Stranded in the Death Valley

17. May 2013 · Comments Off on Stranded in the Death Valley · Categories: Old West · Tags: , , ,

When gold was discovered in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada in 1848, it didn’t take very long for word to get out. From the eastern United States, California was then a six-month journey by mule trail or covered wagon over land – that or a long sea voyage around South America, or two sea voyages broken by a short but disease-plagued trek across the narrowest part of Central America. The sea voyage was expense, the overland journey a bit less so – and it probably seemed much more direct, anyway. Two young Gold Rushers who hit the trail in the spring of 1849 were William Manly and John Rogers; young and adventurous single men who had come by separate means as far as Salt Lake City. Manly already had an adventurous trip just getting that far. From an account written much later, he seems to have been a broad-minded optimist, good-humored and above all – and adventurous. He and some companions had decided to venture down an uncharted river in canoes – and only an encounter with some helpful Indians prevented them from going all the way – down an uncharted river and into a deep and impassible canyon. With one thing and another, they had arrived too late in the season to consider crossing the Sierras by the Truckee River Pass. This was three years after the Donner Party – which served as a Dreadful Warning to all wagon train parties considering a mountain passage late in the trail season.

Instead, Manly and Rogers hired on as drovers or general hands to a lately-arrived party of emigrants and gold seekers who had sensibly decided to follow what was known as the Old Spanish Trail, which led south from Salt Lake City and then west to Los Angeles; the present-day IH-15 roughly follows this trail. The leaders of the so-called Bennett-Arcane party didn’t want to risk any more peril for their families than they had already. The Old Spanish Trail did cross some considerable stretches of desert, but there were regular sources of water all the way along, and it was quite well-traveled.

Unfortunately, the Bennetts and the Arcanes and their friends were tempted into taking a short-cut – the bane of early wagon train pioneers, and one which usually contributed considerable hardship, if not to their doom.  They had a map from a fellow in Salt Lake City who was represented as an expert geographer. As it turned out, he wasn’t – and the seven wagons of the Bennett-Arcane party went off the trail and into an endless and trackless stretch of desert, a valley broken here and there by ranges of steep mountains. By the end of November, 1849, they were across the valley – but nearly out of supplies and had butchered most their draft oxen as they failed, one by one. Fortunately, they had found a small freshwater spring. From there they decided to send for help – and William Manly and John Rogers volunteered … to set out on foot, with only what they could carry. Decades later, Manly set down an account of that journey. “… Mr. Arcane killed the ox which had so nearly failed, and all the men went to drying and preparing meat. Others made us some new mocassins out of rawhide, and the women made us each a knapsack. Our meat was closely packed, and one can form an idea how poor our cattle were from the fact that John and I actually packed seven-eighths of all the flesh of an ox into our knapsacks and carried it away. They put in a couple of spoonfuls of rice and about as much tea … the good women said that in case of sickness even that little bit might save our lives. I wore no coat or vest, but took half of a light blanket, while Rogers wore a thin summer coat and took no blanket. We each had a small tin cup and a small camp kettle holding a quart … They collected all the money there was in camp and gave it to us. Mr. Arcane had about $30 and others threw in small amounts from forty cents upward. We received all sorts of advice. Capt. Culverwell was an old sea faring man and was going to tell us how to find our way back …” There was no need for that; Mr. Bennett had utter faith in Manly’s ability to find his way out of the valley and back.

Rogers had a single shotgun, and Manly borrowed a repeating rifle.They set bravely out, not knowing that they would have to walk 250 miles through the desert before reaching aid. They found the occasional spring of sweet water, but others were contaminated with alkali or salt. “ … Our mouths became so dry we had to put a bullet or a small smooth stone in and chew it and turn it around with the tongue to induce a flow of saliva. If we saw a spear of green grass on the north side of a rock, it was quickly pulled and eaten to obtain the little moisture it contained …  Our thirst began to be something terrible to endure, and in the warm weather and hard walking we had secured only two drinks since leaving camp… We tried to sleep but could not, but after a little rest we noticed a bright star two hours above the horizon, and from the course of the moon we saw the star must be pretty truly west of us. … The thought of the women and children waiting for our return made us feel more desperate than if we were the only ones concerned. … I can find no words, no way to express it so others can understand. The moon gave us so much light that we decided we would start on our course, and get as far as we could before the hot sun came out, and so we went on slowly and carefully in the partial darkness, the only hope left to us being that our strength would hold out till we could get to the shining snow on the great mountain before us. We reached the foot of the range we were descending about sunrise. There was here a wide wash from the snow mountain, down which some water had sometime run after a big storm, and had divided into little rivulets only reaching out a little way before they had sunk into the sand.”

