maid the Second Call but With no Ijetter Sucsees — I then discovered that a mutney
Was Intended — and Emedetly drew one of the men from His heed bj- the top of
His Head, but [some] of his frends in the Plott asisted Him — and We Ware
Soon all In a Scoffel. but Robert Fowler [the Major's brother] Soon Came to my
asistanee — and the bisness as Soon Ended — tho it Was Some time before the gave
up their Intended muteney and five of them Seperated to them Selves and declared
the Wold do [as] the plased and Wold not be ordered by any other porson — I soon
discovered that the Exspected the Spanierds Wold not let Conl glann Return and
that they Intended to make the best of tlie goods tlie Cold — aledgeing the Ware
the Strongest party and that the Wold pay them Selves — on Which discovery I
told them that un less the Wold Return to their dutey I Wold send for the Arra-
poho Cheef Who Wold be gld to asist me to take Care of the goods and that the
might go Whare the plased — and that I Wold not Suffer them to meddle With the
goods — the then Held a Councle and sent one man to tell me that if I Wold be
acountable to them for their pay — the Wold go to their dutey and do \Wiat I
ordered them — to Wliicli I toled them I wold make no new Bargen Witli them —
and that If the Chose the might go on With their mutenous Sceen — that I Cold
protect the goods till the Indeans Came for \\1iich I Wold Soon Send — the then
all Came and Stated that the Wold do What I told them and Wold go to Work
Emedetley — and asked me to think of them and Secure the pay for them If Conl
glann Shold not Return Which the Espected He never Wold, and that it Wold be
Heard [hard] for them to loos all their Wages — to \Miich I toled them if the Con-
tinued to do as good and Honest men auglit that as fare as the goods \^â– old Reech
they Shold be paid — the two men Went out to Hunt but Returned With out killing
any thing — now all Hands Went to Worke \\'illingly and by night We Head the
Hors Peen finished and the Hous With two pens four logs High — WTiich maid
part of the Hors Pen and the door of the Hous in the Hors Peen \\liich Was So
Strong that a few Indeans Cold not take the Horses out With out Choping Some
of the logs — and must Waken us all tho We Slept Ever So Sound —
"Friday 4th .Jany 1822 Went to Work Early got our House nine loggs High
—and began to pitch the tents on tlie top by Way of a Roof the House Just Wide
£nof for that purpose . . .
"Saterday 5th Jany 1822 . . . tliis day finished our House and Packed
in all the goods"
By the middle of the month, not liaving heard from Glenn, although
the time had been short, and having become uneasy in his position upon
the south side of the Arkansas, Fowler decided to abandon it and occupy
HISTOEY OF COLORADO i;:?
another, farther up and on the north bank of the river. Of this change of
base^ he tells, in his "simplified spelling"' :
"tiisday loth Jany 1822 ... I tlien Went to look out a gooJ Sctuation
for a new Settlement on the north Side of the River — Intending to move tomorrow
Should no acoumpt Reach us from Conl glann — as \\"te began to Sopose He Is now
not at liverty to send or Return there being the full time Elapsed in Whioh He
promised to Send an Exspress — and We think that a party of Spanirds may be
Sent to take us prisnors — for AMiich Reason Intend makeing a Strong Hous and
Hors Pen on the Bank of the River Wheare it Will not be In the Powe [power]
of an Enemy to aproch us from the River Side — and Shold the Spanierds appeer
In a Hostill manner We Will fight them on the Ameraken ground, the River Hear
being the line by the last tretey —
"Wensday 16th Jany 1822 moved Camp Early up the River on the north Side
to the Spot I looked out yesterday — We Built a Strong Hors Peen and put up
the Horses at night — no Word from Conl glann — We begin to Conclude as Is not
Well Him [that not all is well with him]
'â– thorsday 17th Jany 1822 ... no Word from Conl glann We Intend
building a Hous tomorrow . . .
"Friday 18th Jany 1822 . . . We built the Hous With three Rooms and
but one out Side door and that Close to the Hors Pen So that the Horses Cold
not be taken out at night Without our knoledge We got the Hous Seven logs
High and Well Chinked the goods al stoed a Way before night . . ."
The new buildings were upon the site of the city of Pueblo, on tlie
left bank of the Arkansas and probably a little to the east of the mouth of
Fountain Creek.
