Chapter VIII: When We Fought the Japanese 277 (6)

Those were days when the chief executive of the nation was hedged by less formality than he is in these busier times, and President Tyler promptly received him. Some day, perhaps, the people of one of those great States which he saved to the Union will commission a famous artist to paint a picture of that historic meeting: the President, his keen, attentive face framed by the flaring collar and high black stock of the period, sitting low in his great armchair; the great Secretary of State, his mane brushed back from his tremendous forehead, seated beside him; and, standing before them, the preacher-pioneer, bearded to the eyes, with frozen limbs, in his worn and torn garments of fur and leather, pleading for Oregon. The burden of his argument was that the treaty of 1819 must be immediately abrogated and that the authority of the United States be extended over the valley of the Columbia. He painted in glowing words the limitless resources, the enormous wealth in minerals and timber and water-power of this land beyond the Rockies; he told his hearers, spellbound now by the interest and vividness of the narrative, of the incredible fertility of the virgin soil, in which anything would grow; of the vastness of the forests; of the countless leagues of navigable rivers; of the healthful and delightful climate; of the splendid harbors along the coast; and last, but by no means least, of those hardy pioneers who had gone forth to settle this rich new region at peril of their lives and who, through him, were pleading to be placed under the shadow of their own flag.

But Daniel Webster still clung obstinately to his belief that Oregon was a wilderness not worth the having.

“It is impossible to build a wagon road over the mountains,” he asserted positively. “My friend Sir George Simpson, the British minister, has told me so.”

“There _is_ a wagon road over the mountains, Mr. Secretary,” retorted Whitman, “for I have made it.”

It was the rattletrap old prairie-schooner that the missionary had dragged into Oregon on two wheels in the face of British opposition that clinched and copper-riveted the business. It knocked all the argument out of the famous Secretary, who, for almost the first time in his life, found himself at a loss for an answer. Here was a man of a type quite different from any that Webster had encountered in all his political experience. He had no axe to grind; he asked for nothing; he wanted no money, or office, or lands, or anything except that which would add to the glory of the flag, the prosperity of the people, the wealth of the nation. It was a powerful appeal to the heart of President Tyler.

“What you have told us has interested me deeply, Doctor Whitman,” said the President at length. “Now tell me exactly what it is that you wish me to do.”

“If it is true, Mr. President,” replied Whitman, “that, as Secretary Webster himself has said, ‘the ownership of Oregon is very likely to follow the greater settlement and the larger amount of population,’ then all I ask is that you won’t barter away Oregon or permit of British interference until I can organize a company of settlers and lead them across the plains to colonize the country. And this I will try to do at once.”

“Your credentials as a missionary vouch for your character, Doctor Whitman,” replied the President. “Your extraordinary ride and your frostbitten limbs vouch for your patriotism. The request you make is a reasonable one. I am glad to grant it.”

“That is all I ask,” said Whitman, rising.

The object that had started him on his four-thousand-mile journey having been attained, Whitman wasted no time in resting. His work was still unfinished. It was up to him to get his settlers into Oregon, for the increasing arrogance of the Hudson’s Bay Company confirmed him in his belief that the sole hope of saving the valley of the Columbia lay in a prompt and overwhelming American immigration. He had, indeed, arrived at Washington in the very nick of time, for, if prior to his arrival the British Government had renewed its offer of compromising by taking as the international boundary the forty-ninth parallel to the Columbia and thence down that river to the Pacific--thus giving the greater part of the present State of Washington to England--there is but little doubt that the offer would have been accepted. But the promise made by President Tyler to Whitman committed him against taking any action.

Though Whitman was treated with respect and admiration by the President of the United States, the greeting he received when he reported himself at the headquarters of the American Board in Boston was far from being a cordial one.

“What are you doing here, away from your post without permission?” curtly inquired the secretary of the Board, eying his shaggy visitor with evident disapproval.

“I came on business to Washington,” answered Whitman, looking the secretary squarely in the eye. “There was imminent danger of Oregon passing into the possession of England, and I felt it my duty to do what I could to prevent it.”

“Obtaining new territories for the nation is no part of our business,” was the ungracious answer. “You would have done better not to have meddled in political affairs. Here, take some money and get some decent clothes, and then we’ll discuss this scheme of yours of piloting emigrants over the mountains.”

Meanwhile General Lovejoy had been busy upon the frontier spreading the news that early in the spring Doctor Whitman and himself would guide a body of settlers across the Rockies to Oregon. The news spread up and down the border like fire in dry grass. The start was to be made from Weston, not far from where Kansas City now stands, and soon the emigrants came pouring in--men who had fought the Indians and the wilderness all the way from the Great Lakes to the Gulf; men who had followed Boone and Bowie and Carson and Davy Crockett; a hardy, sturdy, tenacious breed who were quite ready to fight, if need be, to hold this northwestern land where they had determined to build their homes. The grass was late, that spring of 1843, and the expedition did not get under way until the last week in June. At Fort Hall they met with the customary discouragements and threats from Captain Grant, but Whitman, like a modern Moses, urged them forward. On pushed the winding train of white-topped wagons, crossing the sun-baked prairies, climbing the Rockies, fording the intervening rivers, creeping along the edge of perilous precipices, until at last they stood upon the summit of the westernmost range, with the promised land lying spread below them. Whitman, the man to whom it was all due, reined in his horse and watched the procession of wagons, bearing upward of a thousand men, women, and children, make its slow progress down the mountains. He must have been very happy, for he had added the great, rich empire which the term Oregon implied to the Union.[F]