With the shotgun and repeating rifle, they were able to hunt for food along the way, but Manly suffered from an injury to one of his legs and could only limp along slowly. He urged Rogers to go ahead alone, Rogers refused, so they went on together. On the last day of December, the two young men finally arrived at Mission San Fernando. With the money they carried, they bought two horses, a mule and sufficient supplies … and returned the way they had come. They had to abandon the horses halfway back, but the mule with the precious supplies was as nimble-footed as a cat on the most treacherous part of their passage. They arrived to find their friends all alive but one; Capt. Culverwell, the seafaring man. The life-saving journey took them twenty-six days, there and back. The Bennetts and Arcanes packed up those valuables left to them on the backs of their surviving oxen and the nimble-footed mule and walked out. Years later, Manly wrote of the adventure which had tried them all to extreme: “There were peaks of various heights and colors, yellow, blue fiery red and nearly black. It looked as if it might sometime have been the center of a mammoth furnace. I believe this range is known as the Coffin’s Mountains. It would be difficult to find earth enough in the whole of it to cover a coffin. Just as we were ready to leave and return to camp we took off our hats, and then overlooking the scene of so much trial, suffering and death spoke the thought uppermost saying:—”Good bye Death Valley!”

The spring where the party had camped, waiting for the young men’s return is still called Bennett’s Well. It’s at the foot of the Panamint Mountains. Ironically, fifty years later, Death Valley itself would be the focus of the last of the great western gold and silver rushes.

(Manly’s account, Death Valley in 49 is available as a free eBook from Project Gutenberg, and it is a surprisingly lively read.)

The Great Siege of Elm Creek

10. May 2013 · 2 comments · Categories: Old West · Tags: ,

As the Civil War raged in the east, the western frontier went up in flames, along the Sierra Nevada, and from Minnesota to Texas. With the attention of both the Union and Confederate militaries focused on eastern battlefields, there was nothing much to restrain the Indians, except the volunteers of various western communities. Late in 1864, as the Confederacy stumbled through it’s final agony, a massive Indian raid flashed through Young County, Texas. An ambitious young Comanche chief, Little Buffalo hungered for the plunder and prestige accrued to him by a successful raid into the white-settled country at the headwaters of the Brazos River. Who would stop them? The Federal soldiers were long-gone from Fort Belknap, leaving only a few companies recruited for frontier defence – and Little Buffalo planned to avoid them. All during the fall of 1864, he talked up the possibilities to his fellows and their close allies, the Kiowa. By mid-October, he had gathered a raiding party of seven hundred or so, and they poured south, into the scattered holdings along the Brazos and Elm Creek where about a dozen families had settled. Many of them – the Fitzpatricks and the Braggs had taken the precaution of barricading their houses with a palisade of logs. The commander in charge of frontier defense had seen that another palisade with blockhouses at the corners protected settlers living there. A second fortified place was called Camp Murrah.

The war party came down both sides of Elm Creek; they first encountered and killed a man and his son who were out searching for strayed cattle. Then they fell like hungry wolves on the Fitzpatrick place, the local trading post and general store.  The men had all gone to Weatherford to purchase supplies, so there were only three women; the widowed Elizabeth Carter Fitzgerald, her daughter Susan Durgan and a slave, Mary Johnson, whose husband Britton was Mrs. Fitzgerald’s foreman, with half a dozen children and an infant. Susan Durgan died on the front porch, a shotgun in her hands before the Indians swarmed into the house, looting and setting fire. But the smoke and noise carried along the valley alerting their nearest neighbors; the Hambys and the Wilsons. There were three men there at the Hamby place, branding cattle. By good fortune, one of them was Thornton Hamby, a young Confederate soldier on leave, recuperating from wounds received. Thornton, his father Thomas, and Tom ‘Doc’ Wilson rushed their families into a safe hiding place, away from their houses – a cave in the creek-bank hidden by brush. Thornton Hamby directed Tom Wilson to ride as fast as he could up the creek to warn their neighbors, while he and his father covered for him. They withdrew up the valley, pausing now and again to shoot at the Indians following after, while Tom Wilson galloped ahead. Wilson managed to warn the families at two farmsteads; all took shelter in brush along the creek and survived. By the time the three riders reached the George Bragg place, which had been fortified, the Indians were closing in. An arrow struck Tom Wilson through the chest as they ran for the door; he staggered into the house, gasping, “Hamby, I am a dead man.” He had enough strength to pull out the arrow, and he died just inside the doorway. More »

