Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2)
This object accomplished, and impatient of inactivity, and without orders (General Kearney having departed for California), you cast about to carve out some new work for yourselves. Chihuahua, a rich and populous city of near thirty thousand souls, the seat of government of the State of that name, and formerly the residence of the captains-general of the Internal Provinces under the vice-regal government of New Spain, was the captivating object which fixed your attention. It was a far distant city – about as far from St. Louis as Moscow is from Paris; and towns and enemies, and a large river, and defiles and mountains, and the desert whose ominous name, portending death to travellers – el jornada de los muertos – the journey of the dead – all lay between you. It was a perilous enterprise, and a discouraging one, for a thousand men, badly equipped, to contemplate. No matter. Danger and hardship lent it a charm, and the adventurous march was resolved on, and the execution commenced. First, the ominous desert was passed, its character vindicating its title to its mournful appellation – an arid plain of ninety miles, strewed with the bones of animals perished of hunger and thirst – little hillocks of stone, and the solitary cross, erected by pious hands, marking the spot where some Christian had fallen, victim of the savage, of the robber, or of the desert itself – no water – no animal life – no sign of habitation. There the Texian prisoners, driven by the cruel Salazar, had met their direst sufferings, unrelieved, as in other parts of their march in the settled parts of the country, by the compassionate ministrations (for where is it that woman is not compassionate?) of the pitying women. The desert was passed, and the place for crossing the river approached. A little arm of the river, Bracito (in Spanish), made out from its side. There the enemy, in superior numbers, and confident in cavalry and artillery, undertook to bar the way. Vain pretension! Their discovery, attack, and rout, were about simultaneous operations. A few minutes did the work! And in this way our Missouri volunteers of the Chihuahua column spent their Christmas day of the year 1846.
The victory of the Bracito opened the way to the crossing of the river Del Norte, and to admission into the beautiful little town of the Paso del Norte, where a neat cultivation, a comfortable people, fields, orchards, and vineyards, and a hospitable reception, offered the rest and refreshment which toils and dangers, and victory had won. You rested there till artillery was brought down from Sante Fé; but the pretty town of the Paso del Norte, with all its enjoyments, and they were many, and the greater for the place in which they were found, was not a Capua to the men of Missouri. You moved forward in February, and the battle of the Sacramento, one of the military marvels of the age, cleared the road to Chihuahua; which was entered without further resistance. It had been entered once before by a detachment of American troops; but under circumstances how different! In the year 1807, Lieutenant Pike and his thirty brave men, taken prisoners on the head of the Rio del Norte, had been marched captives into Chihuahua: in the year 1847, Doniphan and his men enter it as conquerors. The paltry triumph of a captain-general over a lieutenant, was effaced in the triumphal entrance of a thousand Missourians into the grand and ancient capital of all the Internal Provinces! and old men, still alive, could remark the grandeur of the American spirit under both events – the proud and lofty bearing of the captive thirty – the mildness and moderation of the conquering thousand.
Chihuahua was taken, and responsible duties, more delicate than those of arms, were to be performed. Many American citizens were there, engaged in trade; much American property was there. All this was to be protected, both life and property, and by peaceful arrangement; for the command was too small to admit of division, and of leaving a garrison. Conciliation, and negotiation were resorted to, and successfully. Every American interest was provided for, and placed under the safeguard, first, of good will, and next, of guarantees not to be violated with impunity.
Chihuahua gained, it became, like Santa Fé, not the terminating point of a long expedition, but the beginning point of a new one. General Taylor was somewhere – no one knew where – but some seven or eight hundred miles towards the other side of Mexico. You had heard that he had been defeated, that Buena Vista had not been a good prospect to him. Like good Americans, you did not believe a word of it; but, like good soldiers, you thought it best to go and see. A volunteer party of fourteen, headed by Collins, of Boonville, undertake to penetrate to Saltillo, and to bring you information of his condition. They set out. Amidst innumerable dangers they accomplish their purpose, and return. Taylor is conqueror; but will be glad to see you. You march. A vanguard of one hundred men, led by Lieutenant-colonel Mitchell, led the way. Then came the main body (if the name is not a burlesque on such a handful), commanded by Colonel Doniphan himself.