But the second "Strong Hous and Hors Pen", like the first, were not
long in use. Colonel Glenn had found that the Mexican Bevolution had
finally overthrown Spanish rule, and that public feeling in Xew Mexico
toward Americans now was cordial. Messengers from him arrived at
Fowler's "new Settlement"' on January 28th with advices which instructed
him at once to proceed into New Mexico. Since the Colonel's departure.
Fowler had had no serious trouble, the greater part of the time and ener-
gies of his men appearing to have been applied to the care of the liorses —
pasturing them by day and guarding them in the jsen at night. Some
mischievous Indians had visited him. but had Iseen bluffed into fair be-
havior.
On January 30th, Fowler with his men and goods started to join his
partner, leaving his buildings to take chances with the Indians and the
elements. Guided by Glenn's couriers, he aiTived at Taos on February
8th, and was met there by the Colonel. Their venture was terminated
profitably, and on June 1st (1822) they set out for the United States,
crossing the southeastern part of Colorado upon their way to the Arkansas
Eiver, and making the entire journey without mishap.
Shortly after the passing of Glenn and Fowler, a :\Iis,souri trader
named John McKnight built a small trading-post on the upiier Arkansas.
Nothing more definite about its location is known, but it is probaljle that
the building was at no great distance from the site of Pueblo. McKnight
was killed near his post bv Comanche Indians in the spring of 1823, and
aft^r his death the station was abandoned. The only record of his enter-
prise and fate is contained in a paragraph in tlie issue of the Missonn
Intelligencer of August 12, 1823. The "deserted trading establishment
passed bv Coloned Dodge's command on August 1, 1835, may have been Ins.
The next traders who established themselves in a trading-post upon
174: HISTORY OF COLOKADO
Colorado soil were Charles, William W., Eobert, and George Bent, of St.
Louis, the first two of whom also were pioneers in the traflfic to and from
Santa Fe over the Santa Fe Trail. In 1826, they built a small station
upon the north bank of the Arkansas, somewhere about half way between
the site of Pueblo and the foot-hills. The stracture is understood to have
been a stockade, made by setting logs shoulder to shoulder upright in the
ground — a close, high and heavy picket-fence — which enclosed the storage-
and living-quarters. It appears that Ceran St. Train, a young French-
man, also of St. Louis, was associated with the Bent brothers in the enter-
prise as a partner. As we shall see a little further along, this post, wliich
seems to have had no distinctive name, was deserted a few years later and
left to go to ruin.
In 1832, two very successful fur traders from St. Louis, Gantt and
Blackwell, erected a small trading-post on the upper Arkansas, and which
probably was a structure of logs. Previously they had been operating on
the Platte and North Platte rivers, and Gantt had become a favorite among
the Arapahoe and Cheyenne Indians. It has been said that their fort on
the Arkansas was located upon the left bank of the river, five or six miles
above the mouth of Fountain Creek. But a map (The North-west Coast
of North America and Adjacent Territories) "compiled and published by
order of the Senate of the United States", in 1838, and which is fairly
accurate in all its other details, places the post upon that bank of the
river, a few miles below the mouth of the Fountain; the place being only
a short distance beyond the present eastern limits of the city of Pueblo.
Perhaps its site has been confused with that of the Bents' primitive trading-
station, which was near the location that has been assigned by some to
the establishment of Gantt and Blackwell. Upon tlie map referred to their
post is named "Ganfs. Ff. Further than the foregoing, the history of
this fort is obscured, and therefore I have been unable to ascertain how
long it was occupied. It may have been abandoned before the time the
mentioned map was issued. The Gantt of this partnership was the "Cap-
tain Gantf who was the guide of Colonel Dodge's expedition.
In the year 1892, while workmen were laying water-pipes in LTnion
Avenue, near the Arkansas Eiver, in Pueblo, they uncovered some human
bones and also several logs that evidently had been parts of a building.
Whether these were relics of the fur-trading period or of later origin
could not be determined. It was thought by a number of citizens that
Pike's breastwork had come into light, a supposition that was entirely out
of the question. However, the logs may have been remains of some struc-
ture built and used by fur traders. Since the founding of Pueblo, the
course of the river through the city has been changed considerably.
It is known that there were several trading-houses on the upper
Arkansas, between the years 1830 and 1845; and doubtless there were
others, built for temporary purposes, and of whicli there is no record.
