Chapter X: Introduction: By Reuben G. Thwaites (8)

That the ideas of these early pioneers were of the expansible variety is readily gathered from the character of the plat prepared to mark the coming town site as the seat of a great and mighty city. On the broad plateau overlooking the river, building lots were staked out 66 by 132 feet, divided by streets 100 feet wide and alleys of 20 feet. There were 320 blocks in all, each comprising eight lots forming squares of 264 feet. Two squares were reserved, one in the business centre 264 by 280 feet, and the other on the top of the most conspicuous hill 600 feet square, the latter designated as Capitol Square and the hill as Capitol Hill, and a broad avenue 120 feet wide leading to it as Capitol Avenue--all in foreordained honor of the magnificent structure to be erected when the newly born city should have achieved the distinction of the capital of Nebraska Territory. Omaha City was not organized as an incorporated municipality until 1857.

Looking closer into the history and geography of the spot where now run the busy streets of Nebraska's metropolis, lined with substantial business blocks and attractive residences, precisely as platted in that lonely summer of 1854, the conclusion is forced that it was not mere fortuitous chance that built a wonder city upon an empty ferry landing. The location was by nature destined to be a turning point on the great central transcontinental highway bridging the divide between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Lewis and Clark, who worked their way to Oregon up the Missouri Valley, were the first white men to leave a record of their visit. From their journal is taken the following extract noting their arrival and detention at the mouth of the Platte in July, 1804, whence they continued northward and passed over the ground now included in the city:

"July 27.--Having completed the object of our stay, we set sail
with a pleasant breeze for the northwest. The two horses swam
over to the southern [western] shore, along which we went,
passing by an island, at three and a half miles, formed by a
pond, fed by springs; three miles further is a large sand
island in the middle of the river, the land on the south [west]
being high and covered with timber; that on the north [east] a
prairie. At ten and a half miles from our encampment, we saw
and examined a curious collection of graves or mounds, on the
south [west] side of the river. Not far from a low piece of
land and a pond, is a tract of about two hundred acres in
extent, which is covered with mounds of different heights,
shapes and sizes; some of sand, and some of both earth and
sand; the largest being near the river. These mounds indicate
the position of the ancient village of the Ottoes, before they
retired to the protection of the Pawnees. After making fifteen
miles, we camped on the south [east] on the bank of a high,
handsome prairie, with lofty cottonwood in groves, near the
river."[14]

That the mounds referred to constituted the ancient Indian burial ground, remnants of which long remained in the lower part of the town as objects of curiosity to inquisitive observers, has been established to the satisfaction of historical critics, as also that the council held by Lewis and Clark with the Indians, from which Council Bluffs derives its name, took place in reality not on the Iowa side opposite Omaha but on the Nebraska side several miles farther up, in the vicinity of what is now Fort Calhoun.

A no less interesting historical chapter is found in the Mormon encampment that for a time promised to make Omaha the centre of its church establishment. It is needless here to state details of the Nauvoo persecutions and the early expeditions in search of the promised land. When the advance-guard sighted the east bank of the Missouri, it took a stand on Miller's hill,--so named after a Mormon elder,--where the various companies into which the emigrants had been divided for their historic march across Iowa converged. It might have been called Miller's hill to this day had not just at that moment a call arrived to enlist a body of volunteers for the United States in its impending war with Mexico, followed by the prompt organization of the Mormon battalion under Colonel T.L. Kane, in whose honor the name of the halting place was changed to Kanesville. Kanesville it might have remained but for the fact that the post-office at that point had been designated as Council Bluffs City, whither the last mail for the emigrants setting out over the great divide was regularly addressed; and to avoid confusion the name of Kanesville was dropped after two or three years and Council Bluffs left in undisputed possession of that corner of the map.

But the east bank of the river was not suitable for the Mormons' purposes. They crossed over and established themselves in Winter Quarters at a point about six miles north of what later became Omaha, making themselves as comfortable as possible in seven hundred and more hastily built log cabins and dug-outs. The place was fortified with stockades, a tabernacle erected, and various workshops and mills were constructed to provide temporary employment. At Winter Quarters was held the annual conference of the church, April 6, 1847, attended by people from all parts of the country prepared for moving west. From Winter Quarters, on the 14th day of the same month, a party of about 150, all but four or five being men, set out, with seventy-three wagons drawn by horses and oxen, under the personal leadership of Brigham Young, the expedition culminating in the famous founding of Zion in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. The excursion of apostles and pioneers returned to the Missouri for their families and friends, their arrival at Winter Quarters in October calling forth as an occasion for special joy and thanksgiving an elaborate celebration. The summer of 1848 saw the great body of Latter Day Saints following Brigham Young to the new Utah settlement, but Winter Quarters was maintained for years as the stopping point and outfitting station for the Mormon emigrants on their westward wandering. By 1856 the name had been changed to Florence and it is so referred to in the writings of the later Mormons. For years it remained the busy hiving place for the church converts moving on Zion from all quarters of the world. To-day it is a quaint, old-fashioned sleepy village, interesting chiefly for a few ancient landmarks, and visited on good-weather Sundays by recreation seekers from Omaha in cart or on wheel.