The whole table land of Mexico, in all its breadth, from west to east, was to be traversed. A numerous and hostile population in towns – treacherous Camanches in the mountains – were to be passed. Every thing was to be self-provided – provisions, transportation, fresh horses for remounts, and even the means of victory – and all without a military chest, or even an empty box, in which government gold had ever reposed. All was accomplished. Mexican towns were passed, in order and quiet: plundering Camanches were punished: means were obtained from traders to liquidate indispensable contributions: and the wants that could not be supplied, were endured like soldiers of veteran service.
The long march from Chihuahua to Monterey, was made more in the character of protection and deliverance than of conquest and invasion. Armed enemies were not met, and peaceful people were not disturbed. You arrived in the month of May in General Taylor's camp, and about in a condition to vindicate, each of you for himself, your lawful title to the double sobriquet of the general, with the addition to it which the colonel commanding the expedition has supplied – ragged – as well as rough and ready. No doubt you all showed title, at that time, to that third sobriquet; but to see you now, so gayly attired, so sprucely equipped, one might suppose that you had never, for a day, been strangers to the virtues of soap and water, or the magic ministrations of the blanchisseuse, and the elegant transformations of the fashionable tailor. Thanks perhaps to the difference between pay in the lump at the end of the service, and driblets along in the course of it.
You arrived in General Taylor's camp ragged and rough, as we can well conceive, and ready, as I can quickly show. You arrived: you reported for duty: you asked for service – such as a march upon San Luis de Potosi, Zacatecas, or the "halls of the Montezumas;" or any thing in that way that the general should have a mind to. If he was going upon any excursion of that kind, all right. No matter about fatigues that were passed, or expirations of service that might accrue: you came to go, and only asked the privilege. That is what I call ready. Unhappily the conqueror of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and Buena Vista, was not exactly in the condition that the lieutenant-general, that might have been, intended him to be. He was not at the head of twenty thousand men! he was not at the head of any thousands that would enable him to march! and had to decline the proffered service. Thus the long-marched and well-fought volunteers – the rough, the ready, and the ragged – had to turn their faces towards home, still more than two thousand miles distant. But this being mostly by water, you hardly count it in the recital of your march. But this is an unjust omission, and against the precedents as well as unjust. "The ten thousand" counted the voyage on the Black Sea as well as the march from Babylon; and twenty centuries admit the validity of the count. The present age, and posterity, will include in "the going out and coming in" of the Missouri-Chihuahua volunteers, the water voyage as well as the land march; and then the expedition of the one thousand will exceed that of the ten by some two thousand miles.
The last nine hundred miles of your land march, from Chihuahua to Matamoros, you made in forty-five days, bringing seventeen pieces of artillery, eleven of which were taken from the Sacramento and Bracito. Your horses, travelling the whole distance without United States provender, were astonished to find themselves regaled, on their arrival on the Rio Grande frontier, with hay, corn, and oats from the States. You marched further than the farthest, fought as well as the best, left order and quiet in your train; and cost less money than any.
You arrive here to-day, absent one year, marching and fighting all the time, bringing trophies of cannon and standards from fields whose names were unknown to you before you set out, and only grieving that you could not have gone further. Ten pieces of cannon, rolled out of Chihuahua to arrest your march, now roll through the streets of St. Louis, to grace your triumphal return. Many standards, all pierced with bullets while waving over the heads of the enemy at the Sacramento, now wave at the head of your column. The black flag, brought to the Bracito, to indicate the refusal of that quarter which its bearers so soon needed and received, now takes its place among your trophies, and hangs drooping in their nobler presence. To crown the whole – to make public and private happiness go together – to spare the cypress where the laurel hangs in clusters – this long, perilous march, with all its accidents of field and camp, presents an incredibly small list of comrades lost. Almost all return: and the joy of families resounds, intermingled with the applause of the State.
