Chapter VI: Pioneers (2)

In command of The Alamo garrison was Colonel Travis, a young man of twenty-five; an Alabaman, admitted to the bar there, but driven out of his native state by financial troubles, and casting in his lot with the Texas revolutionists, among whom he soon acquired considerable influence. The third of the trio, Colonel Bowie, was a native of Georgia, but had settled in Louisiana, where, nine years before, he had been a participant in a celebrated affray. Two gentlemen, becoming involved in a quarrel, decided to settle it in approved fashion by a duel, and, accompanied by their friends, among whom was Bowie, adjourned to a convenient place and took a shot at each other without doing any damage. They were about to declare honor satisfied and to shake hands, when a dispute arose among their friends, and before it was over, fifteen were killed and six were badly injured. Bowie distinguished himself by stabbing a man to death with a knife made from a large file. The weapon was afterwards sent to Philadelphia and there fashioned into the deadly knife which has ever since been known by his name. The prospect of trouble in Texas naturally attracted him, he was made colonel of militia there, and dispatched to The Alamo with a small force by General Houston early in 1836.

Here, then, in this old and crumbling Spanish mission, toward the end of February, were gathered a hundred and fifty Texans, a wild and undisciplined band, impatient of restraint or control, but men of iron courage and the best shots on the border, with Travis in command; while without was the army of Santa Anna. On February 24th, Travis, in a letter asking for reinforcements, announced the siege and added that he would never surrender or retreat. Early in March, thirty-two men from Gonzales, knowing they were going to well-nigh certain death, made their way into the fort, raising its garrison to 180.

Santa Anna demanded unconditional surrender, and Travis answered with a cannon-shot; whereat, on the morning of the sixth of March, the Mexican army stormed the fort from all sides, swarmed in through breaches and over the walls, which the Texans were too few to man, and a desperate hand-to-hand conflict followed. To and fro between the shattered walls the fight reeled, each tall Texan the centre of a group of foes, fighting with a wild and desperate courage; but the odds were too great, and one by one they fell, thrust through with bayonets or riddled by bullets. Colonel Travis fell, and so did Bowie, sick and weak from a wasting disease, but rising from his bed, and dying fighting with his great knife red with the blood of his foes. At last a single man stood at bay. It was Davy Crockett.

Wounded in a dozen places, ringed about by the bodies of the men he had slain, he stood facing his foes, his back against a wall, knife in hand, daring them to come on. No one dared to run in upon that old lion. So they held him there with their lances, while, the musketeers loaded their carbines and shot him down. Not a man of the garrison was left alive, but each of them had avenged himself four times over, for the Mexican loss was over five hundred. So ended one of the most heroic events in American history. "Thermopylae had its messengers of death; The Alamo had none."

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One more era remains to be recorded, that in which the United States confirmed its hold upon the Pacific coast, and here again the story is that of the lives of three men--Marcus Whitman, John Augustus Sutter, and John Charles Frémont. It was Whitman who brought home to the Nation the value of Oregon by a spectacular ride from ocean to ocean; it was Sutter who led the way for an American invasion of California, and who gave impetus to that invasion by the discovery of gold; and it was Frémont who led the revolution there against the Mexicans, and who secured the country's independence.

The explorations of Lewis and Clark, early in the century, had made the country along the Columbia river known to the East in a dim way, but it was so distant and so inaccessible that it excited little interest. Just before the second war with England, John Jacob Astor had attempted to carry out a far-reaching plan for the development of the country and the securing of its great fur trade, but the outbreak of the war had stopped all efforts in that direction, and Astor never took them up again. Meanwhile through Canada, the Hudson Bay Company, a great English concern engaged in the fur trade, had extended its stations to the Pacific coast, and was quietly taking possession of the country.

In 1834, the American board of missions, learning of the need for a missionary among the Oregon Indians, appointed Marcus Whitman to the work. Whitman was at that time thirty-two years of age and was just about to be married. His betrothed agreed to accompany him on his perilous mission, and, after great difficulty, he secured an associate in the person of Rev. H.H. Spalding, also just married. What a bridal trip that was! At Pittsburg, George Catlin, who knew the western Indians better than any living man, having spent years among them, warned them of the folly of attempting to take women across the plains; at Cincinnati, they were greeted by William Moody, only forty-five years of age and yet the first white man born there; at the frontier town of St. Louis, they joined a hunting expedition up the Missouri, and by June 6, 1836, were at Laramie.

