 Chapter 5 A History of California the American Period by Robert Glass-Cleland This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5. Jedediah Smith, Pathfinder of the Sierras The exploration and settlement of the Trans-Alogany West is the great epic of American history. The opening of the approaches to California is the culmination of that epic. For the American advance to California possessed a dual character. While New England's shipmasters were establishing commercial relations along the coast, Western fur traders were opening overland lines of communication between the Mississippi and the Pacific, and thus preparing the way for an overwhelming tide of immigration from the frontier states into the Mexican province. The first American to reach California by overland route was Jedediah Strong Smith, a fur trader of very considerable education and a pronounced religious life. Smith was born in 1798 in the Mohawk Valley of New York, where his parents, pioneers of no mean type themselves, had moved from New Hampshire a few years before. As a boy, Smith came in touch with the fur traders of Canada and the Northwest through a position as clerk on one of the freight boats of the Great Lakes. Not many years later, when about twenty years of age he went to St. Louis, then the very center of Western activities, and began his career as a fur trader and explorer. Smith's first expeditions, and company with such men as David E. Jackson, William Ashley, Andrew Henry, and Thomas Fitzpatrick, carried him through the regions drained by the Central Missouri and the Yellowstone, and even as far west as the Columbia and the Great Salt Lake. This, however, was but the apprenticeship of his career. His real work as a pathfinder began in the summer of 1826 when, at the head of a party of fifteen men, he set out to explore the unknown region lying between the Great Salt Lake and the California coast. From the geographic standpoint, the exploration of this portion of the trans Rocky Mountain West was of the utmost importance. For American knowledge of the country was still almost as hazy and indefinite as it had been a hundred years before. Early in the century, Lewis and Clark had opened a transcontinental route to the Pacific by way of the Missouri and the Columbia, and had thus prepared the way for further exploration of the Northwest by the fur traders. Bikes Expedition had served a similar purpose for the Southwest, and already the Santa Fe trade had begun to link the Mexican settlements along the Upper Rio Grande with those of the Americans in Missouri. But the region known as the Great Basin, from the Snake River to the Colorado and from the Rocky Mountains to the Sierras, as well as the great inland valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin lay unexplored by American adventurers and unknown to American geographers. It was the task of Smith and his fifteen men to do for this region what Lewis and Clark had done for the Northwest and what Pike had accomplished in Colorado and New Mexico a few years before. As already explained, Smith was a fur trader. His associates in the business were men who represented all that was best in the profession. Their real business, in fact, was not so much the taking of furs as the extension of American influence throughout the wilderness. They were the empire builders of the West. Foremost among them was William Henry Ashley, explorer, extraordinary and recognized leader of the fur hunters in the Rocky Mountains. Two others of equal ability and scarcely less reputation were David E. Jackson and William L. Sublet. The last two mentioned trappers had rendezvoused at the Great Salt Lake in the summer of 1826. Here they were joined by Ashley and Smith, coming from St. Louis with a supply of goods for the Indian trade. At this rendezvous Ashley disposed of his share of the business to his three partners and it was under the direction of this newly organized firm of Sublet, Jackson and Smith that the expedition to California was undertaken. The primary purpose of the undertaking was the discovery of a new field for the exploitation of furs, but as Smith and his associates were not men of narrow interests the expedition was something more than a commercial enterprise. Incidentally, the leader probably hoped to establish a depot on the California coast for the shipment of furs to China, thus carrying out the plan John Jacob Astor had tried unsuccessfully at the mouth of the Columbia some fourteen years before. This company left the Salt Lake rendezvous August 22, 1826. Taking a southwest course to Utah Lake, or Little Utah, as the trappers named it, the expedition followed up to Severe River and later crossed a range of mountains to a river which Smith called the Adams, in compliment to our president, Footnote. On the next expedition the same river seems to have been renamed the Virgin after one of Smith's men. In Footnote Keeping down this stream for twelve days, the party arrived at the Colorado, or Seedsgeeker, to give it the Indian name for the Green River which Smith employed. Quote, I crossed the Seedsgeeker, wrote Smith in describing his route, and went down it four days to southwest course. I here found the country remarkably barren, rocky and mountainous. There are a good many rapids in the river, but at this place a valley opens out about five to fifteen miles in width, which, on the river banks, is timbered and fertile. I found here a nation of Indians who call themselves Amukhavas, or Mohavis. They cultivate the soil and raise corn, beans, pumpkins, watermelons and muskmelons in abundance, and also a little wheat and cotton. I was now nearly destitute of horses and had learned what it was to do without food. I therefore remained here fifteen days and recruited my men, and I was enabled also to exchange my horses and purchase a few more of a few runaway Indians who stole some horses of the Spaniards. End quote. From these Indians Smith also secured two guides, and began the last stage of his journey to California. Of his trip across the desert, he wrote, quote, I traveled a west course fifteen days over a country of complete barrens, generally traveling from morning until night without water. I crossed a salt plain about twenty miles long and eight wide. On the surface was across a beautiful white salt quite thin. Under this surface there is a layer of salt from a half to one and a half inches in depth. Between this and the upper layer there is about four inches of yellowish sand, unquote. The exact course followed by Smith on this stage of his journey is not clear. Probably it did not materially differ from the route now taken by the Santa Fe Railroad, but this cannot be determined with certainty. He at length crossed the Sierra Madre Range through the Cajon Pass and reached the fertile plains of California in the vicinity of the present site of San Bernardino. On November twenty-seventh the party encamped a few miles from the flourishing mission of San Gabriel, the first Americans to make the transcontinental journey to California and the forerunners of a great overland advance. The presence of the Americans in this province was contrary to Mexican law, but in spite of this, and the additional fact that Smith and his chief lieutenant Harrison G. Rogers were Protestants of the old school, the priests gave the strangers a courteous welcome. In charge of the mission at that time was Father Jose Bernardo Sanchez, a man of generous spirit for whom the Americans came to have a real affection. Quote, old Father Sanchez, wrote Rogers as the party was about to leave the mission, has been the greatest friend that I ever met with in all of my travels. I shall ever hold him as a man of God, taking us when in distress, feeding and clothing us, and make God prosper him and all such men." Upon the arrival of the Americans at the mission, a young cow was killed, and an abundance of cornmeal was given the half-starved trappers who, at last, after three months of strenuous travel, had reached the land of plenty. A few days later Father Sanchez presented Smith with sixty-four yards of cloth, out of which he and his men, by this time almost naked, made themselves shirts. Smith and Rogers, as leaders of the company, were shown additional courtesies by the mission priests. Most of these Rogers found to be very jovial, friendly gentlemen, remarkably appreciative of good liquors, and not much given to asking embarrassing questions. The mission itself, then at the height of its prosperity, made a deep impression upon the American trappers. Rogers wrote of it as follows, quote, the mansion, or mission, consists of four rows of houses forming a complete square, where there is all kinds of mechanics at work. The church faces the east and the guardhouse the west. The north and south line comprises the workshops. They have large vineyards, apple and peach orchards, and some orange and some fig trees. They manufacture blankets and sundry other articles. They distill whisky and grind their own grain, having a water mill of a tolerable quality. They have upwards of a thousand persons employed, men, women, and children, Indians of different nations. The situation is very handsome. He streams of water running through from all quarters, some thousands of acres of rich and fertile land as level as a dye and view, and a part under cultivation, surrounded on the north with a high and lofty mountain covered with grass. Cattle, this mission has upwards of thirty thousand head of cattle, and horses, sheep, hogs, etc., in proportion. They slaughter at this place from two to three thousand head of cattle at a time. The mission lives on the prophets." After remaining at San Gabriel ten days, waiting to hear from the governor to whom he had written upon his arrival at the mission, Smith set out for San Diego to make his peace with the Mexican officials in person and to obtain permission for his men to stay in the province. The rest of the company remained at San Gabriel during Smith's absence under the command of Rogers. The latter equally deplored his ignorance of Spanish and the condition of his garments. These, he says, were so torn and dirty that they gave him a very grotesque appearance when seated at table amongst the dandies with their ruffled silks and broad clothes. Otherwise, however, Rogers' life at the mission was all it could be desired. He had an abundance to eat and drink, spent much of his time in hunting with the mission fathers, and watched with never-failing interest the varied activities around him. One day he attends a wedding. Again he super-intends the making of a large bear trap to set in the priest's orange garden to catch the Indians when they come up at night to rob his orchard. On another occasion he defends his Calvinistic creed against the Catholic doctrines around him, and on New Year's Day, 1827, he delivers an address to the reverend father of the San Gabriel mission, setting forth in surprising detail the early missionary activities of the Christian Church, and enriched by a