Yale University Library

Uif 'Hwmwi^^wi^mwii
39002029452860 /-\^\rTJ^ r-k n
I OF THE TRAIL

BY SARAH LOWRIE

Church Missions Publishing Co.
211 State Street, Hartford, Conn.
Published Quarterly

I have a bit of advice for teachers and leaders of study classes or mission
bands who may use this book : —
Remember these stories are part of the history of our country. They are
not part fact or part fiction, but all fact. Use a map for every story. Make
the boys or girls read the stories before the meeting and have them tell the tales
at the meeting in their own words. Use the notes in fine print as additional
sidehghts on the men and events described in the stories, but do not read them
aloud as part of the story. Make your own class scrap-books of each of the
Trails; railroad maps and booklets, picture postcards and current articles about
dry farming, irrigation, the fruit crop, advertisements of Mission houses and
Mission furniture, etc., will be found helpful.
Parts of these stories, such as the "Lament of the Nez Percys,'' "The
Burial of Father Marquette," and the "Coming to Acoma of Juan Rimirez"
could be committed to memory by various members of your classes and recited
with good dramatic effect.
Four types of missionaries have been given in the four stories of the Trails :
(1) the Pastoral tj^pe, (2) the Explorer type, (3) the Administrative type, and
(4) the Citizen type; place the accent on these differences in your teaching.
We all know that very Uttle reading outside the study class meetings is
possible for young people. What they get in the way of information or inspira
tion must come in the class, I have not therefore suggested many books for
boys and girls outside this short book of tales, nor do I bother you with a com
plete list of the books — some wise, some otherwise — that I have waded through
in order to tell these tales. If, however, you read Lummis' "Spanish Pioneers," a
book on the early history of New Mexico, and Helen Hunt Jackson's "The Early
Missions of California," and Parkman on "The Mission Fathers of Canada,"
and Grace King on the "French Settlers on the Lower Mississippi and New
Orleans," and if you read Noah Brook's "First Across the Continent,'' and
Parkman's "Oregon Trail," and "The Story of Marcus Whitman," by J. G-
Craighead, you will find much that I have had to leave out.

Y u. II. STEWART

The Path of the Padke

H IRounb IRobin
tatlte
Junior HurtUar^

jfoUowere ot tbe ^rail
THE DESERT TRAIL
THE RIVER TRAIL
THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL
THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS

Bi? Sarab Xowrle

publisbed d^uattetl^
(tburcb fIDiesione publiebing Co.
211 State St., f)attfot&, Conn.

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE
FIRST CHAPTER IN PHILADELPHIA
OF THE ST. PAUL'S BROTHERHOOD
THESE STORIES OF THE WAY
ARE DEDICATED

Cn^. ^1

FOREWORD
SIDE by side with the gleaming rails of the Santa F6 tracks,
in the strange, mysterious deserts of Arizona and New
Mexico, you may catch gUmpses now and again of the half ob
literated road marks of the old Santa F6 Trail.
For nearly three hundred years this path over the terrible
and alluring wilderness has been trod by white men, but no one
can guess for how many centuries before the Spanish explorers
first discovered it, how many generations of Red Men, Zuni,
Apache, and Moki, Pueblos, cliff-dwellers and cave-dwellers,
had passed that way before them. But from the first solitary
wanderer who dared the unspeakable dangers of the en
chanted desert, to the last cow-pxmcher who loped carelessly
through the sage-bush and over the sand dunes that half hid
the tracks of yesterday, no one I think who ever travelled
that trail has been an ordinary, commonplace person, such as
one would expect to meet jogging along most roads that you and
I are familiar with.
From first to last, the men who have taken that old Santa
F6 Trail, warriors, explorers, hunters, missionaries, ranchmen,
fugitives, or even the railroad builders, have had one character
istic in common — they have all been adventurers. And one
may be sure that not even the boldest, most dare-devil of them
but had a fixed desire to gain some treasure from the heart of
that silent and awful land — success, fame, riches, knowledge,
safety, or perhaps only forgetfulness, that would in some meas
ure recompense him for the dangers of the path.
For, in spite of its strange and unearthly beauty, death
lurks silent and unappeasable on every side of that trail. Be
hind wonderful floating mirages of refreshing lakes and shaded

4 FOREWORD
rivers that never have been and never will be, are veritable springs
of water that to taste is death, and bottomless pits of quicksand
with a sham skimming of soil; canons in which an unwary trav
eller may wander hke a caged beast, the sheer walls rising a
thousand feet on either side to imprison him; while more dan
gerous than all is the open foe of all travellers, a sun that at mid
day is terrific in its fierce intensity.
And what is true of the old Santa F6 trail was once true of
many another ancient trail, leading across rivers and mountains
and forests into the heart of this great country. Most roads
were once trails, and most trails were once dangerous for white
men to follow. And those were great adventurers, famous or
forgotten, who crossed the seas, endured hardships, suffered
privations, and died a hundred deaths, to gain this land that
you and I now speak of so serenely as "ours."

THE DESERT TRAIL
WHEN the sun of New Mexico sinks low in the western sky
its level shafts turn the cliffs of the desert blood red. On
either side of the trail the great mesas seem to float towards one
like huge vermihon islands, across a shimmering blue- veiled sea.
They rise forbidding and terrible in that unearthly glare — sheer
cliffs hundreds of feet high, crowned by terraced and buttressed
fortifications, whether carved there by the winds of God, or
built there by the hands of men, no stranger in that land can
tell on first seeing them.
In the year 1598, in the month of December, a Spanish
soldier astride a gaunt horse, and followed by a stocky little
hound, rode through this land of waste and desolation. He
had been journeying towards the Spanish settlement of San
Gabriel but had left the well-used trail, which follows the Rio
Grande north out of Mexico to what is now Santa F&, and
struck westward across the Desert towards the Sky City of the
Quires — Acoma, as it is called to-day. This was in the year
when Phihp II of Spain died and left Spain and the Americas to
his son Philip III. It was also the year when Don Juan Onate,
first governor of New Mexico by the grace of these two Philips,
made treaties with the Seven Cities of Cimbola (literally. The
Bulls, or Buffalos), and with the chiefs of the Quires at Acoma,
and with the other Pueblo cities of the Desert. Under which
treaties by sacred signs they made themselves subject to the
Great King beyond the seas, this same Philip III of Spain.
It was well for his horse that Captain Caspar Perez de Vil-
lagran was young, and therefore of a light and wiry physique,
otherwise the steel jacket and headpiece, the water gourd and
the bag of rations which hung across the saddle bow, might

6 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
have taxed the tired animal's carrying power past endurance.
As it was he stumbled often and made rather poor work of cross
ing the flinty gullies down which the trail led now and again.
Nevertheless Caspar urged him forward with a firm hand on the
quirt when the going was anyway fair.
There were two reasons why the Captain could not well
spare his beast: first, they were passing through a very dangerous
country, infested by prowling bands of Apaches; second, if by
dint of pressing on they could reach the Indian puebla of Acoma
before nightfall, all *anxiety would be at an end. For the young
Spaniard had had news at the last friendly puebla on the Rio
Grande that John Zaldivar, with thirty men or so, was encamped
beneath the chffs of the Sky City. Zaldivar was not only Maestro
di campo to his Lordship the Governor of New Mexico, Juan
Onate, but he was also companion-in-arms to Caspar Perez,
hence the Captain's haste to join him.
In his impatience to be with Zaldivar he had hurried up the
river ahead of his escort and arrived at the friendly puebla of Pua-
ray, south of the East and West Forks, unattended except by his
little hound. From these friendly Pueblos he learned that much
had happened since he had left San Gabriel on his errand for
Don Onate into Mexico. The Governor had made a visit of state
not only to the town of Puaray, but had boldly sought the
hospitahty of the proud chiefs of the Sky City itself, the guarded
fortress town of Acoma, about which such strange stories had
been told before even the days of Coronado. The men of
Puaray assured Captain Perez that the Great Pale Face had
dared to accept the invitation of the chief men of the Qu6res,
had climbed the stone ladders of Acoma in full armor at the
head of his Spanish escort, and had stood even on the most sacred
place of all, the terraced roof of the Estufa (the Council
chamber). He had moreover been graciously invited to enter
this holy of holies of the Quires, and had as graciously refused.

THE DESERT TRAIL 7
Over this refusal the men of Puaray seemed to pause significantly,
but to Gaspar Perez their pause at the time meant nothing.
They told him how on the following day Don Oiiate and his
Spaniards had ridden westward on their beasts of terror — for
horses were then very dragons for the fear they inspired —
towards Zuni. Then, following him down the river from San
Gabriel, had come that other great Pale Face with still more
men of iron carrying thunder weapons. These too had struck
across the Desert towards Acoma and must be even now
encamped beneath its cliffs.
Perez recognized de Zaldivar by the description which the
Indians gave of this second leader, and it fitted well with all
he knew of his friend's temperament that he should have made
the detour to Acoma on his way to join Don Onate at Zuni. For
all the tales concerning the ancient city agreed in the tradition
that its secret chambers were piled high with treasures of tur
quoise and emeralds, gold and silver. Now John Zaldivar had
come to New Mexico for such things, and he was not one to pass
by so ripe an opportunity as the sight of the treasure of Acoma.
And though he himself had no particular craving for gold, or
even for emeralds and turquoise, Gaspar Perez had felt all his
weariness depart when he thought of the brave adventure his
friend must even then be having beneath the mysterious cliffs
guarding the Sky Fortress. Turning his horse westward, there
fore, the next day he followed Zaldivar's trail over the Desert.
To-day that journey would be lonely enough, but three
hundred years ago it was unspeakably lonely and very danger
ous. On this particular afternoon, even though Perez beUeved
it to be now drawing to an end, he found to his chagrin that both
the loneliness and the danger were beginning to tell on his nerves.
The least suspicion of delay, or any confusion in the trail, sent a
sudden qualm of despair over his spirits. Three times during
the day a curious alertness on the part of his hound had keyed

8 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
his senses to the stretching point. Yet he knew enough of In
dian treachery to comprehend that if he were being trailed by
hidden foes his only safety lay in riding straight on, without
any apparent care or watchfulness. Ride straight on he did,
therefore, humming a tune as he rode, admiring the mirage that
was turning the desert for the hour into a shimmering inland
lake which ever threatened to engulf him and which ever re
ceded before his eyes. Last but not least he let his mind dwell
with much enthusiasm upon the surprise he was about to give
his dear friend, John Zaldivar. He even found leisure from his
misgivings to compose a score or so of lines to add to his third
canto in the great epic poem he was writing concerning his ad
ventures in the New World. For Gaspar Perez de Villagran
was not only a brave soldier but a poet also, as the six Uttle vellum
volumes of his works prove to this day. That this cultivated
young officer and the hard-headed Zaldivar should have hit it
off so well was a matter of comment. However, though John
Zaldivar was neither a scholar nor a poet and looked upon the
world as a place to loot and then spend in, he was a good fighter,
a square dealer with his men, and a faithful servant of his King.
Hence more than young Captain Villagran adored him.
When the back of a hound bristles, and his toes widen apart
like a crouching cat's, and there is fear as well as menace in his
voice, it is well to look behind as well as before one, and to the
right and to the left. Captain Gaspar Perez rose in his stirrups
and scanned his surroundings. Whether he saw anything to
warrant the hound's anxiety it would have been hard to tell
from his face. And yet it was to be observed that Villagran,
while allowing the horse to resume his own way with a loose bridle,
quietly and deftly loosened his padded cuirasse from the saddle
bow and buckled it round his body. He also drew under his
brimmed hat his steel head-piece and drew up his sword belt
so that his short sword hung ready at his hand. He had no