The earliest history of Omaha is a chronicle of bitterly waged fights for the possession of the seat of government of the new Nebraska Territory. The proud privilege of advertising itself as the capital city was eagerly sought after not only by Omaha but by every other ambitious town-site company along the eastern frontier. It should be remembered that the initial steps in the territorial organization were taken under the presidency of Franklin Pierce, who, although a Northern man, was almost completely under Southern domination. The position of governor was first offered to General William G. Butler of Kentucky, but unceremoniously declined, whereupon it was passed on to another Southern gentleman in the person of Francis H. Burt of South Carolina. Governor Burt arrived at Bellevue in company with the secretary, Thomas B. Cuming of Iowa, in October, 1854, but before he undertook in any way to exercise his official powers he succumbed to a fatal illness, leaving the succession by virtue of his office to Secretary Cuming. Governor Cuming in due time issued his election proclamation and called the territorial Legislature to convene at Omaha in January. In this connection it should also be remembered that Omaha was located and settled by Iowa promoters while the competing towns to the south looked on slave-holding Missouri as the parent. Had the first capital designation been asserted by the South Carolina executive instead of by his fortuitous Iowa successor we may well doubt whether Omaha would have fared so fortunately.

The earliest territorial legislatures have been described by eye-witnesses and participants as often bordering on an organized mob. To keep the capital at Omaha was the watchword on the one side and to take it away the battle-cry on the other. Money and town-lot stock are said to have played an important part with members who seem to have anticipated later-day legislative methods and yielded to "inducements" that overcame their local loyalty. While the Capitol building rose on Capitol Hill, Omaha had to contest for its retention at every annual session of the Legislature from 1855 to 1858, from which time it was left in undisputed possession until 1867, when with the investiture of Statehood a seat of government was carved anew on the virgin prairie to be christened Lincoln after the martyred President.

The great impetus that sent the infant Omaha forward by leaps and bounds ahead of its rivals in the Missouri Valley north and south came from two closely connected enterprises--the one the building of the Pacific telegraph, the other the construction of the first transcontinental railroad.

The Pacific telegraph assumed tangible form through the unquenchable energies of Edward Creighton. Still in the prime of sturdy manhood, invigorated by the Irish blood inherited from his ancestry, Creighton had come to Omaha in 1856 to visit his brothers, engaging for a time in the lumber business. In 1860 he built the Missouri & Western line from St. Louis to Omaha, but already a year before had evolved a plan for a telegraph from the Missouri River to the Pacific coast. With the encouragement and material assistance of men like Jeptha H. Wade, Ezra Cornell, and Hiram Sibley, whose confidence he earned and kept, his idea, originally received as a weird fancy, took shape in surveys, contracts, and actual construction, the first message transmission occurring in October, 1861, speeding on in an hour by electric current intelligence that would previously have required weeks and months to journey. The fortune sprung from this venturesome undertaking has given the name of Creighton a foundation lasting to the end of time. Edward Creighton died in 1874, leaving $1,500,000 to be bestowed eventually for educational and charitable purposes. The good work he began has been carried further by his brother, John A. Creighton, and the Creighton College, the Creighton Medical School, and the Creighton Memorial Hospital, not to enumerate smaller benefactions, all attest as enduring monuments the activity and foresight that paved the way for the electric fluid to flow unchecked from ocean to ocean.

The telegraph was but the forerunner of the railroad. With Omaha the initial point of the Pacific telegraph lines, it enjoyed a marked advantage in the competition for the eastern terminus of the Pacific Railway. Up to that time, all transportation had been by steamboat up the Missouri River or in wagon and coach overland. The race of the iron horse across Iowa had been interrupted, first by the financial crash of 1857, and then by the war of 1861, so that the first locomotive to carry its train to the Missouri River arrived January 17, 1867, bearing the escutcheon of the Chicago & Northwestern. Within two years four railroads converged at the river opposite Omaha eager to share the through transcontinental traffic already in sight.

The history of Omaha and of the Union Pacific is inseparably linked. It is not necessary to weigh the conflicting claims to credit for suggesting the railroad to the Pacific slope. The war demonstrated the military necessity of a rail connection with the coast States and forced Congress to take the steps that made its immediate construction possible. Without the subsidy offered in the Acts of 1862 and 1863 the road certainly would not have been built for years, and the development of the whole western country would have been long retarded.

At the recommendation of the chief engineer, Peter A. Dey, the eastern terminus was fixed "on the western boundary of the State of Iowa, opposite Omaha," an event so auspicious as to provoke a responsive demonstration from the enthusiastic inhabitants of the young city, who made the master-stroke of their celebration the actual breaking of the ground for the newly projected road. This occurred December 2, 1863, with the thermometer hovering close to the freezing point.

The work of construction was pushed with all possible rapidity, but with the best expedition it was May 10, 1869, before the juncture of the two roads heading for one another from east and west was effected, in the presence of a distinguished body of spectators, by the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Point, girding the continent with bands of steel. According to all accounts the celebration at Omaha of the completion of the Union Pacific was on a scale commensurate with its importance to the commercial and industrial position of the city.

If Engineer Dey was the central figure in the initial work, Thomas C. Durant, as First Vice-President and General Manager, had more to do with its successful completion than any other one man. While many names have since shown bright in the progress of this epoch-making enterprise, those of Dey and Durant must form the base-stones of the arch that has raised this great railroad to its eminence, and carried it through stress and storm.

