horn, a "swell front" or roll, and a stirrup of open"ox-bow" pattern. 

The round-up was the harvest of the range. The time of the calf round-upwas in the spring after the grass had become good and after the calveshad grown large enough for the branding. The State Cattle Associationdivided the entire State range into a number of round-up districts. Under an elected round-up captain were all the bosses in charge of thedifferent ranch outfits sent by men having cattle in the round-up. Letus briefly draw a picture of this scene as it was. 

Each cowboy would have eight or ten horses for his own use, for he hadnow before him the hardest riding of the year. When the cow-puncher wentinto the herd to cut out calves he mounted a fresh horse, and every fewhours he again changed horses, for there was no horse which could longendure the fatigue of the rapid and intense work of cutting. Before therider stretched a sea of interwoven horns, waving and whirling as thedensely packed ranks of cattle closed in or swayed apart. It wasno prospect for a weakling, but into it went the cow-puncher on hisdetermined little horse, heeding not the plunging, crushing, andthrusting of the excited cattle. Down under the bulks of the herd, halfhid in the whirl of dust, he would spy a little curly calf running, dodging, and twisting, always at the heels of its mother; and he woulddart in after, following the two through the thick of surging andplunging beasts. The sharp-eyed pony would see almost as soon as hisrider which cow was wanted and he needed small guidance from that timeon. He would follow hard at her heels, edging her constantly toward theflank of the herd, at times nipping her hide as a reminder of his ownsuperiority. In spite of herself the cow would gradually turn outtoward the edge, and at last would be swept clear of the crush, the calffollowing close behind her. There was a whirl of the rope and the calfwas laid by the heels and dragged to the fire where the branding ironswere heated and ready. 

Meanwhile other cow-punchers are rushing calves to the branding. The hubbub and turmoil increase. Taut ropes cross the ground in manydirections. The cutting ponies pant and sweat, rear and plunge. Thegarb of the cowboy is now one of white alkali which hangs gray in hiseyebrows and moustache. Steers bellow as they surge to and fro. Cowscharge on their persecutors. Fleet yearlings break and run for the open, pursued by men who care not how or where they ride. 

We have spoken in terms of the past. There is no calf round-up of theopen range today. The last of the roundups was held in Routt County, Colorado, several years ago, so far as the writer knows, and it had onlyto do with shifting cattle from the summer to the winter range. 

After the calf round-up came the beef round-up, the cowman's finalharvest. This began in July or August. Only the mature or fatted animalswere cut out from the herd. This "beef cut" was held apart and driven onahead from place to place as the round-up progressed. It was then drivenin by easy stages to the shipping point on the railroad, whence the longtrainloads of cattle went to the great markets. 

In the heyday of the cowboy it was natural that his chief amusementsshould be those of the outdoor air and those more or less in line withhis employment. He was accustomed to the sight of big game, and so hadthe edge of his appetite for its pursuit worn off. Yet he was a hunter, just as every Western man was a hunter in the times of the Western game. His weapons were the rifle, revolver, and rope; the latter two werealways with him. With the rope at times he captured the coyote, andunder special conditions he has taken deer and even antelope in thisway, though this was of course most unusual and only possible underchance conditions of ground and cover. Elk have been roped by cowboysmany times, and it is known that even the mountain sheep has been sotaken, almost incredible as that may seem. The young buffalo were easyprey for the cowboy and these he often roped and made captive. In factthe beginnings of all the herds of buffalo now in captivity in thiscountry were the calves roped and secured by cowboys; and these fewscattered individuals of a grand race of animals remain as melancholyreminders alike of a national shiftlessness and an individual skill anddaring. 

The grizzly was at times seen by the cowboys on the range, and if itchanced that several cowboys were together it was not unusual to givehim chase. They did not always rope him, for it was rarely that thenature of the country made this possible. Sometimes they roped him andwished they could let him go, for a grizzly bear is uncommonly activeand straightforward in his habits at close quarters. The extremedifficulty of such a combat, however, gave it its chief fascination forthe cowboy. Of course, no one horse could hold the bear after it wasroped, but, as one after another came up, the bear was caught by neckand foot and body, until at last he was tangled and tripped and hauledabout till he was helpless, strangled, and nearly dead. It is said thatcowboys have so brought into camp a grizzly bear, forcing him to halfwalk and half slide at the end of the ropes. No feat better than thiscould show the courage of the plainsman and of the horse which he soperfectly controlled. 

Of such wild and dangerous exploits were the cowboy's amusements on therange. It may be imagined what were his amusements when he visited the"settlements. " The cow-punchers, reared in the free life of the openair, under circumstances of the utmost freedom of individual action, perhaps came off the drive or round-up after weeks or months of unusualrestraint or hardship, and felt that the time had arrived for themto "celebrate. " Merely great rude children, as wild and untamed anduntaught as the herds they led, they regarded their first look at the"settlements" of the railroads as a glimpse of a wider world. Theypursued to the uttermost such avenues of new experience as lay beforethem, almost without exception avenues of vice. It is strange that therecords of those days should be chosen by the public to be held as themeasure of the American cowboy. Those days were brief, and they arelong since gone. The American cowboy atoned for them by a quarter of acentury of faithful labor. 

The amusements of the cowboy were like the features of his dailysurroundings and occupation--they were intense, large, Homeric. Yet, judged at his work, no higher type of employee ever existed, norone more dependable. He was the soul of honor in all the ways of hiscalling. The very blue of the sky, bending evenly over all men alike, seemed to symbolize his instinct for justice. Faithfulness and manlinesswere his chief traits; his standard--to be a "square man. "

Not all the open range will ever be farmed, but very much that was longthought to be irreclaimable has gone under irrigation or is being moreor less successfully "dryfarmed. " The man who brought water upon thearid lands of the West changed the entire complexion of a vast countryand with it the industries of that country. Acres redeemed from thedesert and added to the realm of the American farmer were taken from therealm of the American cowboy. 

The West has changed. The curtain has dropped between us and its wildand stirring scenes. The old days are gone. The house dog sits on thehill where yesterday the coyote sang. There are fenced fields and inthem stand sleek round beasts, deep in crops such as their ancestorsnever saw. In a little town nearby is the hurry and bustle of modernlife. This town is far out upon what was called the frontier, long afterthe frontier has really gone. Guarding its ghost here stood a littlearmy post, once one of the pillars, now one of the monuments of theWest. 

Out from the tiny settlement in the dusk of evening, always facingtoward where the sun is sinking, might be seen riding, not so longago, a figure we should know. He would thread the little lane among thefences, following the guidance of hands other than his own, a thing hewould once have scorned to do. He would ride as lightly and as easilyas ever, sitting erect and jaunty in the saddle, his reins held high andloose in the hand whose fingers turn up gracefully, his whole body freeyet firm in the saddle with the seat of the perfect horseman. At theboom of the cannon, when the flag dropped fluttering down to sleep, hewould rise in his stirrups and wave his hat to the flag. Then, towardthe edge, out into the evening, he would ride on. The dust of his ridingwould mingle with the dusk of night. We could not see which was theone or the other. We could only hear the hoofbeats passing, boldly andsteadily still, but growing fainter, fainter, and more faint. *

 * For permission to use in this chapter material from theauthor's "The Story of the Cowboy, " acknowledgment is made to D. Appleton & Co. 

Chapter V. The Mines

If the influence of the cattle industry was paramount in the developmentof the frontier region found by the first railways, it should not beconcluded that this upthrust of the southern cattle constituted theonly contribution to the West of that day. There were indeed earlierinfluences, the chief of which was the advent of the wild population ofthe placer mines. The riches of the gold-fields hastened the building ofthe first transcontinental railroads and the men of the mines set theirmark also indelibly upon the range. 

It is no part of our business here to follow the great discoveries of1849 in California. * Neither shall we chronicle the once-famous rushesfrom California north into the Fraser River Valley of British Columbia;neither is it necessary to mention in much detail the great camps ofNevada; nor yet the short-lived stampede of 1859 to the Pike's Peakcountry in Colorado. The rich placer fields of Idaho and Montana, fromwhich enormous amounts were taken, offer typical examples of the miningcommunities of the Rockies. 

 * See Stewart Edward White: "The Forty-Niners" ("Chronicles ofAmerica"). 

We may never know how much history remains forever unwritten. Of thebeginnings of the Idaho camps there have trickled back into record onlybrief, inconsequent, and partial stories. The miners who surged thisway and that all through the Sierras, the upper Cascades, north into theSelkirks, and thence back again into the Rockies were a turbulent mob. Having overrun all our mountain ranges, following the earlier trails ofthe traders and trappers, they now recoiled upon themselves and rolledback eastward to meet the advancing civilization of the westbound rails, caring nothing for history and less for the civilized society in whichthey formerly had lived. This story of bedlam broken loose, of men gonecrazed, by the sudden subversion of all known values and all standardsof life, was at first something which had no historian and can berecorded only by way of hearsay stories which do not always tally as tothe truth. 

The mad treasure-hunters of the California mines, restless, insubordinate, incapable of restraint, possessed of the belief thatthere might be gold elsewhere than in California, and having heardreports of strikes to the north, went hurrying out into the mountains ofOregon and Washington, in a wild stampede, all eager again to engage inthe glorious gamble where by one lucky stroke of the pick a man might beset free of the old limitations of human existence. 

So the flood of gold-seekers--passing north into the Fraser Rivercountry, south again into Oregon and Washington, and across the greatdesert plains into Nevada and Idaho--made new centers of lurid activity, such as Oro Fino, Florence, and Carson. Then it was that Walla Wallaand Lewiston, outfitting points on the western side of the range, foundplace upon the maps of the land, such as they were. 

Before these adventurers, now eastbound and no longer facing west, therearose the vast and formidable mountain ranges which in their time haddaunted even the calm minds of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Butthe prospectors and the pack-trains alike penetrated the Salmon RiverRange. Oro Fino, in Idaho, was old in 1861. The next great strikes wereto be made around Florence. Here the indomitable packer from the West, conquering unheard-of difficulties, brought in whiskey, women, pianos, food, mining tools. Naturally all these commanded fabulous prices. The price for each and all lay underfoot. Man, grown superman, couldoverleap time itself by a stroke of the pick! What wonder deliriumreigned!

These events became known in the Mississippi Valley and farthereastward. And now there came hurrying out from the older regionsmany more hundreds and thousands eager to reach a land not so faras California, but reputed to be quite as rich. It was then, as thebull-trains came in from the East, from the head of navigation on theMissouri River, that the western outfitting points of Walla Walla andLewiston lost their importance. 

Southward of the Idaho camps the same sort of story was repeatingitself. Nevada had drawn to herself a portion of the wild men of thestampedes. Carson for its day (1859-60) was a capital not unlike theothers. Some of its men had come down from the upper fields, some hadarrived from the East over the old Santa Fe Trail, and yet others haddrifted in from California. 

All the camps were very much alike. A straggling row of log cabins orhuts of motley construction; a few stores so-called, sometimes of logs, or, if a saw-mill was at hand, of rude sawn boards; a number of saloons, each of which customarily also supported a dance-hall; a series ofcabins or huts where dwelt individual men, each doing his own cookingand washing; and outside these huts the uptorn earth--such were thecamps which dotted the trails of the stampedes across inhospitabledeserts and mountain ranges. Church and school were unknown. Law therewas none, for of organized society there was none. The women who livedthere were unworthy of the name of woman. The men strode about inthe loose dress of the camp, sometimes without waistcoat, sometimescoatless, shod with heavy boots, always armed. 

If we look for causes contributory to the history of the mining-camp, weshall find one which ordinarily is overlooked--the invention of Colt'srevolving pistol. At the time of the Civil War, though this weapon wasnot old, yet it had attained very general use throughout the frontier. That was before the day of modern ammunition. The six-shooter of theplacer days was of the old cap-and-ball type, heavy, long-barreled, andusually wooden-handled. It was the general ownership of these deadlyweapons which caused so much bloodshed in the camps. The revolver inthe hands of a tyro is not especially serviceable, but it attained greatdeadliness in the hands of an expert user. Such a man, naturally ofquick nerve reflexes, skillful and accurate in the use of theweapon through long practice, became a dangerous, and for a time anunconquerable, antagonist. 

It is a curious fact that the great Montana fields were doublydiscovered, in part by men coming east from California, and in part bymen passing west in search of new gold-fields. The first discovery ofgold in Montana was made on Gold Creek by a half-breed trapper namedFrancois, better known as Be-net-see. This was in 1852, but the newsseems to have lain dormant for a time--naturally enough, for there wassmall ingress or egress for that wild and unknown country. In 1857, however, a party of miners who had wandered down the Big Hole River ontheir way back east from California decided to look into the Gold Creekdiscovery, of which they had heard. This party was led by James andGranville Stuart, and among others in the party were Jake Meeks, RobertHereford, Robert Dempsey, John W. Powell, John M. Jacobs, Thomas Adams, and some others. These men did some work on Gold Creek in 1858, but seemnot to have struck it very rich, and to have withdrawn to Fort Bridgerin Utah until the autumn of 1860. Then a prospector by the name of TomGolddigger turned up at Bridger with additional stories of creeks to thenorth, so that there was a gradual straggling back toward Gold Creek andother gulches. This prospector had been all over the Alder Gulch, whichwas ere long to prove fabulously rich. 

It was not, however, until 1863 that the Montana camps sprang intofame. It was not Gold Creek or Alder Gulch, but Florence and otherIdaho camps, that, in the summer and autumn of 1862, brought into themountains no less than five parties of gold-seekers, who remained inMontana because they could not penetrate the mountain barrier which laybetween them and the Salmon River camps in Idaho. 

The first of these parties arrived at Gold Creek by wagon-train fromFort Benton and the second hailed from Salt Lake. An election was heldfor the purpose of forming a sort of community organization, the firstelection ever known in Montana. The men from the East had brought withthem some idea of law and organization. There were now in the Montanafields many good men such as the Stuart Brothers, Samuel T. Hauser, Walter Dance, and others later well known in the State. These men wereprominent in the organization of the first miners' court, which hadoccasion to try--and promptly to hang--Stillman and Jernigan, tworuffians who had been in from the Salmon River mines only about fourdays when they thus met retribution for their early crimes. Anassociate of theirs, Arnett, had been killed while resisting arrest. The reputation of Florence for lawlessness and bloodshed was well known;and, as the outrages of the well-organized band of desperadoes operatingin Idaho might be expected to begin at any time in Montana, a certainuneasiness existed among the newcomers from the States. 

Two more parties, likewise bound for Idaho and likewise baffled by theSalmon River range, arrived at the Montana camps in the same summer. Both these were from the Pike's Peak country in Colorado. And in theautumn came a fifth--this one under military protection, Captain JamesL. Fisk commanding, and having in the party a number of settlers boundfor Oregon as well as miners for Idaho. This expedition arrived in thePrickly Pear Valley in Montana on September 21, 1862, having left St. Paul on the 16th of June, traveling by steamboat and wagon-train. WhileCaptain Fisk and his expedition pushed on to Walla Walla, nearly half ofthe immigrants stayed to try their luck at placer-mining. But theyield was not great and the distant Salmon River mines, their originaldestination, still awaited them. Winter was approaching. It was now toolate in the season to reach the Salmon River mines, five hundred milesacross the mountains, and it was four hundred miles to Salt Lake, thenearest supply post; therefore, most of the men joined this littlearmy of prospectors in Montana. Some of them drifted to the Grasshopperdiggings, soon to be known under the name of Bannack--one of the wildestmining-camps of its day. 