For four years more Doctor Whitman continued his work of caring for the souls and the bodies of red men and white alike at the mission station of Waiilatpui. On August 6, 1846, as a direct result of his great ride, was signed the treaty whereby England surrendered her claims to Oregon. In those days news travelled slowly along the frontier, and it was the following spring before the British outposts along the Columbia learned that the British minister at Washington had been beaten by the diplomacy of a Yankee missionary and that the great, despotic company which for well-nigh two centuries had been in undisputed control of this region, and which had come to regard it as inalienably its own, would have to move on. From that moment Marcus Whitman was a doomed man, for it was a long-standing boast of the company that no man defied it--and lived.

The end came with dramatic suddenness. Early in the afternoon of November 20, 1847, Doctor Whitman was sitting in the mission station prescribing medicine, as was his custom, for those of his Indians who were ailing, when a blanketed warrior stole up behind him on silent moccasins and buried a hatchet in his brain. Then hell broke loose. Whooping fiends in paint and feathers appeared as from the pit. Mrs. Whitman was butchered as she knelt by her dying husband, their scalps being torn from their heads before they had ceased to breathe. Fourteen other missionaries were murdered by the red-skinned monsters and forty women and children were carried into a captivity that was worse than death. And this by the Indians who, just fifteen years before, had pleaded to have sent them the white man’s Book of Heaven! Though no conclusive proof has ever been produced that they were whooped on to their atrocious deed by emissaries of the great monopoly which had been forced out of Oregon as a result of Whitman’s ride, there is but little doubt. Whitman had snatched an empire from its greedy fingers, and he had to pay the price.

Within sight of the mission station, where for more than a decade they had worked together, and from which he had started on his historic ride, the martyr and his courageous wife lie buried. You can see the grave for yourself should your travels take you Walla Walla way. You will need to have it pointed out to you, however, for you would never notice it otherwise: a modest headstone surrounded by a picket fence. Though Marcus Whitman added to the national domain a territory larger and possessing greater natural resources than the German Empire, though but for him Portland and Tacoma and Seattle and Spokane would be British instead of American, no memorial of him can be found in their parks or public buildings. Instead of honoring the man who discovered the streams and forests from which they are growing rich, who won for them the very lands on which they dwell, unworthy discussions and acrimonious debates as to the motives which animated him are the only tributes which have been paid him by the people for whom he did so much. But he sleeps peacefully on beside the mighty river, oblivious to the pettiness and ingratitude of it all. When history grants Marcus Whitman the tardy justice of perspective, over that lonely grave a monument worthy of a nation builder shall rise.

THE MARCH OF THE ONE THOUSAND

THE MARCH OF THE ONE THOUSAND

Twenty-two centuries or thereabouts ago a Greek soldier of fortune named Xenophon found himself in a most trying and perilous situation. Lured by avarice, adventure, and ambition, he had accepted a commission in a legion of Hellenic mercenaries, ten thousand strong, who had been engaged by Cyrus to assist him in ousting his brother from the throne of Persia. But at Cunaxa Cyrus had met his death and his forces complete disaster, the Greek legionaries being left to make their way back to Europe as best they might. Under Xenophon’s daring and resourceful leadership they set out on that historic retreat across the plains of Asia Minor which their leader was to make immortal with his pen, eventually reaching Constantinople, after an absence of fifteen months and a total journey of about three thousand five hundred miles, with little save their weapons and their lives. Xenophon’s story of the March of the Ten Thousand as told in his “Anabasis,” is the most famous military narrative ever written; it is used as a text-book in colleges and schools, and is familiar wherever the history of Greece is read.

Yet how many of those who know the “Anabasis” by heart are aware that Xenophon’s exploit has been surpassed on our own continent, in our own times, and by our own countrymen? Where is the text-book which contains so much as a reference to the march of the _One Thousand_? How many of the students who can glibly rattle off the details of Xenophon’s march across the Mesopotamian plains have ever even heard of Doniphan’s march across the plains of Mexico? During that march, which occupied twelve months, a force of American volunteers, barely a thousand strong, traversed upward of six thousand miles of territory, most of which was unknown and bitterly hostile, and returned to the United States bringing with them seventeen pieces of artillery and a hundred battle-flags taken on fields whose names their countrymen had never so much as heard before. Because it is the most remarkable campaign in all our history, and because it is too glorious an episode to be lost in the mists of oblivion, I will, with your permission, tell its story.

Early in May, 1846, Mexico, angered by the annexation of Texas, declared war against the United States. Hostilities began a few days later, when the Army of Occupation under General Zachary Taylor, whom this campaign was to make President, crossed the Rio Grande at Matamoros and defeated the Mexicans in quick succession at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. The original plan of campaign was for the Army of Occupation to penetrate directly into the heart of Mexico via Monterey; the Army of the Centre, under General Wool, to operate against Chihuahua, the metropolis of the north, two hundred and twenty-five miles below the Rio Grande; while an expeditionary force under Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny, known as the Army of the West, was ordered to march on Santa Fé for the conquest of New Mexico. Subsequently this plan was changed: General Scott captured Vera Cruz and used it as a base for his advance on the capital; General Wool, instead of descending on Chihuahua, effected a juncture with General Taylor at Saltillo; and Colonel Kearny, after the taking of New Mexico, divided his force into three separate commands. The first he led in person across the continent to the conquest of California; the second, under Colonel Sterling Price, was left to garrison Santa Fé and hold New Mexico; the third, consisting of a thousand Missouri volunteers under Colonel Alexander Doniphan, was ordered to make a descent upon the state of Chihuahua and join General Wool’s division at Chihuahua City. The march of this regiment of raw recruits from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fé, El Paso, Chihuahua, Saltillo, and Matamoros is known as Doniphan’s Expedition.

