The Old Santa Fe Trail | Page 6

party ascending the Arkansas River in search of a
supposed mass of emeralds. The narrative relates: There was more than
half a league to traverse to gain the other bank of the river, and our
people were no sooner arrived than they found there a party of
Missouris, sent to M. de la Harpe by M. de Bienville, then commandant
general at Louisiana, to deliver orders to the former. Consequently they
gave the signal order, and our other two canoes having crossed the river,
the savages gave to our commandant the letters of M. de Bienville, in
which he informed him that the Spaniards had sent out a detachment
from New Mexico to go to the Missouris and to establish a post in that

country. . . . The success of this expedition was very calamitous to the
Spaniards. Their caravan was composed of fifteen hundred people, men,
women and soldiers, having with them a Jacobin for a chaplain, and
bringing also a great number of horses and cattle, according to the
custom of that nation to forget nothing that might be necessary for a
settlement. Their design was to destroy the Missouris, and to seize
upon their country, and with this intention they had resolved to go first
to the Osages, a neighbouring nation, enemies of the Missouris, to form
an alliance with them, and to engage them in their behalf for the
execution of their plan. Perhaps the map which guided them was not
correct, or they had not exactly followed it, for it chanced that instead
of going to the Osages whom they sought, they fell, without knowing it,
into a village of the Missouris, where the Spanish commander,
presenting himself to the great chief and offering him the calumet,
made him understand through an interpreter, believing himself to be
speaking to the Osage chief, that they were enemies of the Missouris,
that they had come to destroy them, to make their women and children
slaves and to take possession of their country. He begged the chief to
be willing to form an alliance with them, against a nation whom the
Osages regarded as their enemy, and to second them in this enterprise,
promising to recompense them liberally for the service rendered, and
always to be their friend in the future. Upon this discourse the Missouri
chief understood perfectly well the mistake. He dissimulated and
thanked the Spaniard for the confidence he had in his nation; he
consented to form an alliance with them against the Missouris, and to
join them with all his forces to destroy them; but he represented that his
people were not armed, and that they dared not expose themselves
without arms in such an enterprise. Deceived by so favourable a
reception, the Spaniards fell into the trap laid for them. They received
with due ceremony, in the little camp they had formed on their arrival,
the calumet which the great chief of the Missouris presented to the
Spanish commander. The alliance for war was sworn to by both parties;
they agreed upon a day for the execution of the plan which they
meditated, and the Spaniards furnished the savages with all the
munitions which they thought were needed. After the ceremony both
parties gave themselves up equally to joy and good cheer. At the end of
three days two thousand savages were armed and in the midst of dances

and amusements; each party thought nothing but the execution of its
design. It was the evening before their departure upon their concerted
expedition, and the Spaniards had retired to their camps as usual, when
the great chief of the Missouris, having assembled his warriors,
declared to them his intentions and exhorted them to deal treacherously
with these strangers who were come to their home only with the design
of destroying them. At daybreak the savages divided into several bands,
fell on the Spaniards, who expected nothing of the kind, and in less
than a quarter of an hour all the caravan were murdered. No one
escaped from the massacre except the chaplain, whom the barbarians
saved because of his dress; at the same time they took possession of all
the merchandise and other effects which they found in their camp. The
Spaniards had brought with them, as I have said, a certain number of
horses, and as the savages were ignorant of the use of these animals,
they took pleasure in making the Jacobin whom they had saved, and
who had become their slave, mount them. The priest gave them this
amusement almost every day for the five or six months that he
remained with them in their village, without any of them daring to
imitate him. Tired at last of his slavery, and regarding the lack of
daring in these barbarians as a means