The Old Santa Fe Trail | Page 7

of Providence to regain his liberty,
he made secretly all the provisions possible for him to make, and which
he believed necessary to his plan. At last, having chosen the best horse
and having mounted him, after performing several of his exploits
before the savages, and while they were all occupied with his
manoeuvres, he spurred up and disappeared from their sight, taking the
road to Mexico, where doubtless he arrived.
Charlevoix,[2] who travelled from Quebec to New Orleans in the year
1721, says in one of his letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguieres, dated at
Kaskaskia, July 21, 1721:
About two years ago some Spaniards, coming, as they say, from New
Mexico, and intending to get into the country of the Illinois and drive
the French from thence, whom they saw with extreme jealousy
approach so near the Missouri, came down the river and attacked two
villages of the Octoyas,[3] who are the allies of the Ayouez,[4] and
from whom it is said also that they are derived. As the savages had no
firearms and were surprised, the Spaniards made an easy conquest and
killed a great many of them. A third village, which was not far off from

the other two, being informed of what had passed, and not doubting but
these conquerors would attack them, laid an ambush into which the
Spaniards heedlessly fell. Others say that the savages, having heard that
the enemy were almost all drunk and fast asleep, fell upon them in the
night. However it was, it is certain the greater part of them were killed.
There were in the party two almoners; one of them was killed directly
and the other got away to the Missouris, who took him prisoner, but he
escaped them very dexterously. He had a very fine horse and the
Missouris took pleasure in seeing him ride it, which he did very
skilfully. He took advantage of their curiosity to get out of their hands.
One day as he was prancing and exercising his horse before them, he
got a little distance from them insensibly; then suddenly clapping spurs
to his horse he was soon out of sight.
The Missouri Indians once occupied all the territory near the junction
of the Kaw and Missouri rivers, but they were constantly decimated by
the continual depredations of their warlike and feudal enemies, the
Pawnees and Sioux, and at last fell a prey to that dreadful scourge, the
small-pox, which swept them off by thousands. The remnant of the
once powerful tribe then found shelter and a home with the Otoes,
finally becoming merged in that tribe.

CHAPTER I.
UNDER THE SPANIARDS.

The Santa Fe of the purely Mexican occupation, long before the days of
New Mexico's acquisition by the United States, and the Santa Fe of
to-day are so widely in contrast that it is difficult to find language in
which to convey to the reader the story of the phenomenal change. To
those who are acquainted with the charming place as it is now, with its
refined and cultured society, I cannot do better, perhaps, in attempting
to show what it was under the old regime, than to quote what some
traveller in the early 30's wrote for a New York leading newspaper, in
regard to it. As far as my own observation of the place is concerned,
when I first visited it a great many years ago, the writer of the
communication whose views I now present was not incorrect in his
judgment. He said:--

To dignify such a collection of mud hovels with the name of "City,"
would be a keen irony; not greater, however, than is the name with
which its Padres have baptized it. To call a place with its moral
character, a very Sodom in iniquity, "Holy Faith," is scarcely a venial
sin; it deserves Purgatory at least. Its health is the best in the country,
which is the first, second and third recommendation of New Mexico by
its greatest admirers. It is a small town of about two thousand
inhabitants, crowded up against the mountains, at the end of a little
valley through which runs a mountain stream of the same name
tributary to the Rio Grande. It has a public square in the centre, a
Palace and an Alameda; as all Spanish Roman Catholic towns have. It
is true its Plaza, or Public Square, is unfenced and uncared for, without
trees or grass. The Palace is nothing more than the biggest mud-house
in the town, and the churches, too, are unsightly piles of the same
material, and the Alameda[5] is on top of a sand hill. Yet they have in
Santa Fe all the parts and parcels of a regal city and a Bishopric. The
Bishop has a palace also; the only