In 1830, a French trader named Maurice Le Doux. who is said to have
hailed from Detroit, erected quarters for himself and his business at the
confluence of Adobe Creek and the Arkansas, in what is now Fremont
County. Shortly afterward, some Mexicans located near it and engaged
in tilling the soil in a small way. According to a storv of a fracas between
Arapahoe and Ute Indians, Le Doux was occupying his post as late as 1838.
In that year, as the tale runs, a band of Arapahoes went to his station to
HISTORY OF COLORADO 175
seize and carry off a Ute squaw who was harbored there. The trader, with
French tact, held them off in parley, and in the meantime sent a runner
to a party of Utes encamped not far up in the Wet Mountain Valley. These
at once came down to the fort at good speed, fell upon the Arapahoes, and
after killing some of them put the rest to flight. The innocent cause of
the rumpus was left with Le Doux unharmed by the enemy.
At this time there was a small number of Mexicans squatted here and
there on the Greenhorn and Huerfano rivers, in what is now our Pueblo
County; but it appears that they did not long remain there. In 1840, the
Bent brothers, Ceran St. Vrain and others started a settlement, mostly of
Mexicans, on Adobe Creek, expecting it to become permanent. However,
it proved a failure and was abandoned in 1846.
The fort built by Gantt and Blackwell near the mouth of Fountain
Creek was succeeded by the famous, and sometime notorious, "Pueblo", a
walled trading-post constructed of adobe, and of which remains survived
until after the founding of the city of Pueblo. While it is evident that
the post was erected in the year 1842, there is some uncertainty as to its
builders. George Simpson, a trader among the Indians, who became a well-
known and worthy pioneer of Colorado Territory, maintained that he and
two other frontiermen, named Doyle and Barclay, constructed it in the
spring and summer of that year. But James P. Beckwourth, a noted
frontier character, who had been in the Rocky Mountain country since
1825, and who lingered in it, in the vicinity of Denver until after the out-
break of our Civil War, disputed the honor with Simpson. In T. D. Bon-
ner's Life and Adventures of James F. Beckwourih, "written from his own
dictation", the hero of the book makes the following specific statement as to
the origin of the Pueblo :
"We reached the Arkansas about the first of October, 1842. where I erected a
trading post and opened a successful business. In a very short time I was joined
by from fifteen to twenty free trappers with their families. We all united our
labors and constructed an adobe fort sixty yards square. By the following spring
we had grown into quite a little settlement, and we gave it the name of Pueblo."
Beckwourth made the same statement in Denver in the year 1860. bui
the probability is tliat there is not a word of truth in it. He was known
everywhere from the Arkansas to the upper reaches of the Missouri as i\
chronic and unmitigated liar as to his adventures and achievements. Hi."
career truly was a "checkered" one. After some service with master-
traders in the northern country, he joined the Crow Indians and was
made a chieftain in that tribe of rascals. In later years he abandoned
them and returned to white associations, roving hither and yon over the
Great West. Simpson was a different type of frontierman: a trustworthy
and unassuming person. We risk little in believing that he and his part-
ners were the builders of the Pueblo. Beckwourth may have thrust himself
into the Pueblo community after the fort had been built.
A small but motley collection of Mexicans and Americans were in
harbiT at the mouth of the Fountain in 1840. and some of these were
lingering there in the year in which the Pueblo was constructed. Fremont,
who passed the post in 1845, when upon his second exiJedition, thus refers
to it and its occupants at that time in his Memoirs:
"Continuing down the river [Fountain Creek], we encamped at noon on the
14th [of July] at its mouth, on the Arkansas river. A short distance above
17<5 HISTORY OF COLORADO
our encampment, on the left bank of the Arkansas, is a pttehlo, (as the Mexicans call
their civilized Indian villages,) where a number of mountaineers, who had married
Spanish women in the valley of Taos, had collected together, and occupied themselves
in farming, carrying on at the same time a desultory Indian trade. They were prin-
cipally Americans, and treated us with all the rude hospitality their situation ad-
mitted."