A Follower of the Trail

BY D. N. STEWART

THE DESERT TRAIL 9
"thimder weapons," as the Indians called firearms. The short
and clumsy arquebuse of that period took too long in the loading,
and required such ceremony in the firing as to be almost more
of a danger to its owner than a defence, especially at close quar
ters. Hence Perez had travelled from Mexico for all these days
armed only by his sword, and the dagger with which he defended
his sword arm. Although by this time he must have been con
vinced that he was being trailed, he had still a sanguine hope
that he would sup that night with John Zaldivar, for the great
bulk of Acoma loomed nearer and nearer, its summits gleaming
hke burnished copper in the afterglow of the sunset. The
jagged hills surrounding the narrow valley which held the great
Rock were now all that blocked his path. Not two hundred
yards away he could see the opening to the defile leading across
this barrier. As his horse stumbled over the first downward
grade of the defile itself, Perez ceased his humming altogether,
and, tightening the reins, urged the animal forward at a gallop.
Five minutes more and the camp-fires of Zaldivar must gleam
out of the gathering dusk, unless — .
Just then horse and rider and hurrying hound rounded the
last jutty of the defile, and the valley in which the mesa of Acoma
rises lay before them. The Indians of Puaray had minutely
described the great Rock and its surroundings to him, and Perez
perceived at a glance that they had not hed. They had told
him that the camping ground of the Pale Faces lay under a shelv
ing cliff of the mesa, facing the entrance to the valley. This,
they warned him, was the only safe encampment because it was
protected from an attack from the town, and commanded the
two entrances to the valley, from the east and from the north.
Here then John Zaldivar and his thirty men and his horses should
be. For the shelving chff was there, a perfect camping spot,
the black and charred remains of camp-fires were there, and a
rough corral constructed of loose stones, about which Perez

ID FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
could discern the hoof-marks of many horses; but neither the
horses nor the Maestro di Campo nor his Spaniards remained.
Plainly Acoma would afford neither Gaspar Perez, nor his
horse, nor his hound a safe shelter that night. Yet to retrace
his steps through the narrow defile where the crouching, threat
ening figures were gathering like shadows in the dusk, invited
nothing but death. He glanced with quick eye along the north
ern side of the cleared space. The hound, whining and excited,
was nosing the sand and the rocks some forty yards ahead, where
the cup-like rim of the valley was nicked by the opening of a
trail scarcely wide enough for a man on foot. The trail dipped
abruptly downwards into a seemingly bottomless gulch. Steep
as it was, however, and narrow, someone whom the dog knew
and would fain follow had ridden that way not many hours since.
Perez was not one to linger with such a leading. The broken
neck which it threatened was more than preferable to the certain
death which was closing down upon him from behind and before.
With a sudden lash to his horse, and a bend of his body far down
over his saddle bow, he drove the frightened beast straight at
the low barrier, and swung him through the broken rim of rocks
down the shelving, crumbhng trail. He was none too soon.
From the crevices of the rocks and the terraced roofs of the town
came cries of execration, and the long blood-curdhng war-whoop
of warriors keen for murder. Possibly they had counted too
surely upon his faUing into the trap of seeking his companions
on the other side of the mesa; probably too the men who had
trailed him were waiting some signal from the chiefs who watched
from the ramparts, to fall upon their solitary victim. Even
now they must have counted upon surrounding him at the bottom
of the narrow canon down which his horse was carrying him
with such reckless force. But even running, leaping Indians
were no match for that wild and frightened animal, and if neither
Gaspar Perez nor his horse knew one yard of that terrible trail.

THE DESERT TRAIL II
nor could so much as guess the exit from the canon in the gathering
dusk, the hound was hot on a scent that he knew, and Perez,
thanking Heaven for such guidance, followed swift on his dog's lead.
When night fell the cries of his pursuers were faint and in
termittent in the distance. He whistled softly to the eager hound
and drew his horse to a standstill. It was plain that the poor
beast would die in his tracks if he were pushed further without
a rest. Under the starhght Perez prepared the meal of which
all three must partake, man, dog and horse, and divided the
contents of the gourd of water. There was just enough in the
gourd to wash out his horse's mouth, and to wash down the
jerked meat and the corn-meal which hound and master shared.
Then with his weapons ready at hand, and his dog mounting
guard at his feet, Gaspar Perez said his prayers and fell asleep.
"It will take a miracle to protect us when the darkness is gone.
And may Heaven grant it," was his last thought as he stretched
his tired body on the sand.
And, as matters stood, the danger in which he rested was
hardly lessened, only postponed by the darkness. By dawn's
light the swarming Queres could easily trace his whereabouts
by the hoof-marks on the sand. And his worn-out animal could
scarcely endure such another flight. Nevertheless Gaspar Perez
slept soundly hour after hour, so worn was he. And the dawn
found him still sleeping. But the miracle had happened. The
ground about his resting place, the low shrubs, and broken stones,
all the trail by which he had ridden, were white and hidden un
der an unbroken covering of snow.
Days later some Spaniards belonging to the escort of Don
Onate stumbled across an apparently dying white man lying in
the shelter of some cliffs a few feet from the trail that leads past
II Moro (The Castle) on the way to Zuni. He was not recog
nized by his rescuers, and he could not speak, for his black-

12 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL

ened tongue, hard and rasped, protruded from his ghastly lips
when he tried vainly to articulate. They carried him to their
camp, and there skillfully nursed the poor half-crazed man back
to hfe. When a man is dying of thirst, dying of hunger, and
beside himself with the long tortures of the desert, he is easily
killed by the mere kind eagerness of his rescuers. When he
was himself again and could talk, Perez could give no very clear
account of the days which had followed that one of his escape
from Acoma. While the snow still covered the trail he had been
free from danger of pursuit, but he was likewise without a guide
in his endeavor to follow his comrades. He rode at haphazard and
depended for his general direction on the sun; presently his horse
had floundered into a pit — an Indian animal trap without doubt —
and crashing to the bottom had killed himself by breaking his
neck. Perez, himself, had barely escaped from the pit after
repeated efforts. What remained of the rations lay under the
twisted body of his horse. His hound had leaped upon him in
transports of joy as he struggled out of the death trap, but neither
master nor dog had anything to eat that day or the next, and
when the sun had melted the last vestiges of the snow even in
the crevices of the rocks, they had nothing to drink.
It was here that Perez paused in his broken tale and could
not continue it. But the soldiers who had listened with rough
pity to his snatches of talk during his delirium knew what the
sorrow was which pressed upon his heart, and one of them clos
ing his own big hand over Perez's fevered one, said gently: "It
was right that the hound should give his hfe for the most noble
Senor. And who but the noble Senor would take a dog's life so
mercifully!" And so they passed over in sad silence the death of the
faithful httle hound, whose hfe-blood had enabled the tortured
man to struggle on for two days more across the cruel desert.
The tale which his rescuers had to tell Gaspar was ghast-

THE DESERT TRAIL 1 3
Uer yet and had no fortunate ending. For John Zaldivar and
eleven of his men were dead. The Maestro di Campo and six
teen of his Uttle force of thirty had followed Onate's example
and accepted the invitations of the Chief Men of the Qu&es.
They too had mounted the steep ladders of Acoma. In an un
wonted moment of prudence, however, Zaldivar had left a guard
stationed at the encampment to protect the horses. From
what these men could learn afterwards from the three survivors
of that fatal visit to the Sky City, the Quires had shown them
selves so friendly and anxious to please the Pale Faces that, once
up in the strange and far-famed fortress city, Zaldivar and his
followers forgot all customary precautions and allowed them
selves to be separated. The Commander, bent upon discover
ing at least the resting place of the much-talked-of treasure store,
had accepted the Chief's invitation to enter the Estufa. Whether
he was killed in that dark chamber, or met his death trying to
escape to its terraced roof, no one knows, but the fall of his dead
and mutilated body from that roof into the street was the
signal for a general attack upon the scattered Spaniards.
It was a dreadful and unequal combat. Yet as each grim
fighter reeled in his last death stroke he fell on the naked bodies
of many Indians that had paid dearly for their treachery to the
Pale Faces. Five Spaniards attacked from three sides had been
driven nearer and nearer the edge of the cliff, and at last seeing
death in one form or another seemingly inevitable, they had
gone hurtling backward over the sheer sides into the desert below.
Yet from this terrific faU of at least one hundred and fifty
feet, three of the Spaniards survived. The drifts of sand at
the rock's base somehow saved their Uves. For four days the
guard, and these three who remained, rested in fear of attack
in their encampment beneath the overhanging cUff, while the
Quires above them celebrated their victory with wild orgies
and terrific uproar. In the early dawn of the fifth day the Span-

14 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
iards had stolen out of the valley, leading their horses down the
breakneck trail, Perez had followed so soon afterwards. With
all speed they had then pressed forward to Zuni to warn the
Governor lest among the other Pueblo towns he enter a hke trap
and meet a like fate.
In a few days Onate had gathered all his outlying men, and
now that Perez was once more able to mount on horseback the
little group of a hundred men or so set their stern faces north
ward in the direction of the Rio Grande. There were over thirty
thousand Pueblos in the walled cities that they passed, who but
waited a signal to rise and exterminate every Pale Face, —
man, woman or child, — who came within reach. That they
would not wait long Don Onate and his men knew weU. It was
only a question of days, — soon it would be only one of hours.
The only hope of saving the Spanish colony and the women
and children at San Gabriel was to strike first. Acoma must be
made to pay before the eyes of all the waiting towns for her
treachery to the Pale Faces. Yet to besiege that Rock the
Spaniards needed the cannon and the ammunition which lay in
the little fort at San Gabriel, as well as more firearms and more
food and fodder. From Zuni to San Gabriel (which last is not far
from what is now Albuquerque) even by a direct trail is not an
easy trip. The Spaniards rode like the wind. By New Year's
Day they had reached their fortified settlement.
Hence it came about that on the twelth of January, 1599,
Vicenti de Zaldivar, the brother of the murdered John, with Captain
Perez de ViUagran and some seventy soldiers, both arquebusiers
(carriers of flintlocks) and piquiers (lancers carrying swords),
with one smaU cannon of the howitzer type called a pedrero, rode
down the Rio Grande to where the river forks, and struck across
the desert to the great Rock of the Quires. Acoma was to be
summoned to give up her treacherous chiefs. If her people re
fused, — and there was every reason to fear they would howl

