90 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. is, I9 10 * 
panies. It was an army of 1,700 men, and yet 
to the Indians assembled at the fort it must 
have seemed indeed an army, for perhaps few 
of them had ever dreamed that there were half 
so many men in the whole “white tribe.” The 
column drew near the fort, swinging to the left, 
forded the river to the Mexican bank, turned 
again up 'the valley and went on its way, a part 
to the City of Mexico, a part to California and 
a part only to Santa Fe, whence but a few 
months later they would march to avenge the 
murder of Charles Bent, now doling out mint 
juleps to the loitering officers in the little room 
upstairs in the fort. 
There were two or three employes at the fort 
whose labors never ceased. These were the hun¬ 
ters who were obliged constantly to provide 
meat for the employes. Though the number 
of these varied, there might be from sixty to 
a hundred men employed at the fort, and many 
of these had families, so that the population was 
considerable. 
For a number of years the principal hunter 
for the fort was Kit Carson, who was often 
assisted by a Mexican or two, though in times 
when work was slack, many of the traders, 
trappers, employes and teamsters devoted them¬ 
selves to hunting. Often game could be killed 
within sight of the post, but at other times it 
was necessary for the hunter to take with him 
a wagon or pack animals, for he might be 
obliged to go several days’ journey before se¬ 
curing the necessary food. It was the duty of 
Carson and his assistants to provide meat for 
the whole post. It was here that in 1843 Carson 
was married to a Mexican girl. 
Though, as already suggested, difficulties 
sometimes occurred with the Indians, these 
troubles were very rare, yet the vigilance of 
the garrison, drilled into them from earliest 
times by William Bent, never relaxed. 
The animals belonging to the fort were a con¬ 
stant temptation to the Indians. The fort stood 
on the open plain by the river side, and there 
was an abundance of good grass close at hand 
so that the herd could be grazed within sight 
of the walls. Even so, however, the Indians 
occasionally swept off the stock, as in 1839 when 
a party of Comanches hid in the bushes on the 
river bank, ran off every hoof of stock belong¬ 
ing to the post and killed the Mexican herder. 
Farnham gives this account of the event: 
“About the middle of June, 1839, a band of 
sixty of them [Comanche] under cover of night 
crossed the river and concealed themselves 
among the bushes that grow thickly on the bank 
near the place where the animals of the estab¬ 
lishment feed during the day. No sentinel being 
on duty at the time, their presence was unob¬ 
served, and when morning came the Mexican 
horse guard mounted his horses, and with the 
noise and shouting usual with that class of ser¬ 
vants when so employed, rushed his charge out 
of the fort, and riding rapidly from side to side 
of the rear of the band, urged them on, and 
soon had them nibbling the short dry grass in 
a little vale within grape shot distance of the 
guns of the bastion. It is customary for a guard 
of animals about these trading posts to take his 
station beyond his charge, and if they stray from 
each other or attempt to stroll too far, he drives 
them together, and thus keeps them in the best 
possible situation to be driven hastily to the 
corral should the Indians or other evil persons 
swoop down upon them. And as there is con¬ 
stant danger of this, his horse is held by a long 
rope and grazes around him that he may be 
“mounted quickly at the first alarm for a re¬ 
treat within the walls. The faithful guard at 
Bent’s on the morning of the disaster I am re¬ 
lating had dismounted after driving out his ani¬ 
mals and sat upon the ground, watching with 
the greatest fidelity for every call of duty, when 
these fifty or sixty Indians sprang from their 
hiding places, ran upon the animals, yelling hor¬ 
ribly and attempted to drive them across the 
river. The guard, however, nothing daunted, 
mounted quickly and drove his horse at full 
speed among them. The mules and horses hear¬ 
ing his voice amidst the frightening yells of the 
savages immediately started at a lively pace for 
the fort, but the Indians were on all sides and 
bewildered them. The guard still pressed them 
onward, and called for help, and on they rushed 
despite the efforts of the Indians to the con¬ 
trary. The battlements were covered with men. 
They shouted encouragement to the brave guard, 
‘Onward, onward,’ and the injunction was 
obeyed. He spurred his horse to his greatest 
speed from side to side and whipped the hinder- 
most of the band with his leading rope. He had 
saved every animal; he was within twenty yards 
of the open gate. He fell; three arrows from 
the bows of the Comanches had cloven his heart, 
and relieved of him the lords of the quiver 
gathered their prey and drove them to the 
borders of Texas without injury to life or limb. 
I saw this faithful guard’s grave. He had been 
buried a few days. The wolves had been dig¬ 
ging into it. Thus forty or fifty mules and 
horses and their, best servant’s life were lost to 
the Messrs. Bents in a single day.” 