The prestige acquired by Omaha as a railway centre in those early days has been constantly maintained, until to-day the steel rails radiate in every direction, while three magnificent bridges span the Missouri where Brown's lonely ferry formerly transferred victims of the gold fever from one bank to the other.

With a firmly established industrial foundation, the progress of the city has gone steadily forward. Commercial expansion, it is true, has been broken occasionally by bursting real-estate booms, grasshopper plagues, drought-stricken crops or general financial depression, but in material welfare and ever-widening public activity the community takes rank with its most wide-awake competitors. Besides its extensive jobbing interests, its manufacturing development has been along the lines of silver smelting and refining, linseed oil mills, white lead works, machine and locomotive shops, and the great live-stock market and meat-packing establishments that have formed the nucleus of the magic city braced against its boundary under the name of South Omaha, and sure, sooner or later, to be one with it in corporate existence, as it is already in life and business. Although not yet past the fiftieth anniversary, Omaha boasts of all those advantages that make an attractive living place--good schools, well-stocked free libraries, substantial churches, art galleries, well-paved streets, with water, light, and rapid transit, fine public parks, imposing public buildings. Above all, it is a city of homes and home owners, thick with modest dwellings though only meagrely supplied with palatial mansions. Omaha's contribution to the world of science, art, and literature is perhaps small, but it has given two presidents to the American Bar Association in James M. Woolworth and Charles F. Manderson, the latter also having filled the position of President _pro tem._ of the United States Senate; in banking circles Herman Kountze and Joseph H. Millard are known throughout the country; Edward Rosewater and his newspaper, _The Bee_, occupy a place in the front rank of American journalism; the art gallery of George Whininger is classed among the best private collections on this side of the Atlantic; and the benevolence of John A. Creighton has received recognition in the title conferred on him of Count in the Holy Roman See.

The Trans-Mississippi Exposition of 1898 constitutes Omaha's crowning achievement of recent years. Projected in the period of densest industrial gloom and executed in the face of the war with Spain, the enterprise proved an unexpected and unprecedented success, returning to the stock subscribers ninety per cent. of the money they had advanced. The financial success was, however, subordinate to the success in other directions. A white city of such architectural perfection could not fail to afford an æsthetic stimulus in itself of wonderful educational effect. Participated in by all the trans-Mississippi States and Territories as an exhibition of the resources and products of this vast region, the Exposition served to open the eyes of visitors from both at home and abroad to the limitless possibilities there spread before them. The Indian Congress alone, including as it did representatives of nearly all the remaining tribes of aboriginal inhabitants gathered together under the direction of the Indian authorities of the Federal Government, formed an ethnic object-lesson the like of which had never before been presented. No fitter culmination could have been prepared than the Peace Jubilee, in its closing month of October, attended by President McKinley, members of his Cabinet, and heroes of the armed conflict just concluded, all uniting in acclaiming the end of war typified in the Exposition as a towering triumph of the arts of peace.

FOOTNOTE:

[14] In this account the directions are misleading, as they thought the river ran east and west instead of north and south at this point.

DENVER

THE QUEEN CITY OF THE PLAINS

BY JOHN COTTON DANA

Denver has historic background. Behind its own brief chronicles we note the outline of the story, full of the good work of strong men, of the exploration and civic conquest of the wide country between the Mississippi River and the Pacific coast. To ask of Denver's beginnings is to go back of 1858 and the hopeful Aurarians by the ford at the mouth of Cherry Creek, to government explorations, California gold seekers, Mormon emigrants, trappers and traders, and Spanish pioneers.

The incidents which lead up to Denver's origin took place here and there in a great mid-continental area so vast as to make those incidents seem at first sight isolated, unrelated to one another. But there is a simplicity of plan in that great country which, taken with the gold of the west coast and the migrant spirit of the early settlers of the Mississippi Valley, makes the early ventures across the plains seem natural enough and binds them to one another. Given the country and the factors mentioned, and a great central city, at once a focus and distributing point for all that lay across the plains, the Denver of to-day, was foreordained.

Westward of the Mississippi lie six hundred miles of plains, fertile and attractive on their eastern edge, a desert waste beyond, ending abruptly in rocky mountains. The mountains, dropping here and there into high and barren tablelands, roll on a thousand miles to the Pacific. From the Canadian to the Mexican boundary, plains and mountains thus dispose themselves and make the arena for the drama of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the new West,--a conquest of a not too unwilling nature by energetic and efficient men. The scene was remote; the land, generous when once subdued, was repellent if not hostile in its aspect, and added to the barrier of a desert waste upon its border the deterrents and terrors of the unknown. The Indians who claimed the soil--chiefly Arapahoes and their allies near Denver, and their hereditary foes, the Utes, in the mountains--did all in their power to make a seemingly inhospitable nature yet more inhospitable. They were never large in number. They were foredoomed to defeat. Their presence in this vast area added more of romance than of difficulty and danger to the coming of the white man. Some of their travel-worn paths among the mountains, like the old Navajo trail of Southwest Colorado, may still be traced, can still arouse sympathetic interest in a people for whom the modern man could not wait, and despised as laggard. From Aztec Springs, across Lost Cañon, over the Dolores River near its big bend, out upon Dolores Plateau to Narraguinnep Spring and the borders of Disappointment Valley, and then on and on again, so runs the old Navajo trail; here a single foot-path up the cañon side, there deep triple and quadruple ruts worn by men, women, horses, and dragging teepee poles. With no signs of permanent habitation on its way, out of wild nature it comes, into wild nature it goes; significant of the passing of the people who made it and of the petty trace they left on the world about them.

