THE MOUNTAIN MEN and the Fur Trade of the Far West

biographical sketches of the participants by scholars of the subject and with introductions by the editor

under the editorial supervision of LEROY R. HAFEN State Historian of , Emeritus Prof essor of History, Brigham Young University

Volume VIII

THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY Glendale, California 1971 •

374 THE MOUNTAIN MEN Popo Agie, which they followed to its junction with Wind River, which presently becomes the Bighorn. There they joined the main party and continued down the Bighorn. They eluded a Blackfeet ambush, but not without serious wounds, and arrived at their semi-permanent camp on the Yellowstone near the mouth of the Bighorn.26 Late in the summer of 1826 Bill returned to New Mexico where, on August 29, at Santa Fe, he and Ceran St. Vrain and their thirty-five "servants" were given a "passport" by Governor Antonio Norbona "to pass to the State of Sonora [Arizona] for private trade." Although Norbona suspected that the trappers' real purpose was to hunt beaver his official records protested that the "passport" did not include the privilege of "lingering" to trap beavers on the rivers of Sonora. Undeterred, that fall the trappers penetrated deep into the country north of the Gila, working it and its upper affluents.27 One day, as Bill worked alone, he was surprised by the , captured, "stripped of everything, clothes, arms, traps and mule and turned loose in the desert." Stark naked, afoot, and without a weapon, he headed northeast toward Taos. After a 160-mile travail through the White Moun­ tains, the arid valley of the Little Colorado, and the desert country of the Zunis, Bill was picked up among the mesas by the Zunis, taken to their pueblo, ceremoniously welcomed, provided with a blanket and moccasins, and "treated with great veneration and almost worship." After he left the Zunis he appears to have spent some time during the sum-

26 Triplett, op. cit., 416-18, 433-39. Sioux Pass is in present southwest Fremont Co., Wyo. Their semi-permanent camp was near present Bighorn, southwest Treas­ ure Co., Mont. 27 Thomas Maitland Marshall, "St. Vrain's Expedition to the Gila in 1826," in Southwest Historical Quarterly, vol. XIX, no. 3 (Jan. 1916), 253, 255, 257-58. There Is much more to the story, involving politics, Mexican-Indian relations, bribery, per­ sonalities, etc. The entire subject of Mexican-trapper relations Invites scholarly ex­ ploration. See Thomas J. Farnham, Travels in the Californias (N.Y., 1846), S4-86. WILLIAM S. (OLD BILL) WILLIAMS 375 mer of 1827 among the Navahos. Ultimately he made it back to Taos, some two hundred miles.28 Bill left Taos early in the fall of 1827 with a trapping party led by Sylvestre S. Pratte, with Ceran St. Vrain as clerk, bound for Green River. On their way north they camped in Park Kyack, a lush basin full of game, girt on the wTest and south by the snowy Park Range (Continental Divide), on the east by the Medicine Bow Mountains. The North Platte River rises in the park and emerges northward between spurs of the Sierra Madre and Medicine Bows. There, on October 1, Pratte sickened and died, and was suc­ ceeded by St. Vrain. They went on to Green River waters, where they wintered. In April 1828, the party broke up, and most of the men, probably including Bill Williams, reached Taos about May 23.29 From the spring of 1828 to the spring of 1830 Bill appar­ ently became better acquainted with the Utes, their country, and other recesses of the Rocky Mountains theretofore known only to the natives; and acquired wide repute for an accurate knowledge of his range. At Taos, in the spring of 1830, he met young Jesus Archuleta, who began a tenure as Bill's loyal retainer by accompanying him on a trip to South Park and the valley of the South Platte. They went north over Raton Pass and, keeping east of the mountains, arrived at a point near Manitou Springs where they swung around Pike's Peak and crossed the mountains into a splendid hunting ground, South Park, headwaters