I have said that you made your long expedition without government orders: and so, indeed, you did. You received no orders from your government, but, without knowing it, you were fulfilling its orders – orders which, though issued for you, never reached you. Happy the soldier who executes the command of his government: happier still he who anticipates command, and does what is wanted before he is bid. This is your case. You did the right thing, at the right time, and what your government intended you to do, and without knowing its intentions. The facts are these: Early in the month of November last, the President asked my opinion on the manner of conducting the war. I submitted a plan to him, which, in addition to other things, required all the disposable troops in New Mexico, and all the American citizens in that quarter who could be engaged for a dashing expedition, to move down through Chihuahua, and the State of Durango, and, if necessary, to Zacatecas, and get into communication with General Taylor's right as early as possible in the month of March. In fact, the disposable forces in New Mexico were to form one of three columns destined for a combined movement on the city of Mexico, all to be on the table-land and ready for a combined movement in the month of March. The President approved the plan, and the Missourians being most distant, orders were despatched to New Mexico to put them in motion. Mr. Solomon Sublette carried the order, and delivered it to the commanding officer at Santa Fé, General Price, on the 22d day of February – just five days before you fought the marvellous action of Sacramento. I well remember what passed between the President and myself at the time he resolved to give this order. It awakened his solicitude for your safety. It was to send a small body of men a great distance, into the heart of a hostile country, and upon the contingency of uniting in a combined movement, the means for which had not yet been obtained from Congress. The President made it a question, and very properly, whether it was safe or prudent to start the small Missouri column, before the movement of the left and the centre was assured: I answered that my own rule in public affairs was to do what I thought was right, and leave it to others to do what they thought was right; and that I believed it the proper course for him to follow on the present occasion. On this view he acted. He gave the order to go, without waiting to see whether Congress would supply the means of executing the combined plan; and for his consolation I undertook to guarantee your safety. Let the worst come to the worst, I promised him that you would take care of yourselves. Though the other parts of the plan should fail – though you should become far involved in the advance, and deeply compromised in the enemy's country, and without support – still I relied on your courage, skill, and enterprise to extricate yourselves from every danger – to make daylight through all the Mexicans that should stand before you – cut your way out – and make good your retreat to Taylor's camp. This is what I promised the President in November last; and what I promised him you have done. Nobly and manfully you have made one of the most remarkable expeditions in history, worthy to be studied by statesmen, and showing what citizen volunteers can do; for the crowning characteristic is that you were all citizens – all volunteers – not a regular bred officer among you: and if there had been, with power to control you, you could never have done what you did.
CHAPTER CLXIV.
FREMONT'S THIRD EXPEDITION, AND ACQUISITION OF CALIFORNIA
In the month of May 1845, Mr. Frémont, then a brevet captain of engineers (appointed a lieutenant-colonel of Rifles before he returned), set out on his third expedition of geographical and scientific exploration in the Great West. Hostilities had not broken out between the United States and Mexico; but Texas had been incorporated; the preservation of peace was precarious, and Mr. Frémont was determined, by no act of his, to increase the difficulties, or to give any just cause of complaint to the Mexican government. His line of observation would lead him to the Pacific Ocean, through a Mexican province – through the desert parts first, and the settled part afterwards of the Alta California. Approaching the settled parts of the province at the commencement of winter, he left his equipment of 60 men and 200 horses on the frontier, and proceeded alone to Monterey, to make known to the governor the object of his coming, and his desire to pass the winter (for the refreshment of his men and horses) in the uninhabited parts of the valley of the San Joaquin. The permission was granted; but soon revoked, under the pretext that Mr. Frémont had come into California, not to pursue science, but to excite the American settlers to revolt against the Mexican government. Upon this pretext troops were raised, and marched to attack him. Having notice of their approach, he took a position on the mountain, hoisted the flag of the United States, and determined, with his sixty brave men, to defend himself to the last extremity – never surrendering; and dying, if need be, to the last man. A messenger came into his camp, bringing a letter from the American consul at Monterey, to apprise him of his danger: that messenger, returning, reported that 2,000 men could not force the American position: and that information had its effect upon the Mexican commander. Waiting four days in his mountain camp, and not being attacked, he quit his position, descended from the mountain, and set out for Oregon, that he might give no further pretext for complaint, by remaining in California.