The Spanish had carried their religion and their rule up into the southern margin of this great area long before the first settlements were made on Massachusetts Bay. Coronado pushed as far northeast as Kansas in 1541. The towns which the Spanish established, many of them three centuries and more ago, led to the brief romance of the old Santa Fé trail, and still give a peculiar flavor to the story of the southern border. But save for a few small towns whose lack of root in the soil is evidenced by the ruins of their churches--churches so far forgotten that our own historians have called them remains of prehistoric times--the Spanish invasion was an invasion always, not a settlement, not an appropriation of even the margin of the vast area we are considering.

Lewis and Clark went northwest to the Columbia in 1803; Pike went up the Arkansas in 1806; and that young man's simple tale of the things he dared and the sights he saw in his march from the Mississippi to the lone fort he built on the banks of the Conejos in the San Luis Valley is charming and adventurous. He was the American pioneer of the future Colorado. Wandering trappers and hunters had preceded him; but none told what they had seen.

Long, with his expedition, in July, 1820, crossed the spot where Denver now stands. Long was an explorer, not a pioneer. Pioneers are prophets, and see the fences and barns that are to come. To Long all west of the Missouri,

"agreeably to the best intelligence that can be had ... is
throughout uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture
for their subsistence.... This region, however," he says,
"viewed as a frontier, may prove of infinite importance to the
United States, inasmuch as it is calculated to serve as a barrier
to prevent too great an extension of our population westward, and
secure us against the machinations or incursions of an enemy, that
might otherwise be disposed to annoy us in that quarter."

This opinion, widely circulated, perhaps helped to defer the day of actual occupation of that Great American Desert which, after Long's report, took possession, on our maps, of nearly all the country whose history is Denver's prehistoric days.

Then came Sublette and his like, and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, the Santa Fé trail, trappers, Indians; and these also, beginning about 1822, would furnish material for romance, were the simple story thereof not romance enough.

Bonneville in 1832 vanished from sight in the Northwest for three years; and many others, among them Irving, Bonneville's historian, sought profit, adventure, or knowledge in the new land. In '42, Frémont, the Pathfinder, on his first expedition pushed out nearly to the site of Denver. And Frémont's travels, the romantic note in them heightened by the presence of Kit Carson, prince of pioneers,--what color they add to our chronicles of exploration! Five times he set forth. Once he camped on the site of Denver, with 160 lodges of Arapahoe Indians near by. Once he nearly perished with all his party in the Sangre de Cristo range.

Kearney's military expedition to Santa Fé at the time of the Mexican War; Gunnison's exploration for a railroad route to the Pacific, in 1853; Marcy's incredible midwinter march from Fort Bridger, across the very backbone of the continent, south to New Mexico; all these were great deeds, and all served to add to that knowledge of the still wild West which brought about its final conquest.

To speak feelingly of the Mormon exodus, of that venture into the western wilderness of a few men of our own blood and faith, is to be misunderstood. Some day that flight of a few brave exiles for conscience sake, from their brother men to the heart of a continent, where a relentless nature seemed, with her isolation and her desolation, doubly equipped for cruelty--some day that flight, worthily and justly told, will find a place in history.[15]

The gold seekers of California, who crossed by thousands the land the outline of whose human history we are trying to sketch, these have, perhaps, received their due.

Such, then, in broadest outline, is the background of Denver's history. It is almost depressing to consider how little the outline holds of that recognition element which makes "historic" for us a country, a scene, a person, an event. Here is a wide and wonderful country; here have been done great deeds by brave and true men. Coronado, Escalante, Pike, Lewis and Clark, among explorers; Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, the Bents, Jim Baker, among scouts, trappers, and traders; the names could be multiplied many times. Their deeds are fit to provoke emulation or national pride. But mention of either names or deeds stirs the emotions only of the few. This is inevitable. They are not yet part of universal knowledge. They are not yet types of men or actions, as are Ulysses, Agamemnon, Hampden, and the voyage of the _Mayflower_. Things are not "historic" until later generations have made them so. Perhaps the dominance of Old World types in literature and art, together with the swift rush of affairs of the passing day, will crowd much of the story of America's development out from the domain of history as known to men at large. If so, the story of the taking by our forebears and our brothers of the great West beyond the Mississippi will always remain as little "historic," as barren in its emotional content, as it is to-day. This were a pity, tho' perhaps best. But even then it would seem proper to suggest, in the bare outline I have drawn, the historic possibilities which lie back of, lead up to, explain, the Denver of to-day.