lengthy quotation from Justin Martyr. Truly, Harris and G. Rogers, the fur trader, was a man of parts. While Rogers was thus variously occupied, the men were becoming restless. A number of them were engaged by Father Sanchez to cut cordwood for his coal pit, and others found temporary service with one of the hide-and-talliships taking on a cargo at San Pedro. On January 6, most of the company attended a celebration at the mission in honor of the Feast of the Epiphany. Rogers thus describes what took place. Church held early, as usual, men, women, and children attend. After church, the ceremonies as on Sunday. Wine issued abundantly to both Spaniards and Indians. Music played by the Indian band. After the issue of the morning our men and company with some Spaniards went and fired a salute, and the old Padre gave them bread, wine, and meat as a treat. Some of the men got drunk. James Reid and Daniel Ferguson commenced fighting, and some of the Spaniards interfered and struck one of our men by the name of Black, which came near terminating with bad consequence. So soon as I heard of the disturbance, I went among them and pacified our men by telling what trouble they were bringing upon themselves in case they did not desist. And most of them, being men of reason, adhered to my advice. James Reid, however, a troublemaker on numerous occasions, whom Smith had been compelled to flog shortly after reaching San Gabriel, was too far gone to heed Rogers' admonitions. Instead, that same day he came, quote, very abruptly into the priest's dining-room while at dinner, and asked for Ergant, a guardiente, or brandy, the priest ordered a plate of victuals to be handed to him. He ate a few mouthfuls and set the plate on the table, and then took up the decanter of wine and drank it without invitation, and came very near breaking the glass when he set it down. The Padre, seeing he was in a state of inebriity, refrained from saying anything, unquote. No further incidents of such an unseemly nature occurred, however, while the party remained at the mission. In the meanwhile, Smith was having considerable difficulty in his dealings with Governor Echiondia at San Diego. The Mexican law very definitely forbade the presence of foreigners in California without proper passports, and these the governor was not willing to issue on his own responsibility. After nearly a month of negotiation, however, and the presentation of eight fine beaver skins, Smith secured the necessary papers. In his efforts he was greatly aided by Captain Cunningham, an American shipmaster in command of the courier, a hide-and-tallow vessel then lying at San Diego. Echiondia's concessions, given with reluctance and suspicion, were far from fulfilling all that Smith desired. He had requested permission to lead his party northward from San Gabriel through the subtle portions of California, between the coast range and the sea, until he reached the Russian colony at Bodega. But this Echiondia refused to permit, and would only allow the Americans to return unmolested over the route by which they had come. Making the best of the situation, Smith returned to San Gabriel on January 10th, coming from San Diego to San Pedro as a guest of Captain Cunningham on the courier. The next few days were spent in purchasing horses from the ranches near Los Angeles, repairing saddles, and arranging equipment for a renewal of the journey. Finally, on Thursday, January 18th, the party set out. The horses, some sixty-eight in number, were only half broken, and before the cavalcade had gone half a mile the animals began to run, strewing the contents of the packs along the way for a distance of eight or ten miles. Among the articles so unceremoniously lost were twelve dress skins which Smith had received as a parting gift from Father Sanchez. The first night's camp was made near an Indian farmhouse four miles northeast of the mission, where the party had spent the night of November 27th. From this point, their course lay eastward along the edge of the Sierra Madre Mountains. Following closely what is now the Foothill Boulevard so popular with Southern California motorists, the party reached an outlying ranch at the San Gabriel Mission near the entrance to the Cajon Pass. Camping a short distance from this ranch, the trappers spent several days breaking the still unruly horses and making final preparations for the long journey through the wild and unknown country ahead. In spite of Echeandia's instructions, Smith had no intention as yet of quitting California. The route along the coast might be close to him by the governor's orders, but east of the mountains there was neither Mexican law nor Mexican soldier to dispute the passage of the American trappers. Smith therefore turned northward when he reached the desert entrance to the Cajon Pass, followed the Sierra Madre's to the junction of the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevada's, and entered the southern end of the great San Joaquin Valley, either by the Cajon Pass or the Tahachapi. Traveling leisurely down the valley, which he found inhabited by large numbers of Indians, very backward in civilization, living only on acorns, roots, grass, and fish, armed only with bows and arrows, but in no way hostile or dangerous, Smith and his men came at length to one of the numerous rivers which flow into the valley from the Sierras. This was probably the status-loss of the Merced, but here again the record is too incomplete to fix the matter definitely. Smith called this stream the Wimilcha, after an Indian tribe which lived beside it. Here he trapped a short time, finding a few beavers, elk and deer, and antelope in abundance. He then endeavored to cross the Sierras and return to the Great Salt Lake. Being definite as known as to the pass through which Smith sought to lead his men on this occasion, he speaks of the attempt having been made across Mount Joseph, but the route can only be conjectured. FUTNOTE Mount Lassen, on later maps, sometimes appears as Mount St. Joseph, but Mount Lassen is too far north by many miles to be identified as the peak to which Smith refers. IN FUTNOTE Harrison C. Dale, the best authority on the expedition, identifies Mount Joseph with Mount Stannislaus, and tentatively fixes Smith's course along the middle fork of the Stannislaus River to the divide. Smith's own brief account runs as follows. I found the snow so deep on Mount Joseph that I could not cross my horses, five of which starved to death. I was compelled therefore to return to the valley which I had left, and there, leaving my party, I started with two men, seven horses and two mules, which I loaded with hay for the horses and provisions for ourselves, and started on the twentieth of May and succeeded in crossing it in eight days, having lost only two horses and one mule. I found the snow on top of this mountain from four to eight feet deep, but it was so consolidated by the heat of the sun that my horses only sunk from half a foot to one foot deep." From the eastern slope of the Sierras, Smith and his companions probably followed the course of Walker River to the vicinity of Walker Lake and then turned northeasterly toward the Great Salt Lake. The intervening country was of the worst possible description, barren, waterless and without game. One by one the horses gave out and were eaten by the famishing men. The scanty water-holes were frequently two days apart, the Indians encountered were hopelessly degraded, living on grasshoppers, lizards, and roots. More dead than alive, the three men, with but one horse and a mule left out of the nine with which they had started from the San Joaquin, had length reached the southwest end of the Great Salt Lake twenty days after leaving a Sierra, Nevada. Smith's explorations in California did not cease with his first expedition. At the Salt Lake he met his partners, Jackson and Sublet, and remained with them about a month. Here a new party of nineteen men was organized and Smith set out, July 13, 1827, to rejoin the hunters he had left on the Wimulchah. During his original route he reached the Mojave villages without serious mishap. But here disaster overtook him. For three days the Indians traded with the trappers and appeared as friendly as on Smith's first visit. But on the fourth, when the company had become separated and crossing the Colorado, they fell upon the Americans, killed ten of their number and forced the remainder to abandon most of their belongings and flee by forced marches across the desert. The stricken party reached the San Gabriel mission after nine days and a half of desperate hardship. Smith, obtaining such supplies as he could at the mission and leaving two of his men behind, hurried forward into the San Joaquin Valley and rejoined the company he had left on the Wimulchah the preceding May. Footnote The two young men left at San Gabriel were Isaac Galbraith and Thomas Virgin. The latter had been wounded at the Colorado. End of footnote The condition of the United Party was far from satisfactory. Their food was about exhausted. The length of the journey and the difficulties before them made a return to the Salt Lake impossible without fresh supplies. And as they had violated the governor's orders by remaining in the province they were likely to suffer arrest if application for aid should be made to the Californians. Since there was no other recourse, however, Smith took his Indian guides and set out for the mission of San Jose, which lay west of the coast range. Thus he reached in three days, probably crossing the mountains by way of Pacheco Pass. Father Duran at the head of this mission was a man of very different kidney from the good son Chez at San Gabriel. He had already accused the trappers of enticing away certain neophytes, and when Smith came asking assistance he arrested the surprised American and confined him in the wretched hovel called a jail. Here Smith was kept without food for three days, and for a much longer time was denied the privilege of presenting his case in person to the governor at Monterey. When he finally obtained his release and arrived at Monterey, Smith found the governor, the self-same Echandía with whom he had dealt at San Diego the previous year, in no very amiable or certain frame of mind. For a time Echandía threatened to send Smith as a prisoner to Mexico, but at length he was prevailed upon by several American ship captains whose vessels were then in port to permit the Americans to secure needed supplies and leave the country in peace. In return for this concession Smith gave a bond for $30,000 to ensure his actual departure from the province. In the meantime Smith's men had abandoned their camp in the San Joaquin and traveled northward, finally arriving at San Francisco badly in need of food and clothing. Their situation was relieved by a German merchant named Henry Vimond, who had recently established himself on the California coast. Smith next attempted to secure additional recruits for his company from among the English and American residents