These different origins of the population of the first Montana camps areinteresting because of the fact that they indicate a difference in thetwo currents of population which now met here in the new placer fields. In general the wildest and most desperate of the old-time adventurers, those coming from the West, had located in the Idaho camps, and mightbe expected in Montana at any time. In contrast to these, the men latelyout from the States were of a different type, many of them sober, mostof them law-abiding, men who had come out to better their fortunes andnot merely to drop into the wild and licentious life of a placercamp. Law and order always did prevail eventually in any mining community. In the case of Montana, law and order arrived almost synchronously withlawlessness and desperadoism. 

Law and order had not long to wait before the arrival of the notoriousHenry Plummer and his band from Florence. Plummer was already known asa bad man, but was not yet recognized as the leader of that secretassociation of robbers and murderers which had terrorized the Idahocamps. He celebrated his arrival in Bannack by killing a man namedCleveland. He was acquitted in the miners' court that tried him, onthe usual plea of self-defense. He was a man of considerable personaladdress. 

The same tribunal soon assembled once more to try three other murderers, Moore, Reeves, and Mitchell, with the agreement that the men should havea jury and should be provided with counsel. They were all practicallyfreed; and after that the roughs grew bolder than ever. The Plummer bandswore to kill every man who had served in that court, whether as jurymanor officer. So well did they make good their threat that out of thetwenty-seven men thus engaged all but seven were either killed or drivenout of the country, nine being murdered outright. The man who had actedas sheriff of this miners' court, Hank Crawford, was unceasingly houndedby Plummer, who sought time and again to fix a quarrel on him. Plummerwas the best shot in the mountains at that time, and he thought itwould be easy for him to kill his man and enter the usual plea ofself-defense. By good fortune, however, Crawford caught Plummer off hisguard and fired upon him with a rifle, breaking his right arm. Plummer'sfriends called in Dr. Glick, the best physician in Bannack, to treatthe wounded man, warning him that if he told anything about the visithe would be shot down. Glick held his peace, and later was obliged toattend many of the wounded outlaws, who were always engaged in affairswith firearms. 

Of all these wild affrays, of the savage life which they denoted, andof the stern ways in which retribution overtook the desperadoes ofthe mines, there is no better historian than Nathaniel P. Langford, aprominent citizen of the West, who accompanied the overland expeditionof 1862 and took part in the earliest life of Montana. His work, "Vigilante Days and Ways, " is an invaluable contemporary record. 

It is mentally difficult for us now fully to restore these scenes, although the events occurred no earlier than the Civil War. "Life inBannack at this time, " says Langford, "was perfect isolation from therest of the world. Napoleon was not more of an exile on St. Helena thana newly arrived immigrant from the States in this region of lakesand mountains. All the great battles of the season of 1862--Antietam, Fredericksburg, Second Bull Run--all the exciting debates of Congress, and the more exciting combats at sea, first became known to us on thearrival of newspapers and letters in the spring of 1863. "

The Territory of Idaho, which included Montana and nearly all Wyoming, was organized March 3, 1863. Previous to that time western Montana andIdaho formed a part of Washington Territory, of which Olympia was thecapital, and Montana, east of the mountains, belonged to the Territoryof Dakota, of which the capital was Yankton, on the Missouri. Langfordmakes clear the political uncertainties of the time, the difficultyof enforcing the laws, and narrates the circumstances which led to theerection in 1864 of the new Territory of Montana, comprising the limitsof the present State. *

 * The Acts of Congress organizing Territories and admittingStates are milestones in the occupation of this last West. On the eve ofthe Civil War, Kansas was admitted into the Union; during the war, theTerritories of Colorado, Nevada, Dakota, Arizona, Idaho, and Montanawere organized, and Nevada was admitted as a State. Immediately afterthe war, Nebraska was admitted and Wyoming was organized as a Territory. In the Centennial Year (1876) Colorado became a State. In 1889 and 1890North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming wereadmitted as States. In the latter year Oklahoma was carved out of theIndian Territory. Utah with its Mormon population was kept waiting atthe doors of the Union until 1896. Oklahoma became a State in 1907;Arizona and New Mexico were admitted in 1912. 

In Montana as elsewhere in these days of great sectional bitterness, there was much political strife; and this no doubt accounts for anastonishing political event that now took place. Henry Plummer, the mostactive outlaw of his day, was elected sheriff and entrusted with theenforcement of the laws! He made indeed a great show of enforcing thelaws. He married, settled down, and for a time was thought by some ofthe ill-advised to have reformed his ways, although in truth he couldnot have reformed. 

By June, 1863, the extraordinarily rich strike in Alder Gulch had beenmade. The news of this spread like wildfire to Bannack and to the SalmonRiver mines in Idaho as well, and the result was one of the fiercestof all the stampedes, and the rise, almost overnight, of Virginia City. Meanwhile some Indian fighting had taken place and in a pitched battleon the Bear River General Connor had beaten decisively the BannackIndians, who for years had preyed on the emigrant trains. This madetravel on the mountain trails safer than it had been; and the richLast Chance Gulch on which the city of Helena now stands attracted atremendous population almost at once. The historian above cited livedthere. Let him tell of the life. 

"One long stream of active life filled the little creek on itsauriferous course from Bald Mountain, through a canyon of wild andpicturesque character, until it emerged into the large and fertilevalley of the Pas-sam-a-ri. . . The mountain stream called by Lewis andClark in their journal 'Philanthropy River. ' Lateral streams of greatbeauty pour down the sides of the mountain chain bounding the valley. . . . Gold placers were found upon these streams and occupied soon after thesettlement at Virginia City was commenced. . . . This human hive, numberingat least ten thousand people, was the product of ninety days. Intoit were crowded all the elements of a rough and active civilization. Thousands of cabins and tents and brush wakiups. . . Were seen on everyhand. Every foot of the gulch. . . Was undergoing displacement, and it wasalready disfigured by huge heaps of gravel which had been passedthrough the sluices and rifled of their glittering contents. . . . Gold wasabundant, and every possible device was employed by the gamblers, thetraders, the vile men and women that had come in with the miners intothe locality, to obtain it. Nearly every third cabin was a saloon wherevile whiskey was peddled out for fifty cents a drink in gold dust. Many of these places were filled with gambling tables and gamblers. . . . Hurdy-gurdy dance-houses were numerous. . . . Not a day or night passedwhich did not yield its full fruition of vice, quarrels, wounds, ormurders. The crack of the revolver was often heard above the merry notesof the violin. Street fights were frequent, and as no one knew whenor where they would occur, every one was on his guard against a randomshot. 

"Sunday was always a gala day. . . . The stores were all open. . . . Thousandsof people crowded the thoroughfares ready to rush in the directionof any promised excitement. Horse-racing was among the most favoredamusements. Prize rings were formed, and brawny men engaged infisticuffs until their sight was lost and their bodies pommelled toa jelly, while hundreds of onlookers cheered the victor. . . . Pistolsflashed, bowie knives flourished, and braggart oaths filled the air, asoften as men's passions triumphed over their reason. This was indeedthe reign of unbridled license, and men who at first regarded it withdisgust and terror, by constant exposure soon learned to become a partof it and forget that they had ever been aught else. All classes ofsociety were represented at this general exhibition. Judges, lawyers, doctors, even clergymen, could not claim exemption. Culture and religionafforded feeble protection, where allurement and indulgence ruled thehour. "

Imagine, therefore, a fabulously rich mountain valley twelve miles inextent, occupied by more than ten thousand men and producing more thanten millions of dollars before the close of the first year! It is astupendous demand on any imagination. How might all this gold be sentout in safe-keeping? We are told that the only stage route extended fromVirginia City no farther than Bannack. Between Virginia City and SaltLake City there was an absolute wilderness, wholly unsettled, fourhundred and seventy-five miles in width. "There was no post office inthe Territory. Letters were brought from Salt Lake first at a cost oftwo dollars and a half each, and later in the season at one dollar each. All money at infinite risk was sent to the nearest express office atSalt Lake City by private hands. "

Practically every man in the new gold-fields was aware of the existenceof a secret band of well-organized ruffians and robbers. The generalfeeling was one of extreme uneasiness. There were plenty of men who hadtaken out of the ground considerable quantities of gold, and who wouldhave been glad to get back to the East with their little fortunes, butthey dared not start. Time after time the express coach, the solitaryrider, the unguarded wagon-train, were held up and robbed, usually withthe concomitant of murder. When the miners did start out from one campto another they took all manner of precautions to conceal their golddust. We are told that on one occasion one party bored a hole in the endof the wagon tongue with an auger and filled it full of gold dust, thusescaping observation! The robbers learned to know the express agents, and always had advice of every large shipment of gold. It was almostuseless to undertake to conceal anything from them; and resistance wasmet with death. Such a reign of terror, such an organized system ofhighway robbery, such a light valuing of human life, has been seldomfound in any other time or place. 

There were, as we have seen, good men in these camps--although the bestof them probably let down the standards of living somewhat after theirarrival there; but the trouble was that the good men did not know oneanother, had no organization, and scarcely dared at first to attemptone. On the other hand, the robbers' organization was complete and keptits secrets as the grave; indeed, many and many a lonesome grave heldsecrets none ever was to know. How many men went out from Eastern Statesand disappeared, their fate always to remain a mystery, is a part of theuntold story of the mining frontier. 

There are known to have been a hundred and two men killed by Plummerand his gang; how many were murdered without their fate ever beingdiscovered can not be told. Plummer was the leader of the band, but, arch-hypocrite that he was, he managed to keep his own connection withit a secret. His position as sheriff gave him many advantages. He posedas being a silver-mine expert, among other things, and often would becalled out to "expert" some new mine. That usually meant that he lefttown in order to commit some desperate robbery. The boldest outragesalways required Plummer as the leader. Sometimes he would go away onthe pretense of following some fugitive from justice. His horse, thefleetest in the country, often was found, laboring and sweating, at therear of his house. That meant that Plummer had been away on some secreterrand of his own. He was suspected many times, but nothing could befastened upon him; or there lacked sufficient boldness and sufficientorganization on the part of the law-and-order men to undertake hispunishment. 

We are not concerned with repeating thrilling tales, bloody almostbeyond belief, and indicative of an incomprehensible depravity in humannature, so much as we are with the causes and effects of this wildcivilization which raged here quite alone in the midst of one of thewildest of the western mountain regions. It will best serve our purposeto retain in mind the twofold character of this population, and toremember that the frontier caught to itself not only ruffians anddesperadoes, men undaunted by any risk, but also men possessed of a yetsteadier personal courage and hardihood. There were men rough, coarse, brutal, murderous; but against them were other men self-reliant, stern, just, and resolved upon fair play. 

That was indeed the touchstone of the entire civilization which followedupon the heels of these scenes of violence. It was fair play whichreally animated the great Montana Vigilante movement and whicheventually cleaned up the merciless gang of Henry Plummer and hisassociates. The centers of civilization were far removed. The courtswere powerless. In some cases even the machinery of the law was in thehands of these ruffians. But so violent were their deeds, so brutal, somurderous, so unfair, that slowly the indignation of the good men aroseto the white-hot point of open resentment and of swift retribution. Whatthe good men of the frontier loved most of all was justice. They nowenforced justice in the only way left open to them. They did this asCalifornia earlier had done; and they did it so well that there wassmall need to repeat the lesson. 

The actual extermination of the Henry Plummer band occurred ratherpromptly when the Vigilantes once got under way. One of the band by thename of Red Yager, in company with yet another by the name of Brown, had been concerned in the murder of Lloyd Magruder, a merchant of theTerritory. The capture of these two followed closely upon the hanging ofGeorge Ives, also accused of more than one murder. Ives was an exampleof the degrading influence of the mines. He was a decent young man untilhe left his home in Wisconsin. He was in California from 1857 to 1858. When he appeared in Idaho he seemed to have thrown off all restraint andto have become a common rowdy and desperado. It is said of him that "fewmen of his age ever had been guilty of so many fiendish crimes. "

Yager and Brown, knowing the fate which Ives had met, gave up hope whenthey fell into the hands of the newly organized Vigilantes. Brownwas hanged; so was Yager; but Yager, before his death, made a fullconfession which put the Vigilantes in possession of information theyhad never yet been able to secure. *

 * Langford gives these names disclosed by Yager as follows:"Henry Plummer was chief of the band; Bill Bunton, stool pigeon andsecond in command; George Brown, secretary; Sam Bunton, roadster;Cyrus Skinner, fence, spy, and roadster; George Shears, horse thief androadster; Frank Parish, horse thief and roadster; Hayes Lyons, telegraphman and roadster; Bill Hunter, telegraph man and roadster; Ned Ray, council-room keeper at Bannack City; George Ives, Stephen Marshland, Dutch John (Wagner), Alex Carter, Whiskey Bill (Graves), Johnny Cooper, Buck Stinson, Mexican Franks Bob Zachary, Boone Helm, Clubfoot George(Lane), Billy Terwiliger, Gad Moore were roadsters. " Practically allthese were executed by the Vigilantes, with many others, and eventuallythe band of outlaws was entirely broken up. 

Much has been written and much romanced about the conduct of thesedesperadoes when they met their fate. Some of them were brave and someproved cowards at the last. For a time, Plummer begged abjectly, hiseyes streaming with tears. Suddenly he was smitten with remorse asthe whole picture of his past life appeared before him. He promisedeverything, begged everything, if only life might be spared him--askedhis captors to cut off his ears, to cut out his tongue, then strip himnaked and banish him. At the very last, however, he seems to have becomecomposed. Stinson and Ray went to their fate alternately swearing andwhining. Some of the ruffians faced death boldly. More than one himselfjumped from the ladder or kicked from under him the box which was theonly foothold between him and eternity. Boone Helm was as hardened asany of them. This man was a cannibal and murderer. He seems to have hadno better nature whatever. His last words as he sprang off were "Hurrahfor Jeff Davis! Let her rip!" Another man remarked calmly that he caredno more for hanging than for drinking a glass of water. But each afterhis own fashion met the end foreordained for him by his own lack ofcompassion; and of compassion he received none at the hands of the menwho had resolved that the law should be established and should remainforever. 

There was an instant improvement in the social life of Virginia City, Bannack, and the adjoining camps as soon as it was understood that theVigilantes were afoot. Langford, who undoubtedly knew intimately of theactivities of this organization, makes no apology for the acts of theVigilantes, although they did not have back of them the color of theactual law. He says:

"The retribution dispensed to these daring freebooters in no respectexceeded the demands of absolute justice. . . . There was no other remedy. Practically the citizens had no law, but if law had existed it couldnot have afforded adequate redress. This was proven by the feeling ofsecurity consequent upon the destruction of the band. When the robberswere dead the people felt safe, not for themselves alone but for theirpursuits and their property. They could travel without fear. They hadreasonable assurance of safety in the transmission of money to theStates and in the arrival of property over the unguarded route from SaltLake. The crack of pistols had ceased, and they could walk the streetswithout constant exposure to danger. There was an omnipresent spirit ofprotection, akin to that omnipresent spirit of law which pervaded olderand more civilized communities. . . . Young men who had learned to believethat the roughs were destined to rule and who, under the influence ofthat faith, were fast drifting into crime shrunk appalled before thethorough work of the Vigilantes. Fear, more potent than conscience, forced even the worst of men to observe the requirements of society, anda feeling of comparative security among all classes was the result. "

Naturally it was not the case that all the bad men were thusexterminated. From time to time there appeared vividly in the midst ofthese surroundings additional figures of solitary desperadoes, each tohave his list of victims, and each himself to fall before the weapons ofhis enemies or to meet the justice of the law or the sterner meed of theVigilantes. It would not be wholly pleasant to read even the names ofa long list of these; perhaps it will be sufficient to select one, thenotorious Joseph Slade, one of the "picturesque" characters of whom agreat deal of inaccurate and puerile history has been written. Thetruth about Slade is that he was a good man at first, faithful in thedischarge of his duties as an agent of the stage company. Needing attimes to use violence lawfully, he then began to use it unlawfully. Hedrank and soon went from bad to worse. At length his outrages became sonumerous that the men of the community took him out and hanged him. Hisfate taught many others the risk of going too far in defiance of law anddecency. 

