Seventy Years on the Frontier Part 17

Courtly by nature, generous to a fault, big-hearted and brainy, full of grat.i.tude to those whom he feels indebted to, he has won his way in the world and stands to-day as truly one of Nature's n.o.blemen.

One of the strongest characteristics of Buffalo Bill, to my mind, was his love for his mother--a mother most worthy the devotion of such a son. His love and devotion to his sisters has also been marked throughout his lifetime.

When he first came to me he had to sign the pay-roll each month by making the sign of a cross, his mark. He drew a man's pay, and earned every dollar of it.

He always had his mother come to get his pay, and when one day he was told by the paymaster to come and "make his mark and get his money," his face flushed as he saw tears come into his mother's eyes and heard her low uttered words:

"Oh, Willie! if you would only learn to write, how happy I would be."

Educational advantages in those early days were crude in the extreme, and Little Billy's chances to acquire knowledge were few, but from that day, when he saw the tears in his mother's eyes at his inability to write his name, he began to study hard and to learn to write; in fact his acquiring the art of penmans.h.i.+p got him into heaps of trouble, as "Will Cody," "Little Billy," "Billy the Boy Messenger," and "William Frederic Cody" were written with the burnt end of a stick upon tents, wagon-covers, and all tempting places, while he carved upon wagon-body, ox-yoke, and where he could find suitable wood for his pen-knife to cut into, the name he would one day make famous.

With such energy as this on his part, Billy Cody was not very long in learning to write his name upon the pay-roll instead of making his mark, though ever since, I may add, he has made his mark in the pages of history.

All through his life he was ever the devoted son and brother, and true as steel to his friends, for he has not been spoiled by the fame he has won, while to-day his firmest friends are the officers of the army with whom he has served through dangers and hards.h.i.+ps untold, as proof of which he was freely given the indors.e.m.e.nts of such men as Sherman, Sheridan, Gen. Nelson A. Miles, Generals Carr, Merritt, Royal, and a host of others.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

THE PLATTE VALLEY.

From the dawn of history to the present time, civilization has followed the valleys. From the Garden of Eden which was in the valley of the Euphrates to modern times the water courses have been the highways of civilization, and made the Tiber and the Thames, the Rhine and the Rhone famous in the annals of the world's progress. In our own country this fact has been especially ill.u.s.trated. The valley of the Rio Grande del Norte was the pathway of the Spaniard in his march to the northward, and it is one of the curious facts of history that, before the Pilgrims had landed on Plymouth Rock, the adventurous cavaliers of Spain had penetrated the center of the continent and discovered the sources of the great river in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Colorado.

It was along the Connecticut and the Hudson, the Delaware and the Susquehanna, the Ohio and the Mississippi, that the pioneers of the republic pushed their way westward and planted the civilization which has enjoyed so substantial and prosperous a growth. And when the pioneer resumed his westward march to the Rocky Mountains, his trains lay along the Missouri, the Arkansas, and the Platte, thus giving to the valley of the Platte an historic place in the records of the nation's advancement.

The Louisiana Purchase, within whose boundaries lay the great valley of the Platte and its tributaries, was completed in 1804, by President Thomas Jefferson. It was an act of statesmans.h.i.+p worthy of the man who had drafted the Declaration of Independence, and a.s.sured the young republic a future little dreamed of by the men of that day, but which we have lived to realize. Two years later, in 1806, Lieut. Zebulon Pike received an order to explore the newly acquired national possessions, and to find the headwaters of the Platte River. In pursuance of the order, Lieutenant Pike marched up the Arkansas to the Fountaine Qui Bouille, discovered and ascended the great peak which bears his name, entering the South Park from the present site of Canon City by the Current Creek route. Aside from his discovery of the headwaters of the Platte, Lieutenant Pike's expedition was more largely devoted to the Arkansas and the Rio Grande than to this valley.

