THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



657 



Evil Spirit Turned Healing Springs Into Death 



Trap for Indians 



By J. F. CRAWFORD. 



THERE is something intensely interesting about the early 

 history of any country. People listen to the tales of 

 early day hardships and privations of early settlers, their 

 struggles against the wilderness of the land, as well as against 

 the Indians, who have always disputed the advance of 

 civilization. 



No place in the United States has a more thrilling early 

 history than the southern part of Carbon county, Wyoming, 

 known as the Saratoga valley. The North Platte river rises 

 in North Park, Colo., and after leaving the park, enters 

 Wyoming and flows north for about 175 miles, when it makes 

 a great bend and flows south into Nebraska. 



The Saratoga valley is situated on both sides of this river 

 where it enters Wyoming and is flanked on the west by the 

 Sierra Madre range and on the east and northeast by the 

 Medicine Bow range. The town of Saratoga is situated mid- 

 way in this valley, on the North Platte river, where hot springs, 

 some fifteen or twenty in number, gush from the ground. 

 These waters contain medicinal properties of great value and 

 are much frequented by rheumatic patients and those afflicted 

 with kidney or stomach troubles. 



The earliest settlers tell stories of how, every summer, 

 the Indians flocked here from every quarter, to bathe and 

 drink of the waters. For how many years the Indians had 

 been doing this no one can tell, but it is certain that such had 

 been their custom for many centuries. 



So great was the value the Red Men placed on the medi- 

 cinal qualities of the waters of these springs, and so great was 

 the demand for their use, that a compact was formed, between 



Home of J. F. Crawford, Saratoga, Wyo., Editor of the Saratoga 

 Sun. Pyramid of Elk Horns Shown in Foreground. 



all the tribes of this country, that this valley should be neutral 

 ground, and that when once within the confines of the moun- 

 tain ranges that bounded the valley, peace should reign and 

 no hostilities allowed. Death or extermination was the pen- 

 alty exacted of every Indian, or tribe of Indians, that should 

 violate this compact. 



The result was that the teepee trails were thick that led, 

 from every point of the compass, to this spot. Hostile tribes 

 laid aside their weapons and discarded their war paint as soon 

 as they crossed the divides leading to this valley. Utes, 

 Arapahoes, Shoshones and Sioux fraternized, danced, and 

 hunted together in amity, while within the confines of the 

 valley, only to resume their deadly hostilities, once they got 

 beyond the valley's border. They assembled here, each sum- 

 mer, by the thousands and camped all along the North Platte 

 river and its tributaries. 



The valley abounded in game, and the pasture along the 



many small streams, as well as the river, afforded excellent 

 grazing for the herds of Indian ponies. It was a kind of gen- 

 eral playground, where the eternal vigilance, that marked the 

 lives of the many western tribes, was laid aside and the war- 

 rior could lie down to peaceful slumbers, assured that he 

 might fear no foe. 



This state of neutrality and peaceful tranquility, which 

 must have lasted for, no one knows how many thousands of 

 years, was bound to terminate, and its termination in this case 

 was a disastrous one for the Red Men. In the year 1847 the 

 Mormons passed through this country and left smallpox in 

 their camps, which was spread among the Indians. They 

 promptly fled, with this new, strange, disease, to their old- 

 time remedy, the hot spring of this place. 



Their manner of treating the disease was almost as deadly 

 as the disease itself. They made wickyups of willow boughs 

 over the springs, placed the patient inside and, when he was 

 reeking with perspiration, he would jump into the ice-cold 

 waters of the North Platte. The result was almost universally 

 fatal. Old trappers and frontiersmen of that time say that 

 not less than twenty thousand Indians died of smallpox, and 

 that their bones were to be found everywhere strewing 

 the valley. 



The Indians, when the waters failed to cure them, con- 

 cluded that a bad spirit had gotten into the waters and this 

 belief spread to all the tribes in this part of Wyoming. In 

 consequence the springs were looked upon as haunted and they 

 left, never to return here to bathe. The old-time compact 

 was broken and this happy hunting ground became as other 

 places, open to hostilities and to all kinds of Indian warfare 

 and depredation. 



The Medicine Bow range, which lies to the east and north- 

 east of this valley, terminates abruptly in a huge mountain, 

 'grand, gloomy and peculiar." This mountain, some 12,000 

 feet in height, is known as "Elk Mountain." For a number 

 of months each year its top, which is above timber line, is 

 covered with a thick mantle of snow. It is covered on the 

 west and north sides with a dense growth of pine timber and 

 small streams have their head in the canons and defiles that 

 seam its every side. It is an awe-inspiring sight, a landmark 

 that can be seen for hundreds of miles from every point of 

 the compass. In its dark canons and rugged defiles many 

 bloody scenes have been enacted and the history of the moun- 

 tain would fill a book. 



Geologists tell us that this entire country was, ages and 

 ages ago, a level tropical land. They affirm that it was the 

 habitat of the immense dynosaurs and all of the immense 

 creeping things of that age, so far, far back in the history of 

 time, that one can only guess at the date. The country was 

 hot; palms flourished and tropical plants and trees abounded. 



These same learned men tell us that on the top of Elk 

 fountain there are about two acres of the land that existed 

 in that day. There it lies elevated by some cataclysm of na- 

 ture, storm swept, bleached by sun and whipped by wind, a 

 mute testimonial of that age so far away. In this tract of 

 land are to be found the jawbones of camels still perfectly 

 sound. There are many other spots in Wyoming where these 

 jawbones can be found, but nowhere are they so perfect as on 

 that high mountain peak in the original soil of that day. 



To prove that this was a tropical clime at one time these 

 same geologists and searchers after the ancient, have un- 

 earthed the bones of immense lizards, some of them over 60 

 feet in length. Other immense fossils, many of them of ani- 

 mals almost, or entirely unknown, to the scientific world, have 

 been found here in Wyoming, and now fill the Museum of the 

 University of Wyoming, at Laramie, the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion and the Yale and American Museums. Some of the most 

 valuable finds of this character the world has ever known have 

 been made here in Wyoming. 



In the mountain passes of Elk Mountain and in its mighty 

 canons have been enacted thrilling scenes, many of which were 

 indeed tragic and fateful. In one of the many canons on the 

 sides of that mountain, a place that ended in a perfect 

 cul-de-sac, are to be found the mute and eloquent evi- 