in California, but the Mexican authorities intervened to prevent him. The agreement between Smith and Echandía stipulated that the Americans should leave the Mexican settlements within two months. There were many good reasons for delaying their departure beyond this time, but the trappers, being experienced and well-equated with Spanish generosity, were afraid to take further risks and so began to move slowly northward along the Bond Adventure or Sacramento River. After various unsuccessful efforts to find a pass through the Sierra Nevada mountains, the company left the Sacramento about the middle of April 1828 and took a northwest course across the coast range, through what is now Trinity and Humboldt counties to the sea. This portion of the route was rough and difficult in the extreme, as the writer of this volume from his own experience can feelingly testify. The back horses were often scattered and lost in the thick brush. Others had to be abandoned because of fatigue or injury. Sometimes they tumbled off the makeshift trails and were cut and bruised by the jagged rocks. Day after day the record of hardship and danger remained the same, but of these trials a single entry from Rogers Diary must serve as an illustration. On May 14, 1828 he wrote, quote, We made an early start directing our course as yesterday northwest and traveled four miles and encamped on the top of a high mountain where there was but indifferent grass for our horses. The traveling amazing bad. We descended one point of brushy and rocky mountain where it took us about six hours to get the horses down, some of them falling about fifty feet perpendicular down a steep place into a creek. One broke his neck, a number of packs left along the trail as night was fast approaching, and we were obliged to leave them and get what horses we could collected at camp. A number more got badly hurt by the falls, but none killed but this one that broke his neck, end quote. Through this broken and inhospitable country Smith and his men painfully made their way until on the 8th of June they reached the sea coast slightly above the mouth of the Klamath River. Several Indian tribes previously unknown were encountered during this stage of the expedition and a considerable number of furs collected. But food was scarce and game neither very plentiful nor in good condition. This, coupled with a difficulty of the route, sapped the strength of the men and made them recognize more clearly than ever the dangerous nature of the venture upon which they had entered. Thus a note of pathos appears in the prayer Roger's records in his journal under the date of May 23rd when the company were in the thick of these troubles. Quote, O God, he wrote, May it please thee and thy divine providence to still guide and protect us through this wilderness of doubt and fear as thou hast done here to fore, and be with us in the hour of danger and difficulty, as all praise is due to thee and not to man. O, do not forsake us, Lord, but be with us and direct us through." From their camp near the mouth of the Klamath the company followed the coast northward, keeping close to the sea, sometimes indeed traveling along the beach until they came to the lower stretches of the Yom Kwa River. On this stage of the journey many horses were lost, either in fording streams, twenty-three in three days was a record, or through other accidents. Some, too, were killed by the Indians. Game was not overly abundant but a number of furs, including a few of the sea otter, and some food, cheaply berries, fish, and dried eels, were secured from the Indians. Moreover, Smith learned from the Yom Kwa Indians that the Willamette River, with its open path to the Columbia, which meant safety and an end to hardship, lay only a short distance away. But the greater part of the company were destined never to reach this river. On July 14th, the Monday morning, Smith left his man when breakfast was over to trace out a route for the day's journey. In his absence, the Indians, who had previously been most friendly, suddenly attacked a camp, killing all but two of the trappers. Among the victims was the chronicler of the expedition, Harrison G. Rogers, as thorough a Christian gentleman as Smith himself. The survivors of the massacre, beside Smith, were Arthur Black, who escaped the woods after shaking off three of the savages, and John Turner, a man of gigantic strength, who with only a piece of firewood for a weapon, beat down or killed four assailants and succeeded in intercepting Smith as the latter was coming back to camp. Ignorant of Black's escape, Smith and Turner made their way to the Hudson's Bay Post at Vancouver, where Black had arrived the previous day. Here they were received with every kindness by Dr. John McLaughlin, factor in charge, who immediately sent an expedition which recovered nearly all the furs and properties Smith had lost. Since the latter had no means of transporting the restored furs, McLaughlin very generously purchased them from him at the market price, about $20,000 in all. Smith and Black remained at the Hudson's Bay Post throughout the winter, but Turner shortly joined a trapping expedition under McCloud and returned to southern Oregon, where the massacre, from which he had so recently escaped, had taken place. For many years after this, Turner made his home in the same region, and is credited with having opened the cattle trade some years later between the Columbia and the Sacramento Valleys. He also aided in the rescue of the Donner Party in 1846. With the coming of spring, Smith and Black set out to rejoin Jackson and Sablette, who were then trapping in the Snake River Country. The reunion of the three trappers took place at Pierre's Hole on the western side of the Teton Mountains after a separation of nearly two years. During this time Smith had covered an immense stretch of the country, nearly all of which he was the first to explore. He had traversed the first of the great transcontinental routes to California, made known the valleys of the San Joaquin and Sacramento to the American trappers and through them to the American settlers, opened a line of communication from Northern California to the Oregon Country, a route the Hudson's Bay Company were quick to take advantage of, and traversed the Pacific Slope from the Mojave Desert to Puget Sound. Yet in all estate, no monument has ever been erected to this forerunner of California pioneers. Smith's career after his second expedition did not again directly touch California. For some months after his return to Pierre's Hole, he continued in the fur trade with Jackson and Sablette, but finally he and his partner sold their business to the recently organized Rocky Mountain Fur Company in which Bridger, Fitzpatrick, and Sablette were the leaders. In the spring of 1831, the former fur partners embarked on the Santa Fe trade, setting out from St. Louis on April 10th with a party of 85 men. In the sandy wastes between the Arkansas and Cimarron Rivers, the company found themselves without water and in a desperate strait. In seeking to discover some source of relief, Smith fell into an Indian ambush and was killed. He was a brave leader, a Christian gentleman who made religion an active principle from the duties of which nothing could seduce him, an explorer as well as a fur trader, and the true pathfinder of California history. The annals of the West bear record of many heroic men, but no pioneer ever set foot on western soil of greater heroism and nobler life than Jedidiah Strong Smith. Between the time of Jedidiah Smith's arrival in California on his first expedition and the massacre of his men on Yom Kwa, another company of Americans were making their painful way over land to the Pacific. The story of this party, like the story of Smith and his companions, will always remain one of the stirring epics of California history and of western adventure. On June 20th, 1824, five men crossed the Missouri River some 60 miles above St. Louis on a trapping and trading expedition to the Rocky Mountains and the Spanish settlements of New Mexico. Ten pack animals carried their equipment, which consisted for the most part of traps, guns, ammunition, blankets, knives, and other articles adapted to the Indian trade. Sylvester Patti, the leader of this small band, was a typical product for the frontier. Born in Kentucky in the thick of an Indian war, when his father was away from home serving under Colonel Benjamin Logan against the Shawnees, he had lived to see the last Indian attack upon a Kentucky settlement, only to seek a new home in 1812 on the Missouri border. Here the Indian menace was then almost as great as it had been in Kentucky 25 years before. The next decade, however, saw the steady advance of civilization in the Missouri Territory, and when the death of Patti's wife occurred, the tragedy woken him anew, a craving for travel and adventure in the unoccupied regions beyond the American frontier. With Sylvester Patti, on this expedition to the far west went a son who bore the unique name of James O'Chile. The boy was then about twenty years of age, exceptionally well educated for a young man of the western border, skilled too in all the arts of the frontier, and filled with the same deep wandering and adventurous spirit that his father and grandfather had known before him. It is not anticipating too much here to say that within the next six years this young frontiersman found all that his restless nature craved of new scenes, excitement, and danger. One might also add that American literature has not yet produced a tale of adventure equal to a simple narrative of the stirring events of those six years. Checked at Council Bluffs in their plan to trap on the upper Missouri, the Patti company joined a larger expedition en route to New Mexico to engage in the Santa Fe trade. The combined party, numbering 116 men, was placed under command of the Elder Patti, and after many stirring experiences and no little hardship, reached Santa Fe early in November. Almost immediately they were called upon to take part in the pursuit of a marauding band of Indians who had laid waste to the outlying Mexican ranches and carried off a number of captive captives. In this campaign, James Ohio not only distinguished himself as an Indian fighter, but also had the good fortune to rescue the daughter of a former governor of the province from a shameful captivity. He thus won the lasting friendship and gratitude of an influential family. After this novel introduction to New Mexico, the career of the Patties became a succession of exciting episodes, hair breath escapes, and distressing misfortunes. Together with a few other members of the expedition, they first secured permission to trap on the Gila River, or the Gilae, as the younger Patti persistently calls it in his narrative. At that time, the Gila was little known to Americans, though its lower reaches had long since been a familiar highway for the Spanish expeditions to California. Passing down the Rio del Norte, the little