„ i^^

The Moqui Village of Hualpi First Mesa, Arizona

THE DESERT TRAIL 15
with derision at the idea, since they were three hundred war
riors strong, with one hundred Navajo braves at their call as
alUes, — if they refused, there would be nothing for it but to take
Acoma by assault, or perish in the attempt. Every man who
knew Indians and their way of regarding mercy or long-suffer
ing as signs of weakness and fear, knew that unless the blow were
swiftly given to Acoma, and successfully brought to bear upon
the men most guilty, there could be no hope of peace with any
of the Pueblos for at least a generation.
The men of Acoma gave the Spaniards no uncertain welcome.
They crowded the ramparts and hurled down jeering words of
defiance, and stones, and whirling, fiint-headed arrows. Not
until Vincenti and his men had reached the encampment under
the shelving rock were they free from the danger of the deadly
hail. In accordance with the stately custom of Spain a herald had
summoned the Pueblos to give up their guilty chiefs. Whether
or no they heard him in the uproar of their own defiance it would
be difficult to know, but as they showed small signs of hum
bling themselves to the messengers of the King of Spain, Vin
centi de Zaldivar at the head of some thirty arquebusiers led a
sortie against the north wall of the Rock, at its lowest side. Again
and again during that long afternoon his attack failed, and both
men and horses suffered disastrously. Still with imperturbable
coolness, and as it seemed unbeUevable folly, he persisted until
he had the whole strength of the garrison concentrated against
him. Then again and again he led his men up the slippery
ladders in what seemed an effort to take the town by sheer bra
vado. But while this brave man held the attention of all the fight
ing men upon himself, twelve picked soldiers under Perez were
silently and unobserved making their dangerous way to the
southern summit of the mesa, dragging and hauling their Uttle

l6 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
howitzer with them from dizzy ledge to dizzy ledge, by means of
ropes brought for this very purpose. The southern end of the
mesa was higher than the rest of the flat table-Uke rock, and a
cannon once dragged up its sheer sides would command the en
tire town. But dividing this over-hanging extremity of rock
from the rest of the summit was a deep and unbridged abyss
with sides so sheer as to allow of no approach to its edges from
below. For this reason it was left to defend itself by the war
riors of Acoma. For in a warfare of arrows no enemy could dare
to hold it, or daring could long survive.
The sun was setting when the Uttle cannon was in position,
and its roar as it threw its first stone ball into the very center of
the town was as welcome a signal to the Spaniards attacking
the untakeable north wall as it was an unwelcome surprise to
the warriors defending it. Zaldivar had now accompUshed his
purpose and could withdraw his worn-out and wounded men to
the safe shelter of the encampment. Their business for the next
twenty-four hours would be to guard the horses under the over
hanging cliff, and to rest. But for their leader there was no
rest; it was then or never. He and de ViUagran worked to carry
the great plan into effect till the blood literally ran down their
fingers. Bands of men felt their perilous way along the ledges
to the jagged rock's summit where the Uttle cannon stood. Be
low among the clefts of the hills guarding the valley Vincenti
guided other soldiers who cut down the dwarf trees cUnging to
the edges, and spUced them into a tree bridge. In the darkness
of the night this too was drawn to the heights at the south end
of the mesa, Zaldivar leading the way. The Indians watching
from their roofs could see the little moving cluster of men grow
ing bigger and bigger under the starlight, but the secret of the
tree bridge was all unguessed by them, until suddenly in the first
red glow of dawn the giant tree was lifted by a dozen eager hands
and hurled into position across the chasm. No sooner was it

THE DESERT TRAIL \^
in place than a dozen Spaniards, one by one in rapid succession,
had rushed across its swaying length to guard its further end
from attack, while their leader Zaldivar rallied his men to follow
and take the unguarded south end of the town by quick assault.
It was in this brief pause that the terrible mishap occurred
which no one could have forseen. The soldier nearest the bridge,
who was guarding its edge on the Acoma side, took hold of the
rope attached to it and gave it a tug in order to shift the butt
of the tree into firmer position on the rock's edge. He either
puUed too hard, or the bridge was not securely enough fastened
to the other side, for it slipped from the ledge and hung suspended
over the yawning chasm. The soldier was so panic-struck by
what he had done, and so confused by orders shouted to him from
a dozen throats, that before any one could prevent him he had
dragged the swaying tree clear over to his side of the precipice
and thrown it some distance from the edge. The watchful
Indians, quicker to see the result of this mistake than the Span
iards, flung themselves upon the twelve men on their side of
the Rock and in a moment the little guard was fighting for ex-
istance. The catastrophe had fallen so suddenly, and the loss of that
single, slender bridge had so frustrated all his hope of attack,
that Zaldivar stood white and stricken with horror. He could
not even order the men about him to fire upon the struggling
mass swaying nearer and nearer to the edge of the cliff. The
twelve Spaniards and the cUnging savages would have gone
down together, from a charge of musketry. Without the bridge,
too, the position of so large a majority of his entire fighting
force on the slender foot-hold of the jagged peak was dangerous
to the point of ruin.
He glanced backward for a moment in his rage and despair,
half-minded to order a retreat, when his eyes suddenly caught
the face of Gaspar Perez, and something in the dawning purpose

1 8 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
in that face made him pause. "Only a miracle can save them!"
he groaned. "Yes, only a miracle!" came the voice of Perez
through the cries and execrations of the helpless men about him.
And as the words left his mouth Gaspar Perez unbuckled his
cuirass and loosened the thongs binding his heavier clothes.
In a minute he was free of encumbrances and nearly as light as
God had made him. FUnging his sheathed sword at the feet
of his bewildered men he suddenly fiashed a smile of affection
and farewell to them. "Pray for the miracle," he cried, and
sprang through the groaning crowd, pushing them one and
another from his path with a heavy hand. At the top of the
slight decUvity leading down to the chasm's edge he held back for
the breath of a second measuring the gaping abyss from brim
to brim. Then with a rush he bounded down the rocks, held
himself poised for the leap, took it with the impetuosity of a
pursued stag, — and cleared the gulf.
Friend and foe were alike paralyzed. No one moved either
to deter or to help him. But Perez never paused. Dragging
the bridge to the edge of the cliff, he Ufted it endwise and flung
it across. A dozen men sprang to catch the branches as the tree
descended and in another moment it was secure. This time no
one waited for a command, but each as he could reach the first
foot-hold of the bridge hastened across its perilous length. The
Indians gave way before such an onslaught and fled to their pro
tected houses.
For two days and two nights the storming of Acoma lasted.
The little cannon did valiant work. One great adobe house after
another — some of sixty to seventy rooms in extent — crumbled
before its well-placed shots, smothering countless women and
children beneath their ruins. For the Quires refused summons
after summons to capitulate. Not until their own braves and
their Navajo allies were dead and their city a smoking ruin, did

Interior of House of Isleta Pueblo
"The red peppers are also a very pretty adjunct to such a place as this"

THE DESERT TRAIL 19
they yield. Then the old men of the city — all that were left
of its defenders — condescended to sue for peace.
Vincenti de Zaldivar granted it immediately, thankful to
be through with the bloody business. His men were most of
them wounded, some desperately. Many of them carried the
scars of that fight to their djang day, but not one of the chiefs
who had taken part in the murder of the Spanish soldiers of
John Zaldivar's band Uved to pay his reckoning to the Spanish
Governor. Most of the guilty leaders had perished in the two
days' fight; those who had survived flung themselves over the
cliff before the capitulation.
Thus did Acoma and her people pay dearly for breaking
faith with the Pale Faces. The other towns of the Southwest,
the Seven Cities of Cimbola, and the Moki Confederacy, took
the lesson to heart and concluded to keep the solemn promises
they had made to those who had power to punish even the
City of the Sky.
What remains of this tale is soon told.
The years passed, — ^ten, twenty, twenty-five. Don Juan
Onate had long ceased to be Governor of Spain's possessions
in the North. But the colony begun by him at San Gabriel
and then transferred to Sante F6, spread and multipUed. In
the Indian cities along the Rio Grande, from El Paso to Santa
F6, as well as the towns of Cimbola, and from Zuni to the Moki
pueblos, Spanish missionaries had settled and taught the Indians
how to live in peace with their neighbors and pray to the Great
Father. Before the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock there
were eleven churches built in the towns of the Southwest
by the Indians under the guidance of their friends and
teachers the missionaries. Some of those churches are used to
day by the descendants of those same Pueblos, and they are little
altered by the changes and chances of three hundred years.

20 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
Yet there are some people who say that the West has no history.
With Don Onate's departure from the North many of the
brave followers of the trail who had been his friends departed
also. Vincenti de Zaldivar and the poet soldier, Gaspar de Vil
lagran, went their ways in search of other adventures. Twenty-
five years later few remained.
The sights and sounds of those three days' struggle at Acoma
had left scars on the hearts of those who survived the fight as
well as scars on the bodies. Concentrated hate and suUen fear
of the Pale Faces had bitten deep into the memories of the Quires
of the Rock. No white man since that day dared venture near
the valley unless he were protected by Spanish soldiers, and no
Mission Brother had found the courage or the faith to approach
the fatal, ill-omened town.
Therefore in the year 1629, when it was known throughout
the length and breadth of Santa F6 that the gentle monk Fray
Juan Ramirez had volunteered for the dangerous mission, and
had refused a miUtary escort from the Governor, or even so much
as an Indian muleteer from the Superior of his convent, but had
set forth on foot down the long Trail to Acoma, alone and with
only his crucifix for protection, — ^those who knew him gave him
up for dead.
After many, many days, beset by dangers before and be
hind, but believing all things, hoping all things, and therefore
enduring all things with a serene heart, Juan Ramirez, the Mis
sion Brother, entered the rocky defile which had proved the
Gateway of Death to so many of his race.
His coming was not unheralded. As with Gaspar de ViUa
gran so many years before, scouts had trailed him for many and
many a mile. And now they and the guards of the Rock were
waiting to destroy him. His whole journey had been one long
prayer, so that at its end when death faced him he did not pause
to pray. The miracle which must save his life, so that he could