Turning his back on the Mexican possessions, and looking to Oregon as the field of his future labors, Mr. Frémont determined to explore a new route to the Wah-lah-math settlements and the tide-water region of the Columbia, through the wild and elevated region of the Tla-math lakes. A romantic interest attached to this region from the grandeur of its features, its lofty mountains, and snow-clad peaks, and from the formidable character of its warlike inhabitants. In the first week of May, he was at the north end of the Great Tla-math lake, and in Oregon – the lake being cut near its south end by the parallel of 42 degrees north latitude. On the 8th day of that month, a strange sight presented itself – almost a startling apparition – two men riding up, and penetrating a region which few ever approached without paying toll of life or blood. They proved to be two of Mr. Frémont's old voyageurs, and quickly told their story. They were part of a guard of six men conducting a United States officer, who was on his trail with despatches from Washington, and whom they had left two days back, while they came on to give notice of his approach, and to ask that assistance might be sent him. They themselves had only escaped the Indians by the swiftness of their horses. It was a case in which no time was to be lost, or a mistake made. Mr. Frémont determined to go himself; and taking ten picked men, four of them Delaware Indians, he took down the western shore of the lake on the morning of the 9th (the direction the officer was to come), and made a ride of sixty miles without a halt. But to meet men, and not to miss them, was the difficult point in this trackless region. It was not the case of a high road, where all travellers must meet in passing each other: at intervals there were places – defiles, or camping grounds – where both parties must pass; and watching for these, he came to one in the afternoon, and decided that, if the party was not killed, it must be there that night. He halted and encamped; and, as the sun was going down, had the inexpressible satisfaction to see the four men approaching. The officer proved to be a lieutenant of the United States marines, who had been despatched from Washington the November previous, to make his way by Vera Cruz, the City of Mexico, and Mazatlan to Monterey, in Upper California, deliver despatches to the United States' consul there; and then find Mr. Frémont, wherever he should be. His despatches for Mr. Frémont were only a letter of introduction from the Secretary of State (Mr. Buchanan), and some letters and slips of newspapers from Senator Benton and his family, and some verbal communications from the Secretary of State. The verbal communications were that Mr. Frémont should watch and counteract any foreign scheme on California, and conciliate the good will of the inhabitants towards the United States. Upon this intimation of the government's wishes, Mr. Frémont turned back from Oregon, in the edge of which he then was, and returned to California. The letter of introduction was in the common form, that it might tell nothing if it fell into the hands of foes, and signified nothing of itself; but it accredited the bearer, and gave the stamp of authority to what he communicated; and upon this Mr. Frémont acted: for it was not to be supposed that Lieutenant Gillespie had been sent so far, and through so many dangers, merely to deliver a common letter of introduction on the shores of the Tlamath lake.
The events of some days on the shores of this wild lake, sketched with the brevity which the occasion requires, may give a glimpse of the hardships and dangers through which Mr. Frémont pursued science, and encountered and conquered perils and toils. The night he met Mr. Gillespie presented one of those scenes to which he was so often exposed, and which nothing but the highest degree of vigilance and courage could prevent from being fatal. The camping ground was on the western side of the lake, the horses picketed with long halters on the shore, to feed on the grass; and the men (fourteen in number) sleeping by threes at different fires, disposed in a square; for danger required them so to sleep as to be ready for an attack; and, though in the month of May, the elevation of the place, and the proximity of snow-clad mountains, made the night intensely cold. His feelings joyfully excited by hearing from home (the first word of intelligence he had received since leaving the U. S. a year before), Mr. Frémont sat up by a large fire, reading his letters and papers, and watching himself over the safety of the camp, while the men slept. Towards midnight, he heard a movement among the horses, indicative of alarm and danger. Horses, and especially mules, become sensitive to danger under long travelling and camping in the wilderness, and manifest their alarm at the approach of any thing strange. Taking a six-barrelled pistol in his hand, first making sure of their ready fire, and, without waking the camp, he went down among the disturbed animals. The moon shone brightly: he could see well, but could discover nothing. Encouraged by his presence, the horses became quiet – poor dumb creatures that could see the danger, but not tell what they had seen; and he returned to the camp, supposing it was only some beast of the forest – a bear or wolf – prowling for food, that had disturbed them. He returned to the camp fire. Lieutenant Gillespie woke up, and talked with him awhile, and then lay down again. Finally nature had her course with Mr. Frémont himself. Excited spirits gave way to exhausted strength. The day's ride, and the night's excitement demanded the reparation of repose. He lay down to sleep, and without waking up a man to watch – relying on the loneliness of the place, and the long ride of