It is 1857; the country has become vaguely known, many have crossed it; the Mormons have taken possession of the Salt Lake basin; from the mountains across the plains there float back rumors of gold; and the region which has been simply a desert to be crossed begins to be a region to be explored, perhaps to be settled. Who first found gold it is idle to inquire. A party of Cherokees from the gold regions of Georgia were perhaps the first to get traces on the Platte. Certain men of Lawrence, Kansas, prophets perhaps, boomers probably, certainly addicted to the town-site habit, and abounding in hope, went up the Arkansas in 1858; tried to start a town on Monument Creek under the shadow of Pike's Peak; wearied soon of waiting for a population which did not come, and crossed the divide north to the Platte; staked out a town, Montana, on that stream a few miles above the site of Denver, and disbanded. Of this party a few moved down the Platte to the mouth of Cherry Creek, and there in the bottom, among the cotton-woods, just where the old military road crossed the creek, laid out the town of St. Charles. Another party, from Iowa, in the same year, settled across the creek on its west side and soon laid out a town and called it Auraria. Then came another party over the divide from the Arkansas, found the St. Charles town-site promoters were absent, saw the city that was to be, jumped the site, and organized a company to build a town thereon to be called Denver in honor of the then Governor of Kansas. And so, in the winter of 1858-59 Denver found itself, on what proved to be "Section 33 and the west half of section 34, in township 3 south of range 68 west of the 6th principal meridian." How fatal to the romantic element in the beginnings of the Western city are the transit and the chain! What can there be of mystery or poetry in "Sec. 33 and W. 1/2 of Sec. 34, Tp. 3 S. of R. 68 W. 6th P.M."?

Denver was a rival of Auraria. Her supremacy was settled early in 1859 by thirty wagons which came up the Platte and unloaded their merchandise on the Denver side of Cherry Creek. In the spring of 1859 a large company, perhaps 1000, were already camped in and about the new towns. The Pike's Peak excitement became intense. A new gold fever was on. Mr. William N. Byers reached Denver April 21, 1859, with a printing outfit and issued the first number of the first paper printed in Colorado, April 23d. On his way across he met the returning tide. Report says 150,000 started that spring across the plains; 50,000 turned back; 100,000 went on to the mountains; not over 40,000 of them stayed. The early months of 1859 were troublous times. Foolish, reckless gold seekers, led West on half-knowledge, tried to lay the blame for their own folly on the shoulders of others. Gold in paying quantities was as yet far from common. Horace Greeley crossed the plains in July, looked over the ground with care, reported favorably on the country in the _Tribune_, and, in good local phrase, "gave Denver the best advertisement she ever had."

The city, now under way, attained little importance until after 1870. Rival trade centres attracted attention. Mining camps scattered through the mountains drew most of the population. After the Leadville excitement in 1878 and 1879, it rose in 1880 to 35,000, by fairly steady growth to 106,000 in 1890, was checked by the panic and hard times about 1893, and yet rose to 133,000 in 1900.

Once established as the leading distributing point of the mining regions of the New West the city's growth was assured, and followed in the main the lines of many other Western cities. Peculiar to itself were a few incidents due to its position, to ignorance of the climate, its isolation and the difficulty of extending Eastern railways to so remote a point. Early in 1863 a great fire destroyed much of the business portion of the city. The summer following, the plains were burned by a terrible drought. The barrenness of the wide stretches about the city was intensified. To this day the sun-burnt plains of midsummer sweep up to Denver's very door-yards, mock at the blue sky above them, and speak unutterable things of hunger, thirst, and death. In the early 60's it was easy to imagine that they spoke in earnest. Then came a winter, cold beyond all experience. Many suffered. Cattle died. The pride some had felt over the balminess of previous winters was forgotten. With early spring, Cherry Creek, the miserable, despised bed of sand which crept through the town, scorned as a possible stream and used for building sites over all its wide bottom, rose in fury, rolled down from the divide, swept away the cheap bridges that simply served to aggravate the flood, killed twenty persons, and destroyed nearly a million dollars' worth of property. Nor was this the end of troubles. For in 1864 the Indians planned a general massacre, killed a few people near Denver, destroyed stage stations, cut off communication with the East, and left Denver unspeakably alarmed and with only six weeks' supply of food.

In these first years gold seemed the one excuse for the white man's presence in Colorado. Several million dollars were taken out from easily worked placer mines before 1863. The supply then seemed exhausted. All efforts to get the gold from veins were ineffectual. Millions were spent by the overzealous in machinery and mills not adapted to the country's needs. But over this, as over all other obstacles, the triumph was sure; and by 1871 new and proper processes of mining and ore reducing had been successfully adopted.

The fertility of Colorado soil under irrigation was not realized fully for nearly a decade after the founding of Denver. But before 1870 the agricultural possibilities were demonstrated; the cattle industry continued to thrive; and the region north of Denver lying under the several streams which issue from the mountains within sight of the city began to grow into the garden spot it now is, and to lend stability to Denver's factors of growth.

The Union Pacific reached the city via Cheyenne in June, 1870, and the Kansas Pacific soon after. Of that wonderful railway to whose growth Denver owes so much, the Denver & Rio Grande, the first rails were laid in 1871.

What is now Colorado was variously known in early days of its settlement as "Pike's Peak," "Arapahoe County," "Jefferson Territory." The story of the settlement of its governmental difficulties; its miners' and its people's courts; its independent government; the dramatic career of that prophet of the great divide, William Gilpin, first Governor of Colorado, in his headstrong yet wise handling of difficult problems in the opening days of the Civil War,--all this is full of interest, of excitement, of adventure, is instructive to the student of institutions, and full of confirmation for those who have faith in the civic genius of the American people.