Mickey Free – Apache Indian Scout

25. April 2013 · Comments Off on Mickey Free – Apache Indian Scout · Categories: Old West · Tags: , , , ,

Sgt Mickey Free - Apache ScoutHis name wasn’t really Mickey Free, and he wasn’t really an Apache Indian. The legendary Al Sieber, chief of Army scouts in the badlands of the Southwest after the Civil War once described him as ‘Half Mexican, half Irish and whole S-O-B.’ Mickey Free was one of Sieber’s scouts, enlisted formally into the US Army in the early 1870s at Fort Verde, Arizona, eventually rising to the rank of sergeant. He was a valuable asset to Sieber and the Army as a scout and interpreter as he was fluent in English, Spanish and the Apache dialects. Most observers assumed that Mickey Free was at least half-Apache, though. He raised a family, served as a tribal policeman and when he died, was buried at his long-time home on the reservation of the White Mountain Apache. But he was just as Al Sieber had said – Mexican and Irish – and his birth name was Felix Martinez. And what many didn’t know was that Mickey Free was entangled inadvertently  in the bitter and ongoing war between the Apaches and the whites long before his enlistment in the Army.

He was born in Santa Cruz, Sonora, the son of Jesusa Martinez and Santiago Tellez, who was said to be Irish, or part Irish. When Santiago Tellez died, Jesusa married John Ward, and took her small son to live on Ward’s small ranch on Sonoita Creek, southeast of Tucson. Sonoita was very much out of the way – and even more so late in 1860 or early 1861, when John Ward’s ranch was raided by a party of Arivaipa Apaches bound on stealing stock. Felix Martinez, then about twelve years old was captured and taken also; some accounts have it that he tried to climb up into a fruit tree to hide.  But he was captured anyway – and taken away by the raiders. Other accounts have it that Felix’s stepfather was more concerned about the loss of his cattle than the boy, and only belatedly demanded the return of both. Some months later, the officer commanding at the nearest Army post, Fort Buchanan ordered a detachment of soldiers to go out with John Ward and an interpreter, towards the area around Apache Pass. It was supposed that the boy and the stolen cattle were there, in the area where the Overland Mail stage road passed through the mountains. The military detachment was under the command of a young and fairly recent West Point graduate, one Lt. George Bascom, who was later charitably described as an officer, a gentleman … and a fool.

Near the Apache Pass stage station, Bascom and his party encountered the Chiricahua Apache chief Cochise. Bascom asked for a meeting in a council tent with Cochise, and began it badly by demanding return of the boy and the stolen stock. Cochise answered honestly and fairly; he did not have them – but given time, he promised to find out who did and return them. Up until that very day, Cochise had been friendly and conciliatory to whites; indeed, the Overland Mail stages only operated because Cochise and his warriors allowed it. Bascom arrogantly repeated his demand for immediate return of the boy Felix – and informed Cochise that he and his party would be held hostage against the boy’s return. Bascom’s soldiers had been instructed previously to take Cochise and his party prisoners but Cochise had a knife. In the ensuing fracas, he slashed his way free, although his companions – including his own brother and two nephews – were captured.  Bascom took his Indian hostages back to the shelter of the Apache Pass stage station. Meanwhile, Cochise and his warriors attacked an American supply train and captured three hostages, offering them to Bascom in exchange for his brother and nephews. Bascom refused – he would accept only Felix Martinez and the stolen cattle for Cochise’s relatives. Cochise killed his captives, before escaping into the Sonora – and Bascom hanged his, before returning to Fort Buchanan.  The war by Apache on the Federal Army and the white settlers of Arizona was on … and very shortly to be joined by the greater civil war between the Union and the Confederacy. In all of that bloody conflict, the matter of 12-year old Felix Martinez Ward was shelved. It is entirely likely that only his mother cared very deeply; his stepfather didn’t seem to, the military commander in the region soon had bigger problems, and Lt. Bascom was killed in battle at Val Verde, New Mexico territory the following year. The Martinez-Ward family seems to have concluded that the boy was dead, or gone far beyond reach, although a half-brother was surprised many years later to discover the truth.