Long before this, in 1831, when the fort was 
still unfinished, Carson with twelve white em¬ 
ployes went down the river to the Big Timbers 
to cut logs for use in the construction work. 
He had all the horses and mules belonging to 
the post with him, and while he and his men 
were at work, a party of sixty Crows crept up 
close to them, and coming out of the bx-ush and 
timber drove off the herd. Carson and his men, 
all on foot, followed the Crows across the open 
prairie. With them were two mounted Chey¬ 
enne warriors who had been visiting the camp 
when the Crows made their attack, but who 
luckily had their ponies by their sides and thus 
saved them. The Crows had not gone many 
miles before they halted and camped in a thicket 
on the margin of a little stream, thinking that 
a party o£ twelve men would not dare to fol¬ 
low them on foot; therefore, when they beheld 
Carson and his men coming on their trail they 
were greatly astonished. They left the stolen 
animals behind them and came boldly out on the 
open prairie to annihilate the venturesome white 
men, but all of Carson’s party had excellent 
rifles and one or two pistols apiece. Carson 
used to tell how surprised those Crows were 
when they charged down upon his men and were 
met by a stunning volley. They turned and 
made for the thicket, the whites following them 
at a run. Into the thicket went the Crows and 
in after them tumbled Carson and his men. 
Some spirited bushwhacking ensued, then out at 
the far edge of the thicket came the Crows with 
Carson and his men still after them. Mean¬ 
time, when the Crows had come out to charge 
the whites, the two mounted Cheyennes had 
quietly slipped round in the rear and run off 
all the captured horses, so now Carson's men 
mounted and rode exultingly back to their camp 
while the discomfited Crows plodded on home¬ 
ward nursing their wounds. 
In the years before the great peace was made 
between the Kiowa and Comanche and the 
Cheyenne and Arapahoe, the home country of 
the Southern Cheyennes lay chiefly between 
the Arkansas and the South Platte rivers. In 
August many of them used to go east as far as 
the valley of the Republican for the purpose of 
gathering winter supplies of choke cherries and 
plums. In the autumn the Suhtai and the Hill 
people—His si o me' ta ne—went up west into 
the foothills of the mountains to kill mule deer, 
which were plenty there and at that season fat. 
All the different bands of Cheyennes used to 
make annual trips to the mountains for the 
purpose of securing lodge-poles. A cedar 
which grew there was also much employed in 
the manufacture of bows. 
At this time the range of the Kiowa was 
from the Cimarron south of the Red River 
of Texas, on the ridge of the Staked Plains. 
They kept south in order to avoid, so far as 
possible, the raiding parties of Cheyennes and 
Arapahoes, who were constantly trying to take 
horses from them. In those days—and still 
earlier—the Kiowa used to make frequent trips 
north to visit their old friends and neighbors, 
the Crows, but when they did this they kept 
away to the westward, close to the mountains 
in order to avoid the camps of the Cheyennes. 
Nevertheless, such traveling parties were oc¬ 
casionally met by the Cheyenne or Arapahoe 
and fights occurred. It was in such a fight that 
an old woman, now (1908) known as White 
Cow Woman, or the Kiowa Woman, was 
captured. She was a white child taken from 
the whites by the Kiowa when two or three 
years of age, and a year or two later captured 
from the Kiowa as stated by the Cheyenne. 
She is now supposed to be seventy-two or 
three years old. The fight when she was 
captured took place in 1835, or three years be¬ 
fore the great fight on Wolf Creek. 
Before the Mexican War the Arkansas was 
the boundary between the United States and 
Mexico, and Bent’s Fort was therefore on the 
extreme borders of the United States. In 
those days the Indians used to make raids into 
Mexican territory, sweeping off great herds 
of horses and mules. They also captured many 
Mexicans, and many a Comanche and Kiowa 
warrior owned two or three peons whom he 
kept to herd his horses for him. 
These peons were often badly treated by 
their Mexican masters, and after they had been 
for a short time with the Indians, they liked 
the new life so well, that they would not re¬ 
turn to their own masters, even if they had the 
opportunity. Many of these men led the war¬ 
riors in raids into Mexico. They kept up 
communication with peons in the Mexican 
settlements, and from them learned just which 
places were unguarded, where the best herds 
and most plunder were to be secured and where 
the Mexican troops were stationed. The peon 
then led his war party to the locality selected 
and they ran off the herds, burned ranches and 
carried off plunder and peon women and men. 
Some of the peons captured became chiefs in 
the tribes that had taken them. In the old days 