THE DESERT TRAIL 21
do God's will in Acoma, must come from Heaven. His duty
was to go forward to meet it.
Without hurry, — though the flint-head arrows were falling
in all directions about him, one piercing his worn robe, — he
crossed the entrance to the valley and approached the stone
ladder cut into the shelving cUff. With a cry of rage the people
above pressed to the heights overlooking that side of the Rock
and aimed their missiles at the quiet gray figure. Then for a
moment by a turn of the steps he was hid from their sight.
Straining to get the first view of him when he should emerge
on the next platform the crowd howled derision and hate, heap
ing the stones at their feet ready for the last deadly onslaught.
Even the women and children had left their houses and pressed
near the perilous edge to see the Pale Face hurled to his destruc
tion. One of these children, a little girl, too young to compre
hend what the cries and struggling meant, grew suddenly alarmed
by the black looks on the faces about her. She had pushed nearly
to the brink of the precipice and, backing suddenly to free herself,
stepped off the edge.
A terrible cry rose from those nearest the spot, and the
whole mass of human beings swayed backward in horror. Her
Uttle body had rolled down the shelving rock, over and over,
and in an instant was lost to sight. There were jagged rocks
nearly four hundred feet below waiting to receive her.
Climbing steadily upward the monk heard the shout and
recognized the note of horror in the cries. Then suddenly he
beheld a little brown bundle of whirling arms and legs drop
over the cliff above his head and fall with a little thud on a ledge
of rock, heaped with drifting sand, that jutted out some four
feet or so over the next drop of hundreds of feet. Before the
little girl could even catch her breath to cry, Juan had her in
his arms and was comforting her. She was hardly scratched,
and nestled into the hollow of his shoulder quite soothed and

22 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
unafraid. Lost in wonder over the miracle of her escape, he
mounted upward talking to her as he went. It was thus the
people of Acoma saw him as he climbed the last steep steps and
stood before them at the gate-way of the town.
To them, as to him, it was a miracle. And they received
him as a messenger sent from the Great Ones. He Uved among
them for twenty years, teaching them the love of God. The
children learned to read and to write and to say their catechism
at his knees; he was their physician and ministered to the sick
with many simple arts learned from the monks in his boyhood.
To the men and women of the town he was a father. With
enormous labor they built a church where the blood of the Pale
Faces had once stained their streets. It was dedicated to God,
the Holy CathoUc Church and to the good Saint Joseph. And
San Jos6 it is called to this day.
When Father Juan Ramirez died, in the year 1664, his peo
ple of Acoma were the most civiUzed and the gentlest and the
most Christian of aU the Pueblos of the Southwest. To-day the
six hundred Qu&es of that old, old town still gather upon their
terraced roofs and hold quietly aloof from the white men who
pass that way from time to time. But they are a gentle people,
industrious and peaceable.
In their ancient church hangs a crumbUng picture of San
Jos^, given them centuries ago by a king of Spain.
Except for this token of an aUegiance that their forefathers
learned with such bloodshed to comprehend, they must have
long forgotten Spain and her conquest, but of Juan Ramirez,
who conquered them by great love, there remains a faint though
beautiful memory. And the stone steps by which he first entered
Acoma are still called by them "The Path of the Father."

THE DESERT TRAIL 23

NOTES ON THE DESERT TRAIL
In the wildernesses of the Southwest of our country, the wilderness
called The Painted Desert, the Mojave Desert, and The Colorado, there
are wonders as exciting as the wonders in the heart of Africa, and more thril
ling than even Sinbad met on his voyages; petrified forests; giant cations;
acres of scattered agates; deserted cities on all but inaccessible mesas; caves
beneath whose rock floors subterranean rivers chafe and fret their dark
channels; towering prehistoric houses of stone, empty and beast-haunted
now, but with their hundreds and hundreds of chambers unchanged since
their owners left them, centuries before Columbus and his followers were
bom; rivers of fire that have blackened into rock, and extinct volcanoes in
whose hollow shells forgotten tribes of red men have lived and died. And
more interesting even than these past wonders are the histories of the ancient
Indian pueblos, that are as thriving and full of life to-day as they were when
the Desert Adventurers first beheld them. In these strange walled towns
the Indians stUl live their busy, peaceful lives, in the same terraced houses
that their forefathers used when they watched from their ladder stairways
the coming of the Spaniards across the desert three hundred years ago.
Their own forefathers, unknown centmies before that, had watched the
marauding bands of savages, looking out from even more lofty perches.
For in the ancient days they had been wont to build their houses where
eagles build nests, on the edges of sheer cliffs, and to climb home from the
day's farming where even a mountain sheep could scarcely find a footing.
The great Southwest of our Country is also a land of knightly adven
tures. In the days of the Field of the Cloth of Gold brave men in armour
were riding across this land in search of cities of gold. The adventures of
the monk Marcos de Niza, and of Cabeza de Vaca, and the coming of
Coronada were all before the year 1545. Sometimes, too, we forget those other
heroes of that Desert country, the missionaries. Nearly every great stone
church of the fifty that they built before 1676 in our land had at least one
martyr, for those were cruel days, and the Indians learned the lesson of gen
tleness slowly and with many lapses. But that they did learn it, the 10,000
Pueblos dwelling peaceably in their ancient towns in this Twentieth Century
prove. If you read the books of Charles Lummis, who is an authority upon the
history and lives of these extraordinary people, for he lived a neighbor to the

24 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
Hopis for many a year in the little Pueblo of Isleta, not far from the Rio
Grande, you will get a better picture in your mind's eye of what the Desert
Adventurers found when they passed that way than I can give, who only
saw — and passed by.
In two books which are worth reading: The Spanish Pioneers, and, Some
Strange Corners of Our Country (Lummis), I found the story of Acoma,
Other books that are worth while are: My Adventures in Zuni [Cushing),
Arizona and New Mexico (Bancroft).

THE RIVER TRAIL
LA PORTAGE, as they call it in the Canada woods, — the carry,
as it is translated across the border in the Adirondacks, —
is the narrow strip of forest land and rapids that divide one lake
of a chain from another. For in a day's journey one may paddle
a canoe through a dozen of these lonely waterways of the wilder
ness, as smoothly and as silently as things move in dreams, but
at the end of each lake is la portage, across which one must help
to carry the canoe.
France has left scores of names such as this to stand guard for
generations over her lost possessions in America: Louisiana, New
Orleans, Duluth, St. Louis, Detroit, Vincennes, Dubuque, St. Paul,
Marquette, Joliet and many more. It is with the last two names
that this tale has to do.
When Louis de Baud, Count de Frontenac, was Governor of
Canada, he desired above all things to find favor with that most
exacting, yet rewarding of masters, Louis XIV of France. He and
Talon, the French Intendent, gravely planned together in the
governor's fortress at Quebec how they might make the streets of
Paris, and above all the corridors of Versailles, ring with the fame
of New France, and of her Governor, and her Intendent. Finally
they hit upon an idea. Not by any means a new one, but still it had
never lost its glamor, and there was always the possibiUty that
sooner or later the man who pursued it would reach his heart's
desire. Since the days of Columbus, and before, men had set out to
find a short-cut across the world to India; a waterway, by which
the king who controlled it might monopolize the trade of the
world. Spain had hunted in vain for the great inland sea. The

26 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
trails of her adventurers only led through deserts and across great
mountain ranges to the Pacific.
Of late England also had been on the hunt; her sailors had
scoured the coasts for a great river crossing the land from East to
West. They had found many great harbors, and some rivers, but
no waterway to the distant Pacific nearer than that round the Horn.
To the Count de Frontenac and to Talon the chances that
France would prove the lucky hunter seemed twenty to one.
Already a great waterway, the St. Lawrence River, led into five
gigantic lakes which stretched uimumbered leagues into the West.
These great Lakes were all known to be navigable. The hunters
and trappers and fur merchants, and above all the missionaries,
who had sailed to the utmost limits of the inland seas, aU brought
back the same tale — of a mighty river, the Father of All Waters,
the Mississippi, as the awe-struck Indians caUed it, which was said
to spring from the centre of the earth and flow in great yeUow
floods to the farther seas.
No white man had yet seen the river, though La Salle had
found some of its tributaries and guessed its nearness. It never
occurred to him, or to any one else, that it could lead anywhere
except to the Pacific. Here then was the opportunity for the
glory, both for France and for themselves, that Frontenac and
Talon desired so eagerly.
But for various reasons they did not choose the already famous
adventurer, La Salle, to carry out their ambitions, but hit upon a
lesser, and at the same time a richer man than Sieur de La Salle, —
one Louis Joliet.
Joliet was a fur merchant of some note. Before becoming a
merchant he had been a trader with the Indians. He knew them,
and he knew the land and water between Montreal and Green
Bay, better than most Frenchmen. But before he had been
either a trader or a merchant he had been a Jesuit, and was still
connected with the Order.

THE RIVER TRAIL I"]
Immediately upon accepting the appointment of the Governor
to head the expedition to the unknown west he sought out the
Superior of the Canada missionaries to ask his advice. According
to the economical ways of that century, the explorers always bore
the expenses of their arduous journeys, whilst the lands they
discovered and a good deal of the glory, went to the king. Since
Joliet had the honor of being chosen to make the great discovery,
it was he who was expected to pay the price.
He wished to travel as lightly as possible therefore, and what
he asked of his Superior was advice concerning a guide and inter
preter. The others of the party would be Indians to paddle the
canoes. This interpreter would be his sole white companion.
It would be a long and dangerous journey, involving fearful
risks from hostile Indians along unknown ways. Joliet felt that
the choice of companion might mean life or death for him. But
the Superior did not hesitate a moment, "Your man", said he
"is Pere Jacques Marquette. And you will find him at his new
mission on the Lake of the Hurons at Mackilmacinac." But
Joliet being a cautious man wished more definite information con
cerning this priest Marquette, and you may be sure that he got
it, for the Jesuit Order was a great Order in those days, and knew
its men. These, or something like them, were the facts concerning
Pere Marquette which the heads of the Canada Mission gave to
Louis JoUet: Jacques Marquette was born in the town of Laon
in the North country of France in 1637. As his family was as
ancient in origin as the town itself, it was necessary for one of the
sons to marry, in order to carry on the name and estate, but,
having brothers to perform that duty, it was possible for Jacques
Marquette to become a priest in the Order of the Jesuits. He had
joined the great Jesuit Mission at Quebec in the year 1668, and had
been sent directly to the most westerly mission settlement among
the Hurons at Point St. Esprit on Lake Superior. That journey

