Little Pills, an Army Story. R. H. McKay
in gala dress, some very richly dressed women and some whose attire attested poverty, but even these wore bright colors. The head covering was universal but as varied in colors and quality as the fancy and wealth of the wearers suggested. I think some of the hats of the men must have cost a small fortune. The exhibition itself was not very attractive to me. I could see the chickens sparring around as though for a good opening and finally one of the cocks would drive the gaff home with deadly effect and the people would shout and clap their hands and exchange the money they had wagered on the result. The management would then bring in another pair of birds for another contest. The betting consisted not only of money but all kinds of trinkets and valuables. I saw one woman take off her white slippers handsomely ornamented with gold braid and spangles and bet them on the result of the contest. The affair was conducted in Spanish-Mexican and I could not understand anything that was said, but they all seemed to be delighted with the exhibition. To me it was not only cruel but was uninteresting. We did not stay until the finish but went out and saw some more of the town, then returned to our hotel.
My newly made friend came up to my room after supper, and spent part of the evening with me. I found his experiences interesting. The old story of ups and downs, money to spare, and grub-stakes furnished by some one else, to give him another start. He gave me his address and I was very prompt in returning his twenty dollars as soon as I got to Fort Selden, which by the way, I borrowed from the post trader until pay-day. In answer to my remittance I received a post card without address or date saying, "You needn't have been in such a hurry." Thus ended an acquaintance and experience that I think could not have happened anywhere else than on the American frontier. His name was Robert Daugherty and nothing could give me greater pleasure than to meet him again and furnish him a "grub-stake" if he needed it.
Santa Fe (Holy Faith, in Spanish) was an old town when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. About 1606 according to Colonel R. E. Twitchell, the best authority on the early history of New Mexico, it was made the capital of one of the Spanish provinces, and had been built on the site of two small Indian pueblos. I believe if I had been dropped down in some town in the interior of China and had found a few Americans to talk to it would not have seemed more strange to me. The office of the chief medical officer of the district was located in a building on the plaza that someone told me was the old palace, but which I thought did not look much like a palace, and which I understand is now used as a museum in which are to be found the most remarkable collection of archaeological specimens in America.
CHAPTER II.
Monday morning I started for Fort Selden on the Rio Grande, nearly three hundred miles away. We had a different type of stage coach, a small affair, more like a carriage, and drawn by two horses. Some eight or ten miles out of Santa Fe we almost literally dropped off into a canon that widened out into more of a valley as we continued our journey until we reached the Rio Grande some distance above Albuquerque. This town was at that time a straggling Mexican village of adobe houses along the east bank of the river. It is now a city of considerable size on the east side, with modern improvements and is a division point on the Santa Fe railway and a town of commercial importance.
The river was disappointing. I expected something bigger, and it wound around from one side of the valley to the other as though in doubt as to the best way to go. The valley was interesting because of its being occupied by an altogether different type of Indians. We had left the plains Indian at Trinidad and from there to Santa Fe had seen only Mexicans with a fair proportion of Americans whose business interests were in the country. The Plains Indian, Cheyennes, Commanches, and Kiowas and Arapahoes, were nomadic and warlike. Here was an agricultural people who lived in little villages called pueblos, a name also attached to the Indians themselves. Their villages were located at convenient distances apart and both men and women went to the fields to work. The land was divided off into little patches separated by irrigating ditches, called asacies, and there were no fences or lines to show individual ownership. It was seemingly a community interest, a kind of socialism. The Pueblo Isletta was the capital and principal town and was the place of meeting for the disposal of important questions of interest to the tribe, and for the observance of such religious services as was their wont. The hoe was the principal agricultural implement, both for making ditches and for cultivating the land. The people seemed to be kindly disposed, and in every way a contrast to the Plains Indian whose women do the work while the men do the hunting and fighting. They enter their houses by way of the roof, climbing a ladder from the ground to the roof and pulling the ladder up after them, then descending by way of an opening in the room to the room or rooms below. No doors, and only little peep-holes for windows, sometimes covered with a thin cloth of muslin. I suppose this was done in the first place as a protection against the Mountain Indians (Utes and Navajos) who in early times raided the valley and carried off anything they could lay their hands on. The valley was sparsely wooded except here and there when we would come to great groves or boscas as they were called, of immense cotton-wood trees which were very beautiful. The valley as described above was the same all the way down to Fort Selden.
After leaving the Pueblo settlements we came to a country occupied nearly altogether by Mexicans. The commercial interests were conducted by so-called foreigners: Americans, Germans and Jews, the latter predominating, but the population was principally Mexican. Stock raising and farming were the principal industries, the latter in a very primitive way. They had no modern farm implements, such as plows, harrows, wagons, etc., and only such improved tools as they could construct from the scant material at hand. I saw at one place a man driving a yoke of cattle attached to what appeared to be the limb of a tree with a projecting prong entering the ground, and at the other end, which bent up something like a handle, was another man holding it. They were going back and forth making little ditches or furrows but not turning the ground over as our plows do. It looked primitive indeed and reminded me of a picture I saw in an almanac when a kid, representing the Egyptian plowing. Stock business was more promising. A good many cattle were reported on the range and I was told the sheep numbered many thousands scattered all along the mountain range to the west. Soccorro was the principal town, typically Mexican, but a place of some business importance. There were small villages at frequent intervals all the way to Paraja, the last town near the river before crossing the Jornada del Muerto (or "Journey of Death" in Spanish) which extends from Paraja (pronounced Paraha, j having the sound of h in Spanish) to Fort Selden, nearly one hundred miles across, a desert properly named and that has some pitiful associations in my memory. It was what was known as the Apache Indian country and grewsome stories are related concerning it. Death by Indians, famishing for want of water, etc., etc. I must tell a legend concerning it and the desert country to the east and north. Near Paraja and rising bluff from the river's edge is a high bit of mountain, hardly worth the name of range, on the top of which lying in a recumbent position is as perfect profile of a face and bust as you could imagine. You get a fine view of it from Fort Craig and for a great distance to the northwest and northeast. The legend is that a friar, Christobal by name, and for whom the mountain or range was named, was traveling through the country on his work for the souls of men when he perished from thirst. Some supernatural agency brought his body to this mountain top where it hardened into stone and remains to this day a monument commemorating a tragedy, and a land mark and guide to the weary and thirsty traveler pointing the way to where he may find water.
We left Paraja and the river and valley at night after a good supper, having supplied ourselves with water enough for the trip, expecting to get breakfast at a place about half-way across, called the Alaman (Allemand) literally meaning "Dutchman" where it was reported a German had been found some years before, killed and scalped by Indians. There had been repeated efforts made to find water on this desert. General Pope when a young officer of the service had spent a large amount of government money digging for water. Finally a man by the name of Martin, a Scotchman, who furnished the meat supply at Fort Selden, was so persistent with the commanding officer in asserting his ability to find water, that he was furnished a body of soldiers as an escort and guard and commissary supplies for the undertaking. He had been working faithfully and persistently for some months. He had also put some adobe rooms and had them furnished, his hauling his water supply from a spring in a canon some six or eight