company of trappers turned westward at Sackoro, and after a hundred miles of travel came to the copper mines of Santa Rita, which the Spaniards had opened in 1804. From this point, they continued their journey until they struck the upper waters of the Gila. The Americans were now in almost virgin territory so far as trapping was concerned, and succeeded in taking 30 beaver as a result of the first night's work. Trapping both along the Gila and its important tributaries, they obtained all the furs their pack animals could carry. But when they turned back to the Spanish settlements, the Indians robbed them of most of their horses, thus compelling them to bury the furs and return as best they could on foot. The company reached the Santa Rita mines in a half star of condition, but the younger Patti, after a hasty trip to Santa Fe for goods and horses, turned back to the Gila country for the buried furs. Arriving at the main cache, he found that the Indians had already rifled it so that only a few skins hidden in the smaller deposit were recovered. Thus, says Patti, the whole fruit of our long, toilsome and dangerous expedition was lost, and all my golden hopes of prosperity and comfort vanished like a dream. After a few months spent at Santa Rita, during which he and his father successfully negotiated a treaty with the Apache Indians whose incursions had almost suspended the operation of the mines, James, Ohio, again felt an irresistible propensity to resume the employment of trapping, and to see more of this fascinating, albeit dangerous, country through which his first expedition had carried him. In the meanwhile, Sylvester Patti had leased the Santa Rita mines, and fearful of the dangers his son would necessarily have to face on the proposed expedition, sought to dissuade him from the undertaking. But the younger man had too much of the restless blood of the pioneer to accept his father's sound advice, and finding a party of Frenchmen bound for the Colorado by way of the healer, joined their company and set out January 2, 1826 for the unknown region of the Southwest. The story of this expedition is another chapter of bloodshed, hardship, and ultimate misfortune. Before a month had passed, the company was almost annihilated by a treacherous attack of the Papago Indians. From the massacre, Patti escaped through his foresight and good sense. With the aid of some American trappers whom he was fortunate enough to encounter, he returned to the scene of the disaster and took fearful toll of the murderers. The bodies of his former companions he found literally cut in pieces with fragments scattered in every direction. The new company, which Patti had joined, trapped successfully down the healer with a short expedition up the Salt or Beaver River until they came to the Colorado. Here they traded for a short time with the Yuma Indians, an athletic, well-proportioned people at the time of Patti's visit, and then began to ascend the Colorado, the first company of Americans to follow the lower courses of this great stream. Passing through the country of the Myracopa Indians, trapping profitably along the river itself and in the lakes formed by the overflow waters, the company reached the Mojave villages on March 6th, 1826, some six or seven months before Jedidiah Smith passed through the same villages on his first expedition to California. Patti and his companions had several unfortunate scrimmishes with the Mojaves, in one of which 16 Indians were killed. Two nights later, when the whites were exhausted from lack of sleep, the savages crept into camp and got some measure of revenge. Patti and his Terce County, the attack says, quote, At about eleven o'clock this night, they poured upon us a shower of arrows by which they killed two men and wounded two more, and what was more provoking fled so rapidly that we could not even give them a round. One of the slain was in bed with me. My own hunting shirt had two arrows in it, and my blanket was pinned fast to the ground by arrows. There were sixteen arrows discharged into my bed. We extinguished our fires and slept no more that night, end quote. A few days later a much more horrible fate overtook part of the company. Three of the trappers had been sent up a tributary, now called the Bill Williams Fork, which emptied into the Colorado from the east to examine its fur possibilities. When they did not return at the end of two days, a searching party sent out to look for them. At midday, says Patti, we found their bodies cut in pieces and spitted before a great fire after the same fashion which is used in roasting beaver. A short distance above the scene of this tragedy, the party reached the lower end of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Here they found the mountains coming down to the water's edge so precipitously that they were compelled to leave the stream itself, and followed the course of the river for three hundred miles as best they could by keeping along the crest of the gorge. For the beauty and wonder of the Grand Canyon, Patti and his companions had neither eye nor feeling. Snow lay from a foot to eighteen inches deep on the ground over which they passed. Their clothing was inadequate to protect them from the cold. Their horses had no pastureage and became mere skeletons. Food was alarmingly scarce and the men grew faint with hunger and weariness. At length, however, the exhausted party came to the end of the canyon where the river emerges from these hoarded mountains which so caged up as to deprive all human beings of the ability to descend to its banks and make use of its waters. Here the trappers once more set their traps and secured enough beaver meat to recruit their failing strength. From this point, the expedition was continued with better success as far north as the Yellowstone and Platte Rivers. Then the company turned south down the Arkansas, crossed to the headwaters of the Rio Grande and followed that stream to Santa Fe. Eight months were required to complete the expedition, and even if Patti had made no further explorations in the west, this undertaking alone, opening as it did a new route from New Mexico to the eastern boundary of California and traversing the whole course of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, besides much of the central Rocky Mountain region, would have entitled him to rank among the first of Western explorers. But his career as a discoverer was still in its infancy. Subsequent travels were to carry him far beyond the limits he had previously reached and through even greater vicissitudes. Misfortune, as usual, deprived Patti of the profits of the expedition just described. The company which had confined itself for the most part to virgin territory had been unusually successful in its trapping operations. Even the extreme hardships and frequent Indian attacks had not forced the men to cash or abandon the furs secured. So when the party reached Santa Fe, it carried with it a very considerable fortune in beaver scans. But from a financial standpoint, all the months of toil, privation, and dangers went for nothing. On the ground that the Americans had exceeded their trapping license, the Mexican governor confiscated the entire catch of furs and enriched his own pocket with the proceeds. The younger Patti, indignant as he was at such treatment, appears to have wasted but little time in vain regret. After a hasty visit to his father at the mines, he started out upon another trading venture, this time into old Mexico. Passing through Sonora, trading in the cities and little villages to which he came, Patti reached the port of Huimas on the Gulf of California. He then turned eastward to Xihuahua and came by way of Casas Grandes to El Paso. A few days later he reached the copper mines at Santa Rita. Patti's account of the country through which he passed and of Mexican habits and customs is full of interest. But lack of space prevents an extended account of this portion of his travels. After his return to Santa Rita, the adventurous Patti remained a short time with his father. On a hunting trip in the vicinity of the mines he had an unpleasant experience with a wounded grisly. Patti was lying behind a large rock, not far from a precipice which he had failed to notice as the bear charged. Then things began to happen. I waited, he says, until the horrible animal was within six feet of me. I took true aim at her head. My gun flashed in the pan. She gave one growl and sprang at me with her mouth open. At two strides I leaped down the unperceived precipice. My jaw bone was split upon a sharp rock on which my chin struck at the bottom. Here I lay senseless. When I regained recollection I found my companion had bled me with the point of his butcher-knife and was sitting beside me with his hat full of water, bathing my head and face. My companion had cut a considerable orifice in my arm with his knife, which I deemed super-arrogation for I judged that I had bled sufficiently at the chin. Despite this experience, however, the restless explorer found life at Santa Rita too stationary and unruffled to be any longer endured. So with fifteen companions he set out on another trapping expedition along the Puerto Rico River. Here a brush with a mescaleros, a hostile band of Apaches all but finished his wanderings forever. One of his company was killed and he himself painfully wounded in the hip and breast by Indian Arrows. To extract the arrowheads it was necessary to resort to a rude bit of surgery with one of the trappers acting in the capacity of surgeon. Some minutes were required to complete the operation, and of the wound in his hip Petit wrote that the spike could not be entirely extracted, for being a flint it had shivered against the bone. Shortly after the return of the party to Santa Rita a two-fold disaster overtook the Patees. One of their highly trusted employees had absconded with thirty thousand dollars, leaving the Americans almost bankrupt, and before they had recovered from this blow a decree of the Mexican government closed the mine at Santa Rita and forced them to fall back upon their beaver traps for a livelihood. It was this dual misfortune which was responsible for their eventual arrival in California. Securing a license from the governor of New Mexico to trap in Chihuahua and Sonora the two Patees with about thirty American companions left Santa Fe, September 23, 1827, for the Gila River. After trapping down this stream as far as the beaver or salt river with indifferent success, the company decided to extend its operations to the Colorado. Friction and disagreement, however, were already threatening the success of the expedition, and in order to create a more compact organization, each man signed an agreement that any member who deserted or left the company should be shot. Minor cases of insubordination, for which a form of jury trial was provided, were punishable by a fine of fifty dollars payable and beaver skins. In spite of these precautions, however, dissension developed to such an extent that