What has been true regarding the camps of Florence, Bannack, andVirginia City, had been true in part in earlier camps and was to berepeated perhaps a trifle less vividly in other camps yet to come. TheBlack Hills gold rush, for instance, which came after the railroadbut before the Indians were entirely cleared away, made a certainwild history of its own. We had our Deadwood stage line then, andour Deadwood City with all its wild life of drinking, gambling, andshooting--the place where more than one notorious bad man lost his life, and some capable officers of the peace shared their fate. To describe indetail the life of this stampede and the wild scenes ensuing upon it isperhaps not needful here. The main thing is that the great quartz lodesof the Black Hills support in the end a steady, thrifty, and law-abidingpopulation. 

All over that West, once so unspeakably wild and reckless, there nowrise great cities where recently were scattered only mining-camps scarcefit to be called units of any social compact. It was but yesterdaythat these men fought and drank and dug their own graves in their ownsluices. At the city of Helena, on the site of Last Chance Gulch, one recalls that not so long ago citizens could show with a certaincontemporary pride the old dead tree once known as "Hangman's Tree. " Itmarked a spot which might be called a focus of the old frontier. Aroundit, and in the country immediately adjoining, was fought out the greatbattle whose issue could not be doubted--that between the new and theold days; between law and order and individual lawlessness; betweenthe school and the saloon; between the home and the dance-hall; betweensociety united and resolved and the individual reverted to worse thansavagery. 

Chapter VI. The Pathways Of The West

Since we have declared ourselves to be less interested in baldchronology than in the naturally connected causes of events which makechronology worth while, we may now, perhaps, double back upon the pathof chronology, and take up the great early highways of the West--what wemight call the points of attack against the frontier. 

The story of the Santa Fe Trail, now passing into oblivion, once was onthe tongue of every man. This old highroad in its heyday presented themost romantic and appealing features of the earlier frontier life. TheSanta Fe Trail was the great path of commerce between our frontier andthe Spanish towns trading through Santa Fe. This commerce began in 1822, when about threescore men shipped certain goods across the lower Plainsby pack-animals. By 1826 it was employing a hundred men and was usingwagons and mules. In 1830, when oxen first were used on the trail, thetrade amounted to $120, 000 annually; and by 1843, when the Spanish portswere closed, it had reached the value of $450, 000, involving the useof 230 wagons and 350 men. It was this great wagon trail which firstbrought us into touch with the Spanish civilization of the Southwest. Its commercial totals do not bulk large today, but the old trail itselfwas a thing titanic in its historic value. 

This was the day not of water but of land transport; yet the wheeledvehicles which passed out into the West as common carriers ofcivilization clung to the river valleys--natural highways and naturalresting places of homebuilding man. This has been the story of theadvance of civilization from the first movements of the world's peoples. The valleys are the cleats of civilization's golden sluices. 

There lay the great valley of the Arkansas, offering food and water, aneasy grade and a direct course reaching out into the West, even to theedge of the lands of Spain; and here stood wheeled vehicles able totraverse it and to carry drygoods and hardware, and especiallydomestic cotton fabrics, which formed the great staple of a "Santa Feassortment. " The people of the Middle West were now, in short, ableto feed and clothe themselves and to offer a little of their surplusmerchandise to some one else in sale. They had begun to export! Outyonder, in a strange and unknown land, lay one of the original marketsof America!

On the heels of Lewis and Clark, who had just explored the MissouriRiver route to the Northwest, Captain Zebulon Pike of the Army, longbefore the first wheeled traffic started West, had employed this valleyof the Arkansas in his search for the southwestern delimitations of theUnited States. Pike thought he had found the head of the Red River whenafter a toilsome and dangerous march he reached the headwaters ofthe Rio Grande. But it was not our river. It belonged to Spain, as helearned to his sorrow, when he marched all the way to Chihuahua in oldMexico and lay there during certain weary months. 

It was Pike's story of the far Southwest that first started the idea ofthe commerce of the Santa Fe Trail. In that day geography was a humanthing, a thing of vital importance to all men. Men did not read thestock markets; they read stories of adventure, tales of men returnedfrom lands out yonder in the West. Heretofore the swarthy Mexicans, folkof the dry plains and hills around the head of the Rio Grande and theRed, had carried their cotton goods and many other small and needfulthings all the way from Vera Cruz on the seacoast, over trails that werelong, tedious, uncertain, and expensive. A far shorter and more naturaltrade route went west along the Arkansas, which would bring the Americangoods to the doors of the Spanish settlements. After Pike and one or twoothers had returned with reports of the country, the possibilities ofthis trade were clear to any one with the merchant's imagination. 

There is rivalry for the title of "Father of the Santa Fe Trail. " Asearly as 1812, when the United States was at war with England, a partyof men on horseback trading into the West, commonly called the McKnight, Baird, and Chambers party, made their way west to Santa Fe. There, however, they met with disaster. All their goods were confiscated andthey themselves lay in Mexican jails for nine years. Eventually thereturning survivors of this party told their stories, and those stories, far from chilling, only inflamed the ardor of other adventurous traders. In 1821 more than one American trader reached Santa Fe; and, now thatthe Spanish yoke had been thrown off by the Mexicans, the goods, insteadof being confiscated, were purchased eagerly. 

It is to be remembered, of course, that trading of this sort to Mexicowas not altogether a new thing. Sutlers of the old fur traders andtrappers already had found the way to New Spain from the valley of thePlatte, south along the eastern edge of the Rockies, through Wyomingand Colorado. By some such route as that at least one trader, a Frenchcreole, agent of the firm of Bryant & Morrison at Kaskaskia, hadpenetrated to the Spanish lands as early as 1804, while Lewis and Clarkwere still absent in the upper wilderness. Each year the great mountainrendezvous of the trappers--now at Bent's Fort on the Arkansas, nowat Horse Creek in Wyoming, now on Green River in Utah, or even fartherbeyond the mountains--demanded supplies of food and traps and ammunitionto enable the hunters to continue their work for another year. Perhapsmany of the pack-trains which regularly supplied this shifting mountainmarket already had traded in the Spanish country. 

It is not necessary to go into further details regarding this primitivecommerce of the prairies. It yielded a certain profit; it shaped thecharacter of the men who carried it on. But what is yet more important, it greatly influenced the country which lay back of the border on theMissouri River. It called yet more men from the eastern settlementsto those portions which lay upon the edge of the Great Plains. Therecrowded yet more thickly, up to the line between the certain and theuncertain, the restless westbound population of all the country. 

If on the south the valley of the Arkansas led outward to New Spain, yet other pathways made out from the Mississippi River into the unknownlands. The Missouri was the first and last of our great natural frontierroads. Its lower course swept along the eastern edge of the Plains, farto the south, down to the very doors of the most adventurous settlementsin the Mississippi Valley. Those who dared its stained and turbulentcurrent had to push up, onward, northward, past the mouth of the Platte, far to the north across degrees of latitude, steadily forward througha vast virgin land. Then the river bent boldly and strongly off to thewest, across another empire. Its great falls indicated that it headedhigh; beyond the great falls its steady sweep westward and at lastsouthward, led into yet other kingdoms. 

When we travel by horse or by modern motor car in that now accessibleregion and look about us, we should not fail to reflect on the longtrail of the upbound boats which Manuel Lisa and other traders sent outalmost immediately upon the return of the Lewis and Clark expedition. We should see them struggling up against that tremendous currentbefore steam was known, driven by their lust for new lands. We maythen understand fully what we have read of the enterprises of the oldAmerican Fur Company, and bring to mind the forgotten names of Campbelland Sublette, of General Ashley and of Wyeth--names to be followed byothers really of less importance, as those of Bonneville and Fremont. That there could be farms, that there ever might be homes, in thisstrange wild country, was, to these early adventurers, unthinkable. 

Then we should picture the millions of buffalo which once covered theseplains and think of the waste and folly of their slaughtering. We shouldsee the long streams of the Mackinaw boats swimming down the Missouri, bound for St. Louis, laden with bales of buffalo and beaver peltry, every pound of which would be worth ten dollars at the capital of thefur trade; and we should restore to our minds the old pictures of savagetribesmen, decked in fur-trimmed war-shirts and plumed bonnets, armedwith lance and sinewed bow and bull-neck shield, not forgetting whencethey got their horses and how they got their food. 

The great early mid-continental highway, known as the Oregon Trail orthe Overland Trail, was by way of the Missouri up the Platte Valley, thence across the mountains. We know more of this route because it wasnot discontinued, but came steadily more and more into use, for onereason after another. The fur traders used it, the Forty-Niners used it, the cattlemen used it in part, the railroads used it; and, lastly, thesettlers and farmers used it most of all. 

In physical features the Platte River route was similar to that of theArkansas Valley. Each at its eastern extremity, for a few days' travel, passed over the rolling grass-covered and flower-besprinkled prairiesere it broke into the high and dry lands of the Plains, with their greenor grey or brown covering of practically flowerless short grasses. Butbetween the two trails of the Arkansas and the Platte there existedcertain wide differences. At the middle of the nineteenth century thetwo trails were quite distinct in personnel, if that word may be used. The Santa Fe Trail showed Spanish influences; that of the Platte Valleyremained far more nearly American. 

Thus far the frontier had always been altering the man who came to it;and, indirectly, always altering those who dwelt back of the frontier, nearer to the Appalachians or the Atlantic. A new people now was inprocess of formation--a people born of a new environment. America andthe American were conceiving. There was soon to be born, soon swiftly togrow, a new and lasting type of man. Man changes an environment only bybringing into it new or better transportation. Environment changes man. Here in the midcontinent, at the mid-century, the frontier and the waysof the frontier were writing their imprint on the human product of ourland. 

The first great caravans of the Platte Valley, when the wagon-trainswent out hundreds strong, were not the same as the scattering cavalcadeof the fur hunters, not the same as the ox-trains and mule-trains of theSanta Fe traffic. The men who wore deepest the wheel marks of the OregonTrail were neither trading nor trapping men, but homebuilding men--thefirst real emigrants to go West with the intent of making homes beyondthe Rockies. 

The Oregon Trail had been laid out by the explorers of the fur trade. Zealous missionaries had made their way over the trail in the thirties. The Argonauts of '49 passed over it and left it only after crossing theRockies. But, before gold in California was dreamed of, there had comeback to the States reports of lands rich in resources other than gold, lying in the far Northwest, beyond the great mountain ranges and, beforethe Forty-Niners were heard of, farmers, homebuilders, emigrants, menwith their families, men with their household goods, were steadilypassing out for the far-off and unknown country of Oregon. 

The Oregon Trail was the pathway for Fremont in 1842, perhaps the mostovervalued explorer of all the West; albeit this comment may to someseem harsh. Kit Carson and Bill Williams led Fremont across the Rockiesalmost by the hand. Carson and Williams themselves had been taken acrossby the Indian tribes. But Fremont could write; and the story which heset down of his first expedition inflamed the zeal of all. Men beganto head out for that far-away country beyond the Rockies. Not a fewscattered bands, but very many, passed up the valley of the Platte. There began a tremendous trek of thousands of men who wanted homessomewhere out beyond the frontier. And that was more than ten yearsbefore the Civil War. The cow trade was not dreamed of; the coming cowcountry was overleaped and ignored. 

Our national horizon extended immeasurably along that dusty way. In theuse of the Oregon Trail we first began to be great. The chief figureof the American West, the figure of the ages, is not the long-haired, fringed-legging man riding a raw-boned pony, but the gaunt and sadfacedwoman sitting on the front seat of the wagon, following her lord wherehe might lead, her face hidden in the same ragged sunbonnet which hadcrossed the Appalachians and the Missouri long before. That was America, my brethren! There was the seed of America's wealth. There was the greatromance of all America--the woman in the sunbonnet; and not, after all, the hero with the rifle across his saddle horn. Who has written herstory? Who has painted her picture?

They were large days, those of the great Oregon Trail, not alwayspleasingly dramatic, but oftentimes tragic and terrible. We speak ofthe Oregon Trail, but it means little to us today; nor will any meregeneralities ever make it mean much to us. But what did it mean to themen and women of that day? What and who were those men and women?What did it mean to take the Overland Trail in the great adventure ofabandoning forever the known and the safe and setting out for Oregonor California at a time when everything in the far West was new andunknown? How did those good folk travel? Why and whither did theytravel?

There is a book done by C. F. McGlashan, a resident of Truckee, California, known as "The History of the Donner Party, " holding a greatdeal of actual history. McGlashan, living close to Donner Lake, wrotein 1879, describing scenes with which he was perfectly familiar, andrecounting facts which he had from direct association with participantsin the ill-fated Donner Party. He chronicles events which happened in1846--a date before the discovery of gold in California. The DonnerParty was one of the typical American caravans of homeseekers whostarted for the Pacific Slope with no other purpose than that offounding homes there, and with no expectation of sudden wealth to begained in the mines. I desire therefore to quote largely from thepages of this book, believing that, in this fashion, we shall come uponhistory of a fundamental sort, which shall make us acquainted with themen and women of that day, with the purposes and the ambitions whichanimated them, and with the hardships which they encountered. 

"The States along the Mississippi were but sparsely settled in 1846, yetthe fame of the fruitfulness, the healthfulness, and the almost tropicalbeauty of the land bordering the Pacific, tempted the members ofthe Donner Party to leave their homes. These homes were situated inIllinois, Iowa, Tennessee, Missouri, and Ohio. Families from each ofthese States joined the train and participated in its terrible fate; yetthe party proper was organized in Sangamon County, Illinois, by Georgeand Jacob Donner and James F. Reed. Early in April, 1846, the party setout from Springfield, Illinois, and by the first week in May reachedIndependence, Missouri. Here the party was increased by additionalmembers, and the train comprised about one hundred persons. . . . In theparty were aged fathers with their trusting families about them, motherswhose very lives were wrapped up in their children, men in the prime andvigor of manhood, maidens in all the sweetness and freshness of buddingwomanhood, children full of glee and mirthfulness, and babes nestling onmaternal breasts. Lovers there were, to whom the journey was tingedwith rainbow hues of joy and happiness, and strong, manly hearts whoseconstant support and encouragement was the memory of dear ones leftbehind in homeland. 