28 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
of itself was a lesson in wood craft and in Indian craft. The
long days in the canoes, with only Indians about him; the noon
and night rests in the forest; the wild game, the rapids, the Indian
lore, the very dangers themselves, all taught him lessons not to be
learned elsewhere.
Once settled at Point St. Esprit he began his second course
of schooling. He learned to talk not only the language of his
special flock, the Hurons, but also the tongues of the Ottawas,
the Sioux, Pottawattames, Foxes, Menomonies (Rice Eaters) and
of the Illinois, who all came to those shores, some from great
distances, to trade their furs for fish. While he learned he taught,
and being a single-hearted man, very direct, very gentle and
entirely fearless, he soon gained a great hold over his people.
The Illinois interested him more than any of the others, they
were more ready to accept Christianity than the Hurons or the
Ottawas, and they were more civiUzed. They had come too from a
greater distance and told Marquette many strange things about the
countries and tribes through which they had passed, and they
spoke always of the mighty River. It was a dream of his that
some day he should journey back with them and plant a mission
on its banks.
Suddenly they ceased to return year by year to fish in the
lakes. It was to poor, eager Marquette as though the River had
swallowed them up. Two years passed and they did not come.
It was at this time, too, that owing to a shifting of the Hurons
from Lake Superior to Lake Huron, Marquette was directed by
his Superior to follow them, and it was at Pointe St. Ignace, across
the narrows at Machilimacinac, that one day late in the year 1671,
Louis Joliet found the busy missionary overseeing the completion
of his new mission.
When the fur trader showed the priest his appointment from
the Superior to accompany the dangerous expedition into the
unknown west in search of the Great River, Marquette was

THE RIVER TRAIL 29
speechless with joy. His great dream was to be fulfilled. He
asked nothing better of Heaven than to carry the Faith into that
imdiscovered country. For the next two months, while he was
instructing the missioner who was to succeed him, he completed
the building at Pointe St. Ignace. Then with a care-free mind he
set himself to prepare for the journey. He chose five Indians from
among his Hurons upon whom he could rely, and set others to
making two birch canoes. Under their supervision the boats were
fitted out with stores of corn and jerked meat, and the few other
bare necessities for a long trip. Meanwhile he and Joliet made a
map of the country which they hoped to penetrate, the details of
which were based upon the reports of Indians and upon the hear
say of white traders and the woodsmen who had skirted the region
on their hunting trips. A curious map it must have been. Any
child could draw a better one to-day, no doubt.
It was on the seventeenth of May, 1672, that Joliet and Pere
Marquette and their Indian servants set out from Pointe St. Ignace
on Lake Huron, and guided their canoes due south into Lake
Michigan. Their course there lay along the north end of the lake
to the village of the Rice-Eating Indians, the Menomonies. Mar
quette was welcomed with great celebrations by his friends of
that tribe; but when they heard what he had left Pointe St. Ignace
to seek in the wilderness, they did everything in their power to
detain him. For they regarded the expedition as certain death for
the seven men. They assured the two Pale-faces that, not only
were the inhabitants of the shores of the Great River ferocious and
implacable toward all strangers, but the river itself contained fright
ful monsters which would overwhelm their frail canoes, and devour
them. They told of a certain whirlpool in the great flood where a
demon lurked, who bellowed night and day; and of an abyss into
which the river disappeared, and swallowed up all who ventured
near, with cries of wrath and pain. Lastly, they warned Marquette

3° FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
that, should he escape all these terrors, the sun would destroy him
with the levelled spears of his deadly heat. Marquette, in return
for all this friendly zeal, taught his friends, the Menomonies, a
prayer against all evil, seen and unseen; and, explaining somewhat
of the mystery of Jesus Christ, bade them a serene fareweU, and
with his six companions resumed the journey southward to the
Lake, known now as Winnebago.
After adventures, some of a happy, some of a dangerous kind,
they reached the southern end of Green Bay, and on the seventh
of June entered the chief town of the Miami tribe, a place that
has figured much in the traveUers' tales of these days because of
its civilized appearance, and because of the superiority of its in
habitants and their king. Marquette was enraptured to find a
cross set up in the midst of the town. The Miamis venerated it as
the Great Manitou of the French, and they had hung deerskins,
red girdles and war weapons on its outstretched arms. Like St.
Paul at Athens, the eager Father used this as a text to tell his
listeners the story of the "Unknown God" whom they thus ignor-
antly worshipped; and, like the Athenians, the Indians Ustened
with but half attention. The "new thing" which was diverting
their thought was the daring of the Pale-faces in venturing into
the dreadful boundaries of the Great River.
The Miami chief prevailed upon the travellers to accept the
services of two of his men as guides through the long, canal-like
waters at the end of Fox River; and well for them that he did,
for the lagoons twisted in and out of the meadows of wild rice in a
way to confuse any canoer who had not got the clue to the right
channel by long practice. There was a mile and a half only of
portage between these headwaters of Lake Michigan and the head
waters of the Wisconsin River, yet one flowed into the Gulf of
St. Lawrence and the other into the Gulf of Mexico. Thus, on
the tenth day of June, the Frenchmen launched their little canoes
on the stream that knows no rest for over a thousand miles.

'''^'t^S^..

Marquette on the Mississipi'i

THE RIVER TRAIL 3 I
Day after day they glided down a peaceful river, passing
lovely islands and broad prairies, and forests festooned with wild
grape. Night after night they drew their canoes upon some pro
tected shore, lit their campfires, ate their pleasant meals of fresh
trout or venison, and slept peacefuUy under the stars. So far
there was no sign of danger from man or Nature; but on the
seventeenth of June the alert ears of the Indians who paddled
caught the roar of rapids to the south, and presently their Uttle
boats were tossing like leaves on the wild and tumbling waters of
the Mississippi, where it clove the stream of the Wisconsin almost
at right angles, and swept that stream and the seven brave men
floating on its bosom in a strong embrace into the Unknown.
From that hour the travellers advanced with a sharp lookout
on either shore for enemies, and for dangers ahead. They slept in
their canoes at night, anchoring them out of arrow-shot of the
banks; and they divided the night into watches, during which one
waked while the others slept. On the twenty-fifth of June they
made out a well-worn trail along the right bank, and, after a con
sultation, decided to risk following it. The Indians remained with
the canoes, and Marquette and Joliet struck inland over the
prairie, along the path. After six miles or so they came to a large
village, which, to Marquette's great happiness, proved to belong
to his one-time friends, the Illinois.
The coming of the Pale-faces and their daring made a great
impression on the lUinois, and the chief and his braves outdid
themselves to show them honor. - Marquette and his companion
had to endure feasts that were tests of courage as well as of the
stomach. But they did not fail in the test, and so gained upon
the good-wiU of the chief of aU the Ilhnois, to whom they were led
in triumph, that he presented them with a "Peace Calumet," a
pipe decorated with feathers, the peculiar emblem of good-will
recognized by the IlUnois and their allies throughout the land.
Carrying this and some supplies of food for the journey, the two

32 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
companions returned to their waiting canoes, escorted by some
six hundred of their late hosts.
Embarking amidst solemn f areweUs, the slow progress of the two
boats down the great river was continued. They passed the mouth
of the lUinois that La Salle had so nearly reached a year or so before
and came one day abreast of the terrible demon about which the
Menomonies had warned them. It was a great rock, painted to
look like two hideous men monsters, ending in scaly and fishUke
tails. So repulsively large and gruesome did these figures appear
brooding over the river that the men at the paddles and the men
at the stern of the canoes forgot to look to the steering, and failed
to pay heed to the roar of the rapids below them; consequently the
boats were nearly capsized in the welter of waters made by the
junction of the turbulent and swollen stream of the IlUnois River
with the Mississippi.
Escaping this danger, they made quicker progress now that
the stronger current of the two great rivers carried them on their
way. They passed the forest slopes where St. Louis now is, and,
a few days further south, the mouth of the Ohio. Gradually the
heat of the sun grew more and more oppressive, and the foliage
and vegetation more tropical and dense.
Suddenly, one stifling noon, when the two Frenchmen had
relaxed their vigilant outlook, and rested, spent and exhausted,
in the meagre shade of one of the narrow sail sheets, they came sud
denly abreast of a group of Indians on the right bank of the river.
Before, however, the frightened men at the paddles could back
water, or the amazed men on the shore could reach for their
weapons, Marquette had drawn from his tunic the Peace Calumet,
and was holding it up so that all could recognize its purport. To
his joy and to Joliet's relief, the sign was immediately recognized,
and the Frenchmen were invited with hospitable signs to disembark
and test the good-will of the allies of the Illinois.
As before, they were feasted and overwhelmed with atten-

The Grfat Rolling Prairies

THE RIVER TRAIL 33
tions. They noted with grave misgivings, however, that their
hosts carried firearms, and powder in glass bottles of European
make. The Indians were vague as to what far-off power had sup
plied these possessions, and were ignorant how far the river upon
whose banks they had always dwelt flowed, before reaching its
outlet. They assured the travellers, however, that ten days more
must bring them to the Great Sea, which, alas! was far enough
from the truth.
An uneasy sense that they were nearing the Gulf of Mexico
and not the Vermilion Sea, as they caUed the Gulf of CaUfornia,
may have swept over Joliet's mind at this time, but he still hoped
against hope that the stream would bend to the west and take
them within reach of the Pacific. So with a light heart he launched
his canoes into the gigantic stream from which he hoped so much,
and once more the seven travellers pursued their dangerous way.
Day followed day, and marsh-land and forest followed each
other in dreary monotony. The sun was sickening in its terrific
strength, and the nights unrestful from the clouds of insects hover
ing over the river. They had travelled hundreds of miles without
seeing a human being, when suddenly, as they passed below the
mouth of the Arkansas River, the banks seemed alive with Indians.
This time there was no hesitation on the part of the inhabi
tants, nor indeed on Marquette's, who lifted his peace symbol
high above his head, but without effect. The Indians launched
their canoes and beset the boats of the strangers like a swarm of
angry bees. Had not their gutteral and savage cries brought
the elders of the village to the shore Joliet and his companions
would have reached their journey's end then and there. For
tunately, on beholding the Peace Calumet, the elders controlled
the more fiery of the braves until a council could be called.
The two Pale-faces were motioned to bring their canoes to
land, and were conducted amidst sullen silence to the lodge of
the chief. Here they were forced to listen to an endless pow-wow

34 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
in an unknown tongue, while one brave after another spoke his
mind on the advisability of killing them. Their fate quite evi
dently hung on a thread. One movement, one glance of the eye,
might have snapped it, until suddenly a man who could speak a
little of the Illinois entered the circle.
To him Father Marquette addressed himself, explaining the
peacefulness of their errand, and the might and power of the God
who protected them. His words on being repeated to the listen
ing Indians in their own tongue immediately appeased their anger
and the crowd of sullen gaolers became the Pale-faces' friends and
eager hosts, as if by magic.
From the festivities at that village the travellers journeyed
down the river to a second encampment, where a deputation of
welcoming hosts met them on the banks, and escorted them with
shouts of encouragement to the chief. Here, as before, Marquette
preached the Faith, with the help of another interpreter, who also
understood a little Illinois; and, as before, the braves listened with
grave and respectful attention.
JoUet, after taking council with the old men of the tribe,
was forced to conclude that the river was still far from its outlet —
it was, as a matter of fact, full seven hundred miles from the Gulf
— and to acknowledge even to himself that there was no longer a
possibility of that outlet's being on the Pacific slope. On the con
trary, he felt convinced against his desires, from what the Arkansas
Indians now told him, that its destination must be the Gulf of
Mexico. He learned, moreover, that the Indians to the south
of this last Arkansas village had no treaty with the Illinois or with
their allies, and would neither respect the "Peace Calumet" nor
spare the lives of the Pale-faces.
This last, with the fact that their Uves were threatened by
some unruly members of the tribe which was at present harboring
them, and the conviction that they had gained the information
which they had been sent to seek, made Joliet decide to return to