the company shortly divided into two parts. One of these, consisting of the Patees and six others, continued down the Gila until they came to the Colorado. Their first nights in campment on this river brought disaster. The Yuma Indians, aided by the inky blackness of a heavy storm, drove off all the trappers' horses and left them in a desperate situation. Finding pursuit of the thieves a mere waste of time, the Americans destroyed the Yuma village and set about building enough canoes from the cottonwood trees, which grew in large numbers along the river bottom, to transport themselves and their furs as far as the Mexican settlements which they were led to believe existed near the mouth of the Colorado. The voyage down the river from the Yuma villages for a time was delightfully free from hardship and the whims of misfortune. Day after day the little band floated along the circuitous channel of the lower Colorado, setting their traps nightly and sometimes taking as many as sixty beaver between sunset and sunrise. So successful were these operations that the trappers soon found it necessary to build additional canoes to take care of their growing supply of furs. The Indians with whom they came into contact were simple-hearted, friendly beings who had never before seen an American or known the use of firearms. That link as the journey continued the river ran through a low marshy country where the beaver skins were of poor quality and had almost no value. Here also the little company, only one of whom had ever before been within sight of salt water, had its first experience with a gulf tide. This, sweeping up the river one night, inundated the low lying ground where the hunters had pitched their camp. A few days later the voyagers found the tide too strong and the waters too rough for further travel downstream and so turned back up the river. This was early in February when the Colorado had already begun to rise and by the tenth of the month further progress against the current became impossible. Since they could now neither go up nor down the Colorado, the only way of escape for the trappers was to abandon the canoes, bury the furs, and strike overland for the Spanish settlements on the coast. The weary journey across the lower California desert began February 16, 1827. Each man carried his rifle, two blankets, and a considerable quantity of dried beaver meat. The loose hot sand and lack of water soon reduced the company to very deplorable straits, a condition which, fortunately, was relieved by the discovery of an Indian village and a plentiful supply of fresh water. After leaving this hospitable spot, the sufferings of the Americans were again renewed. The most desperate expedience were resorted to to relieve the terrible desert thirst. Two of the company, with swollen tongues and ghastly shrunken eyes, lay down in the shade of a little bush to die. The air seemed to sear and scorched the tissues of the lungs and the dazzling sand caused a temporary blindness, not unlike that produced by the glare of northern snows. A few hours more and none of the party should have survived. But at this critical moment, when Sylvester Patti and an elderly companion had already been left to perish, the remainder of the company reached the edge of a mountain and found a clear running stream of water. Save from death by this discovery, the company, with the help of Indian guides, came at length to the Dominican missions of Santa Catalina on the headwaters of the San Quentin River in lower California. The authorities of this mission were suspicious of the Americans and accorded them but shabby hospitality. At length, word having been sent to the governor of Alta California of the presence of the Americans in the province, they were ordered to report under guard to San Diego. Here, after having been relieved of their arms, the trappers were brought before the governor, the self-same Echeandia with whom Smith had had his dealings only a few months before. Doubtless the arrival of the second party of foreigners following so closely upon the heels of Smith's two expeditions caused Echeandia much genuine alarm for the safety of California. He had also reasoned to fear a severe reprimand from his superiors in Mexico unless he employed harsh measures against the intruders. So, without much to do, the governor, making the absurd charge that the Americans were spies of Old Spain, clapped the entire company into the miserable San Diego Jail and proceeded to deal out to them the ill usage ordinarily accorded Mexican prisoners from that day to this. My prison, wrote the younger Petty, was a cell eight or ten feet square with walls and floor of stone. A door with iron bars and inch square crossed over each other, like the bars of window sashes, graded on iron hinges as it opened to receive me. Over the external front of this prison was inscribed in capital letters, Destinación de la Cativo. A soldier came and handed me in something to eat. It proved to be dried beans and corn cooked with rancid tallow. The contents were about a pint. I took it up and brought it within reach of my nostrils and set it down in unconquerable loathing. When the soldier returned in the evening to bring me more, I handed him my rash and untasted and just as it was. He asked me in a gruff tone why I had not eaten it. I told him the smell of it was enough and that I could not eat it. He threw the contents of the dish in my face, muttering something which amounted to saying that it was good enough for such a brute as I was. To this I answered that if being a brute gave claims upon that dish, I thought he had best eat it himself. The monotony and confinement of prison life, augmented by ill usage and poor fare, chafed the spirits of even the heartiest of the American trappers. In the case of Sylvester Pati, whose health had already been undermined by the sufferings experienced on the desert, the additional hardships of captivity wasted away his strength and brought on a fatal illness. In this extremity the younger Pati was denied access to his father and the latter died alone and unattended in his prison cell. Following this tragedy there was some relaxation in the prisoner's treatment and James Ohio found occasional relief in serving as interpreter for Governor Etienne Dia. He also made the acquaintance of one of the California women. A young lady, as he describes her, of beauty and charm whose kindness and attention added something of a romance to his prison experience. From the captains of three or four American vessels then at anchor in the harbor, Pati also received much assistance. One of these was Captain Cunningham, who had aided Jedidiah Smith a few months before. John Bradshaw of the ship Franklin was another willing friend of the prisoners, but as luck would have it Bradshaw himself was under a cloud with a California governor and so was not able to secure Pati's release as Cunningham had done for Smith. A chance for freedom appeared, however, when Etienne Dia was prevailed upon to grant the Americans permission to return to the Colorado and secure the buried store of furs. But this hope was soon extinguished by the announcement that Pati would be held in San Diego to ensure the return of his companions. The rest of the trappers, however, set out upon the expedition. Upon reaching the Colorado they found that an overflow of the river had ruined the buried furs, leaving only the traps to pay for the expense and pains of the undertaking. Two of the trappers, having had enough of California, left their companions at the Colorado and made their way back to New Mexico. The remainder, in accordance with their promise to Etienne Dia, returned to San Diego, where they were once more imprisoned. An unusual situation, however, soon afterwards brought about the release of the prisoners. A severe epidemic of smallpox at that time was sweeping over the northern part of the province, carrying off Indians and Mexicans alike. As the disease spread farther and farther south and the Californians found themselves unable to check its progress, the governor appealed to Pati for assistance. The latter had in his possession a small quantity of vaccine which his father had brought from the center eat a compromise, and this Pati agreed to give in return for the liberation of himself and his companions on a year's parole. Pati's supply was, of course, augmented by virus from inoculated patients." In fulfillment of this agreement, and with the understanding that Pati should also receive a monetary reward for his services, the Americans were given their freedom and Pati began the novel and rather stupendous task of vaccinating all the mission Indians and the other inhabitants of the province. A thousand persons were treated at San Diego, nearly four thousand at San Luis Ray, six hundred at San Juan Capistrano, more than nine hundred at San Gabriel, twenty five hundred at the Pueblo of Los Angeles, and a larger or smaller number at each of the missions, Pueblos and Presidios as far north of San Francisco. Altogether, Pati claims to have inoculated a total of twenty two thousand persons during his short career as an amateur surgeon. Surely medical annals contain no other record quite so unique, and just as surely never have there been so many arms swelling and itching in unison from San Diego to Sonoma, as during this itinerary of James, Ohio, Pati, fur hunter, and sometimes surgeon extraordinary to his excellency, the governor of California. From San Francisco, Pati made a short visit to the Russian post at Bodega, where he received a hundred dollars for medical services rendered to the colonists there. Upon his return to San Francisco, where he expected to be paid by the Franciscans for vaccinating the Indians of the various missions, Pati was offered a thousand head of cattle together with the necessary land for pastridge on condition that he accept the Catholic faith. This offer Pati indignantly refused and soon left San Francisco for Monterey. Here he came in contact with a number of Americans, most of whom were connected with ships in the harbor. After several months spent in coastwise voyages and sea otter hunting on one of these vessels, Pati returned to Monterey, where he found the country in the throes of one of its frequent revolutions. The leader of the movement, which was directed against Governor Echiondia, was a man of some military ability named Solis, who had been banished to California from Mexico a few years before because of his extreme cruelty. The details of this insurrection are unimportant, except to note that Pati, together with most of the Americans and English residents about Monterey, became involved in it. At first, taking the side of the revolutionary party, they later became alarmed at the attitude shown by Solis toward the foreigners and turned against him. This brought about his defeat, a proceeding in which a barrel of rum, generously delved out to the supporters by the Americans, played fully as large a part as powder and balls. The share which Pati