When, echoing Mexico’s declaration of war, came President Polk’s call for fifty thousand volunteers, Governor Edwards, of Missouri, turned to Colonel Doniphan for assistance in raising the quota of that State. He could not have chosen better, for Alexander Doniphan combined practical military experience and remarkable executive ability with the most extraordinary personal magnetism. Though a citizen of Missouri, Doniphan was a native of Kentucky, his father, who was a comrade of Daniel Boone, having pushed westward with that great adventurer to “the dark and bloody ground,” where, in 1808, Alexander was born. Left fatherless at the age of six, he was sent to live with his elder brother at Augusta, Ky., where he received the best education that the frontier afforded. Graduating from the Methodist college in Augusta when nineteen, he took up the study of law and in 1833 moved to Liberty, Mo., where his pronounced abilities quickly brought him reputation and a large and profitable clientèle. A born organizer, he took a prominent part in building up the State militia, commanding a brigade of the expeditionary force which was despatched in 1838 to quell the insurrectionary movement among the Mormons at Far West. A polished and convincing orator, he met with instant success when he set out through upper Missouri to raise recruits for service in Mexico. The force thus raised was designated as the 1st Missouri Mounted Volunteers, and no finer regiment of horse ever clattered behind the guidons. Missouri, then on our westernmost frontier, was peopled by hardy pioneers, and the youths who filled the ranks of the regiment were the sons of those pioneers and possessed all the courage and endurance of their fathers. Though Doniphan was a brigadier-general of militia and had seen active service, he enlisted as a private in the regiment which he had raised, but when the election for officers came to be held he was chosen colonel by acclamation. If ever a man looked the _beau sabreur_ it was Doniphan. He was then in his eight-and-thirtieth year and so imposing in appearance that the mere sight of him in any assemblage would have caused the question: “Who is that man?” to go round. Six feet four in his stockings; crisp, curling hair, which, though not red, was suspiciously near it; features which would have been purest Grecian had not an aquiline nose lent them strength and distinction; a complexion as fair and delicate as a woman’s; a temperament that was poetic, even romantic, without being effeminate; a sense of humor so highly developed that he never failed to recognize a joke when he heard one; a personal modesty which was as delightful as it was unaffected; manners so courtly and polished as to suggest an upbringing in a palace rather than on the frontier; conversation that was witty, brilliant, and wonderfully fascinating--there you have Alexander Doniphan _en silhouette_, as it were. Small wonder that President Lincoln, when Colonel Doniphan was presented to him in after years, remarked: “Colonel, you are the only man I ever met whose appearance came up to my previous expectations.”

The Army of the West, of which Colonel Doniphan’s Missourians formed a part, was ordered to mobilize at Fort Leavenworth, where several weeks were spent in completing the equipment, collecting supplies, and teaching the recruits the rudiments of drill. Everything being complete down to the last horseshoe, on the morning of June 26, 1846, the expedition, comprising barely two thousand men in all, headed by Colonel Kearny with two squadrons of United States dragoons, smart and soldierly in their flat-topped, visored caps and their shell jackets of blue piped with yellow, and followed by a mile-long train of white-topped wagons, set out across the grassy prairies on a march which was to end in the conquest and annexation of a territory larger than all the United States at that time. It would be difficult to express the hopes and apprehensions of the volunteers and of those who watched and waved to them, when, with the bands playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” they moved out of Fort Leavenworth on that sunny summer’s morning and turned their horses’ heads toward the south--and Mexico. At that time the American people’s knowledge of Mexico was very meagre, for the geographies of the day, though indicating very clearly the Great American Desert, as it was called, stretching long and wide and yellow between Missouri and Mexico, showed little beyond the barest outlines of the vast unexplored regions to the west and south. The people of Missouri, however, knew more than any others, for their traders, for more than twenty years, had laboriously traversed the dangerous trail which led from Independence to the northernmost of the Mexican trading-posts at Santa Fé and thence on to Chihuahua. Thus they knew that the regions between the Missouri and the Great Desert were Indian country and dangerous, and that those beyond were Indian and Mexican and more dangerous still. No wonder that the volunteers felt that every mile of their advance into this _terra incognita_ would reveal perils, marvels, and surprises; no wonder that those who were left behind prayed fervently for the safety of the husbands and sons and lovers who had gone into the wild as fighters go.

