Platte and South Platte rivers, passed southward along the foot-hills and
on to the capital of New Mexico, where he arrived in the summer of 1804.
This adventurer was Baptiste La Lande, the unfaithful steward of the
Kaskaskia fur-factor, William Morrison, who had entrusted him with a
stock of goods for trade. The circumstances and outcome of La Lande's
enterprise have been told in my account of Pike's exjx;dition. When the
American Captain was upon the way from his fort on the Conejos River to
Santa Fe, in the custody of his Spanish friends, and was stopping for the
night at a place which he called the "village of St. Jolin" (San Juan, at
the confluence of the Chama and Rio Grande), La Lande, obviously in
the character of a spy, presented himself to Pike and attempted to gain
hie confidence, but instead barely escaped a kicking by the irate Captain.
On the next day the Frenchman accompanied Pike's escort to the capital.
Although La Lande had sold Morrison's goods at high prices and pocketed
the proceeds, he had now become hopelessly insolvent, and therefore nothing
could be recovered from him for his confiding and betrayed employer back
in Illinois. It is probable that he \yas born there, as his name appears upon
the muster-roll of St. Clair County militia in 1790. It seems tliat he
remained in New Mexico; and at his death, according to a Mexican his-
torical authority, "left much property and many descendants". His em-
166 HISTORY OF COLORADO
ployer was the grandfather of the late William M. Morrison, of Illinois,
who was a conspicuous figure in our national affairs a few years ago.
Other traffickers classed as Americans were trading among the Indians
of the central plains before Pike set out upon his expedition to the Rocky
Mountains. The reader will recall that the commander of the Spanish
military force which was sent from Xew Mexico to intercept Pike, made
captives, as the latter relates, "of all the traders he found", and took tliem
to Santa Fe. Pike met some of these while he himself was in Spanish
custody.
During the interval between the time of Pike and that of Long, a
large number of traders and trappers, American and French, entered the
Far West, one party, of about sixty-five men, under the leadership of W, P.
Hunt, going to the Pacific Coast in the year 1811. The Pike's Peak region
received a full share of such adventurers, but of these the names of only a
few have come down to use.
Ezekiel ^^'illiams, a noted early fur-gathering frontierman of the West
(who was at home when in Cooper, County, Missouri), and nineteen others
of his calling, appeared in the land of Colorado in the autumn of 1811.
Having come across-country from the upper Missouri to the South Platte,
they went on to the Arkansas, on which stream they put in the following
winter, in the vicinity of the foot-hills. It may be that they built for them-
selves a habitation for that season somewhere near the locality of our city
of Pueblo, but if so no record of it has survived. As Indians made trouble
for them there in the spring of 1813, "robbing and harassing the company
in every quarter", they moved up to the headwaters of the South Platte early
in the summer. Here the party divided, half of the men going westward
across the mountains, and also disappearing from the narrative. Shortly
afterward, the others returned to the Arkansas, and presently four of them,
including David Spencer and James Workman, detached themselves and
Btruck out for Santa Fe. Six now were left on the Arkansas — Williams,
three other Americans, one of whom was named Chaplain, and two French-
men. These turned to trapping in the foot-hills, and becoming separated,
three, whose names are unknown, soon were killed by some Arapahoe In-
dians. The three survivors, Williams, Chaplain, and one of the Frenchmen,
named Parteau, later found refuge in a village of Arapahoes on the Arkan-
sas, probably at the Big Timber, the chieftain of which took them under his
personal protection, and where they "passed a wretc'hed winter, filled with
despair of ever being able to return home". As spring approached, Williams
resolved to make an attempt to go home, but his two companions decided
to stay with the Arapahoes, their chief having told them that the Indians
below certainly would kill them at sight. Having cached his furs at the
village, Williams set out on March 1st in a rude canoe to paddle his way
down the Arkansas. After many hardships and frequent delays, including
some weeks of captivity among the Kansas tribe of Indians, he arrived at
his home at the end of the ensuing summer.
The adventures of Williams and his party formed the basis of David
H. Coyners book, The Lost Trappers, first published in 1847, and of which
the greater part has been proved to be a. gross fabrication.
It is probable tliat five other Americans, Joseph Miller, Cass,
John Hoback, Edward Robinson, and Jacob Rezner were within the bounds
of Colorado in the year 1812. Having severed themselves from W. P.