So, what happened to Felix Martinez Ward? Pretty much what happened to many Anglo and Mexican boys of a certain age taken captive by the Tribes. He was adopted into the White Mountain Apache tribal division – treated with relative kindness and trained in the traditional ways. And eleven years after his abduction from his stepfathers’ ranch, Felix Martinez Ward enlisted in the US Army as an Apache scout under the name Mickey Free. He participated in the US Army’s campaign to capture the last stubborn Apache band led by Geronimo – and there exist many pictures of him, either alone or with the other Apache scouts. He is fairly easy to pick out from a group, for although he has long, thick hair to his shoulders … he has a rather round face, with a snub nose and a cleft in his chin. He does not look Indian in the least. Put him into the chorus line of Riverdance, and he’d blend right in.

He lived to a ripe old age on the White Mountain Reservation, and was buried there, leaving many descendants.

The Most One-Sided Gunfight in the Old West

05. April 2013 · 1 comment · Categories: Old West

This affray did not happen in Texas, but in New Mexico in 1884. It did have all the classic Western elements; rowdy cowboys, a small town fed to the back teeth with their destructive and abusive antics, and a single local lawman determined to up hold the rule of law and order. Here, however, ends any resemblance to High Noon, Tombstone, Stagecoach, Shane or any other classic Western movie. In this case, the single resolute lawman stands out in the annals of Western law enforcement for several reasons; first for sheer, stubborn crazy-brave courage, secondly for being barely 19 years old at the time, a tough little banty-rooster of a guy barely five-seven in boots… and thirdly for being native Hispanic in a time and in a place where anti-Mexican bigotry fell very severely on the non-Anglo population of any class or income.

His name was Elfego Baca – and there was one more difference to him. Although he had been born in Socorro, New Mexico Territory, he had spent most of his early life in Topeka, Kansas, where his parents had sought work and an education for their children. This resulted in Elfego Baca being more fluent in English than Spanish at the time of his returning to Socorro and working as a clerk in a general mercantile owned by his brother-in-law. He had another notable skill; facility with a six-gun. Very much later in life he claimed he had been taught to shoot by Billy the Kid … either William McCarty-Antrim-Bonny, or some other adolescent shootist with the same moniker in New Mexico Territory around that time.
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From The Quivera Trail – Chapter 22

04. April 2013 · Comments Off on From The Quivera Trail – Chapter 22 · Categories: Chapters From the Latest Book, Old West · Tags: , ,

(From the work in progress:Chapter 22 – Daughters and Sons. Isobel Becker, staying in Liesel and Hansi Richter’s San Antonio mansion. has just given birth. Her husband Dolph is in the Palo Duro country at the new ranch property, coping with the threat from a clan of rustlers, the deadly Whitmire family.)