The city of Denver lies fifteen miles east of the mountains on the Platte. Its elevation is 5280 feet above sea level. It is the meeting point of nine railroads. It has 165 miles of street railways. It is well paved and its health is well cared for. In parks, churches, journals, schools, hospitals, banks, and kindred institutions it is well supplied. Its manufactured products, including smelter output, amount to over $50,000,000 a year.

What one may call the natural history of Denver's people is interesting and, perhaps, explanatory of some things in its history. To it have come in good measure the vigorous and energetic. They have brought with them the ideas and customs of all parts of the United States. In the first two decades, the formative period, about half of all comers were from the upper Mississippi Valley, largely of New England descent; and one fourth each from the extreme East and the South. Among these were many invalids. All were young; and old men are still rare in Denver. Put these elements together in a climate of sunshine and dry tonic air; separate them by six hundred miles from all that is old and conventional; give them wide opportunity of choice inoccupation,--agriculture, stock raising, mining of precious metals, iron, coal, and stone, and the building of a city and a State; let their city be--much as Paris is France--politically, socially, and financially, the entire State, containing, as it does, nearly one third of all the latter's population;--and you may look for, and you will find, courage, swiftness of execution, easy adjustment of conflicting ideas and habits, tolerance on all matters save those affecting general local interests, where a certain natural State patriotism blooms into a fine bigotry, quick adoption of all modern improvements in living, and a readiness to try any promising social experiment. You would expect politics to be continually threatened with reform; an occasional economic heresy to get a passing boom; newspapers to be wide-awake, vituperative, and not greatly influential. And you would expect to find Denver, as you do find it, a brilliant, active, inspiring city, full of promise in itself and possessed by a people who--being chiefly of American stock and wrought upon by a climate which is the climate of the States intensified--in their alertness and in their intensity perhaps speak of the American citizen as this continent of ours will sometime mould him.

FOOTNOTE:

[15] See chapter on Salt Lake City.

SANTA FÉ

THE CITY OF THE HOLY FAITH

BY FREDERICK WEBB HODGE

There is probably no settlement within our domain over the history of which so much mystery has hovered as the capital of New Mexico. Some historical writers early claimed for the ancient city a reputation for antiquity exceeding that of St. Augustine, Florida; others were content to give it second place in point of age, and this position it really holds, notwithstanding the strong but groundless belief, still somewhat prevalent, that Santa Fé had a teeming aboriginal population when the Spaniards under Coronado first made their appearance in New Mexico in 1540.

The actual founder of Santa Fé, so far as we can determine, was Juan de Oñate, a wealthy resident of Zacatecas, who married Doña Isabel, granddaughter of Hernan Cortés, and great-granddaughter of Montezuma, the Aztec chief. In the autumn of 1595 Oñate was granted authority and vice-regal support to raise an army and to explore and colonize New Mexico, but the intrigues of his rivals caused many delays and it was not until February, 1598, that, with a force of some four hundred colonists, accompanied by eighty-three wagons and seven thousand cattle, he was ready to proceed from the Rio Conchas in Chihuahua, bound for the Rio Grande del Norte and New Mexico.

It is not essential to follow the little army in its northward journeying up the river, across the terrible Jornada del Muerto,--where, as scores of times later, the bones of some were left to whiten the trail. The new country was formally taken possession of, for the fifth time at least, in the name of the King of Spain, and on July 11, 1598, Oñate with his vanguard reached the still inhabited Indian pueblo of San Juan, some thirty miles northwest of the present Santa Fé.

A month later work was begun with Indian aid on the construction of ditches to supply water for a new settlement, the site for which had been selected at the confluence of the Rio Chama with the Rio Grande, on the west bank of the latter stream, where the hamlet of Chamita now stands. On August 23d the erection of a chapel for this new town of San Francisco de los Españoles was begun; it was finished September 7th, and on the following day was consecrated.

This town, which was built on the site of the abandoned Tewa pueblo of Yukewingge (or Yuqueyunque as Coronado's chroniclers called it in 1541), was thus the first European settlement in New Mexico, and the second within the limits of the United States. In 1599 the village became known as San Gabriel, a name which it retained for several years.

The exact date of the founding of Santa Fé is not known, ignorance of the fact probably being due to the destruction by the Indians of the local Spanish archives in 1680. In October, 1604, Oñate started on a journey to the head of the Gulf of California, returning to San Gabriel on April 25, 1605. The return route took the explorer past El Morro, or "Inscription Rock," thirty-five miles east of Zuñi, where he carved his name on April 16th. It seems likely that the building of Santa Fé was begun shortly afterward, although there is also good authority that San Gabriel remained the only settlement of Europeans until 1608, in which year, it is said, the Crown fixed the governmental regulations of the province and assigned a salary of two thousand ducats a year to the Governor, who immediately departed for Santa Fé. About this time Oñate was relieved by Governor Pedro de Peralta.

The prospects of the new capital during its infancy were not promising. Although the Franciscan missionaries manifested such zeal that by 1617 eleven churches had been established in New Mexico and fourteen thousand natives are said to have been baptized, there were only forty-eight soldiers and colonists in the entire province. On January 3, 1617, the King was petitioned to grant succor to the settlement, and by royal decree of May 20, 1620, his Majesty ordered the Viceroy to render the necessary aid, with the result that by 1630 it was recorded by Fray Alonso de Benavides that the town contained 250 Spaniards (some fifty of whom were armed), in addition to seven hundred Indians, "so that, between Spaniards, half-breeds, and Indians, there must be a thousand souls." The expense of the garrison was not borne by the Crown, but by means derived from an _encomienda_, or trusteeship over the Indians, who paid an annual tribute of a vara of cotton cloth and a fanega of corn per family in return for their teaching and "civilization."