THE RIVER TRAIL 35
civilization rather than risk the loss of aU which the journey had
gained for France by venturing further. Escaping as quietly as
they could from their somewhat dangerous hosts, they drove their
canoes out into mid-stream, and facing north began their home
ward voyage.
They started on the seventeenth of July, and in a heat that
was prostrating began to paddle back over the thousand miles
they had floated down the great river. It was a difficult task at
best to make headway day after day against the rapid current,
but the difficulty was augmented by a scourge of dysentery which
attacked them all and which brought Father Marquette to the
point of death. His companions ministered to him with anxious
care, for by his knowledge and quick understanding of Indian
speech and Indian character he had saved their lives more than
once in the past adventure and much endeared himself to them.
At length, by sheer dogged determination, they gained the
mouth of the IlUnois and, leaving the Mississippi, turned into its
calmer waters. The coolness of the forests and the plentiful
supply of fresh meat saved the day for the sick man, so that, when
they reached a large village belonging to the Illinois not far from
Lake Michigan, he was strong enough to preach to them, as he
had to so many of their tribe on that eventful journey, and to
give them his blessing.
The young chief was so won by the good man that he offered
to guide the seven strangers by a short way known only to his tribe
to the lake. They gratefully accepted his services, and arrived
at Green Bay, near the mouth of Lake Michigan, the last of
September. Marquette was too weak to venture further with
winter coming on, but Joliet pushed forward down the Lakes to
Quebec. They had been gone four months and had paddled their
canoes over 2,500 miles.
Poor JoUet! As he neared his destination, with high hopes of
praise from Frontenac, he had the ill-luck to lose control of his

36 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
canoe just above Montreal in the rapids of La Chine. The boat
capsized, and two of its occupants were drowned, Joliet himself
barely escaping, and all his papers and maps were destroyed.
In a letter to Frontenac he said:
"I had escaped every peril from the Indians; I had passed
forty-two rapids and was on the point of disembarking, full of joy
at the success of so long and difficult an enterprise, when, after all
danger seemed over, my canoe capsized. . . Nothing now
remains to me but my Ufe, and the ardent desire to employ it on
any service which you may please to direct."
He died poor, nevertheless, and the credit for the discovery
of the Mississippi has somehow been given more to La Salle than
to him. Perhaps this is due to the fact that La Salle, a few years
later, voyaged down its entire length and died in heroic effort to
found the city which was later to become New Orleans, near its
mouth. Ours is a rich country, and millions upon millions of
fortunate citizens live upon its great resources, but to know the
story of its past is to realize with something like awe how many
men became poor to make us rich; how many men died that we
might live.
As for Father Marquette, if you have a mind to follow him
when he set out the next year to settle among the Illinois and build
them a Mission, you would do well to read that book of great ad
ventures, "La Salle and His Discovery of the Great West," by
Francis Parkman.
I remember that when I read there the story of Pere Jacques
Marquette's burial at St. Ignace after all his happy labors were
ended it reminded me somehow of Campbell's great poem on the
Burial of Sir John Moore.
"In the winter of 1676 a party of Ottawas were hunting on
Lake Michigan; and when, in the following spring, they prepared
to return home, they bethought them, in accordance with an
Indian custom, of taking with them the bones of Marquette, who

THE RIVER TRAIL 37
had been their instructor at the Mission St. Esprit. They re
paired to the spot, found the grave, opened it, washed and dried
the bones and placed them carefully in a box of birch-bark. Then,
in a procession of thirty canoes, they bore it, singing their funeral
songs, to St. Ignace of MichiUmackinac. As they approached,
priests, Indians and traders all thronged the shore. The relics
of Marquette were received with solemn ceremony and buried
beneath the floor of the chapel of the Mission."
Happy, glorious Marquette! Few of the kings of the world
have had such a burial.

38 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL

NOTES ON THE RIVER TRAIL
They were wonderful men, those first French explorers of the New World,
and among them was none greater than the first, Samuel de Champlain.
Let us picture him sailing up the long reaches of the River St. Lawrence
and coming out on that first evening of his discovery on the long shining
levels of the vast Lake — Caniaderiguarunia — (the gate of the Country) as the
Indians named it.
"What an awe-inspiring and terrible wilderness those shores were three
hundred years ago! What a spirit the men had who, in their frail canoes,
traversed the rivers and lakes, with no guides except Indians, and no hope of
succor from friends left far behind! For when Champlain glided over the
waters of the lake that was to bear his name, there were no Eturopeans nearer
than Virginia, where the English had made their httle settlement two years
before. And it was later, in the same year, 1609, that Henry Hudson made his
great discovery."
Far to the South the Spaniards were exploring the Great Desert, and years
before this De Soto had perished on the banks of the river whose greatness
even he had not guessed. It was left to the brave Frenchman, La Salle, to
complete the task begun by De Soto and left incomplete by Joliet. But it is
to the Frenchmen who followed La Salle, the men who founded New Orleans,
St. Louis, Detroit and aU the French towns from the Great Lakes to the Gulf
that we owe the heaviest debt. Many of them were simple Mission Fathers, —
"Black Robes" as the Indians called them, — hke Pere Marquette. They not
only made existence possible on the Great Lakes by their settlements, and
their patient explorations and their maps, but like Marquette they acted as
interpreters, and as go-betweens and peacemakers for the Indian tribes of
what are now the states of Minnesota and Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri
Illinois, and Mississippi. They and the "coureurs de bois," about whom
Francis Parkman has written such wonderful stories, began that great tri
umphal march of oiviUzation from North to South through the very heart of
our land. Their Missions along the Great Lakes were the scenes of many martyr
doms. That hero, P^re Brfibeuf, had met his terrible death years before
Marquette had come to the New World, and those first wonderful missions
had been burned, and the converts massacred by the merciless Iroquois.
The tribes themselves, which had once lived in such friendliness with the

NOTES ON THE RIVER TRAIL 39
Pale-faces, had scattered to other and safer hunting grounds. Thus it was that
the new mission Fathers who came to take the places of their miu'dered brethren
had to begin the work all over again, and in many cases with new tribes and
in new places. But before, and for many years after the massacre, the
Missions were the great centres of life for all that region now known as the
head waters of the Mississippi.
A Jesuit mission of the lakes was generally a fortified and palisaded en
closure containing besides a log chapel and the low-roofed dwellings for the
Fathers and their servants, a workshop, a storehouse for trading purposes, and
a garden. Outside the stockade there were tilled fields and grazing lands.
The Fathers had two sorts of converts who worked for them — the so-called
"donnes,'' or given men, or, as we should call them, the lay brothers, and the
hired servants, "engages," who were generally the hunters, guides and
canoe-men of the settlement. The missions were also centres for the fur trade;
knives, tools, cloth and trinkets, and later on in the century wampum (shell
beads from the coast of New England) was bartered for valuable mink, otter,
beaver, sable and fox skins. Each mission had not only to be self-supporting,
but, in addition, it had to support any new ventures or explorations made by the
Order in the name of the French Government. And you must always bear in
mind that the great expeditions that were undertaken to enlarge the boundaries
of New France in that century were made at the risk and at the expense of
the explorers. The French kings graciously appointed them and gracefully
accepted the results of their labors.
Thus it came about that even though Father Marquette and his Hurons
were hard at work on the new mission at Pointe St. Ignace when the Govern
ment officials at Quebec appointed a Frenchman rich enough, as well as daring
enough, to lead an exploring party in search of the Great River, the fame and
mystery of which roused every one's imagination, the Jesuit Order did not
hesitate to bid their most useful missionary accompany him. For, as you
probably know, the Society of Jesus was at that time an even greater organi
zation than it is to-day. In France it not only controlled the schools of the
kingdom, but it was also the most enthusiastic missionary society then in ex
istence in the world. Its priests were the best educated and the most devoted
to their business in the Roman Church. When young Jacques Marquette
became a priest, this devotion of the Jesuit missionaries to the Faith and the
simplicity and force of their lives were such as the world had not seen for
many a weary century.
It was because the ardent men who were enrolled in its membership
sought first the Kingdom of Heaven, that it was trusted the world over, and

40 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
it was because it was first of all a Missionary Society that it gained the hearts
of kings. When its members forgot their allegiance to the King of kings, and
its priests were found in palaces, and its missions no longer marked the out
posts of the world, but its missioners were found supporting tottering thrones
and debatable monarchies — it was then that the meaning of the word Jesuit
changed from a heroic thing to one of craft and cunning. The thing might
happen again to any of our religious societies. Our own Church could grow
so powerful with the rich that it might cease to be the poor man's friend. It
could so struggle for this world's success that its priests would faU to find
mart3Tdoms.

THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL
TF you or I should desire something fervently enough to work
-¦¦ for it day and night for forty years, the chances are that
in the end we might possess it, even though it should happen
to be the great African Diamond, or the year's winner of the
EngUsh Derby.
About two centuries ago, in the Island of Majorca, there
were four boys — Serra, Crespi, Palou and Verger — who, from
reading old tales about adventures in the Americas, were pos
sessed with a fever of ambition to cross the seas, and to plant
the Cross of the Blessed Jesus in that great mountain land to
the northwest of Mexico which Viscayno had seen from his ships
a century before, and on whose shores Coronada had unfurled
the banner of Spain, claiming the continent for God and his
king. It is true that neither the boys nor the old tales of adventure
were very clear as to what sort of a land it was that bordered
the Pacific above the last Mexican-Spanish settlements in Lower
CaUfornia. Beyond the fact that the mountains were high and
rugged, like their own Sierras of Spain, and the valleys between
them were part desert, part fertile grazing lands where Indians
wandered, Viscayno and the men who came after him were not
over explicit. But it was enough for the boys to know that
Viscayno and his crew, with some monks of the Carmelite order,
had entered a beautiful harbor — now Monterey — and landing on a
flowery shore had celebrated Mass one bright morning in the year
1602, and that they had at the same time announced with a cheer
ful faith that the spot thus hallowed would be the first of many, in
the king's new dominions, to resound to songs of happy Christians.
On their walks and in their labor about the convent school