HISTORY OF COLORADO 167
Hunt's company, at Fort Henry, on the headwaters of the Snake River, in
Idaho, these men roamed southward, trapping as they traveled, and appear
to have reached the Great Salt Lake. Here they turned and moved east
"for several hundred miles", wlien they encountered a band of Arapahoe
Indians, who plundered them of much of their property. After wintering
in the locality of this misfortune, and being again robbed by Arapahoes,
they reversed their course and went in the direction of Utah. About this
time Cass disappeared. Some of the party afterward said he deserted them ;
others told that he was killed by the Arapahoes. In August, Miller and
his three companions were found in a state of starvation by Robert Stuart
and his associates, who were en route from the Columbia River to St. Louis.
In the spring of 181-t, a St. Louis trader named Phillebert, with
eighteen hired French trappers, went to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado
upon a fur-gathering expedition; the band being known historically as
"Phillebert's Company". It seems that they had a very successful season,
as the leader and some of his men returned to St. Louis late in that 3'ear
to "get a supply of goods to enable him to buy horses to bring in his furs",
which for the meantime he had cached on the upper Arkansas. Those of
his force whom he had left behind were to rejoin him on the Arkansas, at
the mouth of the Huerfano River, upon his return. It has been said that
these, after having waited for him until the autumn of the following year,
when their essential supplies were about exhausted, went to Taos, New
Mexico, there to remain through the following winter. It is true that they
went to Taos, but the probability is that the Spaniards rounded them up
and took them there.
Ezekiel Williams and two comrades, Braxton Cooper and Morris May,
accompanied Phillebert's party to the mountains to recover the furs Wil-
liams had cached at the Arapahoe village on the upper Arkansas, and also
to learn what had become of Chaplain and Parteau. Upon their arrival
at the village, the Indians told them that the two men, several months after
Williams had departed on his way homeward in the previous year, had
started across the plains with eleven horses carrying their furs, and that
it had been reported that a band of Crow Indians later had found the
mutilated bodies of two white men, which the Arapahoes supposed to have
been those of Chaplain and Parteau. Williams then exhumed his furs,
and in company with Cooper, ilay, and one of Phillebert's men, went back
to the Missouri River. Thereafter we hear no more of him in the primitive
annals of the Colorado country, but he is known to have conducted a wagon-
train to Santa Fe, over the Santa Fe Trail, in the spring of 1827.
In the summer of 1815, Auguste Pierre Chouteau and Jules de Munn
formed at St. Louis a partnership for trading in the Far West, around the
headwaters of the Platte and Arkansas rivers. In the fore part of Septem-
ber of that year, they set out for the Colorado mountains vnth, according
to Dr. James' understanding, forty-five hired Frenchmen in their company ;
and with them went Phillebert, who was going forth to bring in the furs
he had collected in the year before. While on the plains, Chouteau and
De Munn struck up a l^argain with him under which they took over his
outfit and also the services of those of his men whom he had left on the
upper Arkansas. The traders, still accompanied by Phillebert, proceeded
up the Platte, and then up the South Platte to a place a few miles above
the site of Denver, where they held a "grand council" with the Indians of
168 HISTOEY OF COLOEADO
the country 'round-about, and of which Dr. James tells in a quotation I
have made from his narrative of Long's expedition — his "Grand-camp
creek", on which the council convened, probably having been, as I have
remarked, our Bear Creek.
After the council, the company moved to the confluence of the Arkan-
sas and Huerfano rivers, where Phillebert's men were expected to be found,
arriving there on December 8th: The leaders having been told by Indians
that these men had gone to Taos, it was decided that De Munn should go
to New Mexico in search of them and also to obtain from the Governor
(Alberto Maynez, who bore the title of "Civil and ililitar\- Governor",)
of the Province permission to hunt and trap upon Spanish territory on the
southward side of the upper Arkansas and also on the headwaters of the
Eio Grande. De Munn found Phillebert's men at Taos, where they had
been having a good time; and he was politely received at Santa Fe. As
the suspicions that had been quickened by Pike's operations, and as the
undetermined southwestern . boundarv of the Louisiana Purchase still was
causing the relations between the United States and Spain to be uncom-
fortably strained, the Spanish authorities at Santa Fe were watchful against
American intrusion into what they deemed to be their territory. Tliere-
fore, the Governor, professing to have no authority in such a matter,
declined to grant the privilege, but said he would recommend it to his
superiors. De Munn, taking Phillebert's men with him from Taos, then
returned to his associates in camp at the mouth of the Huerfano.
