Sunday, October 28, 2018

Frontier violence and the last refuge of the incompetent

Realizing through that sin, his true perfection

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

It may be true now, as Isaac Asimov said, that “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
But it was not so, 200 years ago in the wilds of Rocky Mountains, in the heydays of the early mountain men. Those men were perhaps, products of the times.

John "liver-eating" Johnson
Lore has it, the popular movie "Jeremiah Johnson" was partially based on trapper John "liver-eating" Johnson, who in 1847 found his wife and her unborn child had been killed by Crow braves.
Rumors, legends, and campfire tales reflect upon the death of Johnson's wife and subsequent rampage by Johnson. His wife's death: she was of Flathead American Indian tribe descent, prompted Johnson to embark on a vendetta against the Crow tribe.
According to historian Andrew Mehane Southerland, "He supposedly killed and scalped more than 300 Crow Indians and then devoured their livers," to avenge the death of the wife, and "As his reputation and collection of scalps grew, Johnson became an object of fear."
This was said to be an insult, as the Crow believed they'd be barred from the afterlife without a liver.
There are certainly other examples.

John Colter
"Virginia-born John Colter first answered the call of the West in 1804, as part of Lewis and Clark’s famed Corps of Discovery. Two years in the wilderness was more than enough for most of the expedition’s members, but as they made their way home in 1806, Colter decided to shun civilization and strike out on a career as a fur trapper. He soon established himself as one of America’s original mountain men, and may have been the first white man to lay eyes on Yellowstone National Park. A section of Wyoming’s Shoshone River even became known as “Colter’s Hell” for his descriptions of its geothermal activity," wrote History Channel's Evan Andrews.
"Colter was once wounded while fighting alongside Crow and Flathead tribesmen, but the most legendary chapter in his career came in 1809, when he was captured by a band of Blackfeet while trapping near Three Forks, Montana. After killing his partner, the Indians stripped Colter naked, gave him a brief head start and then chased after him as though he were wild game. Ignoring the rocks and cactus that were shredding his feet, Colter supposedly outran most of the warriors before disarming his closest pursuer and killing him with his own lance. The mountain man then staggered into a fort several days later, having trekked over 200 miles clothed only in a blanket."

Christopher "Kit" Carson

Namesake of towns, cities, counties, forts and other geography all over the West, Kit Carson was born in Kentucky in 1809, he fled a saddlemaker’s apprenticeship at age 16 to work as a fur trapper, teamster and buffalo hunter in the West.
"Though illiterate and small in stature, Carson was also a natural frontiersman who learned half a dozen native languages and knew the wilderness like the back of his hand. In 1842, his skills caught the attention of explorer John C. Frémont, who enlisted him as a guide for a mission to map the American West. The pair eventually teamed up on three epic excursions across the Rocky Mountains, California and Oregon, and Carson became a frontier celebrity after Frémont praised him in his expedition dispatches. His fame only grew during the Mexican-American War, when he slipped past enemy lines at the Battle of San Pasquale and made a 30-mile barefoot trek to San Diego to fetch reinforcements," wrote Evan Andrews.
Carson served as wagon train guide, Indian agent, and Union army officer during the Civil War.
"He battled Confederates at 1862’s Battle of Valverde in present day New Mexico, but spent the majority of the war leading a series of controversial campaigns to subdue the Navajo and other Southwestern Indian tribes."
He was Fort Garland's post comander for a time, and died from an aneurysm in 1868, a year after being mustered out of the army as a brigadier general. His last words were supposedly, “Doctor, compadre, adios!”

Jim Baker
"A friend of Kit Carson, Jim Baker was just as colorful of a figure as his companion. While employed as a trapper as a young man, he and 35 other men defeated a much larger band of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors. He was later hired as a chief scout for the Army and retired on a working livestock ranch in Wyoming. He was married 21 times, each of his wives a Native American, and more than one even being the daughter of a tribe's chief," writes Seamus McAfee, of Wide Open Spaces.