A month later, they crossed the Great Divide by the South Pass, "discovered," six years later, by Frémont; and toward the end of July, they came to the great mountain rendezvous of traders and trappers high in the mountains near Fort Hall. Some of those men had not seen a white woman for a quarter of a century. You can imagine, then, what a sensation the arrival of Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding occasioned, and with what warmth they were welcomed. Ten days they tarried there, then pressed on westward, and on September 2, 1836, after a journey of thirty-five hundred miles, the gates of Fort Walla-Walla, on the lower Columbia, opened to receive them, and the conquest of Oregon began.

Fort Walla-Walla belonged to the Hudson Bay Company, which had undisputed control of the rich Oregon fur trade, and which was determined to retain it at any cost. So the difficulties of the Oregon trail were invariably exaggerated, and immigration from the states systematically discouraged. Nevertheless, in the years following Whitman's arrival, other parties of missionaries and settlers worked their way into the country, until, in 1842, their number reached about a hundred and fifty. The Hudson Bay Company realized that neither England nor America had a clear title to the region, and that its population must, in the end, determine its nationality. Consequently it bent every effort to hurry English settlers into the country. In October, 1842, Whitman was dining with a company of Englishmen at Walla-Walla, when a messenger arrived with news of the approach of a large body of settlers from Canada. A shout arose: "Hurrah for Oregon! America is too late! We've got the country!" And Whitman, at a glance, saw through the plan.

Twenty-four hours later, he had started to ride across the continent to carry the news to Washington. He had caught the import of the news, had grasped its consequences, and he was determined that Oregon, with its great forests and broad prairies, its mighty rivers, and its unparalleled richness, should be saved for the Union. If the Nation only knew the value of the prize, England would never be permitted to carry it off. His wife and friends protested against the desperate venture--four thousand miles on horseback--for it would soon be the dead of winter, with snow hiding the trail and filling the passes, with streams ice-blocked and winter-swollen, and last but not least, with the Blackfoot Indians on the warpath. But he would listen to none of this: his duty, as he conceived it, lay clear before him; he was determined to set out at once. Amos Lovejoy volunteered to accompany him, a busy night was spent in preparation, and the next day they were off.

No diary of that remarkable journey was kept by Dr. Whitman, but most of its incidents are known. Terribly severe weather was encountered almost at the start, for ten days they were snowed up in the mountains, and long before the journey ended, were reduced to rations of dog and mule meat. But they struggled on, more than once losing the way and giving themselves up for lost, and on March 3, 1843, just five months from Walla-Walla, Whitman entered Washington.

His spectacular ride rivetted public attention upon the far western country, and the information which he gave concerning it opened the Nation's eyes to its value. When he returned, later in the year, to the banks of the Columbia, he took back with him a train of two hundred wagons and a thousand settlers--a veritable army of occupation which the British could not match. Three years later, so steadily did the tide continue which Whitman had started, the American population had risen to over ten thousand, there was never any further real uncertainty as to whom Oregon belonged, and the treaty of 1846 settled the question for all time.

The new territory was soon to be the scene of a terrible tragedy. The white man had brought new diseases into it, measles, fevers, and even, smallpox; they spread rapidly among the Indians, aggravated by their imprudence and ignorance of proper treatment, and many died. The Indians became convinced that the missionaries were to blame, and it is claimed, too, that the emissaries of the Hudson Bay Company urged them on. However that may have been, on the twenty-ninth of November, 1847, the Indians fell upon the missionaries and killed fifteen, of them, among the dead being Marcus Whitman and his wife. So ended the life of the man who saved Oregon, and of the woman who was the first of her sex to cross the continent.

Meanwhile, far to the south, a drama scarcely less thrilling was enacting, its chief personage being John Augustus Sutter. Sutter was a Swiss and had received a military education and served in the Swiss Guard before coming to America in 1834. He settled first at St. Louis and then at Santa Fé, where he gained considerable experience as a trader. Finally, in 1838, he decided to cross the Rockies, and after trading for a time in a little schooner up and down the coast, was wrecked in San Francisco Bay. He made his way inland, and founded the first white settlement in the country on the site of what is now Sacramento. Here, in 1841, he built a fort, having secured a large grant of land from the Mexican Government, and set up what was really a little empire in the wilderness, over which he reigned supreme. And here, three years later, down from the snow-filled and tempest-swept passes of the Rockies, came a party of starving and frost-bitten scarecrows, the exploring expedition headed by John Charles Frémont, of whom we shall speak presently.