had, and thus reducing the revolt, at once placed him high in Governor Echiondia's favor. But the offers which the latter made were not well received by Pati, who was resolved to lay his claims in person before the Mexican government. Accordingly, he embarked for the west coast of Mexico on the same vessel that carried the prisoners taken by Echiondia in the Solis revolt. Most of the Americans who had come with him from New Mexico, however, remained as permanent residents of California. From San Blas, where the ship anchored, Pati went overland to Mexico City. Here, he presented his claims to Anthony Butler, then American Charger d'Affaires, and also latest case before President Bustamante. From the latter, Pati received sympathy but nothing else, and after a brief stay in the Mexican capital, he continued his journey to Vera Cruz and thence came by way of New Orleans to his birthplace in Kentucky. This he reached the last of August, 1830, a man broken in spirits and in fortune after six years of incredible hardships and desperate adventures. The increase made by James Ohio Pati and his father to the knowledge of the Great Southwest cannot be over-magnified. Among other contributions, their explorations opened one of the chief overland routes to California and prepared the way for the development of the important St. Louis to Santa Fe to Los Angeles trade. Brave, honest, God-fearing, vigorous in mind and body, dependent on their own resources, the Patis belonged to that class of Americans who conquered the wilderness and yearly pushed the frontier westward. Such as the tribute paid by Ruben G. Thwaites, one of the greatest of Western historians to these two Kentucky pioneers and in this judgment every Californian will concur. Of James Ohio Pati's later history, almost nothing is known except that he returned to California during the gold rush and set out for the mines. What became of him after that, no one can say, as his life was filled with adventure so his death is shrouded in mystery. It is fitting that this should be so. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 A History of California, The American Period by Robert Glass-Cleland This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7 The Successors of Smith and Pati The arrival of Smith and Pati companies ushered in a decade of singular importance in California history. Ill-equipped and insignificant in size as these expeditions were, they not only presaged the great overland advance of American settlers which culminated in the riotous days of 49, but also forecast with equal certainty the end of Mexican control and the annexation of California to the United States. It was some years, however, after the coming of these first explorers that organized immigration with the object of permanent settlement actually began. In the meantime, numerous trapping expeditions, most of them larger than either the Smith or Pati companies, found their way across the mountains into the valleys of the interior or to the settlements along the coast. To give here a detailed account of each of these parties is manifestly impossible. Not only does lack of space forbid such an attempt, but the very nature of the men who made up these expeditions also adds to the difficulty of the task. The fur hunter, like most pioneers, was a man of action rather than a chronicler of events, and seldom left behind a written account of his itinerary or achievements. One may catch an occasional glimpse of him, now here, now there, as he wanders through the mountain fastnesses and the great inland valleys of California, or approaches some co-settlement for the purchase of supplies. But for the most part his goings and comings are hidden in obscurity, and the knowledge we have of his activities in California is disappointingly meager. Fortunately, however, the fur hunters of those early days did not confine their operations to any one region. The whole west was their habitat, from the Platte, the Missouri, the Arkansas, and the Red River to the Pacific, and from the Canadian line as far south as the Rio Grande and the Gila, and even beyond those streams into Jojava and Sonora. Whether in the Rocky Mountains or the Sierra Nevadas, the fur trader's manner of life, his methods of trapping and the organization of his companies were virtually the same. A brief description of the industry as a whole will therefore serve to explain something of its nature as it was carried on in California. The fur traders were divided into two classes, the Engages, or regular company employees, and the independent hunters or free trappers. The former, well illustrated by Jedediah Smith's expedition, were bound by definite contract to the company's service for a specified period, usually of a year's duration. They received, together with food and equipment, a stipulated wage ordinarily amounting to $150 a year. Often this was paid in beaver fur at a price per pound agreed upon when the contract was entered into. The discipline maintained in expeditions of this kind was necessarily of military strictness. Throughout the regions where the fur business was carried on, conditions were not particularly favorable to the enforcement of law or the development of courts. Consequently, custom and usage, maintained when in dispute by the individual, took the place of statutes, judges, juries, and sheriffs. A handful of men, carrying with them articles greatly coveted by the Indians, or laden with the profits of a season's hunt, traveling through perilous country, perhaps a thousand miles from any base of supplies, could not long survive unless all were subject to a single leader whose orders were executed by direct and forcible means whenever necessary. If unrestrained by some such rigid discipline, a few quarrelsome or evilly disposed men, either through desertion, broils among themselves, or unnecessary provocation of the Indians, might easily involve the entire expedition in ruin. To preserve order and obedience among a company of reckless semi-lawless trappers, particularly when dissatisfaction prevailed because of the continued hardship or opportunity for insubordination offered itself, was no child's play. At the San Gabriel mission, for instance, Smith was compelled to flog one of his men to correct a confirmed tendency to mischief-making. The Petit Party, as already told, broke up on the Gila with disastrous consequences because the malcontents could not be held to their obligations. Later the inability of Joseph Walker to control his company when in camp near Monterey resulted in the financial ruin of that expedition. To lead a trapping party successfully required not only the nominal power to enforce discipline, but also tact, unwavering firmness, resourcefulness, and a consummate ability to handle men. Whenever these qualities were lacking in the leader, and not infrequently even when they were present, an expedition came to grief. Even more picturesque than the Engages, both in appearance and manner of life, was the free trapper, bound by no obligations, owing no allegiance to any company and everything his own master, the free trapper relied upon his own resources, provided his own equipment, and trapped when and where he pleased. His reckless nature and characteristic garb were thus described by Captain Bonneville, the friend of Washington Irving. Quote, It is a matter of vanity and ambition with the free trapper to discard everything that may bear the stamp of civilized life and to adopt the manners, habits, dress, gesture, and even walk of the Indian. You cannot pay a free trapper a greater compliment than to persuade him that you have mistaken him for an Indian. And in truth the counterfeit is complete. His hair, suffered to attain a great length, is carefully combed out and either left to fall carelessly over his shoulders or plaited neatly and tied up in otterskins or party-colored ribbons. A hunting shirt of ruffled calico, of bright dyes, or of ornamental leather, falls to his knees, below which, curiously fashioned leggings, ornamented with strings, fringes, and a perfusion of hawksbills, reach to a costly pair of moccasin of the finest Indian fabric, richly embroidered with beads. A blanket of scarlet or some other bright color hangs from his shoulders and is girt around his waist with a red sash, in which he bestows his pistil's knife in the stem of his Indian pipe. His gun is lavishly decorated with brass tacks and vermilion, and provided with a fringed cover, occasionally of buckskin, ornamented here and there with a feather. His horse is comparisoned in the most dashing and fantastic style. The bridles and cupper are weightily embossed with beads and cockades, and head, mane, and tail are interwoven with an abundance of eagle's blooms which flutter in the wind. To complete this grotesque equipment, the animal is be streaked and be spotted with vermilion or with white clay." In the decade from 1830 to 1840, both engages and free trappers came into California, the latter probably in somewhat larger numbers than the former. Several of the expeditions were also composed of both types, for the free trappers not infrequently joined themselves temporarily for purposes of protection or other advantage to a regularly organized party. In such cases special arrangements were made to cover the matter of equipment and wages. Most trapping companies were divided into messes of six men each. One member of each mess served as cook for the other five, and in return received his proportionate share of the furs taken by his companions. Each trapper, besides his saddle horse, had at least two-pack animals to carry his equipment and furs. His arms consisted of a rifle, one or more pistols, a hunting knife, and generally a small axe or tomahawk. The rifle usually carried resembled the famous Kentucky squirrel rifle, but was of a somewhat larger bore. The fur chiefly sought after from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific was that of the beaver. These skins sold in the mountains for an average price of five or six dollars each. So Universal indeed was their use that they served as an accepted medium of exchange in place of money throughout the West. They were carried in bundles or packs weighing from eighty to a hundred pounds apiece. Frequently trappers were compelled to cash their surplus provisions, equipment, or furs because of some threatened danger or exigency of the root. When such an emergency arose a pit was secretly dug in a dry and sheltered place, and the sides in the bottom lined with branches, canvas, or even stones. After the articles had been carefully stored away a covering, as nearly waterproof as possible, was placed over the cash. Every trace of labor was then removed and the ground made to look as though it had never been disturbed. In spite of the most skillful precautions, however, and especially when the cash was made under the stress of danger or an urgent haste, marauding Indians, wild beasts, or unexpected floods frequently destroyed the buried stores, thus causing