Jedidiah Smith
Jedidiah Smith reportedly developed his thirst for adventure by reading the journals of Lewis and Clark as a boy. The New Yorker was one of several future mountain men who answered William Ashley’s 1822 call for “enterprising young men” to trap beaver and otter in the uncharted frontier. Tasked with scouting out new hunting grounds in the Dakotas and Wyoming, he helped lead an expedition that rediscovered South Pass, a key Rocky Mountain crossing that became part of the Oregon Trail. Smith went on to explore huge swaths of the West as the owner of his own fur trading company. He traversed the Mojave Desert into Southern California in 1826, and later became the first explorer to journey the Pacific coastline from California into Oregon, according to Andrews.
"As with many mountain men, Smith’s travels were often punctuated by episodes of violence. His scouting parties were ambushed and decimated by Indian attacks on multiple occasions, and he famously had his ribs smashed and his scalp partially torn off in a grizzly bear mauling. He wore his hair long for the rest of his life to cover the scars. Smith tried to retire from the hazards of the wilderness in 1830, but just a year later he was attacked and killed by Comanche Indians while traveling the Santa Fe Trail. At the time of his death, the great explorer was just 32 years old," says Evan Andrews.


Joseph Walker
Like Jedidiah Smith, Tennessee native Joseph Walker was a born explorer who pursued fur trapping and scouting as a way of financing his wanderlust. He first ventured west in 1820 as part of an illegal trapping expedition to Spanish-controlled New Mexico territory, and later served as a guide for the likes of Benjamin Bonneville and John C. Frémont. While working for Bonneville in 1833, Walker led an expedition that bushwhacked its way from Wyoming to California across the Sierra Nevada. His party was forced to eat their horses just to survive, but after exiting the mountains they became the first white men to encounter giant sequoia trees and the wonders of the Yosemite Valley. It was a sight Walker would never forget.  “Camped at Yosemite” is inscribed on his tombstone.
Walker later worked as trapper, scout, wagon train guide and ranch owner. In 1861, at the age of 62, he set off on a two-year prospecting expedition across New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado. "By the time his failing eyesight forced him to retire in 1867, he had spent some five decades on the frontier and served as a guide for hundreds of soldiers and pilgrims. Amazingly, during all of Walker’s years blazing new trails and traveling through hazardous territory, only one man is reported to have died under his command," said Evan Andrews.

Tom Tobin
A legend in Colorado’s history on several fronts, Tom Tobin left his mark.
His father Irish, and his mother a Delaware Indian, Tobin, and his half brother Charles Autobees, arrived in Colorado as early as 1837 with Ceran St. Vrain and worked as trapper and scout for St. Vrain and his partners, the Bent brothers, at Bent’s Fort, as well as Taos, New Mexico.
“Tom Tobin was a picturesque figure. He rode a black horse and wore a black hat, shirt, trousers and boots. He kept two loaded revolvers in his gun belt, one on each side. Although illiterate, Tobin actively supported the local school system and eventually became president of the school board,” wrote Ken Jesson in “Colorado Gunsmoke.”
Tobin also garnered a reputation for being able to “track a grasshopper through the sagebrush” and was skilled with a rifle, pistol and knife. He counted among his good friends, the likes of Kit Carson, “Uncle Dick” Wooton, Ceran St. Vrain and Charley Bent.
It was his tracking ability that got him the job that was to make him famous as a bounty hunter. Jose Filipe Nerio Espinosa and his brother Vivian Espinosa began their murderous rampage in San Luis Valley and had extended it over Ute Pass and into Dead Man’s Canyon near Fountain. One of the Espinosas was killed but Vivian and a younger cousin carried on. Basically, they declared war on all Anglos and by their own reporting, had killed 22 people in Colorado, mostly miners in the California Gulch area from Fairplay to Red Hill, in South Park.
In an interview from Oct. 10, 1946, Kit Carson III, the grandson of Kit Carson and Tom Tobin, and the proprietor of Kit Carson’s Trading Post in Sanford, Colorado, told the following tale of the end of the Espinosa’s reign of terror.
“Colonel (Sam) Tappin considered Grandpa Tobin the best tracker in the country, had him brought in and asked to catch the Espinosas, the reward was not mentioned. Grandpa was told “kill them for humanity’s sake,” nothing said about any reward.”
Tobin tracked them to a draw near LaVeta Pass.
“The Espinosas had been working their way from Colorado Springs going south killing anyone they came in contact with.”
By noticing a bunch of crows circling, Tobin identified the murderous villians’ campsite.
“He found them busy making a meal,” related Kit Carson, III. “The older Espinosa was squatting in front of the fire, while the younger one was hobbling the horses. Grandpa waited till the younger one came near the campfire, not wanting anyone to get away in the heat of battle. Hiding behind a rock, Grandpa sighted in on the older man and shot him, he fell face first into the fire, grandpa loaded a charge and spit a bare ball into the old Hawkin rifle and killed the younger Espinosa.”
Tobin finished off the elder outlaw with his knife and took the Espinosa’s heads in a gunny sack to prove the job was done.
“When arriving at Ft. Garland, the Colonel, some of his officers, and their wives had been out riding, an announcement was made that grandpa was there to see the Colonel. He was brought into a large room where the officers and wives were relaxing after their ride. The Colonel asked, ‘Any Luck, Tom?’ Grandpa said, “So-so,” and he held the gunnysack upside down rolling the heads out onto the floor, ladies were screaming, the officers and Colonel even looked a little green.”