The rest of Sutter's history is soon told. In 1848, when Mexico ceded California to the United States, he was the owner of a vast domain, over which thousands of head of cattle wandered. A few years later, he was practically a ruined man--ruined by gold. On the eighteenth day of January, 1848, one of his men named Marshall, brought to Sutter a lump of yellow metal which he had uncovered while digging a mill-race. There could be no doubt of it--it was gold! News of the great discovery soon got about; there was a great rush for this new Eldorado; Sutter's land was overrun with gold-seekers, who cared nothing for his rights, and when he attempted to defend his titles in the courts, they were declared invalid, and his land was taken from him. To crown his disasters, his homestead was destroyed by fire; finding himself ruined, without land and without money, he gave up the struggle in despair and returned east, passing his last years in poverty in a little town in Pennsylvania.

Frémont, meantime, had done a great work for California. The son of a Frenchman, showing an early aptitude for mathematics, he had secured an appointment to the United States engineering corps, and, after various minor expeditions in which he had acquitted himself well, was put in charge of an expedition for the exploration of the Rocky Mountains. He was fortunate at the start in securing the services as guide and interpreter of that famous hunter and plainsman, Kit Carson, whose life had been passed on the prairies, who knew more Indians and Indian dialects than any other white man, and who was, to his generation, what Davy Crockett was to an earlier one. To Carson a great share of the expedition's success was no doubt due, and it was so successful that in the following year, Frémont was leading another over the country between the Rockies and the Pacific. This one was almost lost in the mountains, and came near perishing of cold and hunger, but, finally, in March, 1844, managed to struggle through to Sutter's Fort.

Frémont found California in a state of unrest amounting almost to insurrection against Mexican rule, and as the number of white settlers increased, this feeling grew, until Mexico, becoming alarmed, sent an armed force to occupy the country. The show of force was the one thing needed to fire the magazine; the settlers sprang to arms as one man, and, under Frémont's leadership, defeated the Mexicans and drove them southward across the border. Soon afterwards, General Kearny marched in from the east, from his remarkable and bloodless conquest of New Mexico, with a force sufficient to render it certain that California would never again be taken by the Mexicans.

On the fourth of July, 1849, Frémont was chosen governor of the new territory, and in the following year, arranged the treaty by which California passed permanently to the United States. The new state was quick to reward him and sent him to the Senate, where he gained sufficient prominence to receive the nomination of the anti-slavery party for the presidency in 1856. He never had any chance of election, for the reform party had not yet sufficient strength, and was defeated by Buchanan. He served with some distinction in the Civil War, gaining considerable notoriety, while in charge of the Western Department in 1861, by issuing a proclamation freeing the slaves of secessionists in Missouri. The proclamation drew forth some laudatory verses from John G. Whittier, but was promptly countermanded by President Lincoln. Soon afterwards, Frémont became involved in personal disputes with his superior officers, was relieved from active service, and the remainder of his life was spent in private enterprises.

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Fremont's "pathfinding" virtually completed the exploration of the country. A few secluded nooks and corners became known only as the tide of immigration crept into them; but in its general features, the great continent, on whose eastern shore the white man was fighting for a foothold two centuries before, was known from ocean to ocean. It had been conquered and occupied by a dominant race, and won for civilization.

SUMMARY

BOONE, DANIEL. Born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, February 11, 1735; settled at Holman's Ford, North Carolina, 1748; explored Kentucky, 1769-70; founded Boonesborough, 1775; moved to Missouri, 1795; died at Charette, Missouri, September 26, 1820.

KENTON, SIMON, Born in Fauquier County, Virginia, April 3, 1755; fled to the West, 1771; ranged western country as a spy, 1776-78; with George Rogers Clark's expedition, 1778; commanded a battalion of Kentucky volunteers under Wayne, 1793-94; brigadier-general of Ohio militia, 1805; at battle of the Thames, 1813; died in Logan County, Ohio, April 29, 1836.