28 James J. Webb's signed statement (ms.), Webb papers (private), St Louis, Mo.; William Ingraham Kip, "The Last of the Leatherstockings," in The Overland Monthly, vol. II, no. 5 (May, 1869), 409; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Dec. 24, 1911; W. T. Hamilton, My Sixty Years on the Plains (N.Y., 1905), 102. 29 Ceran St. Vrain to B. Pratte & Co., enclosing undated memo, of acct., cert, of services, etc., dated Sept. 1, 1829 (mss.), Bent-St. Vrain Papers, P. Chouteau Maffitt Coll., Mo. Hist. Soc, St. Louis. The letter, probably sent from Taos, Is undated and was received in St. Louis Sept. 28, 1828. Park Kyack, also known to the mountain men as The Bull Pen, The Buffalo Pasture, New Park, and North Park (its present name), occupies most of Jackson Co., Colo. 376 THE MOUNTAIN MEN country of the South Platte. Though their route north out of the park is uncertain, it seems likely they went as far north­ west as Williams Fork of the upper Colorado River, then circled southward to the South Platte, followed it to about its junction with Cherry Creek, and went south by an un­ known route to the Arkansas, which they followed to Bent's Fort.30 On September 4, 1832, at the bid of John Harris, a motley crew of some seventy-five trappers and adventurers from the New Mexico settlements, including Bill Williams and another seasoned trapper, Aaron B. Lewis, and Albert Pike, a young Easterner of literary proclivity, rendezvoused in the valley of the Rio Pueblo de Picuris, on the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, about twenty-seven miles south of Taos. The announced intention was to trap "the Cumanche country, upon the heads of the Red river and Fausse Washita." They left on the sixth, and the entire course trended southeast.81 They crossed the mountains near Tres Ritos into Mora Valley, continued to the junction of the Mora River and Sapello Creek, where they struck the and followed it to a point six miles beyond the Gallinas River crossing. There they left it and crossed to the Pecos River at Anton Chico. Eleven days and nearly ninety miles of fol­ lowing the Pecos brought them to Bosque Redondo, where they left the river and headed toward the western escarp­ ment of the Llano Estacado (Staked Plain), up which they wound to a trail.82 The trail led them down the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos River, a succession of depressions holding more

30 St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Dec. 24, 1911. See note 37. 31 Albert Pike, "Narrative of a Journey in the Prairie," in Publications of the Arkansas Historical Association (Conway, Ark., 1917), IV, pp. 94-96; Writers' Pro­ gram, w.p.A., New Mexico (N.Y., 1940), 377. Originally Included in Pike's Prose Sketches and Poems (Boston, 1834), his "Narrative" was reprinted in 1835 with emended text in Pike's newspaper, The Arkansas Advocate. The 1917 printing copies the 1835 text. 32 Pike, op. cit., 95-96, 98-101; Writers' Program, New Mexico, 355, 370, 377. WILLIAM S. (OLD BILL) WILLIAMS 377 or less water. For eighteen days and well over two hundred miles they followed the fork across the arid llano, met nom­ inally friendly , lost and recovered the trail, lost men by desertion, and hunted with little success. Near the junction of the Double Mountain Fork and its South Branch the outfit got lost in the sand hills and broke up.33 Ill-conceived, misdirected, with overtones of deceit and fraud, and with constantly impending Mexican and Co­ manche treachery, the expedition never reached the waters of either the Red or the Washita; and beavers, like the buf­ falo, were always "just ahead" and not one beaver was taken. Bill Williams returned to Taos in time to outfit for the 1832- 1833 trapping season.84 In middle November 1833, Bill, as guide, left a trappers' camp on Ham's Fork, a tributary of Black's Fork of Green River, with a Rocky Mountain Fur Company outfit under Henry Fraeb. They headed for Green River and, as the signs indicated a good season, expected to remain out until about March 1, 1834, and appear to have done so. Bill was back in Taos before April 1." Some time before this Bill had taken up residence in a Taos adobe with a Mexican widow wTith three children. It is known that her maiden name was Antonia Baca, and she came of a good family. One son, Jose, was born about 1834 to Antonia and Bill, who probably lived together for some years after that.36 Bill now sought wider knowledge of the Far West. Ac­ cording to the narrative of Jesus Ruperto Valdez (Pepe) Archuleta, his camp keeper, Bill arranged a two-man "ex-