There was no road, not even a path, leading from Fort Leavenworth into the Santa Fé trail, and, as the intervening country was slashed across by innumerable streams and canyons, bridges and roads had to be built for the wagons. The progress of the column was frequently interrupted by precipitous bluffs whose sides, often two hundred feet or more in height, were so steep and slippery that it was impossible for the mules to get a foothold, and the heavily laden wagons, with a hundred sweating, panting, cursing men straining at the drag-ropes, had to be hauled up by hand. As the column pressed southward the heat became unbearable. The tall, rank grass harbored swarms of flies and mosquitoes which attacked the soldiers until their eyes were sometimes swollen shut and clung to the flanks of the mules and horses until the tormented animals streamed with blood. In places the ground became so soft and marshy that the wagons sank to the hubs and the march was halted while a dozen teams hauled them out again. Numbers of the wagons broke down daily under the terrific strain to which they were subjected, and, as though this was not enough, the troubles of the teamsters were increased by the mules, which, maddened by the attacks of insects and made refractory by the unaccustomed conditions, stubbornly refused to work.

Preceding the column was a hunter train, commanded by Thomas Forsyth, a celebrated frontiersman. Leaving camp about eleven in the evening and riding through the night, the hunters and butchers would reach the site selected for the next camp at daybreak and would promptly get to work killing and dressing the game which swarmed upon the prairies, so that a supply of fresh meat--buffalo, elk, antelope, and deer--was always awaiting the troops upon their arrival at sundown, while along the banks of the Arkansas the men brought in quantities of wild grapes, plums, and rice. Arriving at the towering butte, standing solitary in the prairie, known as Pawnee Rock, Forsyth asked his hunters to ascend it with him. Even these old plainsmen, accustomed as they were to seeing prodigious herds of game, whistled in amazement at the spectacle upon which they looked down, for from the base of the rock straightaway to the horizon the prairie was literally carpeted with buffalo. Forsyth, who was always conservative in his expressions, estimated that five hundred thousand buffalo were in sight, but his hunters asserted that eight hundred thousand would be much nearer the number of animals seen from the summit of Pawnee Rock that morning.

Crossing the Arkansas, the expedition entered upon the Great American Desert--as sterile, parched, and sandy a waste as the Sahara. Dreary, desolate, boundless solitude reigned everywhere. The heat was like a blast from an opened furnace door. The earth was literally parched to a crust, and this crust had broken open in great cracks and fissures. Such patches of vegetation as there were had been parched and shrivelled by the pitiless sun until they were as yellow as the sand itself. Soon even this pretense of vegetation disappeared; the parched wire grass was stiffened by incrustations of salt; streaks of alkali spread across the face of the desert like livid scars; the pulverized earth looked and felt like smouldering embers. The mules grew weak from thirst and some of the wagons had to be abandoned. Horses fell dead from heat and exhaustion, but the men thus forced to march on foot managed to keep pace with the mounted men. Their boots gave out, however, and for miles the line of their march could be traced by bloody footprints. Wind-storms drove the loose sand of the desert against them like a sand-blast, cutting their lips, filling their eyes and ears and sometimes almost suffocating them. Though constantly tantalized by mirages of cool lakes with restful groves reflected in them, they would frequently fail to find a pool of water or a patch of grass in a long day’s march and would plod forward with their swollen tongues hanging from their mouths. Those who saw the smart body of soldiery which rode out of Fort Leavenworth would scarcely have recognized them in the straggling column of ragged, sun-scorched skeletons of men, sitting their gaunt and jaded horses, which crossed the well-named Purgatoire eight weeks later, and saw before them the snow peaks of the Cimarrons.

Although four thousand Mexican troops under General Armijo had been gathered at the pass of the Galisteo, fifteen miles north of Santa Fé, where, as a result of the rugged character of the country, they could have offered a long and desperate resistance and could only have been dislodged at a great sacrifice of life, upon the approach of the American column they retired without firing a shot and retreated to Chihuahua. On the 18th of August, 1846, the American forces entered Santa Fé, and four days later Colonel Kearny issued a proclamation annexing the whole of New Mexico to the Union. As the red-white-and-green tricolor floating over the palace, which had sheltered a long line of Spanish, Indian, and Mexican governors, dropped slowly down the staff and in its stead was broken out a flag of stripes and stars, from the troops drawn up in the plaza came a hurricane of cheers, while the field-guns belched forth a national salute. As United States Senator Benton described this remarkable accomplishment in his speech of welcome to the returning troops: “A colonel’s command, called an army, marches eight hundred miles beyond its base, its communications liable to be cut by the slightest effort of the enemy--mostly through a desert--the whole distance almost totally destitute of resources, to conquer a territory of two hundred and fifty thousand square miles, without a military chest; the people of this territory are declared citizens of the United States, and the invaders are thus debarred the rights of war to seize needful supplies; they arrive without food before the capital--a city two hundred and forty years old, garrisoned by regular troops.”