Isobel drifted up from the grey depths to just below the surface of wakefulness, aware of the sound of a woman’s voice, a sweet cracked voice, singing in words that she didn’t understand … because she was so tired. She would have gone all the way up, opened her eyes and came awake, but for the awareness that her body pained her – or that it would, if she came entirely awake. So she lay quiet, soothed by the song and the voice, content to float in the grey world and keep the knowledge that she ached in every bone at a distance. Gradually, she became aware that she was alone in her body again; that the almost incessant twitch and flutter of the baby within her belly had ceased. This both saddened her – for now she felt quite empty and alone – but also relieved her immensely, as this meant that the birthing was done. The last thing she could recall was someone lowering a gauze tea-strainer over her mouth and nose and a sickly-sweet odor, which mercifully wiped out the sight of the heavy-set bearded man in shirtsleeves, standing at the foot of the bed brandishing a heavy, gleaming metal instrument . . . and telling Aunt Richter to have it boiled. The man also had blood on his hands and wrists, and Isobel knew without a possibility of doubt that it was her own blood.
But it was over now, and Isobel listened drowsily to the woman singing and was comforted. She floated a little farther away from the surface, covering herself like a cozy quilt with the grey unthinkingness, and when she floated up again the woman was no longer singing – but the bedroom was flooded with the golden light of late afternoon. No – no longer could she pull that blissful greyness around herself; her mouth tasted like a cast iron pot boiled dry and she was aware of an urgent need to use the chamber pot. She opened her eyes; yes, she was still lying in the bed of that room which Aunt Richter had allocated to her, with a smaller one adjacent which Aunt Richter had seen fitted out as a nursery. There was someone standing by the window, watching the sunset; Anna Vining. Isobel must have made a sound, because Anna turned around; she had a baby in her arms, a bundle swathed all in white, and too large to be Anna’s own little daughter.
“Ah… you are awake at last,” Anna observed without any surprise. “How do you feel? I need not ask, but it is considered courteous to do so. Three times have I done this … although not for two at once. I assume the discomfort was not doubled.”
“Two?” Isobel croaked. Well, Dr. Herff had said something about twins, once Aunt Richter had suggested the possibility.
“Twin girls,” Anna answered. “You would like to see them, I think. They are very well. This one was born first … see where Dr. Herff’s patent forceps made a little bruise on her forehead?” She brought the child to Isobel’s bedside. “The other is not marked … but Mama said we should tie colored ribbons on their wrists, so that we may learn to tell them apart.” Isobel sat up, wincing as she did so. Below her belly, she felt that she had been ripped into tattered rags of flesh. Anna laid the baby in her lap, and capably settled some pillows behind her so that she could rest against them. Isobel and the infant regarded each other with no particular sentiments at all. Her daughter was a pink-faced mite with a wide-open, unfocused blue gaze, regarding Isobel solemnly over a pink fist balled against its mouth. There was a narrow length of yellow ribbon tied around her wrist, and a faint blue bruise in the center of her forehead. Anna went to a cradle at the foot of the bed and bent over it, drawing out another white-wrapped baby; this one was not awake, but sleeping with brief pale eyebrows drawn in an accusing scowl. Anna laid the second baby next to Isobel on the bed, where it stirred and then settled into sleep again. This one had a pink ribbon. “They have been fed. Mama engaged a wet-nurse for them, one of Dr. Herff’s recommending. What had you thought to name them?”
“In my last letter to my husband, we had agreed; a boy should have our father’s names, a girl our mother’s.”
“So … a name for each.” Anna sounded pleased. “Auntie Magda would like that. Her name in English is Margaret, which would honor my husband’s mother also. What is your mother’s name, then?”
“Caroline,” Isobel answered. “I think the oldest should be Margaret … and this one should be Caroline.” It must have been a trick of the light, or of familial blood, but the sleeping infant’s unformed features looked so like Lady Caroline when she was most displeased with her youngest daughter. Isobel hoped that wouldn’t prove to be an omen. It was bad enough knowing that her mother was unhappy with her; having her daughter similarly disproving would be unendurably horrible.

“I should write to my husband,” Isobel ventured at last. Anna answered briskly, “Yes – about what you have named them. Papa sent a messenger to him once they were safely delivered. Dolph will be most pleased, I am certain. Children of his own instead of dogs, or those orphan boys … and that pleases Auntie Magda.”
“I hope he will be happy with the news.” Isobel looked at the faces of her children and wondered why she felt so … bleak. Empty, as if she could not feel any emotions at all. These were her children, mothers were supposed to love their children dearly … was there yet something else wrong with her that she didn’t?
“Of course – he will be overjoyed.” Anna answered. Well, at least she was acting if everything were perfectly straight-forward, and nothing at all was wrong with Isobel’s cool reaction to hers’ and Dolph’s children. “You look tired, still. When you have had enough of admiring your daughters, I will return them to their cradle, and tell Mama and Aunt Magda that you are awake. Doubtless, they will want to pay a call, hein?”
“Yes,” Isobel agreed. It was too much trouble not to. She wished that Anna would just take away the children now. She wanted to wrap that grey unthinkingness around her, and sleep and sleep, to dream of the blue sky over the steep carved canyons of the Palo Duro, or of hunting in the green hills around Acton … anywhere but here, any time but now. Eventually Anna took the babies back, laying them each in the cradle with a casual familiarity which Isobel only hoped she could manage in time. They were so tiny, as helpless as puppies – and so fragile!
“I go downstairs,” Anna announced. “To tell Mama and Auntie Magda that you are awake – do you wish to see them, or would you rather rest more?”
“I need to … wash …” Isobel answered, miserably, having made the unfortunate discovery that the necessary rag was saturated. Without turning a hair, Anna pointed out where the fresh rags were, and brought out a clean nightgown. There was something bracing about her very matter-of-factness, but Isobel was quite relieved when Anna said, “Ten minutes … I can only restrain Mama for that long.”
Isobel couldn’t think of anything other than to thank her for her consideration, and then to wonder if Anna didn’t think she was responding to kindness by being rude. There were moments when she didn’t know how to talk to her husbands’ relatives, even the ones who spoke English well. More »

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