"The wonderment which all experience in viewing the scenery along theline of the old emigrant road was peculiarly vivid to these people. Few descriptions had been given of the route, and all was novel andunexpected. In later years the road was broadly and deeply marked, andgood camping grounds were distinctly indicated. The bleaching bones ofcattle that had perished, or the broken fragments of wagons or castawayarticles, were thickly strewn on either side of the highway. But in 1846the way was through almost trackless valleys waving with grass, alongrivers where few paths were visible, save those made by the feet ofbuffalo and antelope, and over mountains and plains where little morethan the westward course of the sun guided the travelers. Trading-postswere stationed at only a few widely distant points, and rarely did theparty meet with any human beings, save wandering bands of Indians. Yetthese first days are spoken of by all of the survivors as being crownedwith peaceful enjoyment and pleasant anticipations. There were beautifulflowers by the roadside, an abundance of game in the meadows andmountains, and at night there were singing, dancing, and innocent plays. Several musical instruments, and many excellent voices, were in theparty, and the kindliest feeling and goodfellowship prevailed among themembers. 

"The formation of the company known as the Donner Party was purelyaccidental. The union of so many emigrants into one train was notoccasioned by any preconcerted arrangement. Many composing the DonnerParty were not aware, at the outset, that such a tide of emigration wassweeping to California. In many instances small parties would hearof the mammoth train just ahead of them or just behind them, and byhastening their pace, or halting for a few days, joined themselves tothe party. Many were with the train during a portion of the journey, butfrom some cause or other became parted from the Donner company beforereaching Donner Lake. Soon after the train left Independence itcontained between two and three hundred wagons, and when in motion wastwo miles in length. The members of the party proper numbered ninety. "

This caravan, like many others of the great assemblage westbound at thattime, had great extremes in personnel. Some were out for mere adventure;some were single men looking for a location. Most of them were fathersof families, among them several persons of considerable means and ofgood standing in the community which they were leaving. While we maysuppose that most of them were folk of no extraordinary sort, certainlysome were persons of education and intelligence. Among these was thewife of George Donner--Tamsen Dormer; a woman of education, a musician, a linguist, a botanist, and of the most sublime heroism. 

Tamsen Donner sent back now and then along the route some story of thedaily doings of the caravan; and such letters as these are of the utmostinterest to any who desire precise information of that time. It wouldseem that the emigrants themselves for a great part of their route metwith no great adventures, nor indeed, appeared to be undertaking anyunusual affair. They followed a route up the Platte Valley already longknown to those of the eastern settlements. 

"Near the Junction of the North and South Platte, June 16, 1846. 

"My Old Friend: We are now on the Platte, two hundred miles from FortLaramie. Our journey so far has been pleasant, the roads have been good, and food plentiful. The water for part of the way has been indifferent, but at no time have our cattle suffered for it. Wood is now very scarce, but 'buffalo chips' are excellent; they kindle quickly and retain heatsurprisingly. We had this morning buffalo steaks broiled upon them thathad the same flavor they would have had upon hickory coals. 

"We feel no fear of Indians; our cattle graze quietly around ourencampment unmolested. Two or three men will go hunting twenty milesfrom camp; and last night two of our men lay out in the wildernessrather than ride their horses after a hard chase. 

"Indeed, if I do not experience something far worse than I have yetdone, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started. Our wagons havenot needed much repair, and I can not yet tell in what respects theycould be improved. Certain it is, they can not be too strong. Ourpreparations for the journey might have been in some respects bettered. 

"Bread has been the principal article of food in our camp. We laid inone hundred and fifty pounds of flour and seventy-five pounds of meatfor each individual, and I fear bread will be scarce. Meat is abundant. Rice and beans are good articles on the road; cornmeal too, isacceptable. Linsey dresses are the most suitable for children. Indeed, if I had one, it would be acceptable. There is so cool a breeze atall times on the Plains that the sun does not feel so hot as one wouldsuppose. 

"We are now four hundred and fifty miles from Independence. Our routeat first was rough, and through a timbered country, which appeared to befertile. After striking the prairie, we found a firstrate road, and theonly difficulty we have had, has been in crossing the creeks. In that, however, there has been no danger. 

"I never could have believed we could have traveled so far with solittle difficulty. The prairie between the Blue and the Platte Rivers isbeautiful beyond description. Never have I seen so varied a country, sosuitable for cultivation. Everything is new and pleasing; the Indiansfrequently come to see us, and the chiefs of a tribe breakfasted atour tent this morning. All are so friendly that I can not help feelingsympathy and friendship for them. But on one sheet what can I say?

"Since we have been on the Platte, we have had the river on one sideand the ever varying mounds on the other, and have traveled through thebottom lands from one to two miles wide, with little or no timber. The soil is sandy, and last year, on account of the dry season, theemigrants found grass here scarce. Our cattle are in good order, andwhen proper care has been taken, none have been lost. Our milch cowshave been of great service, indeed. They have been of more advantagethan our meat. We have plenty of butter and milk. 

"We are commanded by Captain Russell, an amiable man. George Donneris himself yet. He crows in the morning and shouts out, 'Chain up, boys--chain up, ' with as much authority as though he was 'something inparticular. ' John Denton is still with us. We find him useful in thecamp. Hiram Miller and Noah James are in good health and doing well. Wehave of the best people in our company, and some, too, that are not sogood. 

"Buffalo show themselves frequently. We have found the wild tulip, theprimrose, the lupine, the eardrop, the larkspur, and creeping hollyhock, and a beautiful flower resembling the bloom of the beech tree, but inbunches as large as a small sugarloaf, and of every variety of shade, tored and green. 

"I botanize, and read some, but cook 'heaps' more. There are fourhundred and twenty wagons, as far as we have heard, on the road betweenhere and Oregon and California. 

"Give our love to all inquiring friends. God bless them. 

"Yours truly, Mrs. George Donner. "

By the Fourth of July the Donner Party had reached Fort Laramie. Theypushed on west over the old trail up the Sweetwater River and across theSouth Pass, the easiest of all the mountain passes known to the earlytravelers. Without much adventure they reached Fort Bridger, then only atrading-post. Here occurred the fatal mistake of the Donner Party. 

Some one at the fort strongly advised them to take a new route, acut-off said to shorten the distance by about three hundred miles. Thiscut-off passed along the south shore of Great Salt Lake and caught upthe old California Trail from Fort Hall--then well established and wellknown-along the Humboldt River. The great Donner caravan delayed forsome days at Fort Bridger, hesitating over the decision of which routeto follow. The party divided. All those who took the old road north ofSalt Lake by way of Fort Hall reached California in complete safety. Ofthe original Donner Party there remained eighty-seven persons. All ofthese took the cut-off, being eager to save time in their travel. Theyreached Salt Lake after unspeakable difficulties. Farther west, in thedeserts of Nevada, they lost many of their cattle. 

Now began among the party dissensions and grumblings. The story is along one. It reached its tragic denouement just below the summit of theSierras, on the shores of Donner Lake. The words of McGlashan may nowbest serve our purpose. 

"Generally, the ascent of the Sierra brought joy and gladness to wearyoverland emigrants. To the Donner Party it brought terror and dismay. The company had hardly obtained a glimpse of the mountains, ere thewinter storm clouds began to assemble their hosts around the loftiercrests. Every day the weather appeared more ominous and threatening. Thedelay at the Truckee Meadows had been brief, but every day ultimatelycost a dozen lives. On the twenty-third of October, they becamethoroughly alarmed at the angry heralds of the gathering storm, and withall haste resumed the journey. It was too late! At Prosser Creek, threemiles below Truckee, they found themselves encompassed with six inchesof snow. On the summits, the snow was from two to five feet in depth. This was October 28, 1846. Almost a month earlier than usual, the Sierrahad donned its mantle of ice and snow. The party were prisoners!

"All was consternation. The wildest confusion prevailed. In theireagerness, many went far in advance of the main train. There was littleconcert of action or harmony of plan. All did not arrive at Donner Lakethe same day. Some wagons and families did not reach the lake until thethirty-first day of October, some never went farther than Prosser Creek, while others, on the evening of the twenty-ninth, struggled through thesnow, and reached the foot of the precipitous cliffs between the summitand the upper end of the lake. Here, baffled, wearied, disheartened, they turned back to the foot of the lake. "

These emigrants did not lack in health, strength, or resolution, buthere they were in surroundings absolutely new to them. A sort of panicseized them now. They scattered; their organization disintegrated. All thought of conjoint action, of a social compact, a community ofinterests, seems to have left them. It was a history of every man forhimself, or at least every family for itself. All track of the roadwas now lost under the snow. At the last pitch up to the summit of theSierras precipitous cliffs abounded. No one knew the way. And now thesnows came once again. 

"The emigrants suffered a thousand deaths. The pitiless snow came downin large, steady masses. All understood that the storm meant death. Oneof the Indians silently wrapped his blanket about him and in deepestdejection seated himself beside a tall pine. In this position he passedthe entire night, only moving occasionally to keep from beingcovered with snow. Mrs. Reed spread down a shawl, placed her fourchildren--Virginia, Patty, James, and Thomas--thereon, and puttinganother shawl over them, sat by the side of her babies during all thelong hours of darkness. Every little while she was compelled to lift theupper shawl and shake off the rapidly accumulating snow. 

"With slight interruptions, the storm continued several days. The mulesand oxen that had always hovered about camp were blinded and bewilderedby the storm, and straying away were literally buried alive in thedrifts. What pen can describe the horror of the position in which theemigrants found themselves? It was impossible to move through the deep, soft snow without the greatest effort. The mules were gone, and werenever found. Most of the cattle had perished, and were wholly hiddenfrom sight. The few oxen which were found were slaughtered for beef. "

The travelers knew that the supplies they had could not last long. Onthe 12th of November a relief party essayed to go forward, but afterstruggling a short distance toward the summit, came back wearied andbroken-hearted, unable to make way through the deep, soft snow. Thensome one--said to have been F. W. Graves of Vermont--bethought himselfof making snowshoes out of the oxbows and the hides of the slaughteredoxen. With these they did better. 

Volunteers were called for yet another party to cross the mountains intoCalifornia. Fifteen persons volunteered. Not all of them were men--somewere mothers, and one was a young woman. Their mental condition waslittle short of desperation. Only, in the midst of their intensehardships it seemed to all, somewhere to the westward was California, and that there alone lay any hope. The party traveled four miles thefirst day; and their camp fires were visible below the summit. The nextday they traveled six miles and crossed the divide. 

They were starving, cold, worn out, their feet frozen to bursting, theirblood chilled. At times they were caught in some of the furious stormsof the Sierras. They did not know their way. On the 27th of Decembercertain of the party resolved themselves to that last recourse whichalone might mean life. Surrounded by horrors as they were, it seemedthey could endure the thought of yet an additional horror. . . . There werethe dead, the victims who already had perished!. . . 

Seven of the fifteen got through to the Sacramento Valley, among thesethe young girl, Mary Graves, described as "a very beautiful girl, oftall and slender build, and, exceptionally graceful character. " Thestory brought out by these survivors of the first party to cross theSierras from the starving camp set all California aflame. There wereno less than three relief expeditions formed, which at varying datescrossed the mountains to the east. Some men crossed the snow belt fivetimes in all. The rescuers were often in as much danger as the victimsthey sought to save. 

And they could not save them. Back there in their tents and hovelsaround Donner Lake starvation was doing its work steadily. There iscontemporary history also covering the details of this. Tamsen Donner, heroine that she was, kept a diary which would have been valuablefor us, but this was lost along with her paintings and her botanicalcollections. The best preserved diary is that of Patrick Breen, donein simple and matter-of-fact fashion throughout most of the starvingwinter. Thus:

"Dec. 17. Pleasant; William Murphy returned from the mountain party lastevening; Baylis Williams died night before last; Milton and Noah startedfor Donner's eight days ago; not returned yet; think they are lost inthe snow. 

"Dec. 21. Milton got back last night from Donner's camp. Sad news; JacobDonner, Samuel Shoemaker, Rhineheart, and Smith are dead; the rest ofthem in a low situation; snowed all night, with a strong southwest wind. 

"Dec. 23. Clear to-day; Milton took some of his meat away; all well attheir camp. Began this day to read the 'Thirty Days' Prayers'; AlmightyGod, grant the requests of unworthy sinners!

"Jan. 13. Snowing fast; snow higher than the shanty; it must be thirteenfeet deep. Can not get wood this morning; it is a dreadful sight for usto look upon. 

"Jan. 27. Commenced snowing yesterday; still continues today. LewisKeseberg, Jr. , died three days ago; food growing scarce; don't have fireenough to cook our hides. 

"Jan. 31. The sun does not shine out brilliant this morning; froze hardlast night; wind northwest. Landrum Murphy died last night about teno'clock; Mrs. Reed went to Graves's this morning to look after goods. 

"Feb. 4. Snowed hard until twelve o'clock last night; many uneasy forfear we shall all perish with hunger; we have but little meat left, andonly three hides; Mrs. Reed has nothing but one hide, and that is onGraves's house; Milton lives there, and likely will keep that. Eddy'schild died last night. 

"Feb. 7. Ceased to snow at last; today it is quite pleasant. McCutchen'schild died on the second of this month. 

"[This child died and was buried in the Graves's cabin. Mr. W. C. Graveshelped dig the grave near one side of the cabin, and laid the little oneto rest. One of the most heart-rending features of this Donner tragedyis the number of infants that perished. Mrs. Breen, Mrs. Pike, Mrs. Foster, Mrs. McCutchen, Mrs. Eddy, and Mrs. Graves each had nursingbabes when the fatal camp was pitched at Donner Lake. ]

"Feb. 8. Fine, clear morning. Spitzer died last night, and we will buryhim in the snow; Mrs. Eddy died on the night of the seventh. 

"Feb. 9. Mrs. Pike's child all but dead; Milton is at Murphy's, not ableto get out of bed; Mrs. Eddy and child buried today; wind southeast. 

"Feb. 10. Beautiful morning; thawing in the sun; Milton Elliott diedlast night at Murphy's cabin, and Mrs. Reed went there this morning tosee about his effects. John Denton trying to borrow meat for Graves; hadnone to give; they had nothing but hides; all are entirely out of meat, but a little we have; our hides are nearly all eat up, but with God'shelp spring will soon smile upon us. "

There was one survivor of the camp at Donner Lake, a man named LewisKeseberg, of German descent. That he was guilty of repeated cannibalismcannot be doubted. It was in his cabin that, after losing all her lovedones, the heroic Tamsen Donner met her end. Many thought he killed herfor the one horrid purpose. *

 * Many years later (1879) Keseberg declared under oath to C. F. McGlashan that he did not take her life. See "History of the Donner"Party, pp. 212, 213. 

Such then is the story of one of the great emigrant parties who startedWest on a hazard of new fortunes in the early days of the OregonTrail. Happily there has been no parallel to the misadventures of thisill-fated caravan. It is difficult--without reading these, bald andawful details--to realize the vast difference between that day andthis. Today we may by the gentle stages of a pleasant railway journeyarrive at Donner Lake. Little trace remains, nor does any kindly soulwish for more definite traces, of those awful scenes. Only a cross hereand there with a legend, faint and becoming fainter every year, may beseen, marking the more prominent spots of the historic starving camp. 

