The Old Santa Fe Trail | Page 5

is now Kansas, is proved by the
statement of his historian, who says: "They saw great chains of
mountains and forests to the west, which they understood were
uninhabited."
Another strong confirmatory fact is, that, in 1884, a group of mounds
was discovered in McPherson County, Kansas, which were thoroughly
explored by the professors of Bethany College, Lindsborg, who found,

among other interesting relics, a piece of chain-mail armour, of hard
steel; undoubtedly part of the equipment of a Spanish soldier either of
the command of Cabeca de Vaca, De Soto, or of Coronado. The
probability is, that it was worn by one of De Soto's unfortunate men, as
neither Panphilo de Narvaez, De Vaca, or Coronado experienced any
difficulty with the savages of the great plains, because those leaders
were humane and treated the Indians kindly, in contradistinction to De
Soto, who was the most inhuman of all the early Spanish explorers. He
was of the same school as Pizarro and Cortez; possessing their daring
valour, their contempt of danger, and their tenacity of purpose, as well
as their cruelty and avarice. De Soto made treaties with the Indians
which he constantly violated, and murdered the misguided creatures
without mercy. During the retreat of Moscoso's weakened command
down the Arkansas River, the Hot Springs of Arkansas were discovered.
His historian writes:
And when they saw the foaming fountain, they thought it was the
long-searched-for "Fountain of Youth," reported by fame to exist
somewhere in the country, but ten of the soldiers dying from excessive
drinking, they were soon convinced of their error.
After these intrepid explorers the restless Coronado appears on the Old
Trail. In the third volume of Hakluyt's Voyages, published in London,
1600, Coronado's historian thus describes the great plains of Kansas
and Colorado, the bison, and a tornado:--
From Cicuye they went to Quivira, which after their account is almost
three hundred leagues distant, through mighty plains, and sandy heaths
so smooth and wearisome, and bare of wood that they made heaps of
ox-dung, for want of stones and trees, that they might not lose
themselves at their return: for three horses were lost on that plain, and
one Spaniard which went from his company on hunting. . . . All that
way of plains are as full of crooked-back oxen as the mountain Serrena
in Spain is of sheep, but there is no such people as keep those cattle. . . .
They were a great succour for the hunger and the want of bread, which
our party stood in need of. . . .
One day it rained in that plain a great shower of hail, as big as oranges,
which caused many tears, weakness and bowes.
These oxen are of the bigness and colour of our bulls, but their bones
are not so great. They have a great bunch upon their fore-shoulder, and

more hair on their fore part than on their hinder part, and it is like wool.
They have as it were an horse-mane upon their backbone, and much
hair and very long from their knees downward. They have great tufts of
hair hanging down on their foreheads, and it seemeth they have beards
because of the great store of hair hanging down at their chins and
throats. The males have very long tails, and a great knob or flock at the
end, so that in some respects they resemble the lion, and in some other
the camel. They push with their horns, they run, they overtake and kill
an horse when they are in their rage and anger. Finally it is a foul and
fierce beast of countenance and form of body. The horses fled from
them, either because of their deformed shape, or else because they had
never before seen them.
"The number," continues the historian, "was incredible." When the
soldiers, in their excitement for the chase, began to kill them, they
rushed together in such masses that hundreds were literally crushed to
death. At one place there was a great ravine; they jumped into it in their
efforts to escape from the hunters, and so terrible was the slaughter as
they tumbled over the precipice that the depression was completely
filled up, their carcasses forming a bridge, over which the remainder
passed with ease.
The next recorded expedition across the plains via the Old Trail was
also by the Spaniards from Santa Fe, eastwardly, in the year 1716, "for
the purpose of establishing a Military Post in the Upper Mississippi
Valley as a barrier to the further encroachments of the French in that
direction." An account of this expedition is found in Memoires
Historiques sur La Louisiane, published in Paris in 1858, but never
translated in its entirety. The author, Lieutenant Dumont of the French
army, was one of a