33 Pike, op. cit., 102-15; William Curry Holden, "Comanche Trail," in The Hand­ book of Texas, ed. Walter Prescott Webb (Austin, 1952), 1, p. 386; Id., Anon., "Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos River," 515. 34 Pike, op. cit., 94-115- 35 Thomas Fitzpatrick to William Sublette, Nov. 13, 1833 (ms.), Sublette Papers, Mo. Hist. Soc, St. Louis; Hiram Martin Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West (Stanford, 1954), I, pp. 260, 476. 36 Statements at Taos of Juan Santistevan, Apr. 24 and 27, 1908, and Teresina (Bent) Scheurich, Apr. 29, 1908, Early Far West Notebook xn (ms.), 47'49. 53"55, 58-59, F. W. Cragin Papers, loc. cit.; Lewis, op. cit., 192. 378 THE MOUNTAIN MEN ploring expedition" into the vast Mexican land between the middle Rio Grande settlements and the Pacific, finding "his own trail" from near Zuni Pueblo "clear through to the missions" in California, to test stories he had heard from "Indians and priests ... of some very wonderful things" farther west. It was to be a leisurely reconnaissance, spiced with hunts and visits with strange people.37 Bill gathered Pepe and "two fine saddle horses," three pack mules, ammunition, only four traps, and left Taos on April i, 1834, for Santa Fe, where he bought food staples and medicines, and followed the old Chihuahua Trail to Albuquerque. There, says Archuleta, they visited the "mis­ sion" (San Felipe Neri Church), where Bill assisted "the padres in translating some Bible lessons into Navajo lingo."38 They continued down the old trail to Isleta Pueblo, left it to cross westward to Laguna Pueblo, turned southwest into "a maze of canyons and cul de sacs/' skirted the Malpais (lava beds), headed south into the San Augustine Plains, and watered at Horse Springs. They worked west and north around the Datil Range into very rough country, and dis­ covered that a volcanic hill they climbed to spot a better trail contained within its crater the fabled Zuni Salt Lake.39

37 Archuleta's narrative was first published in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Dec. 24, 1911, partially subtitled: "The Story of Bill Williams, . . . told here for the first time," and with the narrator's portrait. Its authenticity has been questioned; however, the results of certain tests and investigations (too numerous and lengthy to recount here), applied to the story, are sufficient to convince us that, despite oc­ casional anachromisms and other lapses, the narrative is essentially true in all mat­ ters of which the narrator could have had personal knowledge; and that part has been accepted as substantially correct. One important change has been made-in order to harmonize with an established chronology, and in the absence of reliable conflicting testimony, the events have been shifted from the years 1832-1835 to 1834- 1837. 3S Hamilton, op. cit., 102. 39 Isleta is fifteen miles south of Albuquerque, Laguna fifty miles west of Isleta. The Malpais, in present Valencia Co., N.M., is twenty-five miles southwest of La­ guna. Horse Springs, in the west central part of the San Augustine Plains, in present Catron Co., N.M., is about fifty miles directly south of The Malpais. The Datil Range is in present western Catron Co., N.M., and the Salt Lake in the northwest corner of the county. WILLIAM S. (OLD BILL) WILLIAMS 379 By a devious trail they arrived at the "extreme border house where a civilized man lived," the Cienega Amarilla rancho of Pedro Sanchez, whom Bill had met at Zuni Pueblo in 1827. Continuing west, they crossed the Little Colorado River, and one day met a hunting party of Hopis who directed them to the Petrified Forest. Fascinated, they rode through it to a Hopi village where they learned enough about the Grand Canyon to urge them toward its rim, and after a zig-zag trip they camped above Marble Canyon, where they sat in enchanted stupor.40 Next morning they started south, ran into the formidable canyon of the Little Colorado, retreated eastward to a river crossing, and rode south and west to the neighborhood of what became known as Bill Williams Mountain, where they spent the winter of 1834-1835 in a Walapai village. In the spring they rode west to the Colorado River where, at another Walapai village they met Padre Gonzales, a wander­ ing Franciscan who, since they were seeking enjoyment, not hardship, dissuaded them from crossing the inhospitable Mohave Desert.41 They crossed the Colorado, Bill and Pepe in a canoe, the animals swimming, headed upriver and generally followed the north bank to a low mountain, probably in the Muddy Range, from which they descried the cottonwood fringe along the Virgin River. From that point their northward course is undefined; but thirty-five days later they were at Great Salt Lake, and finally, after many summer days and

40 Cienega Amarilla (Yellow Meadow) lies in present western McKinley Co., N.M., and eastern Apache Co., Ariz., centering near St. Michaels, Ariz. Marble Canyon is the northern arm of the Grand Canyon, above the mouth of the Little Colorado. 41 Bill Williams Mountain, in present southwestern Coconino Co., Ariz., is be­ lieved to have been named by Bill's friend Antoine Leroux. In both instances Archu­ leta called the Indians "Maricopas," but it is believed that he referred to the Mata' va-kapai (north people), a subdivision of the Walapai. See John R. Swanton, The Indian Tribes of North America in Bulletin 145, Bur. of Am. Ethnol. (Washington, 1952), 366. The padre could well have been Rubio Gonzales, "the Zacatecan," exiled from a California mission during secularization, just prior to this time.