Up on the high mountain side, for the most part hid in the forest, liethe snowsheds and tunnels of the railway, now encountering its stiffestclimb up the steep slopes to the summit of the Sierras. Theauthor visited this spot of melancholy history in company with thevice-president of the great railway line which here swings up sosteadily and easily over the Sierras. Bit by bit we checked out as bestwe might the fateful spots mentioned in the story of the Donner Party. Asplendid motor highway runs by the lakeside now. While we halted ourown car there, a motor car drove up from the westward--followingthat practical automobile highway which now exists from the plains ofCalifornia across the Sierras and east over precisely that trailwhere once the weary feet of the oxen dragged the wagons of the earlyemigrants. It was a small car of no expensive type. It was loaded downwith camping equipment until the wheels scarcely could be seen. Itcarried five human occupants--an Iowa farmer and his family. They hadbeen out to California for a season. Casually they had left Los Angeles, had traveled north up the valleys of California, east across the summitof the Sierras, and were here now bound for Iowa over the old emigranttrail!

We hailed this new traveler on the old trail. I do not know whether ornot he had any idea of the early days of that great highway; I suspectthat he could tell only of its present motoring possibilities. But hiswheels were passing over the marks left more than half a century agoby the cracked felloes of the emigrant wagons going west in searchof homes. If we seek history, let us ponder that chance pause of theeastbound family, traveling by motor for pleasure, here by the side ofthe graves of the travelers of another day, itself so briefly gone. Whatan epoch was spanned in the passing of that frontier!

Chapter VII. The Indian Wars

It might well be urged against the method employed in these pages that, although we undertook to speak of the last American frontier, all thatwe really thus far have done has been to describe a series of frontiersfrom the Missouri westward. In part this is true. But it was preciselyin this large, loose, and irregular fashion that we actually arrived atour last frontier. Certainly our westbound civilization never advancedby any steady or regular process. It would be a singularly illuminatingmap--and one which I wish we might show--which would depict in differentcolors the great occupied areas of the West, with the earliest dates oftheir final and permanent occupation. Such a map as this would show usthat the last frontier of America was overleaped and left behind notonce but a score of times. 

The land between the Missouri and the Rockies, along the Great Plainsand the high foothills, was crossed over and forgotten by the men whowere forging on into farther countries in search of lands where fortunewas swift and easy. California, Oregon, all the early farming andtimbering lands of the distant Northwest--these lay far beyond thePlains; and as we have noted, they were sought for, even before gold wasdreamed of upon the Pacific Slope. 

So here, somewhere between the Missouri and the Rockies, lay our lastfrontier, wavering, receding, advancing, gaining and losing, changinga little more every decade--and at last so rapidly changed as to beoutworn and abolished in one swift decade all its own. 

This unsettled land so long held in small repute by the early Americans, was, as we have pointed out, the buffalo range and the country of theHorse Indians--the Plains tribes who lived upon the buffalo. For a longtime it was this Indian population which held back the white settlementsof Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado. But as menbegan to work farther and farther westward in search of homes in Oregon, or in quest of gold in California or Idaho or Montana, the Indianquestion came to be a serious one. 

To the Army, soon after the Civil War, fell the task of exterminating, or at least evicting, the savage tribes over all this unvalued andunknown Middle West. This was a process not altogether simple. Fora considerable time the Indians themselves were able to offer veryeffective resistance to the enterprise. They were accustomed to livingupon that country, and did not need to bring in their own supplies;hence the Army fought them at a certain disadvantage. In sooth, the Armyhad to learn to become half Indian before it could fight the Indians onanything like even terms. We seem not so much to have coveted the landsin the first Indian-fighting days; we fought rather for the trails thanfor the soil. The Indians themselves had lived there all their lives, had conquered their environment, and were happy in it. They made abitter fight; nor are they to be blamed for doing so. 

The greatest of our Indian wars have taken place since our own CivilWar; and perhaps the most notable of all the battles are those whichwere fought on the old cow range--in the land of our last frontier. Wedo not lack abundant records of this time of our history. Soon after theCivil War the railroads began edging out into the plains. They brought, besides many new settlers, an abundance of chroniclers and historiansand writers of hectic fiction or supposed fact. A multitude of bookscame out at this time of our history, most of which were acceptedas truth. That was the time when we set up as Wild West heroes roughskinclad hunters and so-called scouts, each of whom was allowed to tellhis own story and to have it accepted at par. As a matter of fact, atabout the time the Army had succeeded in subduing the last of the Indiantribes on the buffalo-range, the most of our Wild West history, at leastso far as concerned the boldest adventure, was a thing of the past. It was easy to write of a past which every one now was too new, tooignorant, or too busy critically to remember. 

Even as early as 1866, Colonel Marcy, an experienced army officer andIndian-fighter, took the attitude of writing about a vanishing phase ofAmerican life. In his Army "Life on the Border, " he says:

"I have been persuaded by many friends that the contents of the bookwhich is herewith presented to the public are not without value asrecords of a fast-vanishing age, and as truthful sketches of men ofvarious races whose memory will shortly depend only on romance, unlesssome one who knew them shall undertake to leave outlines of theirpeculiar characteristics. . . . I am persuaded that excuse may be foundin the simple fact that all these peoples of my description--men, conditions of life, races of aboriginal inhabitants and adventuroushunters and pioneers--are passing away. A few years more and the prairiewill be transformed into farms. The mountain ravines will be the abodesof busy manufacturers, and the gigantic power of American civilizationwill have taken possession of the land from the great river of the Westto the very shores of the Pacific. . . . The world is fast filling up. I trust I am not in error when I venture to place some value, howeversmall, on everything which goes to form the truthful history of acondition of men incident to the advances of civilization over thecontinent--a condition which forms peculiar types of character, breedsremarkable developments of human nature--a condition also which canhardly again exist on this or any other continent, and which has, therefore, a special value in the sum of human history. "

Such words as the foregoing bespeak a large and dignified point ofview. No one who follows Marcy's pages can close them with anything butrespect and admiration. It is in books such as this, then, that we mayfind something about the last stages of the clearing of the frontier. 

Even in Marcy's times the question of our Government's Indian policywas a mooted one. He himself as an Army officer looked at the matterphilosophically, but his estimate of conditions was exact. Long ago ashe wrote, his conclusions were such as might have been given forty yearslater. 

"The limits of their accustomed range are rapidly contracting, and theirmeans of subsistence undergoing a corresponding diminution. The whiteman is advancing with rapid strides upon all sides of them, and theyare forced to give way to his encroachments. The time is not far distantwhen the buffalo will become extinct, and they will then be compelledto adopt some other mode of life than the chase for a subsistence. . . . Noman will quietly submit to starvation when food is within his reach, andif he cannot obtain it honestly he will steal it or take it byforce. If, therefore, we do not induce them to engage in agriculturalavocations we shall in a few years have before us the alternative ofexterminating them or fighting them perpetually. That they are destinedultimately to extinction does not in my mind admit of a doubt. For thereasons above mentioned it may at first be necessary for our governmentto assert its authority over them by a prompt and vigorous exercise ofthe military arm. . . . The tendency of the policy I have indicated will beto assemble these people in communities where they will be more readilycontrolled; and I predict from it the most gratifying results. " Anotherwell-informed army officer, Colonel Richard Dodge, himself a hunter, a trailer, and a rider able to compete with the savages in their ownfields, penetrated to the heart of the Indian problem when he wrote:

"The conception of Indian character is almost impossible to a man whohas passed the greater portion of his life surrounded by the influencesof a cultivated, refined, and moral society. . . . The truth is simply tooshocking, and the revolted mind takes refuge in disbelief as the lesspainful horn of the dilemma. As a first step toward an understanding ofhis character we must get at his standpoint of morality. As a child heis not brought up. . . . From the dawn of intelligence his own will is hislaw. There is no right and no wrong to him. . . . No dread of punishmentrestrains him from any act that boyish fun or fury may prompt. Nolessons inculcating the beauty and sure reward of goodness or thehideousness and certain punishment of vice are ever wasted on him. Themen by whom he is surrounded, and to whom he looks as models forhis future life, are great and renowned just in proportion to theirferocity, to the scalps they have taken, or the thefts they havecommitted. His earliest boyish memory is probably a dance of rejoicingover the scalps of strangers, all of whom he is taught to regard asenemies. The lessons of his mother awaken only a desire to take hisplace as soon as possible in fight and foray. The instruction of hisfather is only such as is calculated to fit him best to act a prominentpart in the chase, in theft, and in murder. . . . Virtue, morality, generosity, honor, are words not only absolutely without significanceto him, but are not accurately translatable, into any Indian language onthe Plains. "

These are sterner, less kindly, less philosophic words than Marcy's, but they keenly outline the duty of the Army on the frontier. We madetreaties with the Indians and broke them. In turn men such as theseignorant savages might well be expected to break their treaties also;and they did. Unhappily our Indian policy at that time was one ofmingled ferocity and wheedling. The Indians did not understand us anymore than we did them. When we withdrew some of the old frontier postsfrom the old hunting-range, the action was construed by the tribesmen asan admission that we feared them, and they acted upon that idea. In onepoint of view they had right with them, for now we were moving out intothe last of the great buffalo country. Their war was one of desperation, whereas ours was one of conquest, no better and no worse than all thewars of conquest by which the strong have taken the possessions of theweak. 

Our Army at the close of the Civil War and at the beginning of the warswith the Plains tribes was in better condition than it has ever beensince that day. It was made up of the soundest and best-seasonedsoldiers that ever fought under our flag; and at that time itrepresented a greater proportion of our fighting strength than itever has before or since. In 1860 the Regular Army, not counting thevolunteer forces, was 16, 000. In 1870 it was 37, 000--one soldier to eachone thousand of our population. 

Against this force, pioneers of the vaster advancing army of peacefulsettlers now surging West, there was arrayed practically all thepopulation of fighting tribes such as the Sioux, the two bands of theCheyennes, the Piegans, the Assiniboines, the Arapahoes, the Kiowas, theComanches, and the Apaches. These were the leaders of many other tribesin savage campaigns which set the land aflame from the Rio Grande to ournorthern line. The Sioux and Cheyennes were more especially the leaders, and they always did what they could to enlist the aid of the lesswarlike tribes such as the Crows, the Snakes, the Bannacks, theUtes--indeed all of the savage or semi-civilized tribes which had hungon the flanks of the traffic of the westbound trail. 

The Sioux, then at the height of their power, were distinguished by manywarlike qualities. They fought hard and were quick to seize upon anysigns of weakness in their enemies. When we, in the course of our CivilWar, had withdrawn some of the upper posts, the Sioux edged in at onceand pressed back the whites quite to the eastern confines of the Plains. When we were locked in the death grip of internecine war in 1862, theyrose in one savage wave of rebellion of their own and massacred with themost horrible ferocity not less than six hundred and forty-four whitesin Minnesota and South Dakota. When General Sibley went out among themon his later punitive campaign he had his hands full for many a long andweary day. 

Events following the close of the Civil War did not mend matters inthe Indian situation. The railroads had large land grants given tothem along their lines, and they began to offer these lands for sale tosettlers. Soldier scrip entitling the holder to locate on public landsnow began to float about. Some of the engineers, even some of thelaborers, upon the railroads, seeing how really feasible was thesettlement of these Plains, began to edge out and to set up their homes, usually not far from the railway lines. All this increase in the numbersof the white population not only infuriated the Indians the more, butgave them the better chance to inflict damage upon our people. Our Armytherefore became very little more than a vast body of police, and it wasalways afoot with the purpose of punishing these offending tribesmen, who knew nothing of the higher laws of war and who committed atrocitiesthat have never been equalled in history; unless it be by one of thebelligerents of the Great War in Europe, with whom we are at thiswriting engaged--once more in the interest of a sane and humancivilization. The last great struggle for the occupation of the frontierwas on. It involved the ownership of the last of our open lands; andhence may be called the war of our last frontier. 

The settler who pushed West continued to be the man who shared his timebetween his rifle and his plough. The numerous buffalo were butcheredwith an endless avidity by the men who now appeared upon the range. Asthe great herds regularly migrated southward with each winter's snows, they were met by the settlers along the lower railway lines and in abrutal commerce were killed in thousands and in millions. The Indianssaw this sudden and appalling shrinkage of their means of livelihood. It meant death to them. To their minds, especially when they thought wefeared them, there was but one answer to all this--the whites must allbe killed. 

Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Roman Nose, American Horse, Black Kettle--thesewere names of great Indian generals who proved their ability to fight. At times they brought into the open country, which as yet remainedunoccupied by the great pastoral movement from the south, as many asfive thousand mounted warriors in one body, and they were well armedand well supplied with ammunition. Those were the days when the Indianagents were carrying on their lists twice as many Indians as actuallyexisted--and receiving twice as many supplies as really were issued tothe tribes. The curse of politics was ours even at that time, and itcost us then, as now, unestimated millions of our nation's dearesttreasures. As to the reservations which the Indians were urged tooccupy, they left them when they Iced. In the end, when they werebeaten, all they were asked to do was to return to these reservationsand be fed. 

There were fought in the West from 1869 to 1875 more than two hundredpitched actions between the Army and the Indians. In most cases thewhite men were heavily outnumbered. The account which the Army gave ofitself on scores of unremembered minor fields--which meant life or deathto all engaged--would make one of the best pages of our history, couldit be written today. The enlisted men of the frontier Army were ridingand shooting men, able to live as the Indians did and able to beat themat their own game. They were led by Army officers whose type has neverbeen improved upon in any later stage of our Army itself, or of any armyin the world. 

There are certain great battles which may at least receive notice, although it would be impossible to mention more than a few of theencounters of the great Indian wars on the buffalo-range at about thetime of the buffalo's disappearance. The Fetterman Massacre in 1866, near Fort Phil Kearney, a post located at the edge of the Big HornMountains, was a blow which the Army never has forgotten. "In a placeof fifty feet square lay the bodies of Colonel Fetterman, Captain Brown, and sixty-five enlisted men. Each man was stripped naked and hacked andscalped, the skulls beaten in with war clubs and the bodies gashed withknives almost beyond recognition, with other ghastly mutilations thatthe civilized pen hesitates to record. "

This tragedy brought the Indian problem before the country as neverbefore. The hand of the Western rancher and trader was implacablyagainst the tribesmen of the plains; the city-dweller of the East, with hazy notions of the Indian character, was disposed to urge lenientmethods upon those responsible for governmental policy. While the Siouxand Cheyenne wars dragged on, Congress created, by act of July 20, 1867, a peace commission of four civilians and three army officers to dealwith the hostile tribes. For more than a year, with scant sympathy fromthe military members, this commission endeavored to remove the causes offriction by amicable conference with the Indian chiefs. The attitude ofthe Army is reflected in a letter of General Sherman to his brother. "We have now selected and provided reservations for all, off the greatroads. All who cling to their old hunting-grounds are hostile and willremain so till killed off. We will have a sort of predatory war foryears--every now and then be shocked by the indiscriminate murder oftravelers and settlers, but the country is so large, and the advantageof the Indians so great, that we cannot make a single war and end it. From the nature of things we must take chances and clean out Indians aswe encounter them. "

Segregation of the Indian tribes upon reservations seemed to thecommission the only solution of the vexing problem. Various treatieswere made and others were projected looking toward the removal ofthe tribesmen from the highways of continental travel. The result wasmisgiving and increased unrest among the Indians. 

In midsummer of 1868 forays occurred at many points along the border ofthe Indian Territory. General Sheridan, who now commanded the Departmentof the Missouri, believed that a general war was imminent. He determinedto teach the southern tribesmen a lesson they would not forget. In thedead of winter our troops marched against the Cheyennes, then in theirencampments below the Kansas line. The Indians did not believe thatwhite men could march in weather forty below zero, during which theythemselves sat in their tepees around their fires; but our cavalrymendid march in such weather, and under conditions such as our cavalryperhaps could not endure today. Among these troops was the SeventhCavalry, Custer's Regiment, formed after the Civil War, and it was ledby Lieutenant-Colonel George A. Custer himself, that gallant officerwhose name was to go into further and more melancholy history of thePlains. 