42 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
of San Bernardino, to which they had been sent to become Francis
can Brothers, the boys talked with eager enthusiasm about these
hopes. Young Serra, who was the most fiery and imaginative of
the four friends, was fuU of dreams of the churches that they
would build with their own hands, as the great St. Francis had
done before them; and of the Indians they would gather into
them, and baptize and teach, to the glory of God. Crespi, who
longed for adventures, lay awake at night, enduring with un
bounded delight imaginary perils across unknown mountains
and through valleys hostile with savage Indians. I dare say that
the other two friends, Palou and Verger, had their share in these
youthful plans of adventure, but into what particular paths their
fancies led them the real tale of their wonderful lives does not tell.
Verger, who was certainly the most methodical of the friends,
may have delighted himself by planning what provisions and seeds
and utensils. Church vestments and books, they would have to
carry with them, with which to furnish their churches, and build
their monasteries, and plant their gardens, and teach their schools.
Be that as it may, while the four friends of the Monastery
of San Bernardino were indulging in their boyish dreams within
its dim old cloisters, there was nothing in the world outside to
bid them hope that their ambitions could ever be fulfilled. The
Spanish king showed no zeal in the support of adventurers on
exploring expeditions to the Pacific slopes. Spain had lost more
than she had gained thus far from her adventurers; and if the
Church had been inaugurating a mission to the unknown lands
northwest of her Mexican domains, she would have put the
Jesuits, who were already in possession of Lower California, at
the head of any new venture.
Last and most fatal barrier of all, the Franciscan authori
ties of the Monastery of San Bernardino were not given to am
bitious dreams of missionary conquest. Hence the request of
the four young Brothers, Serra, Crespi, Palou and Verger, that

THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 43
they be allowed to cross the seas, and carry the Gospel to the
Indians of the mountain lands on the other side of the world,
was received with scant favor and finally dismissed as impossible
by the Superior of the Order.
But perhaps you have observed that it is the "impossible"
which happens to some men — men who refuse to give up hope,
who never know when they are beaten.
Before he had reached his eighteenth year young Serra be
came a monk. He took the name of Junipero — pronounced
"Oonipairo" in the Spanish — from that amusing, simple-hearted
follower of St. Francis, whom the great Italian so delighted in
that once, you remember, he exclaimed: "Would that I had a
whole forest of such Junipers!"
It seems that the second Junipero was well named, for he
was the most cheerful and serene of companions. When the
Superior of the monastery turned a deaf ear, year after year,
to the prayers of Serra and his fellow monks for freedom to go
on their perilous journey, he and his friends showed neither
anxiety nor chagrin. Some day their summons would come!
Some day the Almighty, Himself would intervene on their be
half. Meanwhile, obedient to the words of the Blessed Jesus,
it behooved them to watch and pray!
Five years passed away, and yet another five; still no sum
mons! The routine of the monastery, the prayers, the service,
and the study, and the labor, went on, month after month, year
after year, in the ancient cells. From the world outside came
faint echoes of wars and conspiracies. Kings were crowned and
Popes died; colonies were founded and abandoned; a score of
years passed away, and still Junipero and his three friends waited
and hoped.
Then suddenly, as though a thunder bolt had dropped from
a blue sky, came the call! A great missionary expedition had
been inaugurated by the Church of Rome to depart for Mexico.

44 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
The convent of San Bernardino in the Island of Majorca was
required to send two of its monks to join the other Brothers of
the Order at Cadiz, from whence the missionaries were to sail
for the New World. Junipero and Palou were chosen and de
parted, Crespi and Verger waving them a farewell from the con
vent gates with wistful, glorified faces. At Cadiz, Junipero
found that there were still two vacant places. He and Palou
lost no time in applying for them for Crespi and Verger. Word
was hurried to Majorca, and, joy of joys the four friends were
reunited in time to sail in the same vessel!
But the time of waiting was not over. In Mexico the four
Franciscans of Majorca were sent to the College of San Fernando.
Here they labored among the Spanish and Indians and the Half
Breeds, teaching, preaching, and living with them, for nearly
another score of years. The Jesuit missions still blocked the
way to the long-desired goal of Upper CaUfornia. They neither
went in to possess the land themselves, nor permitted others to
go. To any but extraordinarily brave men this last long de
tention on the very threshold of their desires would have turned
hope into desperation; but what you must always remember
first about Junipero and his companions is just this — they were
extraordinarily brave men.
Serra was an old man when the Great Summons came, old
at the age of fifty-six, and crippled with the hardships and labors
he had driven his frail body to endure for the last twenty years,
in a climate where no European worked who valued his life; but
he stood ready to answer the caU with a heaven of exaltation
in his heart.
The great Jesuit power had come to a sudden end in Spain,
in the year 1767. Within a twelvemonth the Order had been
expelled from all the Spanish possessions of Mexico, and the
Franciscan friars had been put in charge of the missions in Lower
California, and commanded to carry the Gospel of the Blessed

THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 45
Jesus to the Indians of the mountains and sea lands to the north.
The "impossible" had happened!
Yet, when the word was brought to Father Junipero Serra
that he had been appointed Superior to the sixteen Franciscans
who were to form the new Mission, he was so surprised at the
honor that, as the old record puts it, "He was unable to speak a
single word for sudden tears."
Of the four friends. Verger only was to remain behind. He
cheerfully took upon himself the work of his other three compan
ions at San Fernando, leaving them free to depart upon the mis
sion so long dear to all their hearts. Thus in a very beautiful
and practical sense he helped their dream of the conquest of
California to come true.
The Spanish Government had now suddenly become very
keen about the mission, and Don Joseppi de Galvez, Inspector
General for His Majesty's provinces, was instructed to send
soldiers and Mexican Indians, as well as Spanish settlers, to
colonize the new country. De Galvez was a most practical
and far-seeing organizer, and he gladly provided the Franciscan
Brothers with seed with which to start the gardens about the
new monasteries, as well as with grain for the farm lands they
planned to cultivate. He also ordered that cattle and sheep
should follow the expedition, in ships from Southern California
to San Diego; while with his own hands he packed altar furniture
and vestments for the chapels which Father Junipero would
build in the distant wilderness.
It was decided to send the expedition in two parties. The
ships were instructed to meet those who were to journey by land
at the harbor which Viscayno had discovered in the year 1602
at the lowest extremity of the unexplored country.
Don Joseppi also pointed out to Father Junipero that Vis
cayno had found a second harbor many leagues to the north of
San Diego, the Bay of Monterey. Here it was proposed that

46 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
the Franciscans should plant a second Mission, while half way
between the two he designated a spot for the third monastery,
asking that the Fathers should name it Buena Ventura.
Father Junipero most cheerfully assented to aU this good
advice, only adding that there must be no long delay in estab
lishing yet a fourth Mission, which for love's sake he would name
for the great founder of the Order, St. Francis. The Command
ant agreed that assuredly this must be done; but as to the site
of the Saint's nameplace he did not presume to dictate.
"If St. Francis desires a Mission," he said gravely, "let him
but show the port, and we vnll put one there for him!"
As both De Galvez, and Portala the captain of the soldiers
who were to protect the missionaries, were in grave doubt if
Father Junipero's strength would hold out on the long and dan
gerous journey before them, they urged the Padre to go by the
easier way of the ships; but Junipero Serra laughed at their
qualms on his behalf. He told them that he would rather die
on the trail than miss one step of the glorious journey to the land
of his high hopes. And even when, as a last resort, they begged
that he would allow himself to be carried on a litter across the
rugged defiles of the mountain canons, he told them with shin
ing eyes that they need have no anxiety for his safety. God
would not let him perish until he had fulfilled his task.
And so, upon Thursday in Holy Week in the year 1769,
the Mission Fathers, with Portala and his soldiers and escort,
started on their long journey. It is a wonderful story. Father
Crespi kept the records and he had a very artless way of mixing
up pious reflections, bits of wayside gossip, miraculous happen
ings, and tragic mis-adventures in the same simple recital. He
relates how one day, when an old injury to Father Junipero's
leg became insupportable from the heat and dust and steepness
of the trail, a sudden happy thought came to the plucky travel
ler. Beckoning to one of the muleteers he said :

THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 47
"Son, do you know a remedy for a sore leg?"
"Eh, Father!" cried the man, "what remedy can I know?
I only cure beasts."
"Well, then, my son, regard me as but one of your beasts,
and my sore leg, a sore back. In short, give me the same treat
ment you would give to your beasts."
It took some further urging on the Padre's part to screw
the muleteer up to performing the cure, for, in commom with all
the party, he regarded Father Junipero as a saint already. Finally,
however, he consented.
"I will do it, Padre, if it pleases you," he said with a solemn face.
In true muleteer fashion he mixed some herbs in a solution
of hot tallow, and made a poultice for the inflamed limb. It
worked as well on the saint as he had been used to see it work
upon his beasts. That night the swelling went down, and the
Frate slept more soundly than he had for many a week. Next
day he was able to kneel at prayer as he read the Service and
to continue the journey. To the end of his days he was lame
and in constant pain, and to the end of his days he bore both
lameness and pain as though they did not exist for him.
It took fifty days for the scouts of the CaUfornia Mission
to reach the Bay of San Diego; there was no trail and they did
not know the mountain passes. Often in trying to keep within
sight of the ocean they found no footing on the steep western
slopes of the mountains, yet much of the interior of the land was
a grim desert, "rich only in thorns and stones," as Father Crispi
wrote down in his journal. The Indians, whom they had brought
for guides, deserted, fearing the tribes of the north; and desert
ing, carried off most of the provisions. Yet on June 16th the
entire expedition had reached San Diego. Below in the bay
the ships rode at anchor, and under a canopy of green boughs
servants, sailors and monks knelt while Father Junipero cele
brated the Holy Communion.