As at San Gabriel, among the first structures reared in the new town was a chapel. The first edifice of this character was an unpretentious affair, a mere hut, which served its purpose until 1622, when Benavides, having become Father Custodian of the province, commenced to build a new church and monastery which, after its completion in 1627, "would shine in whatsoever place." This is believed to have been the Parroquia, which stood on the site of the present cathedral; indeed, some of the walls of the old building are incorporated in the present structure. The chapel of San Miguel, greatly modified in recent years, dates from the middle of the seventeenth century; while the Capilla de los Soldados, which formerly faced the plaza, opposite the Palace, with its grand altar tablet erected by Governor Francisco Antonio Marin del Valle in 1761, probably dates from about 1730.

As already mentioned, there is no ground for the belief that Santa Fé was established at a populous Indian pueblo,--the "capital" of all the village dwellers of New Mexico,--the only excuse for such belief, still popular in New Mexico, being that, in prehistoric times, the town was the site of at least one Indian pueblo.

Of the history of Santa Fé between Benavides's time (1622-1630) and the year 1680 not much is known. More than a dozen governors served the kingdom of Spain in the administration of the affairs of the colony during this period, and knowledge of the geography was somewhat increased by expeditions from the seat of government into parts little known. The Pueblo Indians, always friendly when well treated, cherished the religion of their fathers, which the Spaniards tried in every way to supplant, so that comparatively little progress was made in this rich missionary field aside from the erection of massive churches of stone and adobe and the baptism of many of the natives. Jealousy arose between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and so bitter became the feeling that the friars were accused of inciting a rebellion of the Indians in 1642, which resulted in the killing of Governor Luis Rosas. Henceforward the hatred of the natives for the whites became deeper and deeper; many of the natives were hanged from time to time for alleged religious offences, and in 1675 many others were whipped and imprisoned. From this time affairs assumed such a serious aspect that the sedentary tribes, under the leadership of Popé, a native of San Juan pueblo, finally determined to throw off the Spanish yoke by effecting an organization that is still noteworthy in Indian annals.

Popé was a medicine-man of no mean capacity. His story of the wrongs of his people fell on eager ears, and it was not long ere his plan to exterminate the Spaniards received support from all the northerly Pueblo tribes. The day of reckoning was to have been August 13th, while the mystic means of communication was a knotted yucca cord which was dispatched by fleet runners to the outlying tribes. Although all were enjoined to the strictest secrecy, treachery lurked in the Indian ranks, and before the time allotted for the outbreak the Spaniards became aware of its approach through neophytes loyal to their cause. Popé saw that immediate action was necessary to the fulfilment of his designs; news that the secret had been divulged was heralded afar in true Indian fashion, and on August 10th, three days before the time originally fixed, more than four hundred of the twenty-five hundred settlers, soldiers, and friars were cruelly massacred.

On the 13th the refugees at Santa Cruz were taken to Santa Fé, and on the day following the enemy appeared in the suburb of Analco, in the vicinity of the present chapel of San Miguel, which had been erected for the Tlascalan or Mexican members of the colony. A parley was held with a deputation of the Indians, who bore a white cross of peace and a red cross of war: of these they gave the Spaniards their choice, but on condition that if the former were selected their country must be immediately evacuated. Every effort was made by the Spaniards to bring about peace, but the Indians, encouraged by the success of their bloody enterprise, were determined to drive the Spaniards forever from the home of their fathers.

Failing in his efforts at conciliation, Governor Otermin endeavored to dislodge the natives from the outskirts; but already the warriors had arrived by hundreds, and the first desperate effort of the Spaniards to drive off the natives resulted in their own retirement to the great adobe Palace where the surviving women and children had already taken refuge.

The siege continued until the 19th. The Indians grew bolder with the continued arrival of warriors until three thousand were massed in the outskirts of the town. The city was beleaguered; the chapel of San Miguel had been destroyed, and the water-supply of the town cut off; consequently the trembling thousand within the Palace walls under the protection of only a hundred armed men were in desperate straits. The 19th passed. Otermin and his imprisoned colonists spent the night in planning the escape which seemed almost impossible. On the following day the brave hundred made a sortie which met with such success that three hundred of the enemy were slain, and nearly fifty captured and afterward hanged in the plaza, while the main body was driven in confusion to the heights. The Indians became demoralized by this first blow, thus affording the Spaniards the opportunity, on August 21st, of gathering their belongings, and starting on their march of six weeks down the river, under a midsummer's sun and through a ravaged country, to the mission of Guadalupe near the present El Paso, Texas.