Custer marched until he got in touch with the trails of the Cheyennes, whom he knew to belong to Black Kettle's band. He did not at the timeknow that below them, in the same valley of the Washita, were also thewinter encampments of the Kiowas, the Comanches, the Arapahoes, and evena few Apaches. He attacked at dawn of a bleak winter morning, November27, 1868, after taking the precaution of surrounding the camp, andkilled Black Kettle, and another chief, Little Rock, and over a hundredof their warriors. Many women and children also were killed in thisattack. The result was one which sank deep into the Indian mind. Theybegan to respect the men who could outmarch them and outlive them onthe range. Surely, they thought, these were not the same men who hadabandoned Forts Phil Kearney, C. F. Smith, and Reno. There had beensome mistake about this matter. The Indians began to think it over. Theresult was a pacifying of all the country south of the Platte. The lowerIndians began to come in and give themselves up to the reservation life. 

One of the hardest of pitched battles ever fought with an Indian tribeoccurred in September, 1868, on the Arickaree or South Fork of theRepublican River, where General "Sandy" Forsyth, and his scouts, fornine days fought over six hundred Cheyennes and Arapahoes. These savageshad been committing atrocities upon the settlers of the Saline, theSolomon, and the Republican valleys, and were known to have killed somesixty-four men and women at the time General Sheridan resolved to punishthem. Forsyth had no chance to get a command of troops, but hewas allowed to enlist fifty scouts, all "first-class, hardenedfrontiersmen, " and with this body of fighting men he carried out themost dramatic battle perhaps ever waged on the Plains. 

Forsyth ran into the trail of two or three large Indian villages, butnone the less he followed on until he came to the valley of the SouthFork. Here the Cheyennes under the redoubtable Roman Nose surroundedhim on the 17th of September. The small band of scouts took refuge on abrushy island some sixty yards from shore, and hastily dug themselves inunder fire. 

They stood at bay outnumbered ten to one, with small prospect of escape, for the little island offered no protection of itself, and was inpointblank range from the banks of the river. All their horses soon wereshot down, and the men lay in the rifle pits with no hope of escape. Roman Nose, enraged at the resistance put up by Forsyth's men, led aband of some four hundred of his warriors in the most desperate chargethat has been recorded in all our Indian fighting annals. It was rarelythat the Indian would charge at all; but these tribesmen, stripped nakedfor the encounter, and led at first by that giant warrior, who cameon shouting his defiance, charged in full view not only once but threetimes in one day, and got within a hundred feet of the foot of theisland where the scouts were lying. 

According to Forsyth's report, the Indians came on in regular ranks likethe cavalry of the white men, more than four hundred strong. They weremet by the fire of repeating carbines and revolvers, and they stood forthe first, second, third, fourth, and fifth fire of repeating weapons, and still charged in! Roman Nose was killed at last within touch of therifle pits against which he was leading his men. The second chargewas less desperate, for the savages lost heart after the loss of theirleader. The third one, delivered towards the evening of that same day, was desultory. By that time the bed of the shallow stream was wellfilled with fallen horses and dead warriors. 

Forsyth ordered meat cut from the bodies of his dead horses and buriedin the wet sand so that it might keep as long as possible. LieutenantBeecher, his chief of scouts, was killed, as also were Surgeon Mooers, and Scouts Smith, Chalmers, Wilson, Farley, and Day. Seventeen othersof the party were wounded, some severely. Forsyth himself was shot threetimes, once in the head. His left leg was broken below the knee, andhis right thigh was ripped up by a rifle ball, which caused him extremepain. Later he cut the bullet out of his own leg, and was relieved fromsome part of the pain. After his rescue, when his broken leg was set itdid not suit him, and he had the leg broken twice in the hospital andreset until it knitted properly. 

Forsyth's men lay under fire under a blazing sun in their holes on thesandbar for nine days. But the savages never dislodged them, and at lastthey made off, their women and children beating the death drums, and theentire village mourning the unreturning brave. On the second day of thefighting Forsyth had got out messengers at extreme risk, and at lengththe party was rescued by a detachment of the Tenth Cavalry. The Indianslater said that they had in all over six hundred warriors in this fight. Their losses, though variously estimated, were undoubtedly heavy. 

It was encounters such as this which gradually were teaching the Indiansthat they could not beat the white men, so that after a time they beganto yield to the inevitable. 

What is known as the Baker Massacre was the turning-point in thehalf-century of warfare with the Blackfeet, the savage tribe whichhad preyed upon the men of the fur trade in a long-continued series ofrobberies and murders. On January 22, 1870, Major E. M. Baker, led byhalf-breeds who knew the country, surprised the Piegans in their wintercamp on the Marias River, just below the border. He, like Custer, attacked at dawn, opening the encounter with a general fire into thetepees. He killed a hundred and seventy-three of the Piegans, includingvery many women and children, as was unhappily the case so often inthese surprise attacks. It was deplorable warfare. But it ended theresistance of the savage Blackfeet. They have been disposed for peacefrom that day to this. 

The terrible revenge which the Sioux and Cheyennes took in the battlewhich annihilated Custer and his men on the Little Big Horn in thesummer of 1876; the Homeric running fight made by Chief Joseph of theNez Perces--a flight which baffled our best generals and their men fora hundred and ten days over more than fourteen hundred miles ofwilderness--these are events so well known that it seems needless todo more than to refer to them. The Nez Perces in turn went down foreverwhen Joseph came out and surrendered, saying, "From where the sun nowstands I fight against the white man no more forever. " His surrender tofate did not lack its dignity. Indeed, a mournful interest attachedto the inevitable destiny of all these savage leaders, who, no doubt, according to their standards, were doing what men should do and all thatmen could do. 

The main difficulty in administering full punishment to such bands wasthat after a defeat they scattered, so that they could not be overtakenin any detailed fashion. After the Custer fight many of the tribe wentnorth of the Canadian line and remained there for some time. The writerhimself has seen along the Qu'Appelle River in Saskatchewan some of thewheels taken out of the watches of Custer's men. The savages broke themup and used the wheels for jewelry. They even offered the Canadians fortrade boots, hats, and clothing taken from the bodies of Custer's men. 

The Modoc war against the warriors of Captain Jack in 1873 was waged inthe lava beds of Oregon, and it had the distinction of being one ofthe first Indian wars to be well reported in the newspapers. We heard agreat deal of the long and trying campaigns waged by the Army in revengefor the murder of General Canby in his council tent. We got small gloryout of that war, perhaps, but at last we hanged the ringleader of themurderers; and the extreme Northwest remained free from that time on. 

Far in the dry Southwest, where home-building man did not as yet essaya general occupation of the soil, the blood-thirsty Apache long wageda warfare which tried the mettle of our Army as perhaps no other tribesever have done. The Spaniards had fought these Apaches for nearly threehundred years, and had not beaten them. They offered three hundreddollars each for Apache scalps, and took a certain number of them. But they left all the remaining braves sworn to an eternal enmity. TheApaches became mountain outlaws, whose blood-mad thirst for revengenever died. No tribe ever fought more bitterly. Hemmed in andsurrounded, with no hope of escape, in some instances they perishedliterally to the last man. General George Crook finished the work ofcleaning up the Apache outlaws only by use of the trailers of their ownpeople who sided with the whites for pay. Without the Pima scouts henever could have run down the Apaches as he did. Perhaps these werethe hardest of all the Plains Indians to find and to fight. But in 1872Crook subdued them and concentrated them in reservations in Arizona. Ten years later, under Geronimo, a tribe of the Apaches broke loose andyielded to General Crook only after a prolonged war. Once again theyraided New Mexico and Arizona in 1885-6. This was the last raid ofGeronimo. He was forced by General Miles to surrender and, togetherwith his chief warriors, was deported to Fort Pickens in Florida. In allthese savage pitched battles and bloody skirmishes, the surprisesand murderous assaults all over the old range, there were hundreds ofsettlers killed, hundreds also of our army men, including some splendidofficers. In the Custer fight alone, on the Little Big Horn, the Armylost Custer himself, thirteen commissioned officers, and two hundredand fifty-six enlisted men killed, with two officers and fifty-one menwounded; a total of three hundred and twenty-three killed and wounded inone battle. Custer had in his full column about seven hundred men. Thenumber of the Indians has been variously estimated. They had perhapsfive thousand men in their villages when they met Custer in this, the most historic and most ghastly battle of the Plains. It would bebootless to revive any of the old discussions regarding Custer and hisrash courage. Whether in error or in wisdom, he died, and gallantly. Heand his men helped clear the frontier for those who were to follow, and the task took its toll. Thus, slowly but steadily, even thoughhandicapped by a vacillating governmental policy regarding the Indians, we muddled through these great Indian wars of the frontier, our soldiersdoing their work splendidly and uncomplainingly, such work as no otherbody of civilized troops has ever been asked to do or could have doneif asked. At the close of the Civil War we ourselves were a nationof fighting men. We were fit and we were prepared. The average of ourwarlike qualities never has been so high as then. The frontier producedits own pathfinders, its own saviors, its own fighting men. 

So now the frontier lay ready, waiting for the man with the plough. Thedawn of that last day was at hand. 

Chapter VIII. The Cattle Kings

It is proper now to look back yet again over the scenes with whichwe hitherto have had to do. It is after the railways have come to thePlains. The Indians now are vanishing. The buffalo have not yet gone, but are soon to pass. 

Until the closing days of the Civil War the northern range was a wide, open domain, the greatest ever offered for the use of a people. Noneclaimed it then in fee; none wanted it in fee. The grasses and the sweetwaters offered accessible and profitable chemistry for all men whohad cows to range. The land laws still were vague and inexact inapplication, and each man could construe them much as he liked. Theexcellent homestead law of 1862, one of the few really good land lawsthat have been put on our national statute books, worked well enoughso long as we had good farming lands for homesteading--lands of which aquarter section would support a home and a family. This same homesteadlaw was the only one available for use on the cattle-range. In practiceit was violated thousands of times--in fact, of necessity violatedby any cattle man who wished to acquire sufficient range to run aconsiderable herd. Our great timber kings, our great cattle kings, madetheir fortunes out of their open contempt for the homestead law, whichwas designed to give all the people an even chance for a home and afarm. It made, and lost, America. 

Swiftly enough, here and there along all the great waterways of thenorthern range, ranchers and their men filed claims on the water fronts. The dry land thus lay tributary to them. For the most part the openlands were held practically under squatter right; the first cowman inany valley usually had his rights respected, at least for a time. Thesewere the days of the open range. Fences had not come, nor had farms beenstaked out. 

From the South now appeared that tremendous and elemental force--mostrevolutionary of all the great changes we have noted in the swiftlychanging West--the bringing in of thousands of horned kine along thenorthbound trails. The trails were hurrying from the Rio Grande to theupper plains of Texas and northward, along the north and south line ofthe Frontier--that land which now we have been seeking less to defineand to mark precisely than fundamentally to understand. 

The Indian wars had much to do with the cow trade. The Indians werecrowded upon the reservations, and they had to be fed, and fed on beef. Corrupt Indian agents made fortunes, and the Beef Ring at Washington, one of the most despicable lobbies which ever fattened there, now wroteits brief and unworthy history. In a strange way corrupt politics andcorrupt business affected the phases of the cattle industry as they hadaffected our relations with the Indians. More than once a herd of somethousand beeves driven up from Texas on contract, and arriving late inautumn, was not accepted on its arrival at the army post--some pet ofWashington perhaps had his own herd to sell! All that could be done thenwould be to seek out a "holding range. " In this way, more and more, thecapacity of the northern Plains to nourish and improve cattle becameestablished. 

Naturally, the price of cows began to rise; and naturally, also, thedemand for open range steadily increased. There now began the wholecomplex story of leased lands and fenced lands. The frontier still wasoffering opportunity for the bold man to reap where he had not sown. Lands leased to the Indians of the civilized tribes began to cut largefigure in the cow trade--as well as some figure in politics--until atlength the thorny situation was handled by a firm hand at Washington. The methods of the East were swiftly overrunning those of the West. Politics and graft and pull, things hitherto unknown, soon wrote theirhurrying story also over all this newly won region from which therifle-smoke had scarcely yet cleared away. 

But every herd which passed north for delivery of one sort or the otheradvanced the education of the cowman, whether of the northern or thesouthern ranges. Some of the southern men began to start feeding rangesin the North, retaining their breeding ranges in the South. The demandof the great upper range for cattle seemed for the time insatiable. 

To the vision of the railroad builders a tremendous potential freightagenow appeared. The railroad builders began to calculate that one day theywould parallel the northbound cow trail with iron trails of their ownand compete with nature for the carrying of this beef. The whole swiftstory of all that development, while the westbound rails were crossingand crisscrossing the newly won frontier, scarce lasted twenty years. Presently we began to hear in the East of the Chisholm Trail and of theWestern Trail which lay beyond it, and of many smaller and interminglingbranches. We heard of Ogallalla, in Nebraska, the "Gomorrah of theRange, " the first great upper marketplace for distribution of cattle tothe swiftly forming northern ranches. The names of new rivers cameupon our maps; and beyond the first railroads we began to hear of theYellowstone, the Powder, the Musselshell, the Tongue, the Big Horn, theLittle Missouri. 

The wild life, bold and carefree, coming up from the South now in amighty surging wave, spread all over that new West which offered to thepeople of older lands a strange and fascinating interest. Every one onthe range had money; every one was independent. Once more it seemed thatman had been able to overleap the confining limitations of his life, andto attain independence, self-indulgence, ease and liberty. A chorus ofHomeric, riotous mirth, as of a land in laughter, rose up all over thegreat range. After all, it seemed that we had a new world left, a landnot yet used. We still were young! The cry arose that there was landenough for all out West. And at first the trains of white-topped wagonsrivaled the crowded coaches westbound on the rails. 

In consequence there came an entire readjustment of values. Thiscountry, but yesterday barren and worthless, now was covered withgold, deeper than the gold of California or any of the old placers. Newsecurities and new values appeared. Banks did not care much for the landas security--it was practically worthless without the cattle--but theywould lend money on cattle at rates which did not then seem usurious. Anew system of finance came into use. Side by side with the expansion ofcredits went the expansion of the cattle business. Literally in hundredsof thousands the cows came north from the exhaustless ranges of thelower country. 

It was a wild, strange day. But withal it was the kindliest and mostgenerous time, alike the most contented and the boldest time, in all thehistory of our frontiers. There never was a better life than that of thecowman who had a good range on the Plains and cattle enough to stock hisrange. There never will be found a better man's country in all the worldthan that which ran from the Missouri up to the low foothills of theRockies. 