serious financial loss and not infrequently bringing the unfortunate trappers face to face with starvation. It will be recalled that the patis, along with many other disasters, suffered at least twice in this regard, once when the Indians rifled their cash on the Gila, and again when high water ruined the furs they had buried on the banks of the Colorado. In addition to the furs taken by members of an expedition through their own trapping operations, large numbers of skins were also obtained by trade from the Indians. To meet the demands of this Indian trade, as well as to supply the personal needs of the trappers themselves, every well-equipped expedition carried with it a wide variety of merchandise, of which the following list adapted from Chittenden furnishes a typical illustration. The prices were those prevailing in the mountains. Quote, gunpowder at a dollar and a half a pound, payable in beaver skins, scarlet cloth at six dollars a yard, beaver traps at nine dollars each, finger rings at five dollars a gross, copper kettles at three dollars a pound, tobacco, blankets, files, coffee, dried fruit, washing soap, sugar, anchor chiefs, auls, horseshoes, buttons, cotton goods, calicoes, axes, beads, looking glasses, and a dozen similar articles at corresponding prices. Not least in the catalog, whether in the estimate of the Indians and trappers or in the profits which it brought, or the demoralization which it accomplished, was a liberal supply of rum. This was always of remarkable potency and sold at a minimum price of thirteen dollars a gallon. End quote. A majority of the western trappers came for Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and had behind them an ancestry and early training which fitted them thoroughly for the peculiar and dangerous work of their profession. For the most part they were a rough reckless lot if judged by the present day standards of society, but among them could also be found men of education, refinement, and high moral character. Drunkenness and gambling were the chief vices indulged in so freely when the trappers met at the annual rendezvous that the entire proceeds of a year's hard work were usually squandered in a few days of riotous and unrestrained debauch. Naturally with such men the accepted standards of morality did not obtain. Shut off from women of their own race, they formed connections with Indian squads, sometimes, but not often, dignified by the tribal marriage ceremony, or in the extreme southwest, found the free and easy virtue of the Mexican women in natural keeping with their own desires. The life, as a whole, was full of hardship, loneliness, and an almost unbelievable element of risk. Danger was everywhere and death usually came in unexpected and violent forms. Trappers died in brawls among themselves and from starvation, thirst, snow slide, flood, and accidents of many kind. They were mangled beyond recognition by grizzly bears or crushed under the hooves of buffalo herds. They were killed by Indians, sometimes in pit battle, sometimes in sudden surprise attack as they lay sleeping under the open sky. Often they fought their last rim fight in some lonely canyon or upon the banks of a quiet stream, single-handed against hopeless odds, or most fearful of all, faced fire and torture at the hands of their Indian captors. The perilous nature of the business might indeed be shown from the experiences of almost every trapping expedition that crossed the western plains, but a single illustration must suffice. Of the hundred and sixteen men who started for Santa Fe and the company which included the patis, only sixteen remained alive at the end of the first twelve months. With all its dangers, however, the life of the trapper had about it a compelling fascination that seldom allowed a man, upon whom its spell once rested, to forego his love of wilderness and mountains. So when furs decreased and the business became no longer profitable, the trappers turned to other lines of frontier activity. They became Indian agents and government scouts, or went into mining and cattle-raising. Later, many of them found service in the overland mail companies, and a few survived to help with the construction of the first transcontinental railroads. The trappers who reached California between 1830 and 1840 followed, in the main, three or four fairly well-defined routes. The most northerly of these led from the Columbia Basin into the Sacramento Valley, and was probably first used by expeditions sent out from the Hudson's Bay Post at Vancouver after the escape of Smith and his two men from the Umpqua Massacre. The earliest of these led by McLeod and guided by Turner, one of Smith's companions, reached the Sacramento in 1828 and succeeded in taking a large number of skins. A second, under command of the famous Peter Skiin Ogden, crossed over from the Snake River and spent eight months on the Sacramento and San Joaquin, returning to Vancouver laden down with furs. A number of other expeditions during the decade followed the same route, finding the Sacramento and its tributaries, such as the Feather and the American Fork, rich in beaver and comparatively easy of access. While Hudson's Bay employees and a few American trappers were finding their way into California by means of the Oregon Route, two other trails, both of which had their starting point in the quaint old town of Santa Fe, were being opened up by fur hunters operating in the Southwest. The importance of Santa Fe during this period of California history is not easily overestimated. Here, from about 1825 on, centered the trading and trapping life of the Southwest. Here, on occasion, Americans just arrived with their mule or ox-drawn caravans from Independence or Franklin or St. Louis, intent upon exchanging their cargoes of cotton goods and calicoes for Mexican silver, furs, or mules, touched elbows in the little shops, cantinas, and narrow streets with many a fellow countryman to whom Santa Fe was but the beginning, rather than the end of adventure. Here, trapping expeditions outfitted for the lower Rio Grande, or went northward to the green in the Platte, or westward to the Colorado in the Gila. Here, other Americans, having secured the necessary passports, left for the interior of Chihuahua and Sonora to bring back gold, silver, mules, panoche, and liquor, much in demand among the inhabitants of New Mexico. Here, also many trapping and trading expeditions were organized for the long journey to California. The earliest of these California parties to follow the Patees was led by a Tennessean named Ewing Young, who had been for some years both trapper and trader in New Mexico. Leaving Taos in 1829, Young and his companions, with the passport signed by Henry Clay, took a northwest course till they came to the tributaries of the Grand River. From the Grand they crossed to the green, and then appeared to have followed Smith's first route into California. Instead of immediately visiting the Mexican settlements on the coast, however, they turned north without entering the Cajon Pass to trap the streams of the San Joaquin. Footnote. The same year, an important Mexican expedition under Antonio Armijo followed a somewhat similar course to San Gabriel. In footnote. Somewhere in this valley, or in the lowest part of the Sacramento, they came upon Ogden's party of Hudson Bay employees, but the meeting was apparently friendly on both sides. After a visit to the San Jose mission, Young finally led his men to Los Angeles. In this little Pueblo, a few days of debauchery put the trappers so beyond their leader's control that he was glad to get them back to the wilderness with a loss of only one man. This fellow, known as Big Jim to his companions, was killed on the road from Los Angeles to San Gabriel by one of his fellow trappers. Young reached house on his return from California in the summer of 1830. He then formed a partnership with William Wolfskill, a Kentucky trapper of several years' experience in the Missouri Santa Fe Chihuahua trade, to trap the interior streams of California from which Young had just returned. From Taos, Wolfskill and his company came to the Colorado by way of the San Juan, Grand and Green Rivers, and then turned south until further progress was checked by the impassable barrier of the Grand Canyon. A westerly course then brought the trappers to the Severe River, but this they soon left for a southwest course to the Sierra. Wolfskill's company, however, were such a motley, dissatisfied crew that the proposed march to the Sierras had to be abandoned for the easier route by way of the Mojave villages in the Cajón Pass to Los Angeles. Here, the expedition fell to pieces. The Young Wolfskill expeditions marked the opening of the so called Old Spanish Trail, over which the regular caravan trade was afterwards conducted between Los Angeles, Santa Fe and Missouri. The year following, the route first taken by the Patees along the Gila was to furnish a new avenue of approach to California for the New Mexican traders. Early in the fall of 1831, a year after Wolfskill's departure from Taos, a combined trading and trapping expedition was sent from Santa Fe to California by the newly organized firm of Jackson, Waldo and Young. The expedition consisted of two companies. The first, composed of 11 men left Santa Fe on September 6th under the command of Jackson, the former partner of Sublet and Smith, who had come to New Mexico the preceding season with the disastrous expedition that witnessed Smith's death. It was proposed that Jackson's party should proceed directly to California and there purchase a large number of mules to be driven back to Missouri and Louisiana. For this purpose, five of the pack animals of the expedition were laden with silver pesos. While this was the first undertaking of its kind to embark for California, the buying of mules and Sonora and Chihuahua for the Western American states was a recognized branch of the Santa Fe trade and Jackson merely proposed to extend the plan to California. Following Patees' old trail through Albuquerque, Santa Rita and along the Gila to the Colorado, Jackson's party crossed what is now the Imperial Valley to the mission of San Luis Rey and thence continued to San Diego. From San Diego they turned northward to Los Angeles. Jackson and most of the company then continued up the coast as far as San Francisco, looking for mules and horses but finding the number for some reason or other very limited. Less than 700 animals were secured, though the original purpose had been to purchase as high as 2,000. The cost was probably from 10 to 15 dollars each. The second section of the expedition, under the command of Ewing Young, left Santa Fe only a few days behind the Jackson party. Young proposed to follow down the Gila and trap that stream in the Colorado until the season was over. He then intended to join Jackson and Los Angeles. From Los Angeles the combined party was to return to Santa Fe, driving the mules Jackson had purchased in California. The two partners met at Los