The historian, Francis Parkman. wlio, in company with Quincy Adams
Shaw, visited the Far West in 1846 — a journey which he made memorable
by his interesting book, The Oregon Trail (Boston, 1847.) — amved at the
Pueblo late in August of that year, when homeward bound, having come
from Fort Laramie by way of the site of Denver. Of the surroundings,
appearance and condition of the post, and of the character of its inliabit-
ants, in that summer, he tells the following in his story of his travels :
". . . After an hour's ride we reached the edge of a hill, from which a wel-
come sight greeted us. Tlie Arkansas ran along a valley below, among woods and
groves, and closely nestled in the midst of wide corn-fields and green meadows, where
cattle were grazing, rose the low mud walls of the Pueblo. . . . We approached the
gate of the Pueblo. It was a wretched species of fort, of most primitive construc-
tion, being nothing more than a large square inclosure, surrounded by a wall of
mud, miserably cracked and dilapidated. The slender pickets that surmounted it
were half broken down, and the gate dangled on its wooden hinges so loosely, that
to open or shut it seemed quite likely to fling it down altogether. Two or three
squalid Mexicans, with their broad hats, and their vile faces overgrown with hair,
were lounging about the bank of the river in front of it. They disappeared as they
saw us approach; and as we rode up to the gate, a light active little figure came
out to meet us. It was our old friend Richard [a trader from Fort Laramie].
. . . Shaking us warmly by the hand, he led the way into the area. Here we
saw his large Santa Fe wagons standing together. A few squaws and Spanish
women, and a few Mexicans, as mean and miserable as the place itself, were lazily
sauntering about. Richard conducted us to the state apartment of the Pueblo, a
small mud room, very neatly furnished, considering the material, and garnished
with a crucifix, a looking-glass, a picture of the Virgin, and a rusty horse-pistol.
There were no chairs, but instead of them a number of chests and boxes ranged
about the room. There was another room beyond, less sumptuously decorated, and
here three or four Spanish girls, one of them very pretty, were baking cakes at a
mud fireplace in the corner. They brought out a poncho, which they spread upon
the floor by way of a table-cloth. A supper, which seemed to us luxuriant, was
soon laid out upon it, and folded buffalo-robes were placed around it to receive the
guests. Two or three Americans besides ourselves were present. . . . When
we took leave of Richard it was near sunset. Passing out of the gate, we could
look down the little valley of the Arkansas ; a beautiful scene, and doubly so to
our eyes, so long accustomed to deserts and mountains. Tall woods lined the river,
with green meadows on either hand ; and high bluff's, quietly basking in the sun-
light, flanked the narrow valley. A Mexican on horseback was driving a herd of
cattle towards the gate, and our little white tent, which the men had pitched under
a tree in the meadow, made a pleasing feature in the scene. When we reached it,
we found that Richard had sent a Mexican to bring us an abundant supply of green
corn and vegetables, and invite us to help ourselves to whatever we wanted from the
fields around the Pueblo."
Frederick Ruxton, who was at the Pueblo in 1847. upon his way back
from New Mexico to the States, thus describes the building and its tenants
in his Life in the Far West:
"The Pueblo is a small square fort of adobe with circular bastions at the
corners, no part of the walls being more than eight feet high, and around the in-
side of the yard or corrall are built some half-dozen little rooms inhabited by as
many Indian traders and mountain-men. They live entirely upon game, and the
greater part of the year without even bread, since but little maize is cultivated. As
HISTORY OF COLORADO 177
soon as their supply of meat is exhausted, they start to the mountains witli two or
three pack-animals and bring them back in two or three days loaded with buiralo or
venison. In the immediate vicinity of the fort game is very scarce, anil the buffalo
have within a few years deserted the neighlioring [jrairies, but the}' are always fovmd
in the mountain valleys. . . ."
About the middle of August, 1846, a company of Mormons, numbering
seventv-five or eighty men, women and eiiildren, arrived at tlie Pueblo ; and
three months later were joined there by eighty-eight more men of tlieir
faith, the coming of whom raised the total of the company's membership
to more than one hundred men, thirty-five married women, and many chil-
dren. While the Great Salt Lake was the ultimate destination of these
people, they built cabins near the Pueblo and occupied them until the begin-
ning of the next summer. Most of the men had been members of the
Mormon Battalion (which formed a part of the American forces that took
possession of N'ew Mexico soon after the outbreak of our war with Mexico),
and who had been, on account of sickness, released from further service;
some at the American encampment below Fort Bent and others while on
the march into Xew Mexico. The families of the sick men, together with a
number of other Mormons and their families, had accompanied the Ameri-
can troops across the plains, intending to go on to the Great Salt Lake
without delay. The company's wintering-place was in a large grove of
cottonwoods upon the southern bank of the Arkansas, and within half a
miles of the Pueblo. Although these people came as wayfarers and their
winter quarters were temporary, theirs were the first American families that
sojourned, and their cabins the fir&t structures that sheltered American
family-life, within the bounds of Colorado. While they tarried there, eight
or nine deaths and several births occurred among them, the first of the
latter being that of a girl — Malinda Catherine Kelley, probably the first
American cliild born upon the soil of our State. When the party started
for the farther West, near the end of May, 1847, two of the families re-
mained with the Puebloans and may have contributed additions to the local
population in later days.