The lower cities took their tribute of the northbound cattle for quite atime. Wichita, Coffeyville, and other towns of lower Kansas in turn madebids for prominence as cattle marts. Agents of the Chicago stockyardswould come down along the trails into the Indian Nations to meet thenorthbound herds and to try to divert them to this or that market asa shipping-point. The Kiowas and Comanches, not yet wholly confined totheir reservations, sometimes took tribute, whether in theft or in openextortion, of the herds laboring upward through the long slow season. Trail-cutters and herd-combers, licensed or unlicensed hangers-on to thenorthbound throngs of cattle, appeared along the lower trails--with somereason, occasionally; for in a great northbound herd there might bemany cows included under brands other than those of the road brandsregistered for the drovers of that particular herd. Cattle thievingbecame an industry of certain value, rivaling in some localities theoperations of the bandits of the placer camps. There was great wealthsuddenly to be seen. The weak and the lawless, as well as the strong andthe unscrupulous, set out to reap after their own fashion where they hadnot sown. If a grave here or there appeared along the trail or at theedge of the straggling town, it mattered little. If the gamblers and thedesperadoes of the cow towns such as Newton, Ellsworth, Abilene, Dodge, furnished a man for breakfast day after day, it mattered little, forplenty of men, remained, as good or better. The life was large andcareless, and bloodshed was but an incident. 

During the early and unregulated days of the cattle industry, thefrontier insisted on its own creed, its own standards. But all the time, coming out from the East, were scores and hundreds of men of exacternotions of trade and business. The enormous waste of the cattle rangecould not long endure. The toll taken by the thievery of the men whocame to be called range-rustlers made an element of loss which could notlong be sustained by thinking men. As the Vigilantes regulated things inthe mining camps, so now in slightly different fashion the new propertyowners on the upper range established their own ideas, their own senseof proportion as to law and order. The cattle associations, the bandingtogether of many owners of vast herds, for mutual protection and mutualgain were a natural and logical development. Outside of these there wasfor a time a highly efficient corps of cattle-range Vigilantes, who shotand hanged some scores of rustlers. 

It was a frenzied life while it lasted--this lurid outburst, thelast flare of the frontier. Such towns as Dodge and Ogallalla offeredextraordinary phenomena of unrestraint. But fortunately into the worstof these capitals of license came the best men of the new regime, and the new officers of the law, the agents of the Vigilantes, theadvance-guard of civilization now crowding on the heels of the wild menof the West. In time the lights of the dance-halls and the saloons andthe gambling parlors went out one by one all along the frontier. By 1885Dodge City, a famed capital of the cow trade, which will live as longas the history of that industry is known, resigned its eminence anddeclared that from where the sun then stood it would be a cow camp nomore! The men of Dodge knew that another day had dawned. But this wasafter the homesteaders had arrived and put up their wire fences, cuttingoff from the town the holding grounds of the northbound herds. 

This innovation of barb-wire fences in the seventies had caused atremendous alteration of conditions over all the country. It had enabledmen to fence in their own water-fronts, their own homesteads. Casually, and at first without any objection filed by any one, they had includedin their fences many hundreds of thousands of acres of range land towhich they had no title whatever. These men--like the large-handed cowbarons of the Indian Nations, who had things much as they willed in alittle unnoted realm all their own--had money and political influence. And there seemed still range enough for all. If a man wished to throw adrift fence here or there, what mattered it?

Up to this time not much attention had been paid to the Little Fellow, the man of small capital who registered a brand of his own, and whowith a Maverick * here and there and the natural increase, and perhapsa trifle of unnatural increase here and there--had proved able toaccumulate with more or less rapidity a herd of his own. Now the cattleassociations passed rules that no foreman should be allowed to haveor register a brand of his own. Not that any foreman could besuspected--not at all!--but the foreman who insisted on his old right toown a running iron and a registered brand was politely asked to find hisemployment somewhere else. 

 * In the early days a rancher by the name of Maverick, a Texasman, had made himself rich simply by riding out on the open range andbranding loose and unmarked occupants of the free lands. Hence the term"Maverick" was applied to any unbranded animal running loose onthe range. No one cared to interfere with these early activities incollecting unclaimed cattle. Many a foundation for a great fortune waslaid in precisely that way. It was not until the more canny days in theNorth that Mavericks were regarded with jealous eyes. 

The large-handed and once generous methods of the old range now began tonarrow themselves. Even if the Little Fellow were able to throw a fencearound his own land, very often he did not have land enough to supporthis herd with profit. A certain antipathy now began to arise between thegreat cattle owners and the small ones, especially on the upper range, where some rather bitter wars were fought--the cow kings accusing theirsmaller rivals of rustling cows; the small man accusing the largeroperators of having for years done the same thing, and of having grownrich at it. 

The cattle associations, thrifty and shifty, sending their brandinspectors as far east as the stockyards of Kansas City and Chicago, naturally had the whip hand of the smaller men. They employed detectiveswho regularly combed out the country in search of men who had looseideas of mine and thine. All the time the cow game was becoming stricterand harder. Easterners brought on the East's idea of property, of lowinterest, sure returns, and good security. In short, there was set ononce more--as there had been in every great movement across the entireWest--the old contest between property rights and human independencein action. It was now once more the Frontier against the States, and theStates were foredoomed to win. 

The barb-wire fence, which was at first used extensively by the greatoperators, came at last to be the greatest friend of the Little Fellowon the range. The Little Fellow, who under the provisions of thehomestead act began to push West arid, to depart farther and fartherfrom the protecting lines of the railways, could locate land and waterfor himself and fence in both. "I've got the law back of me, " was whathe said; and what he said was true. Around the old cow camps of thetrails, and around the young settlements which did not aspire to becalled cow camps, the homesteaders fenced in land--so much land thatthere came to be no place near any of the shipping-points where a bigherd from the South could be held. Along the southern range artificialbarriers to the long drive began to be raised. It would be hard to saywhether fear of Texas competition or of Texas cattle fever was the morepowerful motive in the minds of ranchers in Colorado and Kansas. But thecattle quarantine laws of 1885 nearly broke up the long drive of thatyear. Men began to talk of fencing off the trails, and keeping thenorthbound herds within the fences--a thing obviously impossible. 

The railroads soon rendered this discussion needless. Their agents wentdown to Texas and convinced the shippers that it would be cheaper andsafer to put their cows on cattle trains and ship them directly to theranges where they were to be delivered. And in time the rails runningnorth and south across the Staked Plains into the heart of the lowerrange began to carry most of the cattle. So ended the old cattle trails. 

What date shall we fix for the setting of the sun of that last frontier?Perhaps the year 1885 is as accurate as any--the time when the cattletrails practically ceased to bring north their vast tribute. But, in fact, there is no exact date for the passing of the frontier. Itsdecline set in on what day the first lank "nester" from the Statesoutspanned his sun-burned team as he pulled up beside some sweet wateron the rolling lands, somewhere in the West, and looked about him, andlooked again at the land map held in his hand. 

"I reckon this is our land, Mother, " said he. 

When he said that, he pronounced the doom of the old frontier. 

Chapter IX. The Homesteader

His name was usually Nester or Little Fellow. It was the old story ofthe tortoise and the hare. The Little Fellow was from the first destinedto win. His steady advance, now on this flank, now on that, just backof the vanguard pushing westward, had marked the end of all our earlierfrontiers. The same story now was being written on the frontier of thePlains. 

But in the passing of this last frontier the type of the land-seekingman, the type of the American, began to alter distinctly. The milliondead of our cruel Civil War left a great gap in the American populationwhich otherwise would have occupied the West and Northwest after theclearing away of the Indians. For three decades we had been receivinga strong and valuable immigration from the north of Europe. It was ingreat part this continuous immigration which occupied the farming landsof upper Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. Thus the population of theNorthwest became largely foreign. Each German or Scandinavian who foundhimself prospering in this rich new country was himself an immigrationagency. He sent back word to his friends and relatives in the Old Worldand these came to swell the steadily thickening population of the New. 

We have seen that the enterprising cattlemen had not been slow to reachout for such resources as they might. Perhaps at one time between 1885and 1890 there were over ten million acres of land illegally fenced inon the upper range by large cattle companies. This had been done withoutany color of law whatever; a man simply threw out his fences as far ashe liked, and took in range enough to pasture all the cattle that heowned. His only pretext was "I saw it first. " For the Nester who wanteda way through these fences out into the open public lands, he cherisheda bitter resentment. And yet the Nester must in time win through, musteventually find the little piece of land which he was seeking. 

The government at Washington was finally obliged to take action. Inthe summer of 1885, acting under authorization of Congress, PresidentCleveland ordered the removal of all illegal enclosures and forbade anyperson or association to prevent the peaceful occupation of the publicland by homesteaders. The President had already cancelled the leases bywhich a great cattle company had occupied grazing lands in the IndianTerritory. Yet, with even-handed justice he kept the land boomers alsoout of these coveted lands, until the Dawes Act of 1887 allotted thetribal lands to the Indians in severalty and threw open the remainderto the impatient homeseekers. Waiting thousands were ready at the Kansasline, eager for the starting gun which was to let loose a mad stampedeof crazed human beings. 

It always was contended by the cowman that these settlers coming in onthe semi-arid range could not make a living there, that all they coulddo was legally to starve to death some good woman. True, many of themcould not last out in the bitter combined fight with nature and thegrasping conditions of commerce and transportation of that time. Thewestern Canadian farmer of today is a cherished, almost a petted being. But no one ever showed any mercy to the American farmer who moved outWest. 

As always has been the case, a certain number of wagons might be seenpassing back East, as well as the somewhat larger number steadily movingwestward. There were lean years and dry years, hot years, yellow yearshere and there upon the range. The phrase written on one disheartenedfarmer's wagon top, "Going back to my wife's folks, " became historic. 

The railways were finding profit in carrying human beings out to thecow-range just as once they had in transporting cattle. Indeed, it didnot take the wiser railroad men long to see that they could afford toset down a farmer, at almost no cost for transportation, in any partof the new West. He would after that be dependent upon the railroad inevery way. The railroads deliberately devised the great land boom of1886, which was more especially virulent in the State of Kansas. Many ofthe roads had lands of their own for sale, but what they wanted most wasthe traffic of the settlers. They knew the profit to be derived from theindustry of a dense population raising products which must be shipped, and requiring imports which also must be shipped. One railroad evenoffered choice breeding-stock free on request. The same road, and othersalso, preached steadily the doctrine of diversified farming. In short, the railroads, in their own interests, did all they could to makeprosperous the farms or ranches of the West. The usual Western homesteadnow was part ranch and part farm, although the term "ranch" continuedfor many years to cover all the meanings of the farm of whatever sort. 

There appeared now in the new country yet another figure of the Westerncivilization, the land-boomer, with his irresponsible and unregulatedstatements in regard to the values of these Western lands. These menwere not always desirable citizens, although of course no industry wasmore solid or more valuable than that of legitimate handling of thedesirable lands. "Public spirit" became a phrase now well known in anyone of scores of new towns springing up on the old cow-range, each ofwhich laid claims to be the future metropolis of the world. In any oneof these towns the main industry was that of selling lands or "realestate. " During the Kansas boom of 1886 the land-boomers had their desksin the lobbies of banks, the windows of hardware stores--any place andevery place offering room for a desk and chair. 

Now also flourished apace the industry of mortgage loans. Easternmoney began to flood the western Plains, attracted by the high rates ofinterest. In 1886 the customary banking interest in western Kansas wastwo per cent a month. It is easy to see that very soon such a state ofaffairs as this must collapse. The industry of selling town lots far outin the cornfields, and of buying unimproved subdivision property withborrowed money at usurious rates of interest, was one riding for its ownfall. 

None the less the Little Fellow kept on going out into the West. Wedid not change our land laws for his sake, and for a time he needed nosympathy. The homestead law in combination with the preemption act andthe tree claim act would enable a family to get hold of a very sizabletract of land. The foundations of many comfortable fortunes were laid inprecisely this way by thrifty men who were willing to work and willingto wait. 

It was not until 1917 that the old homestead law limiting the settlerto a hundred and sixty acres of land was modified for the benefit of thestock-raiser. The stockraising homestead law, as it is called, permitsa man to make entry for not more than six hundred and forty acres ofunappropriated land which shall have been designated by the Secretaryof the Interior as "stockraising land. " Cultivation of the land is notrequired, but the holder is required to make "permanent improvements"to the value of a dollar and twenty-five cents an acre, and at leastone-half of these improvements must be made within three years after thedate of entry. In the old times the question of proof in "proving up"was very leniently considered. A man would stroll down to the landoffice and swear solemnly that he had lived the legal length of time onhis homestead, whereas perhaps he had never seen it or had no more thanridden across it. Today matters perhaps will be administered somewhatmore strictly; for of all those millions of acres of open land once inthe West there is almost none left worth the holding for farm purposes. 

Such dishonest practices were, however, indignantly denied by those whofostered the irrigation and dryfarming booms which made the last phaseof exploitation of the old range. A vast amount of disaster was workedby the failure of number less irrigation companies, each of themoffering lands to the settlers through the medium of most alluringadvertising. In almost every case the engineers underestimated the costof getting water on the land. Very often the amount of water availablewas not sufficient to irrigate the land which had been sold to settlers. In countless cases the district irrigation bonds-which were offeredbroadcast by Eastern banks to their small investors--were hardly worththe paper on which they were written. One after another these wildcatirrigation schemes, purporting to assure sudden wealth in apples, pears, celery, garden truck, cherries, small fruits, alfalfa, pecans, eucalyptus or catalpa trees-anything you liked--went to the wall. Sometimes whole communities became straitened by the collapse of theseoverblown enterprises. The recovery was slow, though usually the resultof that recovery was a far healthier and more stable condition ofsociety. 

This whole question of irrigation and dry farming, this or that phaseof the last scrambling, feverish settling on the last lands, was sorelywasteful of human enterprise and human happiness. It was much like thespawning rush of the salmon from the sea. Many perish. A few survive. Certainly there never was more cruel injustice done than that to thesober-minded Eastern farmers, some of them young men in search ofcheaper homes, who sold out all they had in the East and went out tothe dry country to farm under the ditch, or to take up that still morehazardous occupation--successful sometimes, though always hard andalways risky--dry farming on the benches which cannot be reached withirrigating waters. 

Strangely changed was all the face of the cattle range by thesesuccessive and startling innovations. The smoke of many little homesrose now, scattered over all that tremendous country from the Rockiesto the edge of the short grass country, from Texas to the Canadian line. The cattle were not banished from the range, for each little farmerwould probably have a few cows of his own; and in some fashion the greatcowmen were managing to get in fee tracts of land sufficient for theirpurposes. There were land leases of all sorts which enabled the thriftyWesterner who knew the inside and out of local politics to pick uppermanently considerable tracts of land. Some of these ranches heldtogether as late as 1916; indeed, there are some such oldtime holdingsstill existent in the West, although far more rare than formerly was thecase. 

Under all these conditions the price of land went up steadily. Landwas taken eagerly which would have been refused with contempt a decadeearlier. The parings and scraps and crumbs of the Old West now werefought for avidly. 

The need of capital became more and more important in many of the greatland operations. Even the government reclamation enterprises could notopen lands to the settler on anything like the old homestead basis. Thewater right cost money--sometimes twenty-five or thirty dollars an acre;in some of the private reclamation enterprises, fifty dollars an acre, or even more. Very frequently when the Eastern farmer came out to settleon such a tract and to meet the hard, new, and expensive conditions oflife in the semi-arid regions he found that he could not pay out onthe land. Perhaps he brought two or three thousand dollars with him. Itusually was the industrial mistake of the land-boomer to take fromthis intending settler practically all of his capital at the start. Naturally, when the new farmers were starved out and in one way oranother had made other plans, the country itself went to pieces. Thatpart of it was wisest which did not kill the goose of the goldenegg. But be these things as they may be and as they were, the wholereadjustment in agricultural values over the once measureless andvalueless cow country was a stupendous and staggering thing. 

