The Rocky Mountain West in 1867
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TheRockyMountainWestin1867 2 LouisL.Simonin Copyright 1966, 1994 Reproduced by permission of University of Nebraska Press The Rocky Mountain West in 1867 by LOUIS L. SIMONIN Translated and annotated by WILSON O. CLOUGH from Le grand-ouest des Etats-Unis UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS LINCOLN TheRockyMountainWestin1867 3 LouisL.Simonin Copyright 1966, 1994 Reproduced by permission of University of Nebraska Press Earlier versions of portions of this translation have been previously published: part of Chapter 9 as "A French View of Cheyenne in 1867," Frontier, X (March 1930), 240-242; portions of Chapters 10 through 15 under the title "Fort Russell and the Fort Laramie Peace Commission in 1867," Frontier, XI (January 1931), 177-186, reprinted in State University of Montana, Sources of Northwest History, No. 14; and parts of Chapters 4 through 7 as "Colorado in 1867 as Seen by a Frenchman," Colorado Magazine, XIV (March 1937), 56-63. Copyright © 1966 by the University of Nebraska Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog card number 66-16514 Reproduced by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 1966, 1994 by the University of Nebraska Press. (Reproduced in 2012) MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TheRockyMountainWestin1867 4 LouisL.Simonin Copyright 1966, 1994 Reproduced by permission of University of Nebraska Press Contents Translator's Foreword ................................................................................ ix Selected Bibliography of Simonin's Writings.......................................... xiii Author's Preface...........................................................................................3 1. The Queen of the Lakes ...............................................................................4 2. The Missouri ..............................................................................................11 3. The Tall Grass Country..............................................................................18 4. The Transcontinental Stage........................................................................26 5. The City of the Plains ................................................................................32 6. The Founders of Colorado .........................................................................40 7. The Miners of the Rocky Mountains .........................................................46 8. Gold and Silver ..........................................................................................52 9. The Birth of a City.....................................................................................59 10. The Soldiers of the Desert..........................................................................68 11. A Caravan ..................................................................................................75 12. Fort Laramie...............................................................................................84 13. A Sioux Village..........................................................................................89 14. Mountain Men, Trappers, and Traders ......................................................96 15. The Great Council of the Crows ..............................................................100 16. Moneka, the Pearl of the Prairies.............................................................120 17. The Savages .............................................................................................125 18. The Indian Question.................................................................................131 19. The Emancipation of Women ..................................................................143 20. The Empire City.......................................................................................150 21. The American People...............................................................................157 Appendix: Newspaper Accounts of Simonin's Trip ................................161 Acknowledgements..................................................................................165 Index ........................................................................................................167 TheRockyMountainWestin1867 5 LouisL.Simonin Copyright 1966, 1994 Reproduced by permission of University of Nebraska Press List of Illustrations following page 82 Building the Union Pacific Railroad A Denver Street View of Central City Georgetown Pikes Peak Cheyenne Fort Laramie Pierre Richard and His Indian Wife vii TheRockyMountainWestin1867 6 LouisL.Simonin Copyright 1966, 1994 Reproduced by permission of University of Nebraska Press Translator's Foreword The trans-Mississippi West of the nineteenth century held a singular fascination for European visitors; they came in large numbers to satisfy their curiosity about the Red Indians, to hunt the great bison, or, particularly in the latter years of the century, to invest in cattle-raising or mining ventures. Among the earliest who have left a record of their travels were Prince Maximilian von Wied-Neuwied, who toured the upper Missouri region in 1832, and Sir William Drummond Stewart, who visited the Rockies at about the same time. The real influx of travelers did not begin, however, until some twenty years later; and tourists were still something of a novelty until after the Civil War. After the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, however, as Robert G. Athearn has written, "it was merely a matter of buying a railroad ticket if one wanted to have a look at much of the area. Since almost every part of the new land was available to the most cautious tourist, via the many branch lines, western America was literally overrun with travelers, most of whom, happily, had an insatiable urge to write of their observations."1 In this body of literature the present volume, apart from its intrinsic interest, holds a special place for two reasons: the overwhelming majority of the accounts were written by travelers from England, and Louis Laurent Simonin (1830-1886) was a Frenchman; moreover, he did not wait for the ceremonies at Promontory Point to visit the Rocky Mountain West. When he toured the region in the autumn of 1867, rail service extended only as far west as Julesburg. Born in Marseilles, Simonin was a mining engineer, a graduate of the School of Mines in St. Etienne, and after 1865 a professor of geology at the Ecole Centrale d'Architecture in Paris. An inveterate traveler, he had, prior to 1867, made scientific and exploratory trips to the mines of France and Italy, Madagascar, the island of Reunion, and in 1859, to California. He was a prolific writer; in addition to accounts of his travels [ix] he published a number of books dealing with geology and mining (see Selected Bibliography of Simonin's Writings, p. xiii), and contributed frequently to literary and scientific journals. His 1867 trip, as Simonin tells us in his preface, followed on an invitation from J. P. Whitney, a commissioner from Colorado Territory to the Paris Exposition. A gentleman "largely engaged in the development of our mines," Whitney had, at his own expense, assembled a fine exhibit of minerals for the Exposition, and thereby "induced several eminent scientists of Europe to make exhaustive examinations of the gold, silver and other resources of the Territory, whose favorable reports, when published, caused the investment of foreign capital in them."2 When Whitney returned to Colorado, he was accompanied by Simonin and Colonel Wilhelm Heine, then attaché to the American legation in Paris. Heine seems to have been a man of parts—a painter, writer, soldier, and traveler. Born in Dresden, he had studied art in Paris before emigrating to the United States in 1849 at the age of twenty-two. His travels took him to Central America and the Far East—he was a member of Commodore Perry's 1852 expedition to Japan. During the Civil War he saw action as a captain of engineers in the Union Army and later held the post of consul in Paris and Liverpool. The Whitney party arrived in Denver in early October. 1 Robert G. Athearn, Westward the Briton (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), p. 5. 2 Frank Hall, History of the State of Colorado (Chicago: Blakely, 1889-1895), I, 440-441 TheRockyMountainWestin1867 7 LouisL.Simonin Copyright 1966, 1994 Reproduced by permission of University of Nebraska Press In 1867 the United States was at the peak of a period of physical and industrial expansion, and Simonin was caught up in the prevailing sentiment that nothing could stop the tide of empire. Even the Civil War—which he mentions only in passing—appears to have been to him little more than an interruption in the steady drive westward. The mid-nineteenth century was indeed a watershed era, looking back to the difficulties of the early republic and ahead to the seemingly boundless promise of the future. Men still living remembered the Lewis and Clark expedition; mountain men and trappers were not yet a vanished breed; and the Colorado gold rush, the transcontinental telegraph, and the Pacific railroad were current news. But underlying this frontier activity, so stimulating to Simonin, was the chronic Indian warfare which culminated during the decade of the sixties. With the withdrawal of government troops from the West during the Civil War, the hostile Plains Indians, in particular the Brulé Sioux, the Cheyennes, and the Arapahos, had become emboldened in their attacks on white settlements. The situation had become so critical that in 1866 travel in the