Angeles in keeping with this agreement about April 1st, 1832, but neither could claim more than indifferent success. Jackson's failure to secure the desired number of mules and horses has already been noticed. Young, through a combination of misfortunes, had little to show in the way of beaverskins for his stay on the Colorado and the Gila. The original plan and the expedition was therefore abandoned. It was decided that the combined party should proceed to the Colorado and that Jackson should then take such men as were necessary and return to Santa Fe with the mules and horses, while Young came back to the coast to prepare for an extended trapping expedition through Central and Northern California the following autumn. In May, therefore, the whole company set out for the Colorado, across which they got most of the animals after 12 days of exhausting labor. Jackson and Young then separated, the former taking the trail for Santa Fe and the latter returning to Los Angeles. Before Jackson had gone two days' journey from the Colorado, most of his animals were killed or stampeded by a sudden Indian attack. Young, on his part, spent a summer hunting sea otter off the California coast and in October left Southern California with 14 men by way of the Tahoe Pass for the San Joaquin. After trapping the kings, Fresno and San Joaquin rivers until they discovered that a Hudson's Bay party had preceded them, the Americans pushed on to the Sacramento, where they found the rival trappers encamped. Leaving the Sacramento, after several weeks of trying experience with high water and mud, Young next led his men to the sea coast, some 75 miles north of the Russian settlement at Ross. Continuing up the coast, he entered the Umpqua Valley, passed over to the Klamath Lake, crossed the Klamath, rogue and somewhat later the Pitt River, and eventually returned to the Upper Sacramento. This sea followed to the American Fork and then passed down the valley to the San Joaquin. Trapping along this stream, he came again to the kings, where he found his trail of the previous year. This sea followed to the Tahoe and going on by way of Elizabeth Lake and the Cajon Pass came finally to San Bernardino. Young's wanderings, however, were not yet over, crossing from Temecula to the Colorado. He spent some months trapping on that river in the Gila. He then returned to Los Angeles in the early summer of 1834. Continuing northward, he purchased a drove of horses with the proceeds of his furs, but instead of taking them to Santa Fe as he had originally planned, he drove them northward to the settlements on the Columbia. Here in Oregon, Young finally made his home. He continued his excursions into California, however, for many years, no longer as a trapper, but as a trader in mules and cattle. Besides the routes from Santa Fe to Los Angeles and from Oregon to the Sacramento, at least one other approach to California was used by the fur hunters of the thirties. This was opened in 1833-34 by Joseph Walker and later became one of the important immigrant trails. Like Young and many another trapper, Joseph Rediford Walker, one of the bravest and most skillful of the mountain men, was a native of Tennessee. After serving an early apprenticeship as sheriff in one of the Missouri counties, he entered the Santa Fe trade and afterwards engaged in various trapping expeditions to the Rocky Mountains. As a result of the reputation which he had thus gained, Walker was selected by Captain Bonneville, whose story was afterwards given to the world by the vivid pen of Washington Irving, to serve as one of his chief lieutenants when he undertook his western expedition. On July 24, 1833, Walker left the main command under Bonneville on the Green River and with 35 or 40 men started westward to explore the territory beyond the Great Salt Lake. Passing the lake, the company struck the headwaters of the Humboldt or Mary's River and followed this to its sink. The experiences of the party from this point on are thus described by Washington Irving. The trappers continued down Ogden's River until they ascertained that it lost itself in a great swampy lake to which there was no apparent discharge. They then struck directly westward across a great chain of California mountains, intervening between these interior plains and the shores of the Pacific. For three and twenty days they were entangled among these mountains, the peaks and ridges of which are in many places covered with perpetual snow. Their passes and defiles present the wildest scenery, partaking of the sublime rather than the beautiful and abounding with frightful precipices. The sufferings of the travelers among these savage mountains were extreme. For a part of the time they were nearly starved. At length they made their way through them and came down upon the plains of New California, a fertile region extending along the coast with magnificent forests, verdant savannas, and prairies that look like stately parks. Here they found deer in game and abundance and indemnified themselves for past famine." The exact course taken by Walker's company across the Sierra is still a matter of conjecture. Some authorities identify it with a familiar route along the Truckee which came into general use a decade later. Others hold that the trappers remained east of the mountains until they came to the stream now known as Walker River and followed this to the crest of the Divide. George Knitiver, himself a member of the expedition, states that the route down the western slope lay through a valley between the Merced and the Tuolumne rivers. Footnote. Walker's tombstone bears the inscription, camped at Yosemite November 13th, 1833. In footnote. But whatever the route, the Tennessee trapper deserves the distinction of being the first American to cross the Sierra Nevada proper into California. Footnote. Smith, of course, crossed the Sierras before Walker, but he made the passage from west to east in footnote. Because of the discoveries made on this and later expeditions, he ought also to be ranked with Smith and Petit as one of the greatest of California explorers. After reaching the San Joaquin Valley, the Walker Party traveled southward a short distance and then turned westward to the coast. Christmas was spent at Monterey, whose inhabitants proved courteous and diverting hosts. Here the trappers, getting beyond Walker's control, wasted their employer's substance in riotous living, making the expedition a very costly venture for the unlucky Bonneville. After some months of ease at Monterey, the Party, minus a number of its members who elected to remain in California, returned to the San Joaquin. Continuing up this valley they came near at southern extremity to an opening through the Sierra, since known as Walker's Pass. This furnished an outlet from the south fork of the Kern River to the eastern side of the Divide. But whether Walker discovered the now famous Owens River Valley on this, or a subsequent expedition, is not definitely known. After traversing Walker's Pass, the trappers followed a course generally running to the northeast until they rejoined the disappointed Bonneville on the Bear River in central Utah. Space does not permit the mention of other parties that entered California during this particular period. But to complete the chapter, the significance of the fur trader's contribution to California history ought to be pointed out. One of the results of importance to the economic life of California and New Mexico and the western American states was the inauguration of a regular intercourse between Los Angeles, Santa Fe, and St. Louis following the Wolfskill Young and Jackson expeditions of the early thirties. The route along which the Los Angeles, Santa Fe caravans passed, known as the Old Spanish Trail, paralleled very closely the present line of the Santa Fe Railroad. The trade was conducted by means of pack trains, which made the round trip once each year. Outward bound from Santa Fe, the caravans carried blankets, Mexican woollen goods, silver, and numerous American wares from St. Louis. On the return journey, the traders brought back chiefly Chinese products, silks and the like, obtained from trading vessels on the coast, and horses and mules for the American markets. Another significant effect of the fur trade was to increase the foreign population of California. Many of the fur hunters fell under the spell of the province and made it their permanent home. This class of Americans, rivaling those who came by sea in point of number, though settling in many parts of the province, were especially numerous in the region about Los Angeles. Many of these, like Wolfskill, J. J. Warner, Isaac Williams, William Workman, Jacob E. Lease, to mention only a few, were men of excellent character and faithfully served the interests of their adopted country. Others were citizens of a different type, instinctively daring and lawless, contemptuous like most Westerners of Mexican control and authority, always heavily armed, clad in a half-savage costume and undeterred by the most formidable barriers of mountains and desert from entering the province, the American trapper naturally became a source of fear and annoyance to the California officials. He was often in difficulty with Mexican citizens or members of his own race and sometimes even united with the Indian horse thieves of the interior to drive off horses and other livestock from the coast ranches. In several of the numerous revolutions which kept the course of California politics from running smooth, he was also an important factor. On such occasions, Quim alone seems to have determined his choice of sides and not infrequently he transferred his allegiance from one party to the other with calm disregard for previous affiliations. Furthermore, he cherished the scarcely concealed expectation that someday he and his companions would overthrow Mexican control entirely and take the destiny of the province into their own hands. A third result of the fur trade was to familiarize the settlers of the Western States with the easy conditions of life in California and to acquaint them with the undeveloped resources of the Pacific slope. The reports and tales brought back by return trappers quickly found their way into local newspapers and were circulated from mouth to mouth until a fever of interest in California spread from community to community all along the American frontier. The fur hunters, also having opened up overland avenues of approach to the Pacific, became guides for subsequent immigrant parties along these routes and even made possible a success of government exploring expeditions such as that of John Charles Fremont across the Sierra. Joseph Walker, Kit Carson, and James Bridger to mention only a few of the more familiar names all learned the roots and passes to California while engaged in the fur trade. Thus, before government explorer, pioneer settler, or gold seeker crossed the Sierra into California came the forerunner of all the fur hunter of the far west. End of chapter 7