To understand the reason for General Armijo’s evacuation of New Mexico without firing a shot in its defense, it is necessary to here interject a chapter of secret history. The bloodless annexation of New Mexico was due, not to Colonel Kearny, but to an American trader and frontiersman named James Macgoffin. Macgoffin, who had lived and done business for years in Chihuahua, was intimately acquainted with Mexico and the Mexicans. He was not only familiar with the physiography of the country, but he understood the psychology of its people and how to take advantage of it. When war was declared he happened to be in Washington. Going to Senator Benton, he explained that he wished to offer his services to the nation and outlined to the deeply interested senator a plan he had in mind. Senator Benton immediately took Macgoffin to the White House and obtained him an interview with the President and the Secretary of War, who, after listening to his scheme, gladly availed themselves of his services. Macgoffin thereupon hastened to Independence, Mo., where he hastily outfitted a wagon-train and some weeks later, in his customary rôle of trader, arrived at Santa Fé, reaching there several weeks in advance of Kearny’s column. The details of his dealings with General Armijo, of how he worked upon his cupidity, and of the precise inducements which he offered him to withdraw his forces from the pass of the Galisteo, to evacuate Santa Fé and leave all New Mexico to be occupied by the Americans, are buried in the archives of the Department of State, and will probably never be known. But though Armijo fled and Kearny effected a bloodless conquest, Macgoffin’s work was not yet done. There remained the most dangerous part of his mission, which was to do for General Wool in Chihuahua what he had done for Colonel Kearny in Santa Fé. That he carried his life in his hands no one knew better than himself, for had the Mexicans learned of his mission he would have died before a firing-party. As a matter of fact, he did arouse the suspicions of the authorities in Chihuahua, but, owing to their inability to confirm them and to his personal friendship with certain high officials, instead of being executed he was sent as a prisoner to Durango, where he was held until the close of the war. Upon his return to Washington after hostilities had ended, Congress, in secret session, voted him fifty thousand dollars as remuneration for his services, but, though President Taylor urged the prompt payment of the same, the War Department arbitrarily reduced the sum to thirty thousand dollars, which was insufficient to cover the disbursements he had made. Ingratitude, it will thus be seen, is not confined to princes.

Having organized a territorial government, brought order out of chaos, and put New Mexico’s house in thorough order, Kearny, now become a general, set out on September 25 with only three hundred dragoons for the conquest of California. This march of Kearny’s, with a mere handful of troopers, across fifteen hundred miles of unknown country and his invasion, subjugation, and occupation of a bitterly hostile territory are almost without parallel in history. Colonel Doniphan, who was left in command of all the forces in New Mexico, rapidly pushed forward his preparations for his contemplated descent upon Chihuahua, delaying his start only until the arrival of Colonel Price’s column to occupy the newly conquered territory. But on October 11, just as everything was in readiness for the expedition’s departure, a despatch rider brought him orders from Kearny to delay his movement upon Chihuahua and proceed into the country of the Navajos to punish them for the depredations they had recently committed along the western borders of New Mexico. The disappointment of the Missourians, when these orders were communicated to them, can be imagined, for they had volunteered for a war against Mexicans, not Indians. But that did not prevent them from doing the business they were ordered to do and doing it well. Crossing the Cordilleras in the depths of winter without tents and without winter clothing, Doniphan rounded up the hostile chiefs and forced them to sign a treaty of peace by which they agreed to abstain from further molestation of their neighbors, whether Indian, Mexican, or American. A novel treaty, that, signed on the western confines of New Mexico between parties who had scarcely so much as heard each other’s names before, and giving peace and protection to Mexicans who were hostile to both. No wonder that the Navajos and the New Mexicans, who had been at war with each other for centuries, looked with amazement and respect on an enemy who, disregarding all racial and religious differences, stepped in and drew up a treaty which brought peace to all three.

Owing to the delay caused by the expedition against the Navajos, it was the middle of December and bitterly cold before the column was at last ready to start upon the conquest of Chihuahua. The line of march was due south from Santa Fé, along the east bank of the Rio Grande, to El Paso del Norte. Ninety miles of it lay through the _Jornada del Muerto_--the “Journey of Death.” In traversing this desert the men suffered terribly, for the weather had now become extremely cold, and there was neither wood for fires nor water to drink. The soldiers, though footsore with marching, benumbed by the piercing winds, and weakened from lack of food, pushed grimly forward through the night, for there were few halts for rest, setting fire to the dry bunches of prairie grass and the tinder-like stalks of the soap-plant, which would blaze up like a flash of powder and as quickly die out, leaving the men shivering in the cold. The course of the straggling column could be described for miles by these sudden glares of light which intermittently stabbed the darkness. Toward midnight the head of the column would halt for a little rest, but throughout the night the weary, limping companies would continue to straggle in, the men throwing themselves supperless upon the gravel and instantly falling asleep from sheer exhaustion. At daylight they were awakened by the bugles and the march would be resumed, with no breakfast save hardtack, for there was no fuel upon the desert with which to cook. Such was the three days’ march of Doniphan’s men across the Journey of Death. On the 22d of December the expedition reached the Mexican hamlet of Donanna, where the soldiers found an abundance of cornmeal, dried fruit, sheep, and cattle, as well as grain and fodder for their starving horses, and, most welcome of all, streams of running water. The army was now within the boundaries of the state of Chihuahua.

On Christmas Day, after a shorter march than usual, the column encamped at the hamlet of Brazito, twenty-five miles from El Paso, on the Rio Grande. While the men were scattered among the mesquite in quest of wood and water a splutter of musketry broke out along their front, and the pickets came racing in with the news that a strong force of Mexicans was advancing. The officers, as cool as though back at Fort Leavenworth, threw their men into line for their first battle. Colonel Doniphan and his staff had been playing loo to determine who should have a fine Mexican horse that had been captured by the advance-guard that morning.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to stop the game long enough to whip the greasers,” Doniphan remarked, carefully laying his cards face down upon the ground, “but just bear in mind that I’m ahead in the score. We’ll play it out after the scrap is over.” The game was never finished, however, for during the battle the horse which formed the stakes mysteriously disappeared.