The second expedition up the Platte Valley was ordered in 1819 by John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War for President James Monroe, and was under the command of Major Stephen S. Long, of the corps of topographical engineers. Leaving Pittsburg, Pa., in April, 1819, Major Long proceeded westward and established his camp near the present site of Council Bluffs, Iowa, to which was given the name of Engineer Cantonment. Thence on June 6, 1820, with a number of scientists and a small detail of regular troops, he marched toward the mountains. On June 30th the party sighted the magnificent range of the Rocky Mountains, a view of which burst upon them in the full glory of the morning light. On July 3d they pa.s.sed, as Long's annals read, "the mouth of three large creeks, heading in the mountains and entering the Platte from the northwest." These were undoubtedly the Cache la Poudre, the Thompson, and the St. Vrain. On July 5th they camped on the present site of Fort Lupton, and on July 6th on the present site of Denver, at the mouth of Cherry Creek. Thence the party followed the valley to the Platte Canon, and, proceeding southward along the base of the mountains, returned eastward along the Arkansas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUFFALO BILL'S FIRST SITUATION.]

Twenty-two years later, in 1842, came Lieut. John C. Fremont, the famous pathfinder, who traversed the Blue toward the Platte, reaching the valley at Grand Island, a portion of the party going up the North Fork toward Fort Laramie, and the larger part marching up the South Fork to Fort St. Vrain, which had then been established a number of years, and had become a noted rendezvous for trappers, hunters, and plainsmen.

The following year the intrepid explorer left St. Louis on his second expedition, traveling the valleys of the Kaw and the Republican, reaching the Platte at the mouth of Beaver Creek, and arriving at Fort St. Vrain on July 4, 1843. I quote the words of Lieutenant Fremont as prophetic of the future of the valley. "This post," he says, "was beginning to a.s.sume the appearance of a comfortable farm. Stock, hogs and cattle, were ranging about the prairie. There were different kinds of poultry and there was the wreck of a promising garden in which a considerable variety of vegetables had been in a flouris.h.i.+ng condition, but had been almost entirely ruined by recent high water."

Between the dates of the expeditions of Long and Fremont three noted trading posts had been established along the Platte in the immediate vicinity of the spot on which we are now a.s.sembled. The first of these was Fort Vanquez, built by Louis Vanquez in 1832, at the mouth of Clear Creek, then known as Vanquez Fork of the Platte. The next was Fort Lupton, a portion of whose walls are still standing, and the third was Fort St. Vrain, built in 1840. These forts, as they were called, were trading posts at which a large traffic in skins and furs was conducted, and which became the headquarters of such famous frontiersmen as Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Jim Baker, Jim Beckwourth, and others, who in those days const.i.tuted the vedettes of the civilization of the country. I have not time to dwell upon their exploits, but I note their names as indicating that we stand upon historic ground, and that here in this valley were planted the first germs of the prosperous growth which to-day enfolds it in every department of its social, industrial, and commercial life.

In 1847 the Platte Valley became the highway of the Mormons in their exodus from Illinois to Utah. Two years later its trails were broadened by the California pioneers en route to the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific to share in the golden discoveries of Sutter and his companions.

In 1857 came the expedition of Col. Albert Sidney Johnston marching to Utah to sustain the laws and authority of the United States.

But a greater movement was now organizing to traverse and possess the valley of the Platte. In the fullness of time the crisis of its destiny had arrived. The year of 1859 dawned upon a nation fast drifting into the vortex of a civil war. The irrepressible conflict which for half a century had been going on between free and slave labor was nearing the arbitrament of arms, and absorbed all men's minds to the exclusion of events which were happening on the distant frontier. In the summer of 1858 Green Russell and a party of adventurous prospectors had discovered gold in Cherry Creek, a tributary of the Platte. The news spread, and grew as it spread, until the people living along the Missouri, which was then the frontier of the Republic, became excited over the richness of the discoveries.

They were ripe for adventure, desperate almost in their determination to reestablish the fortunes that had been wrecked by the financial panic of 1857, which had swept with disastrous effect along the entire borderland of the entire nation. In the spring of 1859 the march of the pioneers began. The Platte Valley was their grand pathway to the mountains, whose summits they greeted with exultant joy, and beneath whose protecting shadows they camped; here to make their homes, here to lay the foundations of the future State.

Thus in a little over half a century from the date of its purchase by the Federal Government, the Platte Valley had become the home of civilized man, and the work of its development begun. As gold was first discovered in this valley, so was quartz mining first begun on one of the tributaries in Gilpin County.