The Pueblos were at last in possession of Santa Fé and of the dearly bought independence which they had so long been craving. Everything Spanish was laid aside under strict taboo--the language of the white man was to be forgotten and his religion forever buried; his houses of worship and the civil and ecclesiastical archives were to be fed to the flames, and their own rites revived in the ceremonial chambers which the Spaniards had caused to be abandoned; even the clothing and the crops of the foreigners were to be discarded, and only indigenous products consumed as of old, while soap-weed and the rivulet which flows through Santa Fé provided the means for effacing their baptism into Christianity. The Palace (which then occupied the entire block north of the plaza) seems to have been at least partially spared and was occupied by the Tanos of Galisteo, who built a kiva or ceremonial chamber in its courtyard.

More than one attempt was made to reconquer the province and to re-establish the seat of government during the next few years, but nothing of marked importance was accomplished until after Diego de Vargas Zapata Lujan Ponce de Leon became Governor in 1691. Accompanied by some sixty soldiers, one hundred Indians, and three friars, Vargas started up the Rio Grande from El Paso August 21, 1692, and on September 13th appeared before Santa Fé with part of his force. The fortified Tanos at first showed hostility, but moral suasion soon resulted in effecting their surrender and even in inducing the apostates to renew allegiance and to submit to baptism. Vargas then withdrew for the purpose of extending the conquest over other parts, and it was not until October, 1693, that he was enabled to gather his force of a hundred soldiers, and to renew the journey from El Paso with the seventy families and seventeen friars (about eight hundred souls) who were to form the new colony. On December 16th the little army entered Santa Fé under the very banner borne by Oñate nearly a century before. Although the Tanos were now found to be friendly in the main, they manifested little enthusiasm in providing the Spaniards with food, or in rendering aid in the restoration of San Miguel Chapel, offering, however, their pagan kiva for the white man's worship.

It was midwinter, and, the altitude being over seven thousand feet, many children perished. As the Indians were occupying the official quarters and such of the dwellings as had not been razed, they were ordered back to Galisteo, but refused to go. Their stronghold was attacked; re-enforcements from the kindred Tewas arrived, but the combined force was overpowered, seventy prisoners were made an example of, and four hundred women and children were distributed among the colonists. Hostilities continued with the outlying tribes until September, 1694, but before the year closed the missionaries were enabled to resume their fields of labor.

The winter of 1695-96 was one of discontent by reason of a failure of the crops during the previous season. This probably in large measure was the cause of another revolt in the following June, when twenty-six Spaniards, including five friars, were murdered; and not until the new century dawned were the last embers of the rebellion smothered. Vargas's term as Governor expired in 1696; but he remained in Santa Fé, where serious charges were preferred against him by his successor, Cubero, which resulted in his imprisonment until 1700. In 1703 he was reappointed Governor, but died April 8, 1704, and was buried in the Parroquia, which meanwhile had been restored to its former condition. San Miguel Chapel remained in ruins until 1708, when its restoration was commenced by Governor José Chacon Medina Salazar y Villaseñor, Marqués de Peñuela. The edifice was completed in 1710, as the following inscription on a gallery beam still testifies:

EL SEÑOR MARQUÉS DE LA PEÑUELA HIZO ESTA FÁBRICA: EL ALFÉREZ
REAL DON AGUSTIN FLORES VERGARA SU CRIADO. AÑO DE 1710.

The eighteenth century was marked by expeditions from Santa Fé in various directions (including one in the year of American Independence that resulted in the discovery of Utah Lake), which added materially to geographic knowledge of the period; by an extension of missionary work among some tribes and the chastisement of others who had been conducting their raids uncomfortably close to the capital with its little garrison of eighty soldiers; and by controversies between the authorities of Church and State which did not tend to promote the peace of mind of either side or of the colonists.

In 1767 a freshet so seriously threatened the town that the citizens were called to divert the course of the stream and thus saved the settlement. As in the case of a previous proposal to move the capital to Sia, it was planned in 1780 to transfer the seat of government to Santo Domingo, but Governor Ugarte decided against the project and expended two thousand pesos in improving the plan of the town and in establishing a presidio therein. Before the middle of the century French-Canadian traders had found their way to the Rio Grande, and sporadic bartering with the plains Indians gradually developed into the important industry later known as the "commerce of the prairies." A brisk trade also sprang up between New Mexico and Chihuahua, which in 1780 aggregated $30,000 in value. Santa Fé, therefore, at an early period became the seat of an inland commerce, mainly in sheep, wool, wine, and pelts. In 1804 William Morrison of Kaskaskia dispatched to New Mexico a consignment of goods, which were confiscated; various attempts to introduce merchandise from the United States during the next few years shared a like fate, the participants usually being imprisoned. This action on the part of the New Mexican officials was later probably more or less due to the ill-feeling engendered by the exploit of Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike, who in January, 1807, while conducting an exploration under military orders, erected a stockade fort in Spanish territory. He and his command were arrested, conducted to Santa Fé, and later taken to Chihuahua as prisoners.

But all efforts to prevent the inroads of traders from the United States were in vain; even the almost prohibitory duty, for a time, of $500 per load of merchandise, regardless of its value, was overcome, and the overland trade conducted by way of the great Santa Fé trail, first by pack-animals from Franklin, and later by wagon from Independence, Missouri, increased from $15,000 in 1822 to $750,000 in 1844. The names of McKnight, Pursley, Choteau, Beard, Lalande, Chambers, Cooper, the Bents, Joel Walker, Sublette, Kit Carson, and many other hardy pioneers will long be remembered in the early history of the old Santa Fé trail.