It was now determined that De Munn should go to St. Louis for
additional supplies and equipment and a reenforcement of trappers. On
February 27th (1816), he, Phillebert, and one of the latter's men started
upon this journey, which they are said to have made in forty-five days,
and with which Phillebert drops out of the story. It had also been ar-
ranged that late in the spring Chouteau and the employees should take the
accumulated furs to the mouth of the Kansas River, and there meet De
Munn as he was upon his return. This plan was executed; the furs were
forwarded to St. Louis, and in the middle of September the party, with
the recruits and replenishing supplies, again were at the mouth of the
Huerfano. A few days later, the company moved southwest and made
camp at the base of the Sangi-e de Cristo Mountains, from which halting-
place De Munn started for Santa Fe to learn the fate of his request for a
license to gather furs upon Spanish territory.
But in the meantime. Governor Maynez had been succeeded by the
arbitrary Pedro Maria de Allande, who was unfriendly to everybody and
everything identified with the United States. De Munn was not permitted
to enter Santa Fe, but was ordered immediately to withdraw his people
from Spanish soil. The entire party then returned to the Arkansas, and
remained on that river through the ensuing winter, but continued to hunt
on both sides of the stream, regardless of the international boundar\'.
Early in the spring of 1817, the persistent De Munn again went to
Taos, with the purpose of making another attempt to reach Santa Fe to
see the new Governor about the desired license. He was taken into custody
at Taos and sent back to the Arkansas under an escort of 200 Spanish
troops. Governor De Allande had heard, or pretended to have heard, that
instead of a band of fur-gatherers there were 20,000 Americans on the
upper Arkansas, and that these had built there a strong militar}- fortifica-
HISTOEY OF COLOEADO 169
tion — as iu the case of Pike on the Rio Conejos. The commander of De
Munn's escort was to see if this report were true; and if it were false lie
was to conduct the Chouteau-De Munn company well down on the Arkan-
sas and there start the outfit back to the Missouri River. The stor\' of the
twenty thousand and the fort having been proved untrue, the commander
was persuaded to await further advices from the Governor, who finally
consented to leave the French-Americans undisturbed so long as they con-
fined their operations to the northward side of the Arkansas.
Chouteau and De Munn now decided to cross the mountains and go
to the country of the Columbia River. An attempt was made to get over
the range, but it failed because of the depth of the snow. So the party
turned back, and the leaders again changed their programme. De Munn
with an escort was to go to St. Louis with the stock of furs, while Chouteau
and the rest of the men should continue the operations on the headwaters
of the Arkansas and of the South Platte. De Munn fixed May 23d as the
date of his departure, but there was some delay in making read v.
On the next day, a troop of Spanish dragoons appeared with orders
at once to conduct the traders and their men, with their horses, furs, goods
and supplies, to Santa Fe — after the manner of Captain Pike's capture.
As resistance would have ^een futile, the Frenchmen yielded. When they
arrived at Santa Fe their property was confiscated and they were placed
in close confinement, some in fetters, and so were kept for nearly two
months, when they were tried by a court-martial, which confirmed the
confiscation of their property and ordered them to get out of New Mexico
immediately by the shortest route: each man being given a horse upon
which to hasten his exit.
The discomfited Frenchmen left Santa Fe without delay, and turned
up at St. Louis in the fore part of September. If they ever obtained any
redress, there is no known record of it.
Of the circumstances of their trial by the court-martial, De Munn,
in a letter written on November 25, 1817, to William Clark (the explorer).
Governor of Missouri Territory, related the following:
"After forty-eight days' imprisonment, we were presented before a court-
martial composed of six members and a president who was the governor himself
[De Allande]. Only one of the six members appeared to have any information, tht
others not even knowing how to sign their names. Many questions were asked, but
particularly why we had stayed so long in Spanish dominions. I answered that,
being on the Arkansas river we did not consider ourselves in the domains of New
Spain, as we had a license to go as far as the headwaters of said river. The presi-
dent denied that our government had a right to give such a license, and entered into
such a rage that it prevented liis speaking, contenting himself with striking his
fist several times on the table, saying, 'Gentlemen, we must have this man shot'.