James P. Beckwourth
Born April 6, 1798, in Fredricksburg, Virginia, (his father an Irish American plantation owner and his mother, a Negro slave) Jim Beckwourth was educated by his father and could read, write and spoke Spanish, French and multiple Indian dialects. For eight to nine years, Beckwourth lived with a Crow band. He rose in their society from warrior to chief (a respected man) and leader of the "Dog Clan". According to his book, he eventually ascended to the highest-ranking war chief of the Crow Nation.
James P. Beckwourth had a reputation for being able to tell a good yarn.
And that was exactly what he did in dictating his autobiography to Thomas Bonner. Bonner, a Justice of the Peace in the California Gold fields. Of course, he was obliged to add or ‘improve’ certain details about himself in “The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians.”
Amazingly, most of it contained elements of truth.
“… While Beckwourth certainly had a tendency to exaggerate numbers or to occasionally make himself the hero of events that happened to other people, later historians have discovered that much of what Beckwourth related in his autobiography actually occurred,” according to beckwourth.org.
“An often-told story has it that when the book appeared, a group of miners who were well-acquainted with Beckwourth, commissioned one of its members to pick up a copy while on a trip to San Francisco. But the man, being careless, got a copy of the Bible instead. In the evening, he was requested to read aloud from the long-awaited book, and opening it at random, he hit upon and read the story of Sampson and the foxes,” according to beckwourth.org.
“That’ll do!” one of the men cried. “I’d know that story for one of Jim’s lies anywhere!”
One local story, told by Beckwourth himself, involved the legend of Jimmy Camp. Beckwourth related a tale of Jimmy Boyer (other historians have said his last name was Hayes or Daugherty) “a little dwarf Irishman” who had established a cabin and fort about 10 miles east of what is now the center of Colorado Springs. Jimmy would trade items brought from ‘civilization’ to trade with the Indians for furs.
“His wagon train would follow a segment of the Cherokee Trail (before it was the Cherokee Trail) north from the Pueblo area, and his route was called Jimmy Camp Trail, which gave the name to Jimmy Camp Creek,” writes Perry Eberhart in “Ghosts of the Colorado Plains.”
Jimmy would then light a bonfire on the top of a hill to signal that he had returned and it was time to trade. By all accounts, the Indians liked and trusted Jimmy.
Sometime from 1833 to 1835, however, Jimmy was murdered by Mexican bandits, it is believed.
According to Beckwourth, he and Indian friends of Jimmy, tracked down the murders, slit their throats and hung them by their toes in a nearby tree.
A man familiar with the American West himself, Oscar Wilde noted:  "A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realize through that sin, his true perfection.”
Whatever the case, I don't think your could argue they were incompetent.