The Mexican force, which was under the command of General Ponce de Leon, was composed of some thirteen hundred men. Five hundred of these consisted of the Vera Cruz lancers, one of the crack regiments of the Mexican army; the remainder were volunteer cavalry and infantry from El Paso and Chihuahua. When a few hundred yards separated the opposing forces, a lieutenant of lancers, magnificently mounted and carrying a black flag--a signal that no quarter would be given--spurred forward at full gallop until within a few paces of the American line, when, with characteristic Mexican bravado, he suddenly jerked his horse back upon its haunches. Doniphan’s interpreter, a lean frontiersman clad in the broad-brimmed hat and fringed buckskin of the plains, rode out to meet him.

“General Ponce de Leon, in command of the Mexican forces,” began the young officer arrogantly, “presents his compliments to your commander and demands that he appear instantly before him.”

“If your general is so all-fired anxious to see Colonel Doniphan,” was the dry answer, “let him come over here. We won’t run away from him.”

“We’ll come and take him, then!” shouted the hot-headed youngster angrily; “and remember that we shall give no quarter!”

“Come right ahead, young feller,” drawled the plainsman, as the messenger spurred back to the Mexican lines, his sinister flag streaming behind him. “You’ll find us right here waitin’ fer you.”

No sooner had the messenger delivered the American’s defiance than the trumpets of the Mexican cavalry sounded and the lancers, deploying into line, moved forward at a trot. They presented a beautiful picture on their sleek and shining horses, their green tunics faced with scarlet, their blue skin-tight pantaloons, their brass-plated, horse-tailed _schapkas_, and the cloud of scarlet pennons which fluttered from their lances. The bugles snarled again, the five hundred lances dropped as one from vertical to horizontal, five hundred horses broke from a trot into a gallop, and from five hundred throats burst a high-pitched scream: “_Viva Mexico! Viva Mexico!_”

Waiting until the line of cheering, charging horsemen was within a hundred and fifty yards, the officer in command of the American left called, in the same tone he would have used on parade: “Now, boys, let ’em have it!” Before the torrent of lead that was poured into it the Mexican line halted as abruptly as though it had run into a stone wall, shivered, hesitated. Dead men toppled to the ground, wounded men swayed drunkenly in their saddles while great splotches of crimson spread upon their gaudy uniforms, riderless horses galloped madly away, and cursing officers tore up and down, frantically trying to reform the shattered squadrons. At this critical juncture, when the Mexicans were debating whether to advance or to retreat, Captain Reed, recognizing the psychological value of the moment, hurled his company of dismounted Missourians straight at the Mexican line. So furious was the onset of the little band of troopers that the crack cavalry of Mexico, already on the verge of demoralization, turned and fled. Meanwhile the Chihuahua infantry, taking advantage of the cover afforded by the dense chaparral, had moved forward against the American right. As the Mexicans advanced Doniphan ordered his men down on their faces, cautioning them to hold their fire until he gave the word. The advancing Mexicans, seeing men drop all along the line and supposing that their scattering fire had wrought terrible execution, with a storm of _vivas_ dashed forward at the double. But as they emerged into the open, barely a stone’s throw from the American line, the whole right wing rose as one man and poured in a paralyzing volley. “Now, boys, go in and finish ’em!” roared Doniphan, a gigantic and commanding figure on a great chestnut horse. With the high-keyed, piercing cheer which in later years was to be known as “the rebel yell,” the Missourians leaped forward to do his bidding. In advance of the line raced Forsyth, the chief of scouts, and another plainsman, firing as they ran. And every time their rifles cracked a Mexican would stagger and fall headlong.

Meanwhile the American centre had repulsed the enemy with equal success, though a field-piece which the Mexicans had brought into action at incautiously close range continued to annoy them with its fire.

“What the hell do you reckon that is?” inquired one Missourian of another, as a solid shot whined hungrily overhead.

“A cannon, I reckon,” answered some one.

“Come on! Let’s go and get it!” shouted some one else, and at the suggestion a dozen men dashed like sprinters across the bullet-swept zone which lay between them and the field-piece. So quickly was it done that the Mexican gunners were bayonetted where they stood and in another moment the gun, turned in the opposite direction, was pouring death into the ranks of its late owners. In thirty minutes the battle of the Brazito was history, and the Mexicans--such of them as were left--were pouring southward in a demoralized retreat, which did not halt until they reached Chihuahua. Five hundred Americans--for the balance of Doniphan’s column did not reach the scene until the battle was virtually over--in a stand-up fight on unfamiliar ground, with all the odds against them, whaled the life out of thirteen hundred as good soldiers as Mexico could put into the field. In killed, wounded, and prisoners the Mexicans lost upward of two hundred men; the American casualties consisted of eight wounded. In such fashion did Doniphan and his Missourians celebrate the Christmas of 1846.

The expedition remained six weeks at El Paso, awaiting the arrival of a battery of artillery which Doniphan had asked Colonel Price to send him from Santa Fé; so February was well advanced before the troops started on the final stage of their advance upon Chihuahua. A few days after his departure from El Paso Colonel Doniphan received astounding news. An American named Rodgers, who had escaped from Chihuahua at peril of his life, brought word that General Wool, to whom Doniphan had been ordered to report at Chihuahua, had abandoned his march upon that city and that the Mexicans were mobilizing a formidable force to defend the place. Though Wool’s change of plan was known in the United States, Doniphan had penetrated so far into the enemy’s country that there was no way to warn him of his danger, and the nation waited with bated breath for news of the annihilation of his little column. Even at this stage of the march Doniphan could have retraced his steps and would have been more than justified in doing so, for it seemed little short of madness for a force of barely a thousand men, wholly without support, to invade a state which was aware of their coming and was fully prepared to receive them. It shows the stuff of which Doniphan and his Missourians were made that they never once considered turning back.