the day, as a security against the proximity of danger. It was the second time in his twenty thousand miles of wilderness explorations that his camp had slept without a guard: the first was in his second expedition, and on an island in the Great Salt Lake, and when the surrounding water of the lake itself constituted a guard. The whole camp was then asleep. A cry from Carson roused it. In his sleep he heard a groan: it was the groan of a man receiving the tomahawk in his brains. All sprung to their feet. The savages were in the camp: the hatchet and the winged arrow were at work. Basil Lajeunesse, a brave and faithful young Frenchman, the follower of Frémont in all his expeditions, was dead: an Iowa was dead: a brave Delaware Indian, one of those who had accompanied Frémont from Missouri, was dying: it was his groan that awoke Carson. Another of the Delawares was a target for arrows, from which no rifle could save him – only avenge him. The savages had waited till the moon was in the trees, casting long shadows over the sleeping camp: then approaching from the dark side, with their objects between themselves and the fading light, they used only the hatchet and the formidable bow, whose arrow went to its mark without a flash or a sound to show whence it came. All advantages were on the side of the savages: but the camp was saved! the wounded protected from massacre, and the dead from mutilation. The men, springing to their feet, with their arms in their hands, fought with skill and courage. In the morning, Lieutenant Gillespie recognized, in the person of one of the slain assailants, the Tlamath chief who the morning before had given him a salmon, in token of friendship, and who had followed him all day to kill and rob his party at night – a design in which he would certainly have been successful had it not been for the promptitude and precision of Mr. Frémont's movement. Mr. Frémont himself would have been killed, when he went to the horses, had it not been that the savages counted upon the destruction of the whole camp, and feared to alarm it by killing one, before the general massacre.
It was on the 9th of May – a day immortalized by American arms at Resaca de la Palma – that this fierce and bloody work was done in the far distant region of the Tlamath lakes.
The morning of the 10th of May was one of gloom in the camp. The evening sun of the 9th had set upon it full of life and joy at a happy meeting: the same sun rose upon it the next morning, stained with blood, ghastly with the dead and wounded, and imposing mournful duties on the survivors. The wounded were to be carried – the dead to be buried; and so buried as to be hid and secured from discovery and violation. They were carried ten miles, and every precaution taken to secure the remains from the wolf and the savage: for men, in these remote and solitary dangers, become brothers, and defend each other living and dead. The return route lay along the shore of the lake, and during the day the distant canoes of the savages could be seen upon it, evidently watching the progress of the party, and meditating a night attack upon it. All precautions, at the night encampment, were taken for security – horses and men enclosed in a breastwork of great trees, cut down for the purpose, and half the men constantly on the watch. At leaving in the morning, an ambuscade was planted – and two of the Tlamaths were killed by the men in ambush – a successful return of their own mode of warfare. At night the main camp, at the north end of the lake, was reached. It was strongly intrenched, and could not be attacked; but the whole neighborhood was infested, and scouts and patrols were necessary to protect every movement. In one of these excursions the Californian horse, so noted for spirit and docility, showed what he would do at the bid of his master. Carson's rifle had missed fire, at ten feet distance. The Tlamath long bow, arrow on the string, was bending to the pull. All the rifles in the party could not have saved him. A horse and his rider did it. Mr. Frémont touched his horse; he sprang upon the savage! and the hatchet of a Delaware completed the deliverance of Carson. It was a noble horse, an iron gray, with a most formidable name – el Toro del Sacramento: and which vindicated his title to the name in all the trials of travel, courage, and performance to which he was subjected. It was in the midst of such dangers as these, that science was pursued by Mr. Frémont; that the telescope was carried to read the heavens; the barometer to measure the elevations of the earth; the thermometer to gauge the temperature of the air; the pencil to sketch the grandeur of mountains, and to paint the beauty of flowers; the pen to write down whatever was new, or strange, or useful in the works of nature. It was in the midst of such dangers, and such occupations as these, and in the wildest regions of the Farthest West, that Mr. Frémont was pursuing science and shunning war, when the arrival of Lieutenant Gillespie, and his communications from Washington, suddenly changed all his plans, turned him back from Oregon, and opened a new and splendid field of operations in California itself. He arrived in the valley of the Sacramento in the month of May, 1846, and found the country alarmingly, and critically situated. Three great operations, fatal to American interests, were then going on, and without remedy, if not arrested at once. These were: 1. The massacre of the Americans, and the destruction of their settlements, in the valley of the Sacramento. 2. The subjection of California to British protection. 3. The transfer of the public domain to British subjects. And all this with a view to anticipate the events of a Mexican war, and to shelter California from the arms of the United States.