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Sunday, October 7, 2018

Greeley goes west, but suffers from local accident

Reformer Greeley ran against Grant as a Liberal Republican

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, the New-Yorker, and financial backer of American publications all over the country, Horace Greeley, was a surprising force in politics, media and the generation of new ideas.

His promotion of utopian reforms such as socialism, vegetarianism, agrarianism, feminism, and temperance, led to the formation of his namesake Northern Colorado city, (originally known as the Union Colony) and in 1854, he helped found, and may have named the Republican Party.

Long active in Whig politics, he served briefly as a congressman from New York, and was the unsuccessful candidate of the new Liberal Republican party in the 1872 presidential election against incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant.

As early as the spring of 1837, during a business panic Horace Greeley advised young men to go west. But at that time, "West" meant the borders of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana.

"I say to all the unemployed and able-bodied, leave the cities without delay. You have a winter in prospect of fearful, unexampled severity — the times are out of joint— go to the Great West, if you have money to go so far."

Though he lectured about that advice for years, it wasn't until the spring of 1859 that he made serious trip to what would become Colorado.

"Now, in 1859, he intended to see for himself if the gold reports from the Rockies were true or false," wrote Mrs. Elmo Scott Watson in an August, 1962, Denver Westerners' Roundup.

Many new developments in this area awaited Greeley's attention in the Rockies.

"Denver City was new, established in November, 1858, and named for James W. Denver, previously the governor of Kansas territory. Auraria, westward across Cherry Creek, was about a year old, named for a small mining town in in Georgia. The Leavenworth and Pikes Peak Express service was new, operating two coaches daily, starting from each end of the line... The Rocky Mountain News was new, and so was Cherry Creek Pioneer, although the later rival was soon absorbed by the William H. Byers, founder of the News. The gold strike at the Gregory Diggings was new, discovered on May 6, just three days before Mr. Greeley started his trip from New York City," wrote Watson.

At the the end of May, Greeley boarded one of the two red coaches of the Pikes Peak Express Company headed west. The coach, costing $800 each at the time, was hitched to four Kentucky mules that were trained to start at a dead run, and drivers were well-paid, experienced and fearless.

On June 1, Wednesday, at Station 16, there was a swarm of jostling, begging Araphoe children and women.

"They are thorough savages," Greeley wrote. And that he was glad to get away from their presence.

Later that same afternoon, almost to Station 17, there was an accident.

"The stage was wrecked and Mr. Greeley was severely injured. This misfortune changed his plans for a pleasant sojourn in Denver, ... and the Rock Mountain News suppressed any mention of the accident or the injury to this distinguished visitor," says Watson.

Greeley wrote of the troubles himself, in the New York Tribune.

"We began to descend the steep bank, the driver pulling with all his might, the mules acting perversely (being frightened, I fear by Indians) ... when the left rein of the leaders broke and the team was in a moment sheared out of the road and ran diagonally down the pitch ... I was alone in the state, and I of course, went over with it ... When I rose to my feet as soon as possible, considerably bewildered and disheveled, while the driver, considerably hurt, was getting out from under the coach to go after the mules, I found I had a slight cut on my left cheek, and a deep gouge from the sharp corner of a seat in my left leg below the knee, but I walked to the station as firmly as ever."

The next day, Greeley noted that he "was so stiff he could hardly move."

A young reporter in Denver writing for the Cincinnati Daily Commercial, Henry Villard, noted his arrival there a few days later.

"This community was startled by the appearance of Horace Greeley who unexpectedly dropped among the astonished denizens of this and adjoining places. He arrived in one of the Express coaches in rather dilapidated condition, the consequences of being upset some 300 miles east of here. His countenance bore a variety of extemporized plasters, his inexpressibles revealed several tears, and the use of his left leg had become almost impossible by the severe cut he had received immediately below the left knee," wrote Villard in his dispatch.

According to accounts from such notables as Greeley, William Byers, Gen. Will Larimer and Beverly Williams, met to decide what would be the story for the press, at the time.

"It was unanimously agreed that no mention wreck, or of Mr. Greeley's injury would appear in the Rocky Mountain News. Mr. Greeley preferred to minimize his disabilities when he wrote his family and colleagues in New York," said Watson, in her account.