On February 12 the expedition reached the edge of the arid, sun-baked desert, threescore miles in width, whose pitiless expanse lies squarely athwart the route from El Paso to Chihuahua. Two days later, after giving the animals an opportunity to feed and rest, the never-to-be-forgotten desert march began. Aware that not a drop of water was to be had until the desert was crossed, the troopers not only filled their water-bottles, but tied their swords about their necks and filled the empty scabbards with water. The first day the column covered twenty miles and encamped for the night in the heart of the desert. The following day the loose sand became so deep that the wagons were buried to the hubs and the teams had to be doubled up to pull them through. The mules were so weak from thirst, however, that the soldiers had to put their shoulders to the wheels before the wagons could be extricated from the engulfing sands. Notwithstanding this delay, twenty-four more miles were covered before the soldiers, their lips cracked open, their tongues swollen, and their throats parched and burning, threw themselves upon the sands to snatch a few hours’ rest. The next day was a veritable purgatory, for the canteens were empty, the horses and mules were neighing piteously for water, and many of the men were delirious and muttered incoherently as they staggered across the _llanos_, swooning beneath waves of shifting heat. As the day wore on their sufferings grew more terrible; many of the supplies had to be abandoned, and finally, when only ten miles from water, the oxen were turned loose. Though only a few miles now separated them from the Guyagas Springs, where there was water and grass a-plenty, men and horses were too weak to continue the march and fell upon the desert, little caring whether they lived or died. Indeed, had it not been for a providential rain-storm which burst upon them a few hours later, quenching their thirst and cooling their burning bodies, a trail of bleaching skeletons would probably have marked the end of Doniphan’s expedition.

Upon reaching the lush meadows which bordered the little lake[G] near Guyagas Springs a long sigh of relief went up from the perspiring column, for here they could spend a few days in rest and recuperation. But, though they had, as by a miracle, escaped a death by thirst, they were suddenly confronted by another and even greater danger. A trooper carelessly knocked the ashes from his pipe upon the ground; the sun-dried grass instantly took fire; and before the soldiers realized their peril, a waist-high wall of flame, fanned by a brisk wind, was bearing down upon them. All attempts to check the progress of the fire proving useless, the animals were hastily harnessed and a desperate attempt was made by the teamsters to get their wagons ahead of the flames, but a gale was blowing in the direction the column was advancing and the barrier of fire, now spread out for many miles, was approaching faster than a man could walk; so the wagons and guns were run into the lake. That the expedition was saved was due to the ingenuity of a trooper in the Missouri Horse Guards, who had had experience with prairie fires before. Acting upon his suggestion, the soldiers were dismounted and ordered to cut the grass with their sabres over a zone thirty feet in width and then set fire to the grass standing next to the wind, which burned slowly until it met the advancing conflagration. That night the men slept on the bare and blackened earth, without forage for their horses but with thankfulness in their hearts.

A few days after this episode the scouts in advance of the column saw a group of horsemen riding toward them across the plain. As the party came nearer it was seen to consist of thirty or forty Indians led by a single white man. The latter proved to be one of the strangest characters ever produced by the wild life of the frontier. His name was Captain James Kirker, or, as he was called by the Mexicans, Santiago Querque, and he was an Indian fighter by profession. By this I do not mean that he took part in the periodical wars between the Indians and the whites, but that he contracted to kill Indians at so much per head, just as hunters in certain portions of the country make a business of tracking and killing vermin for the bounty. For many years past Kirker, whose fame was as wide as the plains, had been employed by the state of Chihuahua to exterminate the Apaches who terrorized its borders, and, thinking to fight the devil with fire, he had imported twoscore Delaware braves, noted even among the Indians for their abilities as trackers, to help him in hunting down the Apaches. Shortly before the outbreak of the war the government of Chihuahua owed Kirker thirty thousand dollars for the scalps of Apaches he had slain, but when hostilities began it refused to pay him and threatened him and his braves with imprisonment if they persisted in their claims. Thus it came about that Doniphan received a considerable addition to the strength of his force, for no sooner had Kirker received word of the approach of the column than he and his Delawares slipped out of Chihuahua between two days and rode off to offer their services to their countrymen. Because of his remarkable knowledge of the country and his acquaintance with the language and customs of the people, Kirker proved of essential service to Doniphan as an interpreter and forage-master, while his Delawares were invaluable as scouts. In appearance Kirker was a dime-novel hero come to life, for his long hair fell upon his shoulders; his mustaches were of a size and fierceness that would have abashed a pirate; from neck to knees he was dressed in gorgeously embroidered, soft-tanned buckskin; his breeches disappeared in high-heeled boots ornamented with enormous spurs, which jangled noisily when he walked; his high-crowned sombrero was heavy with gold braid and bullion; thrust carelessly into his scarlet sash was a veritable armory of knives and pistols, and the thoroughbred he bestrode could show its heels to any horse in northern Mexico.