The first pioneer's cabin was erected in Denver; the first school-house was built at Boulder; the first church was consecrated at Denver; the first colony located at Greeley, and the first irrigating ditches taken out, all within the Platte Valley. As the valley had been the route of Major Long and other of the early explorers, so, following in the train of the pioneer, came first the pony express, then the stage-coach, then the locomotive and the Pullman car. And it is a fact which I believe has never yet been published, that the last stage-coach of the great overland line was dispatched from the town of Brighton to Denver, thus a.s.sociating its name with an act, insignificant in itself, but far-reaching in its importance, when it is remembered that that act marked the end of our pioneer period and ushered in the new growth of the railroad era.

We stand to-day at the distance of three-fourths of a century from the date when the foot of the white man first trod the valley of the Platte.

The names of Pike and Long are perpetuated by the two magnificent peaks which raise their summits to the clouds and stand as guardians of the plains below. Fremont lived to see his wildest dreams realized in the progress of the West, but whatever fame he may have achieved as a soldier and a statesman, his name will longest be remembered as the pathfinder of the Rocky Mountains. Wheat-fields now flourish where once stood the trading-posts of Vanquez and St. Vrain. The trails of the early explorers and of the pioneers of 1859 are almost obliterated, and gra.s.s is growing upon their once broad and beaten pathways. A happy, contented, prosperous people possess the land. A great line of railway now rolls the traffic of a continent along the valley where once the stage-coach and ox-trains of Russell, Majors & Waddell wended their slow and weary way. Thriving towns and villages and cities dot the plain, and reflect in the activity of their commercial life the industrial development by which they are surrounded.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

KANSAS CITY BEFORE THE WAR.

In August, 1838, there appeared in the far West a newspaper published at Liberty, in Clay County, Missouri, the only newspaper within many miles, a notice which read as follows: "Circuit Court of Jackson County, Missouri, at Independence, August term, 1838." Then followed a description of lands now included in what is known as the "old town" of Kansas City. Then continues: "The above mentioned lands are situated in the county of Jackson, one and one-half miles below the mouth of the Kansas River, and five miles from the flouris.h.i.+ng town of Westport. The situation is admirably calculated for a ferry across the Missouri River, and also one of the best steamboat landings on the river, and an excellent situation for a warehouse or town site. The terms of sale will be a credit of twelve months, the purchaser giving bond and approved security, with interest at the rate of 10 per cent from day of sale. All those wis.h.i.+ng to invest capital advantageously in landed estate will do well to call upon Justice H. McGee, who is guardian for the heirs.

"JAMES B. DAVENPORT, "PETER BOOTH, "ELLIOTT JOHNSON, "_Commissioners_."

The purchasers were William L. Sublette, John C. McCoy, William Gillis, Robert Campbell, and others, and the price paid for the entire tract, extending along the Missouri River from Broadway to Troost Avenue, containing 156 acres, was $4,220.

These gentlemen put their purchase into lots and blocks and called it "Kansas," but very little was done toward founding a city until some eight years later, when a new company was organized by H. M. Northup, who is still living; John C. McCoy, who died within the past few months; Fry P. McGee, Jacob Ragan, William Gillis, Robert Campbell, who have been dead but a few years respectively; Henry Jobe, W. B. Evans, and W.

M. Chick, who have been dead much longer.

The first sale of lots was had in April, 1848, at which sale 150 lots were sold at an average price of $55.65 per lot.

The business of the city was confined almost entirely, for a number of years, to the levee, and was of the general character of that done in all river towns in their early history, pretty rough, pretty miscellaneous, and not altogether unmixed with "wet goods." Prohibition was an unknown element in social science, and the proportion of whisky consumed in the retail trade, compared with that of tea or coffee, was very like that described by Shakespeare in referring to Falstaff's "intolerable deal of sack to the half penny worth of bread." But very few men of those days remain nowadays; yet, as I have said, H. M.

