Tales of the Colorado Pioneers. Alice Polk Hill
Names of Rivers—The Pioneers’ Pride………………316
Perchance the living still may look
Into the pages of this book,
And see the days of long ago
Floating and fleeting to and fro,
As in the well-remembered brook
They saw the inverted landscape gleam,
And their own faces like a dream
Look up upon them from below.
—Longfellow.
“ Who so shall telle a tale after a man,
He moste reherse, as neighe as ever he can,
Everich word, if it be in his charge,
All speke he never so rudely and so large;
Or elles he moste tellen his tale untrewe,
Or fienen things, or linden words newe.”
—Chaucer.
TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS.
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CHAPTER I.
GOLD.
A large proportion of the explorers, adventurers, pilgrims, prospectors and colonial “tramps” that, since the days of Noah, have marched away to establish settlements elsewhere, have been driven to it by some unpleasantness at home.
Colorado was to some extent an outgrowth of the great financial crash of 1857. Time-honored houses had reeled, tottered and gone down in the overwhelming business convulsion of that period, and men were ready for any venture which gave even faint promise of rebuilding their ruined fortunes, when Green Russell, a Georgian, returned from Pike’s Peak, bearing “tidings of great joy.” He had found gold.
The Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, makes frequent mention of gold and silver. Abraham “was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.” Solomon, the great king of the Hebrews, had portions of his temple “overlaid with gold.” The followers of Moses made a golden calf and worshipped it. Even before the recital of the creation of woman, the existence of gold is mentioned. Genesis 2 :12 reads: “And the gold of that land was good;” but we are not told who discovered it. However, all peoples in all ages have found it to be a good
18 TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS.
thing to have in the house. It’s the fulcrum that moves the world; it buys everything, even a husband or wife.
When Green Russell exhibited his buckskin bag of shining dust to the men who had lost their all, it caused a wild, indiscriminate rush to the new Eldorado, embracing good, bad and indifferent; the educated and illiterate; the merchant, the speculator, the mechanic, the farmer, the gambler, some of every kind—a sort of human mosaic, marshalled under a banner which bore the forceful if inelegant legend, “Pike’s Peak or Bust.”
A journey from the Missouri river in those days occupied from six to seven weeks. Wagons christened “prairie schooners,” drawn by the contemplative ox and the patient mule, supplemented by the “foot and walker line,” were the only means of transportation. Pullman sleepers were unknown. There were no settlements on the way, no opportunity to procure supplies for man or beast, save at the occasional stations of Ben Holladay’s overland stage line to California. It was genuine courage that prompted the pioneers to such a journey in the face of approaching winter, for the plains, covered with snow and infested with hostile Indians and wild beasts, like the Clashing Islands that closed after the Argo and her crew of heroes, would cut them off from any communication with home or friends for months—years, perhaps; they knew not how long. It was by the help of Medea, who was found at the end of the road, that Jason captured the golden fleece. A few of the Argonauts of ’59, thinking “a bird in the hand worth two in the bush,” took their helpmeets with them. They were not painted society belles or light-brained coquettes, but women of good practical sense and moral and physical strength. They had
GOLD. 19
making deformed cats and dogs;
but their husbands’ garments were
models of “crazy patchwork,” and
they practiced “wood carving”
twice a day, at the morning and
evening camp-fires.
There were no “Mother Hub¬
bard ” gowns in those days.
“Picture,” said Judge Stone, in
his address to the Barnacles, “a
pioneer woman in a ‘ Mother Hub¬
bard’ gown, sailing around a win¬
dy camp-fire, or climbing in and out of the hind end of a
prairie schooner! No; our pioneer women had no such
‘loose habits.’”
Unfeigned joy filled the hearts of the weary and travel-
worn pilgrims when, with eager, wistful gaze they des¬
cried in the distance the everlasting watch-towers of the
continent, that marked the gold fields the} 7 were seeking.
They pitched their tents under the cottonwood trees on
the west side of Cherry creek, near its junction with the
Platte, about twelve miles from the base of the Rocky
mountains, and called the settlement Auraria—after an
unimportant mining town in Georgia—with the belief,
that in the mountains they would soon make their “pile”
and return to their homes to live forever afterwards in
affluence. For not one of the many thousands who came
cherished a thought of building a permanent home here.
Apropos is the story of the Dutchman who was hanged
for stealing. (Hanging was the punishment for all dev¬
iltry in those days.) Before adjusting the noose he was
20 TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS.
asked what he had to say for himself. With a quavering voice he said, “I come out mit de spring to stay mit de summer and go back mit de fall, but now I tink I vill stay all de vile.” He was duly planted, and warranted to remain as a “permanent settler.”
The same winter the town of St. Charles was located on the east bank of Cherry creek. It was afterwards called Denver, in honor of Governor Denver, of Kansas, this part of the Territory being at that time within the boundaries of Kansas.
Those cottonwood trees became a focus for the converg¬
ing rays of immigration, and the foundation for the “ Queen City of the Plains” was laid without knowing it. Therefore it may be said, Denver was not premeditated— it just happened. And now that it is “ flourishing like a green bay tree,” the pioneers love to sit under its wide-spreading branches and tell how it was planted and grew —talk over the days that “tried men’s souls,” and laugh over the customs that were new.
Many of the tales told are more like the “Arabian Nights” stories than matter-of-fact history, as will appear in the course of our narratives.
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CHAPTER II.
A RETROSPECT.
Colorado