Now appeared yet another agency of change. The high dry lands of manyof the Rocky Mountain States had long been regarded covetously by anindustry even more cordially disliked by the cattleman than the industryof farming. The sheepman began to raise his head and to plan certainthings for himself in turn. Once the herder of sheep was a meek andlowly man, content to slink away when ordered. The writer himself in thedry Southwest once knew a flock of six thousand sheep to be rounded upand killed by the cattlemen of a range into which they had intruded. The herders went with the sheep. All over the range the feud between thesheepmen and the cowmen was bitter and implacable. The issues in thosequarrels rarely got into the courts but were fought out on the ground. The old Wyoming deadline of the cowmen against intruding bands ofGreen River sheep made a considerable amount of history which was neverrecorded. 

The sheepmen at length began to succeed in their plans. Themselves notpaying many taxes, not supporting the civilization of the country, notbuilding the schools or roads or bridges, they none the less claimed theearth and the fullness thereof. 

After the establishment of the great forest reserves, the sheepmencoveted the range thus included. It has been the governmental policy tosell range privileges in the forest reserves for sheep, on a per capitabasis. Like privileges have been extended to cattlemen in certain of thereserves. Always the contact and the contest between the two industriesof sheep and cows have remained. Of course the issue even in thisancient contest is foregone--as the cowman has had to raise his cowsunder fence, so ultimately must the sheepman also buy his range in feeand raise his product under fence. 

The wandering bands of sheep belong nowhere. They ruin a country. Itis a pathetic spectacle to see parts of the Old West in which sheepsteadily have been ranged. They utterly destroy all the game; they evendrive the fish out of the streams and cut the grasses and weeds downto the surface of the earth. The denuded soil crumbles under theircountless hoofs, becomes dust, and blows away. They leave a waste, adesert, an abomination. 

There were yet other phases of change which followed hard upon the heelsof our soldiers after they had completed their task of subjugating thetribes of the buffalo Indians. After the homesteads had been proved upin some of the Northwestern States, such as Montana and the Dakotas, large bodies of land were acquired by certain capitalistic farmers. Allthis new land had been proved to be exceedingly prolific of wheat, thegreat new-land crop. The farmers of the Northwest had not yet learnedthat no country long can thrive which depends upon a single crop. Butthe once familiar figures of the bonanza farms of the Northwest--thepictures of their long lines of reapers or selfbinders, twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty machines, one after the other, advancing through thegolden grain--the pictures of their innumerable stacks of wheat--thefigures of the vast mileage of their fencing--the yet more stupendousfigures of the outlay required to operate these farms, and the splendidtotals of the receipts from such operations--these at one time werefamiliar and proudly presented features of boom advertising in the upperportions of our black land belt, which day just at the eastern edge ofthe old Plains. 

There was to be repeated in this country something of the history ofCalifornia. In the great valleys, such as the San Joaquin, the firstinterests were pastoral, and the cowmen found a vast realm which seemedto be theirs forever. There came to them, however, the bonanza wheatfarmers, who flourished there about 1875 and through the next decade. Their highly specialized industry boasted that it could bake a loaf ofbread out of a wheat field between the hours of sunrise and sunset. Theoutlay in stock and machinery on some of these bonanza ranches raninto enormous figures. But here, as in all new wheat countries, theproductive power of the soil soon began to decrease. Little by littlethe number of bushels per acre lessened, until the bonanza farmer foundhimself with not half the product to sell which he had owned the firstfew years of his operations. In one California town at one time abonanza farmer came in and covered three city blocks with farm machinerywhich he had turned over to the bank owning the mortgages on his landsand plant. He turned in also all his mules and horses, and retired worsethan broke from an industry in which he had once made his hundreds ofthousands. Something of this same story was to follow in the Dakotas. Presently we heard no more of the bonanza wheat farms; and a littlelater they were not. The one-crop country is never one of soundinvesting values; and a land boom is something of which tobeware--always and always to beware. 

The prairie had passed; the range had passed; the illegal fences hadpassed; and presently the cattle themselves were to pass--that is tosay, the great herds. As recently as five years ago (1912) it was myfortune to be in the town of Belle Fourche, near the Black Hills--aregion long accustomed to vivid history, whether of Indians, mines, orcows--at the time when the last of the great herds of the old industrythereabouts were breaking up; and to see, coming down to the cattlechutes to be shipped to the Eastern stockyards, the last hundreds ofthe last great Belle Fourche herd, which was once numbered in thousands. They came down out of the blue-edged horizon, threading their way fromupper benches down across the dusty valley. The dust of their travelrose as it had twenty years earlier on the same old trail. But thesewere not the same cattle. There was not a longhorn among them; there hasnot been a longhorn on the range for many years. They were sleek, fat, well-fed animals, heavy and stocky, even of type, all either whitefacesor shorthorns. With them were some old-time cowmen, men grown gray inrange work. Alongside the herds, after the ancient fashion of trailingcattle, rode cowboys who handled their charges with the same old skill. But even the cowboys had changed. These were without exception men fromthe East who had learned their trade here in the West. Here indeedwas one of the last acts of the great drama of the Plains. To many anobserver there it was a tragic thing. I saw many a cowman there thegravity on whose face had nothing to do with commercial loss. It wasthe Old West he mourned. I mourned with him. Naturally the growth ofthe great stockyards of the Middle West had an effect upon all thecattle-producing country of the West, whether those cattle were bred inlarge or in small numbers. The dealers of the stockyards, let us say, gradually evolved a perfect understanding among themselves as to whatcattle prices ought to be at the Eastern end of the rails. They havealways pleaded poverty and explained the extremely small margin ofprofit under which they have operated. Of course, the repeated turn-overin their business has been an enormous thing; and their industry, sincethe invention of refrigerator cars and the shipment of dressed beef intins, has been one which has extended to all the corners of the world. The great packers would rather talk of "by-products" than of thesethings. Always they have been poor, so very poor!

For a time the railroads east of the stockyard cities of Kansas Cityand Chicago divided up pro rata the dressed beef traffic. Investigationafter investigation has been made of the methods of the stockyard firms, but thus far the law has not laid its hands successfully upon them. Naturally of late years the extremely high price of beef has madegreater profit to the cattle raiser; but that man, receiving eight orten cents a pound on the hoof, is not getting rich so fast as did hispredecessor, who got half of it, because he is now obliged to feed hayand to enclose his range. Where once a half ton of hay might have beensufficient to tide a cow over the bad part of the winter, the LittleFellow who fences his own range of a few hundred acres is obliged tofigure on two or three tons, for he must feed his herd on hay throughthe long months of the winter. 

The ultimate consumer, of course, is the one who pays the freight andstands the cost of all this. Hence we have the swift growth of Americandiscontent with living conditions. There is no longer land for freehomes in America. This is no longer a land of opportunity. It is nolonger a poor man's country. We have arrived all too swiftly upon theways of the Old World. And today, in spite of our love of peace, we arein an Old World's war!

The insatiable demand of Americans for cheap lands assumed a certaininternational phase at the period lying between 1900 and 1913 orlater--the years of the last great boom in Canadian lands. The DominionGovernment, represented by shrewd and enterprising men able to handlelarge undertakings, saw with a certain satisfaction of its own the swiftpassing from the market of all the cheap lands of the United States. It was proved to the satisfaction of all that very large tracts ofthe Canadian plains also would raise wheat, quite as well as had theprairies of Montana or Dakota. The Canadian railroads, with lands tosell, began to advertise the wheat industry in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The Canadian Government went into the publicity business on its ownpart. To a certain extent European immigration was encouraged, but theUnited States really was the country most combed out for settlers forthese Canadian lands. As by magic, millions of acres in western Canadawere settled. 

The young American farmers of our near Northwest were especially covetedas settlers, because they knew how to farm these upper lands far betterthan any Europeans, and because each of them was able to bring a littlecapital of ready money into Canada. The publicity campaign waged byCanadians in our Western States in one season took away more than ahundred and fifty thousand good young farmers, resolved to live underanother flag. In one year the State of Iowa lost over fifteen milliondollars of money withdrawn from bank deposits by farmers moving acrossthe line into Canada. 

The story of these land rushes was much the same there as it had beenwith us. Not all succeeded. The climatic conditions were far moresevere than any which we had endured, and if the soil for a time in someregions seemed better than some of our poorest, at least there waitedfor the one-crop man the same future which had been discovered forsimilar methods within our own confines. But the great Canadianland booms, carefully fostered and well developed, offered a curiousillustration of the tremendous pressure of all the populations of theworld for land and yet more land. 

In the year 1911 the writer saw, all through the Peace River Valley andeven in the neighborhood of the Little Slave Lake, the advance-guardof wheat farmers crowding out even beyond the Canadian frontier in thecovetous search for yet more cheap land. In 1912 I talked with aschool teacher, who herself had homestead land in the Judith Basinof Montana--once sacred to cows--and who was calmly discussing theadvisability of going up into the Peace River country to take up yetmore homestead land under the regulations of the Dominion Government!In the year 1913 I saw an active business done in town lots at FortMcMurray, five hundred miles north of the last railroad of Alberta, onthe ancient Athabasca waterway of the fur trade!

Who shall state the limit of all this expansion? The farmer has everfound more and more land on which he could make a living; he is alwaystaking land which his predecessor has scornfully refused. If presentlythere shall come the news that the land boomer has reached the mouthof the Mackenzie River--as long ago he reached certain portions of theYukon and Tanana country--if it shall be said that men are nowselling town lots under the Midnight Sun--what then? We are building agovernment railroad of our own almost within shadow of Mount McKinleyin Alaska. There are steamboats on all these great sub-Arctic rivers. Perhaps, some day, a power boat may take us easily where I have stood, somewhat wearied, at that spot on the Little Bell tributary ofthe Porcupine, where a slab on a post said, "Portage Road to Ft. McPherson"--a "road" which is not even a trail, but which crosses themost northerly of all the passes of the Rockies, within a hundred milesof the Arctic Ocean. 

Land, land, more land! It is the cry of the ages, more imperative andclamorous now than ever in the history of the world and only arrestedfor the time by the cataclysm of the Great War. The earth is well-nighoccupied now. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, even Africa, arecolonization grounds. What will be the story of the world at the endof the Great War none may predict. For the time there will be more landleft in Europe; but, unbelievably soon, the Great War will have beenforgotten; and then the march of the people will be resumed toward suchfrontiers of the world as yet may remain. Land, land, more land!

Always in America we have occupied the land as fast as it was feasibleto do so. We have survived incredible hardships on the mining frontier, have lived through desperate social conditions in the cow country, havefought many of our bravest battles in the Indian country. Always ithas been the frontier which has allured many of our boldest souls. Andalways, just back of the frontier, advancing, receding, crossing itthis way and that, succeeding and failing, hoping and despairing--butsteadily advancing in the net result--has come that portion of thepopulation which builds homes and lives in them, and which is notcontent with a blanket for a bed and the sky for a roof above. 

We had a frontier once. It was our most priceless possession. It has notbeen possible to eliminate from the blood of the American West, dilutedthough it has been by far less worthy strains, all the iron of the oldhome-bred frontiersmen. The frontier has been a lasting and ineradicableinfluence for the good of the United States. It was there we showed ourfighting edge, our unconquerable resolution, our undying faith. There, for a time at least, we were Americans. 

We had our frontier. We shall do ill indeed if we forget and abandon itsstrong lessons, its great hopes, its splendid human dreams. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

ANDY ADAMS, "The Log of a Cowboy, " 1903. "The Outlet, " 1905. Homely butexcellently informing books done by a man rarely qualified for his taskby long experience in the cattle business and on the trail. Nothingbetter exists than Adams's several books for the man who wishestrustworthy information on the early American cattle business. 

GEORGE A. FORSYTH, "The Story of the Soldier, " 1900. 

GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, "The Story of the Indian, " 1895. 

EMERSON HOUGH, "The Story of the Cowboy, " 1897. 

CHARLES HOWARD SHINN, "The Story of the Mine, " 1901. 

CY WARMAN, "The Story of the Railroad, " 1898. The foregoing books ofAppleton's interesting series known as "The Story of the West" arevaluable as containing much detailed information, done by contemporariesof wide experience. 

FRANCIS PARKMAN, "The Oregon Trail, " 1901, with preface by the author tothe edition of 18991. This is a reprint of the edition published in 1857under the title "Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life, " or "The Californiaand Oregon Trail, " and has always been held as a classic in theliterature of the West. It holds a certain amount of informationregarding life on the Plains at the middle of the last century. Theoriginal title is more accurate than the more usual one "The OregonTrail, " as the book itself is in no sense an exclusive study of thathistoric highway. 

COLONEL R. B. MARCY, U. S. A. , "Thirty Years of Army Life on theBorder, " 1866. An admirable and very informing book done by an Armyofficer who was also a sportsman and a close observer of the conditionsof the life about him. One of the standard books for any library ofearly Western literature. 

EMERSON HOUGH, "The Story of the Outlaw, " 1907. A study of the Westerndesperado, with historical narratives of famous outlaws, stories ofnoted border movements, Vigilante activities, and armed conflicts on theborder. 

NATHANIEL PITT LANGFORD, "Vigilante Days and Ways, " 1893. A storehouseof information done in graphic anecdotal fashion of the scenes in theearly mining camps of Idaho and Montana. Valuable as the work of acontemporary writer who took part in the scenes he describes. 

JOHN C. VAN TRAMP, "Prairie and Rocky Mountain Adventures or Life inthe West, " 1870. A study of the States and territorial regions of ourWestern empire, embracing history, statistics, and geography, with descriptions of the chief cities of the West. In large part acompilation of earlier Western literature. 

SAMUEL BOWLES, "Our New West, " 1869. Records of travel between theMississippi River and the Pacific Ocean, with details regarding scenery, agriculture, mines, business, social life, etc. , including a fulldescription of the Pacific States and studies of the "Mormons, Indians, and Chinese" at that time. 

HIRAM MARTIN CHITTENDEN, "The American Fur Trade of the Far West, " 1902. The work of a distinguished Army officer. Done with the exact care of anArmy engineer. An extraordinary collection of facts and a general viewof the picturesque early industry of the fur trade, which did so muchtoward developing the American West. See also his "History of SteamboatNavigation on the Missouri River" (1903). 

A. J. SOWELL, "Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas, "1900. A local book, but done with contemporary accuracy by a man whoalso studied the Texas Rangers and who was familiar with some of theearlier frontier characters of the Southwest. 

The foregoing volumes are of course but a few among the many scores orhundreds which will have been read avidly by every man concerned withfrontier life or with the expansion of the American people to the West. Space lacks for a fuller list, but the foregoing readings will serve toput upon the trail of wider information any one interested in these andkindred themes. 

Let especial stress again be laid upon the preeminent value of booksdone by contemporaries, men who wrote, upon the ground, of things whichthey actually saw and actually understood. It is not always, or perhapsoften, that these contemporary books achieve the place which they oughtto have and hold. 

Among the many books dealing with the Indians and Indian Wars, thefollowing may be mentioned: J. P. DUNN, "Massacres of the Mountains, AHistory of the Indian Wars of the Far West, " 1886. 

L. E. TEXTOR, "Official Relations between the United States and theSioux Indians, " 1896. 

G. W. MANYPENNY, "Our Indian Wards, " 1880. 

There is an extensive bibliography appended to Frederic L. Paxson's "TheLast American Frontier" (1910), the first book to bring together themany aspects of the Far West.