"At such conduct of the president I did not think much of my life, for all
the members were terrified in his presence, and unwilling to resist him; on the
contrary [were ready] to do anything to please him.
"He talked nuich of a big river that was the boundary line between tlie two
countries, but did not know its name. When mention was made of the Mississippi
he jumped up saying that that was the big river he meant: tliat Spain had never
ceded the west side of it. It may be easy to judge of our feelings to .see our lives
in the hands of such a man.
"That day the court did not come to any determination, because the president
'(as I heard him say to Lieutenant de Arce) had forgotten everything he had to
«ay. Xext day we were again presented to the court, but as I knew the kind of
a man we had to deal with, I never attempted to justify myself of any of his false
170 HISTOBY OF COLORADO
assertions. We were dismissed, and Mr. Chouteau and myself put in the same
room.
"Half an hour afterward the lieutenant came in with a written sentence; we
were forced to kneel down to hear the citure of it, and forced, likewise, to kiss the
unjust and iniquitous sentence that deprived harmless men of all they possessed —
of the fruits of two years' labors and perils.
"What appears the more extraordinary is that the governor acknowledged to
me afterward in the presence Don Pedro Piero, the deputy of New ^Mexico to the
Cortes, and several others, that we were very innocent men ; yet notwithstanding
this, all our property was kept and we were permitted to come home, each with
one of the worst horses we had."
While there is no record of them, there is even^ probabilit}- that the
Chouteau- De Munn organization put up some structures somewhere on or
near the upper Arkansas, as it does not seem likely that the Frenchmen
would have so long remained there without cabins. De Allande's story
about the fort may have grown out of an Indian account of the log huts
occupied by the party.
It is probable that Major Long's French guide, Joseph Bijeau, had been
& member of this company, and that he had ranged the Pike's Peak country
even before the coming of Chouteau and De Munn. While Dr. James does
not connect him with the unlucky French enterprise, he says that Bijeau
"had formerly been resident in tliese regions, in the capacity of hunter
and trapper, during the greater part of six years"'; that "he had traversed
the country lying between the north fork of the Platte and the Arkansas,
in almost every direction" ; and also that "his pursuits often lead him
within the Eocky Jlountains, where the beaver are particularly abundant".
Bijeau pointed out the Huerfano to Long and his companions as the stream
up which the Chouteau-De Munn people were taken upon their march to
Santa Fe.
"Potera", the name that Long's expedition found applied to an affluent
of the South Platte (believed to have been St. Yrain Creek), may have
been from that of a member of this company. In the fore-part of that
centurj-, there were French rangers of the West having the surname
"Potra", which might easily be rendered "Potera". Yet there is a chance
that the latter may have been derived from "Parteau", the name of one
of the Frenchmen who were with Ezekiel Williams in 1811-12. In all
probability, the French name of our Fountain Creek, "Eiviere de la Fon-
taine qui Bouiile" ("Eiver of the Boiling Spring", from the Manitou
springs), or, as Fremont more accurately called it, "Fontaine qui Bouit",
was bestowed upon the stream by Chouteau and De ilunn or some of their
men.
Neither Chouteau nor De Munn appears to have returned to the Pike's
Peak region for trade. In the past I shared the belief that the former,
some twelve years after his rough experience with the Spanish authorities
of New Mexico, built a trading-post upon an island in the Arkansas Eiver,
about fifty-five miles east of the eastern line of Colorado, and which for
long was called "Chouteau's Island". But it is now known that he did not
have a post upon the island, and that it received his name from another
circumstance. Wlien, in the spring of 1816, he and his men were going
to the mouth of the Kansas Eiver with their furs and to meet De Munn
returning from St. Louis, they were attacked by a large band of Pawnee
Indians. The Frenchmen retreated to the island, upon which tliey effec-
HISTOEY OF COLOEADO 171
tively defended themselves and drove off the Pawnees. Hence the name.