Northup still lives, vigorous and active. Dr. I. M. Ridge still continues to practice his profession, although less extensively than forty years ago. John Campbell traverses our streets, but has long since turned his well-known and faithful old sorrel mule out to gra.s.s. William Mulkey looks hale and hearty, but has discarded his former buckskin suit, though he still maintains a portion of his farm in the center of the city. Once in a long while one of the old French settlers of those early days, or even an old plainsman, ventures into the busy city and looks about him in a bewildered sort of way for a day or two, and then disappears again into the nearest wilderness or prairie, as being far more congenial to his tastes and habits of life. Not all of them, however, are of this character and disposition. It is but a few weeks since I met one of our most noted pioneer plainsmen and freighters across the prairies of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, in the earliest of the days I have been speaking of. In those times no name was better or more widely known than that of Seth E. Ward, the post trader at Laramie.

The descendants of most of the original owners of the "Town of Kansas,"

as it was first called, or "Westport Landing," as it was nicknamed later, still remain there, and are among its most prominent and respected citizens to-day.

Ten years later the "western fever" struck Ohio, and hundreds of young men of my acquaintance left there for Kansas and Nebraska. Omaha was a favorite objective point, and a town named Columbus was founded still farther west than Omaha, which was almost entirely colonized by people from Franklin County, Ohio. One of my friends, Dr. Theodore S. Case, also holding the rank of colonel, was studying medicine at the time in Columbus, Ohio, and resisted the fever until the following year, 1857, when, with a few books and a sheepskin authorizing him to write M. D.

after his name, and to commit manslaughter without being called to account for it, started for the West. He knew nothing of the West, but had a general idea that he would go to St. Louis, or Keokuk, or Des Moines, or Omaha, or Council Bluffs, or possibly to "Carson City," Kan.; for a sharper, originally from Columbus, had been out West and came back with a lithographic map of a city by that name, fixed up very attractively, and with all the modern improvements of court house, city hall, depots, churches, colleges, steamboats, etc., and he bought some $15 worth of lots on one of the princ.i.p.al thoroughfares of the city not far from the depot. However, before he got as far west as St. Louis, he had learned the manners and tricks of such gentry, and did not go to "Carson City." By some accidental circ.u.mstance his attention was called particularly to the geographical location of Kansas City, and he at once determined to give it a look anyhow. There being no railroad nearer than Jefferson City at that time, he took the steamer Minnehaha at St. Louis, along with some other 299 fellows who were going "out west to grow up with the country," and four days afterward landed at Kansas City, May 1, 1857, almost thirty-five years ago.

The first view of Kansas City was by no means prepossessing, as it consisted princ.i.p.ally of a line of shabby looking brick and frame warehouses, dry-goods stores, groceries, saloons, restaurants, etc., strung along the levee from Wyandotte Street to a little east of Walnut Street, the whole backed up and surmounted by a rugged and precipitous bluff, from 100 to 150 feet high, covered with old dead trees, brush, dog fennel and jimson weeds, with an occasional frame or log house scattered between and among them, and a few women and children, princ.i.p.ally darkies, looking down at the boats.

To a young man, however, the levee, with its three or four steamers, huge piles of Mexican freight, prairie schooners, mules, greasers, Indians, negroes, mud clerks, roustabouts, Frenchmen, consignees, emigrants, old settlers, tenderfeet, hotel drummers, bra.s.s bands, omnibuses, etc., presented attractions not easily resisted.

Notwithstanding all the tooting for hotels, there were really but two in the place, one on the levee, then known as the American Hotel, now remembered more familiarly as the "Gillis House," and the other the "Farmers' Hotel," on Grand Avenue, between Sixteenth and Seventeenth streets. The first was technically known as the "Free State Hotel,"

having been built by the New England Aid Emigrant Society, and the other as the "Pro-Slavery," or "Border Ruffian House," as it was or had been the headquarters of the pro-slavery party in the border war of 1854 and 1856 between the free state and pro-slavery contestants for the possession of political control of the Territory of Kansas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LEE'S FERRY, ON THE COLORADO.]

All travelers, however, who knew the ropes dodged both these hotels and took the omnibus for Westport, where two really good hotels were kept.

To show the amount of travel toward Kansas at that time I may say that at the American Hotel alone there were 27,000 arrivals in the year 1856-57.

Such was Kansas City in early days and the experience there of a tenderfoot, but now an honored citizen of what is really to-day a great city.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.