Other accounts had Greeley, basically retire to a cabin provided by Gen. Larimer for the remaining 10 days of his trip and arranging for an "ambulance" with four mules and driver to take him to Fort Laramie, some 200 miles to the north.

According to free-lance reporter A.D. Richardson's version, who actually was brought in to concoct a story to be printed in the News, Greeley did not appear in public at all those last 10 days in Denver, and in a book he later wrote, said that Greeley "lay prostrate for three weeks after our return, and indeed his injury was so severe that a year later he was still limping."

In fact, Greeley limped for the rest of his life until his death in 1872.

During the Civil War, Greeley mostly supported Lincoln, though urging him to commit to the end of slavery before the President was willing to do so. After Lincoln's assassination, he supported the Radical Republicans in opposition to President Andrew Johnson. He broke with Republican president Ulysses Grant because of corruption and Greeley's sense that Reconstruction policies were no longer needed.

Greeley was the new Liberal Republican Party's candidate in the 1872 U.S. presidential election. He lost in a landslide, despite having the additional support of the Democratic Party. He was devastated by the death of his wife, who died five days before the election, and died himself three weeks later, before the Electoral College had met.


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Saturday, October 6, 2018

Ute and Crow admire the Big Horn Sheep


Rescued by bighorn sheep, the man takes the name of their leader, Big Metal


By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

At the Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum, near the Sky Ute Casino Resort in Ignacio, in southwestern Colorado, inside a buffalo robe teepee, you hear the recorded voices of Ute elders telling stories:
"In the beginning, the great spirit (Sine-wav) lived alone in the middle of the sky. After a while he grew lonesome and wanted to make something new. So he poked a hole in the heavens and poured dirt through it to make the mountains. Then he came down to earth and touched it with his magic stick. Where he touched the earth, water flowed and bushes and trees grew. In the fall, when leaves turned bright colors and fell off the trees, he gathered them up. He took the prettiest leaves into his hand and blew on them and they grew wings and became birds," the Elders said.
"The Great Spirit made bears, buffalo, bighorn sheep, rabbits, squirrels and coyotes. Coyote, ever curious, waited to see what the Great Spirit would take out of his work bag next. Impatient, Coyote opened the bag. Many, many people came running out, running in every direction and speaking many different languages. The Great Spirit had planned to give each group its own place on the earth so they would not fight. Their fighting, and that of the animals, stained the land and the rivers red with blood — giving Colorado its name. The Great Spirit grabbed the bag and saw that only one people remained. He set them down in the mountains where they would be closest to him. Then he said: These people will be very brave and very strong. They will be called Ute," according to lore.
"As mountain people, the Utes emphasize their heritage as hunters of large game including elk, big horn sheep, deer, and pronghorn. They also traveled to the Plains to hunt buffalo and, like the Western Ute, supplemented their food resources by hunting small mammals such as rabbits and squirrels. With the availability of horses from the Spanish colonies in the southwest through capture or trade by the early 1700s, the Utes became increasingly involved in buffalo hunting. Plains style hide (and, later, canvas) tipis, which were much easier to transport with horses, became more prevalent although people continued to build their brush lodges for summer use," says Emma I. Hansen, Curator Emerita, Plains Indian Museum.
"We don’t have a migration myth because we have always been here," Hansen attributes to an Eastern Ute elder.
Bighorn sheep were among the most admired animals of the Apsaalooka (Crow) people, and what is today called the Bighorn Mountain Range in Montana, was central to the Apsaalooka tribal lands, says Rick and Susie Graetz in their book, "About the Crow: Introduction."
In the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area book, storyteller Old Coyote describes a legend related to the bighorn sheep. A man possessed by evil spirits attempts to kill his heir by pushing the young man over a cliff, but the victim is saved by getting caught in trees. Rescued by bighorn sheep, the man takes the name of their leader, Big Metal. The other sheep grant him power, wisdom, sharp eyes, sureness-of-foot, keen ears, great strength, and a strong heart. Big Metal returns to his people with the message that the Apsaalooka people will survive only so long as the river winding out of the mountains is known as the Bighorn River.