After that of the coming and going of Choutcan and De Munn, there
is no known record of anj' other American citizens having halted in the
land of Colorado before the winter of 1821-32. From that time until past
the middle of the century the general vicinity of our city of Pueblo was
almost continuously a resort of fur-gatherers and some other adventurers
in the Pike's Peak country. The locality seems to have been exccptionallv
inviting to them. As the reader will recall from a preceding cliapter, it
was probably somewhere near, if not upon, Pueblo's site that a party of
French traders put up a building earlier than the year 1763. So far as
known, this was the first habitation erected by white men in all the Colo-
rado region; although it is possible that Spaniards may have Ijeen earlier
builders upon Colorado soil.
In September, 1821, "Colonel"' Hngh Glenn, of Cincinnati, and
"Major" Jacob Fowler, of Covington, Kentucky, with eighteen employees,
left the former's trading-post, which he had established a few years before
on the Verdigi'is River near its confluence with the Arkansas, on a com-
mercial expedition to Santa Fe, carrying their goods upon pack-horses.
Fowler kept a journal of the party's operations day by day, and which has
been published {The Journal of Jacob Fowler, Xew York, 1898). While
the Major's record is an extraordinary example of indifference to the
common rules for using the English language, it is an interesting and
valuable contribution to the early history of the Far West.
The company followed the course of the Arkansas Eiver, upon its
northward side, and entered the bounds of Colorado on Xovember 5th.
Passing on up the river, without unusual incidents, but finding "Buffelow
Plenty", the traders crossed to the south side and encamped at the mouth
of the Piirgatory on the 13th. Here, within an hour or two, one of the
men, Lewis Dawson, was attacked by a grizzly bear and so badly hurt that
he died on the third day after. From this tragic circumstance, Fowlei
named the Purgatory "White Bair Crick". Having buried Dawson, the
march up the Arkansas was resumed on the 16th. Four days later, the
party, now upon the north side of the river, came to a large encampment
of Indians — Comanches, Arapahoes, Kiowas, Cheyennes, and Snakes — a
few miles east of the site of the present railway station of Nepesta, in the
eastern part of Pueblo County. Fowler says that "by night We Ware a
large town Containing up Wards two Honderd Houses [tepees] Well
filled With men Wemon and Children— With a great nombr of dogs and
Horses So that the Hole Cuntry to a great distance Was Coverd". Except-
ing the Comanches, who threatened to make trouble, but presently were
appeased by some gifts, all were friendly; the Arapahoes effusively so.
Unlike the conditions found by Major Long, in the previous \ear. the
upper Arkansas country now was swarming with red people.
It was not until December 2oth that the Americans left tlie vicinity
of the Indian encampment and proceeded up the Arkansas. On the 28th,
"We moved about 12 oclock and Went five miles up the Eiver and Camped
on the South Side". This halting-place appears to have been near the
mouth of the St. Charles. Two days afterward, a caravan of some sixty
Mexican traders among the Indians, and who were upon their way home,
appeared and made camp close by the Americans.
Colonel Glenn now decided to leave Fowler here with the goods and
IT'-' HISTOEY OF COLORADO
most of the party^ while he and some of the men should go to Santa Fe in
company with the Mexican traders to learn the condition of affairs in the
settled parts of New Mexico. Of the Colonel's departure and of what
was done in the camp during the next few days, I quote the following from
Fowler's picturesque Journal, and which the reader may make more intelli-
gible by substituting in frequent instances the word "they"' for the jour-
nalist's "the":
Jany 2nd 1822 this morning tlie Spanierds Began to Collect their Horses and
load for their departure — Conl glann and four men Set out With them — leaveing
me With Eight men [several were absent on a hunt] in an oppen Camp With the
ballence of the goods after takeing Some things With Him to Sell So as to pay
their Exspences. We are now In the Hart of tlie Inden Cuntry and Emedetly
on the great Ware [war] Road — not only of one nation against the others — in the
road to all the Spanish Settlements With Which the Indeans on this Side of the
mountains are at War — So that our Setuation is not of the most Plesent kind — We
Have no meet In Camp — and Con Clude to Send two Hunters out With Horses in
the morning to kill Some meat Intending to Set the ballence of the Hands at
Work to build a Hous and a Strong Peen [pen] for the Horses at night
"Jany the 3rd 1822 Roas Early to Start the Hunters ordered two of the men
to Prepare the Horses While the Hunters got Readey — but the men lay Still I