CLARK, GEORGE ROGERS. Born in Albemarle County, Virginia, November 19, 1752; settled in Kentucky, 1775; major of militia, 1776; sent as delegate to Virginia, 1776; second journey to Virginia, 1777; started on Illinois expedition, June 24, 1778; captured Kaskaskia, July 4, 1778; captured Vincennes, February 24, 1779; defeated Miami Indians and destroyed villages, 1782; died near Louisville, Kentucky, February 18, 1818.

PUTNAM, RUFUS. Born in Sutton, Massachusetts, April 9, 1738; served in campaigns against the French, 1757-60; superintended defenses of New York City, 1776; superintended construction of fortifications at West Point, 1778; promoted to brigadier-general, January 7, 1783; founded Marietta, Ohio, April 7, 1788; judge of Supreme Court of Northwest Territory, 1789; served as brigadier-general under Wayne, 1792-93; member of Ohio Constitutional Convention, 1803; formed first Bible society west of the Alleghanies, 1812; died at Marietta, Ohio, May 1, 1824.

LEWIS, MERIWETHER. Born near Charlottesville, Virginia, August 18, 1774; entered United States army, 1795; promoted captain, 1800; private secretary to President Jefferson, 1801-03; explored country west of Mississippi, 1804-06; governor of Missouri Territory, 1808; killed himself near Nashville, Tennessee, October 8, 1809.

CLARK, WILLIAM. Born in Virginia, August 1, 1770; removed to Kentucky, 1774; lieutenant of infantry, March 7, 1792; resigned from service, July, 1796; removed to St. Louis, 1796; accompanied Meriwether Lewis on western explorations, 1804-06; governor of Missouri Territory, 1813-21; superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1822-38; died at St. Louis, September 1, 1838.

PIKE, ZEBULON MONTGOMERY. Born at Lamberton, New Jersey, January 5, 1779; entered United States army, 1799; captain, 1806; conducted exploring expeditions in Louisiana Territory, 1805-07; major, 1808; colonel, 1812; brigadier-general, March 12, 1813; died in assault on York (now Toronto), Canada, April 27, 1813.

HOUSTON, SAMUEL. Born near Lexington, Virginia, March 2, 1793; served in war of 1812; member of Congress from Tennessee, 1823-27; governor of Tennessee, 1827-29; defeated Mexicans at San Jacinto, April, 1836; President of Texas, 1836-38 and 1841-44; United States senator from Texas, 1845-59; governor of Texas, 1859-61; died at Huntersville, Texas, July 25, 1863.

CROCKETT, DAVID. Born at Limestone, Tennessee, August 17, 1786; member of Congress, 1827-33; served in Texan war, 1835-36; killed at The Alamo, San Antonio de Bexar, Texas, March 6, 1836.

BOWIE, JAMES. Born in Burke County, Georgia, about 1790; notorious in duel of 1827; went to Texas, 1835; made colonel of Texan army, 1835; killed at the Alamo, March 6, 1836.

TRAVIS, WILLIAM BARRETT. Born in Conecuh County, Alabama, 1811; admitted to the bar, 1830; went to Texas, 1832; killed at the Alamo, March 6, 1836.

WHITMAN, MARCUS. Born in Rushville, Ontario County, New York, September 4, 1802; appointed missionary to Oregon, 1834; reached Fort Walla Walla, September 2, 1836; started on ride across continent, October 3, 1842; reached Washington, March 3, 1843; took great train of emigrants back to Oregon, 1843; killed by Indians at Waülatpu, Oregon, November 29, 1847.

SUTTER, JOHN AUGUSTUS. Born in Kandern, Baden, February 15, 1803; graduated at military college at Berne, Switzerland, 1823; served in Swiss Guard through Spanish campaign, 1823-24; emigrated to America and settled at St. Louis, 1834; crossed Rocky Mountains, 1838; settled in California, 1839; built fort on present site of Sacramento, 1841; gold discovered on his ranch, January 18, 1848; homestead burned, 1864; removed to Litiz, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1873; died at Washington, D.C., June 17, 1880.

FRÉMONT, JOHN CHARLES. Born at Savannah, Georgia, January 21, 1813; explored South Pass, Rocky Mountains, 1842; Pacific Slope, 1843-45; took part in conquest of California, 1846-47; United States senator from California, 1850-51; Republican candidate for presidency, 1856; Federal Commander of Department of the West, 1861; governor of Arizona, 1878-82; died at New York City, July 13, 1890.

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