Lippincotts Magazine of Popular Literature and Science | Page 5

settlement, the Mountain Utes, then the allies of the whites, offered their services to help repel the common enemy. Petitions went up to the governor and Legislature to accept the proffered services, but they were steadily refused. Our long-headed judge gives the reason: The administration was under the control of men who were feeding Uncle Sam's troops with corn at thirteen cents per pound, and other staples in proportion, and the Indian volunteers promised a too speedy ending of such a profitable warfare.
Thus eventfully has passed the life of Judge Bradford. During his threescore-and-five years he has moved almost across a continent, never content unless he was on the frontier. Long may he live to ride in his light coverless wagon in the smile of bright Colorado sunshine, honored by all who know him, and affording his friends the enjoyment of his rare good presence!
[Illustration: OLD ADOBE FORT.]
Thirty years ago this whole Rocky-Mountain region, now appropriated by an enterprising and progressive people, contained, besides the native Indians and the Mexicans in the south, only a few trappers and frontier traders, most of them in the employ of the American Fur Company. These were the fearless and intrepid pioneers who so far from fleeing danger seemed rather to court it. Accounts of their adventures--now a struggle with a wounded bear, again the threatened perils of starvation when lost in some mountain-fastness--have long simultaneously terrified and fascinated both young and old. We all have pictured their dress--the coat or cloak, often an odd combination of several varieties of skins pieced together, with fur side in; breeches sometimes of the same material, but oftener of coarse duck or corduroy; and the slouched hat, under whose broad brim whatever of the face that was not concealed by a shaggy, unkempt beard shone out red from exposure to sun and weather. The American Fur Company had dotted the country with forts, which served the double purpose of storehouses for the valuables collected and of places where the employés could barricade themselves against the too-often troublesome savages. For such a purpose, though not actually by the Fur Company, was built the old adobe fort the ruins of which are still to be seen on the banks of the Arkansas at Pueblo. How old it may have been no one seems to know, but certain it is that for long years, and in the earliest times, it was a favorite rendezvous. Here was always to be found a jolly good party to pass away the long winter evenings with song and story. Here Kit Carson often stopped to rest from his many perilous expeditions, enjoying, together with Fremont and other noted Rocky-Mountain explorers, the hospitalities of the old fort. Many times were its soft walls indented by the arrows of besieging Indians, but its bloodiest tragedy was enacted in 1854, when the Utes surprised the sleeping company and savagely massacred all.
While these events were transpiring at the old fort a party of Mexicans had journeyed from the south, crossed the Arkansas River and formed a settlement on the east side of the Fontaine. A characteristically squalid and miserable place it was, with the dwellings--they scarce deserved the name of houses--built in the side of the bluffs very much as animals might burrow in the ground. Part dug-out and part adobe were those wretched habitations, and the shed-like parts which projected from the hill were composed of all conceivable and inconceivable kinds of rubbish. Sticks, stones, bits of old iron, worn-out mattings and gunny-sacks entered more or less into the construction of these dens, all stuck together with the inevitable adobe mud. The settlement extended some distance along the side of the bluff, and the sloping plain in front was dignified as the plaza. Perhaps the dark-hued immigrants expected a large town to spring from these unpromising beginnings, and their plaza to take on eventually all the importance which a place so named ever deserves in the Spanish and Mexican mind. But the Pike's Peak excitement, originating in 1852 with the finding of gold by a party of Cherokee Indians, and reaching its culmination in 1859, brought a far different class of people to our Rocky-Mountain outpost, and a civilization was inaugurated which speedily compelled the ancient Mexican methods to go by the board. Thus, Fontaine was soon absorbed by the rising town of Pueblo, though the ancient dug-outs still picturesquely dot the hillside, inhabited by much the same idle and vagabond class from which the prosperous ranchman soon learns to guard his hen-roost.
The growth of any of our Far Western towns presents a curious study. In these latter days it frequently requires but a few months, or even weeks, to give some new one a fair start upon its prosperous way. Sometimes a mineral vein, sometimes the