On the 28th of February, when within less than ten miles of Chihuahua, the Americans caught their first glimpse of the army which had been assembled to receive them. The enemy occupied the brow of a rocky eminence, known as Sacramento Hill, which rises sharply from a plateau guarded on one side by the Sacramento River and on the other by a dried-up watercourse, known as an _arroyo seco_. The great natural strength of the position had been enormously increased by an elaborate system of fieldworks consisting of twenty-eight redoubts and intrenchments. Here, in this apparently impregnable position, which was the key to the capital of the state, and hence to all northern Mexico, the Mexican army, which, according to the muster-rolls which fell into Doniphan’s possession after the battle, consisted of four thousand two hundred and twenty men, was prepared to offer a desperate resistance to the invader. To oppose this strongly intrenched force, which comprised the very flower of the Mexican army, Colonel Doniphan had one thousand and sixty-four men, of whom one hundred and fifty were teamsters. No wonder that the Mexicans were so confident of victory that they had prepared great quantities of shackles and handcuffs to be used in marching the captured _gringos_ to the capital in triumph.

Now, if Colonel Doniphan had acted according to the cut-and-dried rules of the game as taught in military schools and books on tactics and had done what the Mexican commander expected him to do, there is little doubt that he and his men--such of them as were not killed in battle or shot in cold blood afterward--would have gone to the City of Mexico in the chains so thoughtfully provided for them. But being a shirt-sleeve fighter, as it were, and not in the least hampered by a knowledge of scientific warfare, he did the very thing that he was not expected to do. Instead of attempting to fight his way down the high-road which led to Chihuahua, which was commanded by the enemy’s guns, and where they could have wiped him out without leaving their intrenchments, he formed his column into a sort of hollow square, cavalry in front, infantry on the flanks, and guns and wagons in the centre, suddenly deflected it to the right, and before the Mexicans grasped the significance of the manœuvre he had thrown his force across the _arroyo seco_, had gained the summit of the plateau, and had deployed his men upon the highland in such a position that the Mexican commander was compelled to hastily reconstruct his whole plan of battle. By this single brilliant manœuvre Doniphan at once nullified the advantage the Mexicans derived from their commanding position.

The Americans scarcely had time to get their guns into position and form their line of battle before a cavalry brigade, twelve hundred strong, led by General Garcia Condé, ex-minister of war, swept down from the fortified heights with a thunder and roar to open the engagement. This time there was no waiting, as at the Brazitos, for the Mexicans to get within close range; the advancing force was too formidable for that. In the centre of the American position was posted the artillery--four howitzers and six field-guns--under Captain Weightman. Above the ever loudening thunder of the approaching cavalry could be heard that young officer’s cool, clear voice: “Form battery! Action front! Load with grape! Fire at will!” As the wave of galloping horses and madly cheering men surged nearer, Weightman’s gunners, getting the range with deadly accuracy, poured in their thirty shots a minute as methodically as though they were on a target-range. In the face of that blast of death the Mexican cavalry scattered like autumn leaves. Within five minutes after their bugles had screamed the charge, the finest brigade of cavalry that ever followed Mexican kettle-drums, shattered, torn, and bleeding, had turned tail and was spurring full tilt for the shelter of the fortifications, leaving the ground over which they had just passed strewn with their dead and dying. For the next fifty minutes the battle consisted of an artillery duel at long range, throughout which Colonel Doniphan sat on his war-horse at the rear of the American battery, his foot thrown carelessly across the pommel of his saddle, whittling a piece of wood--an object-lesson in coolness for his men and, incidentally, a splendid mark for the Mexican gunners.

While the guns of the opposing forces were exchanging compliments at long range the American officers busied themselves in forming their men preparatory to taking the offensive. That was Doniphan’s plan of battle always--to get in the first blow. When everything was in readiness, Colonel Doniphan tossed away his stick, pocketed his knife, drew his sabre, and signalled to his bugler to sound the advance. As the bugles shrieked their signal the whole line, horse, foot, and guns, dashed forward at a run. It was a daring and hazardous proceeding, a thousand men charging across open ground and up a hill to carry fortifications held by a force four times the strength of their own, but its very audacity brought success. So splendid was the discipline which Doniphan had hammered into his force that the infantry officers ran sideways and backward in front of their men as they advanced, just as they would have done on the drill field, keeping them in such perfect step and order that, as an English eye-witness afterward remarked, a cannon-ball could have been fired between their legs down the line without injuring a man. Not a shot was fired by the Americans until they reached the first line of redoubts, behind which the Mexican officers were frantically endeavoring to steady their wavering men. As the Americans surged over the intrenchments they paused just long enough to pour in a volley and then went in with the bayonet. At almost the same moment Captain Weightman brought his guns into action with a rattle and crash and began pouring a torrent of grape into the now thoroughly demoralized Mexicans. As the right wing stormed the breastworks an American sergeant who was well in advance of the line, having emptied his rifle and pistols and being too hard-pressed to reload them, threw away his weapons and defended himself by hurling rocks. When the order to charge was given, Kirker, the Indian fighter, called to another scout named Collins: “Say, Jim, let’s see which of us can get into that battery first.” The battery referred to was in the second redoubt, whence it was directing a galling fire upon the Americans over the heads of the Mexicans defending the first line of fortifications. Collins’s only reply was to pull down his hat, draw his sword, bury his spurs in his horse’s flanks, and ride at the battery as a steeplechaser rides at a water-jump, Kirker, his long hair streaming in the wind, tearing along beside him. Is it any wonder that the Mexicans exclaimed to each other: “These are not men we are fighting--they are devils!”