At that time, another walled station, the counterpart of the Pueblo,
stood upon the north bank of the Arkansas, at or near the mouth of Hard-
scrabble Creek (a name that has been transmitted from that period), about
twenty-five miles farther west, and five or six miles east of the site of the
modern town of Florence. This establishment had been built by Simpson,
Doyle and Barclay in the ^-ear after the erection of the Pueblo, and, like
the latter, now was tenanted by a much-mixed assemblage of white folks.
Major Thomas Fitzpatrick, an old frontierman of the better stripe, who
served Fremont as a guide in 1843, and who had been in the Rocky iloun-
tain country since 1822, but who at the time was "United States Indian
Agent for the Indians on and between the upper Arkansas and Nebraska
[Platte] rivers", reporting to Washington from Fort Bent, in September,
1847, and considering the Hardscrabble collection and that at the Pueblo
as constituting one "settlement", had the following to say of the character
of the inhabitants thereof and of their means and modes of living :
"About 75 miles above this place, and immediately on the Arkansas river, there
is a small settlement, the principal part of which is composed of old trappers and
hunters: the male part of it are mostly Americans, Missouri French, Canadians,
and Mexicans. Tliey have a tolerable supply of cattle, horses, mules, &c. ; and I am
Vol. 1—12
178 HISTORY OF COLORADO
informed that this year they have raised a good crop of wheat, com, beans, pumpkins
and other vegetables. They number about 150 souls, and of this number there are
about 60 men, nearly all having wives, and some have two. Tliese wives are of
various Indian tribes, as follows, viz. : Blaekfoot, Assineboines, Arickeras, Sioux,
Aripohoes, Chyennes, Pawnees, Snake, Sinpach [Simpiteh], (from west of the Great
[Salt] lake,) Chinock [Chinook], (from the mouth of Columbia) [the Columbia
River], Mexicans, and Americans. The American women are Mormons; a party of
Mormons having wintered there, and, on their departure for California [this was
before peace had been made with Mexico, when the Utah country was counted as a
part of Mexican California], left behind two families. These people are living in
two separate establishments near each other; one called 'Punble' [Pueblo], and the
other 'Hard-scrabble'; both villages are fortified bj' a wall 12 feet high, composed of
adobe, (sun-dried brick.) Those villages are becoming the resort of all idlers and
loafers. Tliey are also becoming depots for the smuggling of liquors from New Mex-
ico into this country; therefore they must be watched."
The Pueblo continued to be redolent with bad odor. While many of
the conventionalities of civilized society generally were ignored in fur-
trading circles, the character and habits of most of the Pueblo's tenants
brought upon tlie place increasing disrepute. But the uumljer of its occu-
pants dwindled, and of those who were remaining in December, 1854,
nearly all the men perished at the hands of Indians. According to the
popular account of the massacre, as it appears in R. ]\I. Stevenson's his-
torical sketch of Pueblo County in a Histonj of the Arkansas Valley, from
which I have quoted in a preceding chapter, the tragedy occurred on
Christmas-da}', at which time the Pueblo was occupied by a few ilexicans
and seventeen Americans, mostly huuters and trappers. While the latter,
as tills story runs, were engaged in celebrating the holiday with the help
of a goodly supply of IVIexican whiskey — ''Taos Lightning" — and were
already hilarious, a large band of peaceable Ute Indians arrived at the post
and eagerly accepted an invitation to join in the festivities. When all
hands had become "fighting-drunk"", a trifling cjuarrel between white and
red precipitated a melee, in which fifteen of the Americans were killed
and one left mortally wounded. The only American survivor among the
tenants of the place was a teamster, who had gone from the post early in
the morning and was absent until nightfall ; and who, upon his return,
found the Pueblo in the condition of a slaughter-house.
But in another account, which most probably states the facts, and
which has no Christmas celebration, it is said that the massacre was the
work of a large war-party of Utes, who api^eared at the Pueblo alx)ut