48 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
After that day of rest the good Father set about building
his first mission church, and Brother Crispi set off to find the
harbor of Monterey. He hunted for it for six months, poor
eager man, but neither he nor his followers set eyes on it.
However, persevering northward in search of it, they found "a far
greater harbor" which they named San Francisco, remember
ing the words of Don Joseppi de Galvez.
When at last they returned to San Diego with the news of their
failure and their success, they found their captain, Portala, so
discouraged with his six months experience of the barrenness
and unfriendhness of CaUfornia that he had given orders for
the expedition to return home. The expected ships with new
supplies had not come from Mexico, the men were djdng of scurvy,
and the meagre rations on hand would hardly support them
back to civiUzation. March 20th was the date fixed for depart
ure, and Father Junipero was given to understand quietly and
kindly, but very plainly, that his dream of missions in California
must be put away forever.
"Now is the time for a miracle!" said he to his brother monks.
He had implored the commander to postpone his departure yet
a week or two more in the hope of the long-delayed ships, but
at last he reaUzed that he was powerless to change Portala's
fixed purpose.
"It rests with God alone," he said quietly. "Let us fast, and
then pray for a miracle."
And pray and fast he and Crispi and Palou did all that day
and all that night.
On the morning of the 20th at the celebration of the early
communion, they, and many with them, saw suddenly on the
far horizon of the sea a great ship with all her sails set. There
she was for a moment hke a great winged angel — and the next
she was gone. Some thought she was a phantom ship bearing
such an one as the Flying Dutchman, others thought her a sign

The Miraculous Ship

THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 49
from Heaven. Portala was one of these last, and waited. Four
days later the good ship San Antonio entered the Bay weighted
with provisions from bow to stern and the Mission to CaUfornia
was saved. Soon after this joyful event Portala and Junipero and many
others set out once more to find Monterey, the ships following
them up the coast. This time they found the harbor without
delay, and on the first day of June the happy monks and soldiers
and sailors sang the Te Deum on the green bluffs overlooking
those beautiful waters.
To-day if you look above the road which passes between the
beach and the Presidio grounds of the town of Monterey, you
will see a stone figure of a kneeling Franciscan, the flowers and
field grasses blowing all about the little enclosure which protects
the spot. Those who know, say that it is a good Ukeness of the
happy missionary who knelt on that green knoll in the year 1770,
thanking God for the long journey, safely ended.
"Only grant me the years to build Thy Missions," cried he.
"I am poor and weak and growing old, but give me yet a few more
years in which to serve Thee."
He looked so frail and transparent that few believed his
passionate desire would be fulfilled. Yet God gave him more
than fourteen years. Lame, and frail as he was, he tramped
back to Mexico after a year or two to get more money from the
Viceroy, who dared not refuse him face to face. He built nine
great Missions. Their names are the names of the beautiful towns
of CaUfornia, and he and Crispi and Palou and their foUowers
planted the ohve orchards and the vineyards and the fruit and
the rose gardens. They made, too, the great trail across the
mountains from San Diego to San Francisco, as safe and beautiful
as a garden path.
Always when he was starting a new Mission Junipero was
most triumphant.

50 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
"As soon as a place favorable for one had been reached, the
Padre would order a halt, and extracting his bells from the panier
of the pack mule, tie them to a nearby tree and fall to ringing
them with all his might."
"Hear, hear, ye Gentiles! Come to the Holy Church! Come
to the Faith of Jesus Christ!" he would cry.
Perhaps not an Indian would be in sight. "Never mind!"
he once said. "Let me unburden my heart! It is full with de
sire that aU the world might hear the beUs and that every Gen
tile of these mountains may come!"
And they did come; first a few to stare and wonder; then
more who asked questions; then more and more until there were
hundreds. Father Junipero baptized over one thousand of his
people with his own hands.
He saw nine great Missions built before his death. In all
over a score of them were established within the next twenty-
five years. In them twenty thousand Indians lived and learned,
prayed and worked.
And so he journeyed to and fro, over his mountain trail
through all weathers for fourteen years. Father Crespi, "the
joyous," as he was called, was his constant companion. The
last journey the two friends ever took together was just before
Father Crespi's death, when they set out to the hills above the
Bay of San Francisco, where Brother Palou was laboring.
Father Junipero's death was quite as beautiful as his life had
been, and far, far easier. He was at the San Carlos Mission not far
from Monterey, resting from a long journey up the coast from San
Diego, and Father Palou was with him. The year was 1784.
Everyone seemed to have guessed that he was dying, yet every day
he read the service and ministered to the people. The evening be
fore he died, when he had made his last Communion, the church
was crowded with weeping Spaniards and Mexicans and his own

THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 5 I
Indian converts, for the news had spread, and the people from
other Missions had come to say farewell.
There was a sound of weeping all through the dim church
and finally those who sang the hymn, "Tantum Ergo," failed
one by one until Father Junipero's voice sang on almost alone,
"strong and high" the old record says.
Next day he walked to the kitchens and asked for a little
broth; and seeing how pleased the Brothers looked at his taking
it, let them lead him back to his cell, where Father Palou took
him in charge.
"I feel better now," he said as he lay down on his pallet.
And then, smiling at them, he added with a sigh of content:
"I wiU rest."
And so ended his long day's work!

52 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL

NOTES ON THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL
It was the plan of the California missionaries not only to convert the
Indians, but to civihze them. Every Mission had its church building and its
services and catechism classes; and, also within those great cloistered enclos
ures, there were graneries and winepresses, dairies, vegetable and flower gar
dens, orchards, and sheep-folds. Opening out of the long stone corridors of the
mission building were rooms where women were taught to weave and to spin,
to dress skins and to fashion clothes, and where their children were taught to
read and write. These Missions according to Junipero's eager planning were
put an easy day's journey apart and thus afforded safe shelters for travellers
the length of that wonderful coast, as well as great Church schools for teach
ing the art of hving to the Indians.
You may imagine with such dreams coming true, what a rapture of hope
fulfilled Junipero put into the Te Deum that day in June, one hundred
and forty years ago as he knelt on the slopes of the Monterey. But you can
not well imagine, because you have never seen the like of it in your day, —
unluckily for you, — how the news of that hymn of praise sung on the hillside
of Monterey set Mexico to ringing her church bells for joy, and was carried
over the sea to Spain, where it spread like wUdfire from province to province,
the peasants and their lords joining in thanksgiving. A new glory had been
added to Spain, a new people to God!
And when you see the Missions which Father Junipero bmlt in those ten
years, you will realize how splendidly Spain and her Viceroy helped the little
monk. The churches and monasteries, the acqueducts and walls, the store
houses and cloisters, that were built under the direction of the Mission Fathers,
have given a name to a certain very noble, spacious style of architecture, so
that nowadays, when you see a particularly strong, low building of cement and
stone, whose lines and curves are simple and good, and whose interior fittings
seem cut and hewn to endure for generations, you are more than likely to be
told that the plans have been drawn in the Mission style, and after the designs
the Mission Fathers made for their Indian converts a century ago.
And when you read the books of Helen Hunt Jackson — "California
Missions,'' and "Ramona," you will comprehend what the missions once
were to California.
Before fifty years had passed the successors of Crespi and Palou and
Junipero owned twenty convents in California, and were very rich and very

Ruins of San Juan Mission, 1716.

NOTES ON THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 53
powerful. They owned the richest farming and grazing lands of the country,
and their cattle and sheep and Uve stock numbered thousands and thousands.
Whole communities of Indians Uved within their walled enclosures, working
for them in return for food, clothing and protection — a kind of serfdom.
But the Mission Fathers of that generation were no longer missionaries
in thought or act. They were indolent and dull, fond of power and of ease.
They no longer fought sin and ignorance and their own evil passions, but
they fought the Mexican government, which quite naturally coveted their
rich lands and their many possessions.
As the years went by and Spain lost her American provinces, and Mexi
can governors supplanted the old proud Spanish rule in California, the great
pillage of the Missions began in good earnest; lands, cattle, graneries, orchards,
— everything went. The Indians were driven out and perished in a single
generation, the monasteries were broken up and dismantled.
Then came the American war with Mexico! And California became ours
in 1848 by the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidlago. It was at this time, too, and
by this treaty, that New Mexico and its desert trails became possessions of
the United States. Texas had freed herself and was annexed in 1848.
The United States government found terrible confusion and poverty
left by the Mexicans in California, and just then in 1848-49, began the great
gold stampede. The Indians and the Spaniards, and after them the Mexi
cans had found gold in California, but the Americans turned the mountain
country into a vast mining camp! Great fortunes were made in a week, and
lost in a night in the gambling dives which infested the camps. Fot a time
no one thought of any thing but gold in California, and no restless boy or man
in all the country thought of anything but California.
Those were not good days, and in the years while the surface gold lasted
the mining cities of the Pacific slopes were evU, unlovely places, where men
were desperate, and women were bad, and few children were innocent. Then
gradually the easily-got gold failed and the mining camps were deserted. Men
in desperation turned to the long-neglected gardens and orchards of the
Mission Fathers. The old irrigating sluices were mended, the wells and
cisterns restored — then California came into her own. I
Our fathers called California the Golden State because of its shining
metals; we of this generation call it the Golden State stUl, but we think of
golden oranges, and long glistening rows of lemon trees.
To-day in that land of gardens, there are people who point to a few
.beautiful but rather empty Mission churches, and to a great monastery at
Santa Barbara, and to a score of quite ruined buildings and cloisters, with

54 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
here and there a bowed old Indian clinging to the shelter of their broken
walls. "These," say they, "are all that remain of Father Junipero Serra and
his wonderful dream for California! The Missions pillaged and ruined by
the Mexican and Spanish and American Governments; the Franciscan monks
debased, and driven out by persecution; the Indians despoiled and scattered!"
They quite forget, when they look at the ruins, that, though the schools and
churches and the very bells which Father Junipero hung with his own hands
are silent and broken, his dream for California is still coming true. Coming
true, O wonderful thought, because it was his dream!
For the great gardens and orchards, the great orange-groves and vine
yards of California are Father Junipero's gifts. He first made these deserts
blossom as the rose. And the flowers are his gift; and the bells that swing
under beautiful archways, and the long, low houses with the curving gables
are his gifts; and the great Indian schools that the Government and the
Churches have modelled after his Mission schools, are his gifts. And the
wrongs that after slow years have been righted because of the undimmed
power of his enthusiasm, are his gifts. His trail across the mountains is still
beautiful from San Diego to San Francisco.

THE TRAIL OF THE
HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS
IN the early thirties of the last century the town of St. Louis was
the meeting-ground of many races. The French Canadians
and the Spanish and Mexicans, the Yankees, the Southern plant
ers, and the pure French from New Orleans, passed and re-passed
one another in the streets, and made their trades in the markets
and the warehouses, and along the busy wharves.
Men in homespun and men in raccoon skins, Mexicans in
embroidered jackets and Frenchmen with their hair en cue
and with ruffled linen, sat side by side on the banquettes sipping
their cooUng drinks without exciting even a glance from the idlers
on the streets; but when one day there stalked into the town a
company of four silent Indians in full ceremonial dress, demand
ing to see the Governor, the crowd gathered from all directions,
and men stood on their chairs at the cafes to see them pass. Not
that Indians were strange sights in St. Louis; the nearby country
swarmed with them; but these Indians were of a different sort
from those in the Mississippi Valley, and their dress and orna
ments were strange. It was rumored that they had come from
beyond the Rocky Mountains and had traveled more than three
thousand miles. Two of them were old men.
Now it happened that General Clark, the United States
Government Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the North
west, was then in St. Louis, and to him these Indians were led.
They told him that they were of the tribe of the Nez Percys,
far, far to the North, and upon questioning them he learned that
they had come from the banks of the Columbia River. They
said that they had been sent by their tribe to the Land of the
Rising Sun, where men worshipped the AU-Powerful One, to get

56 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
from the Pale Faces their great Book which told of the Way to
the Happy Hunting Grounds beyond the Great Divide.
General Clark received them with grave ceremony, he saw
to it that they were properly housed and clothed and fed, he
showed them the sights of the town, the theatre, the cathedral,
the markets and the wharves, and he persuaded them to post
pone their return until a boat which belonged to the American
Fur Company could take them up the river as far as the mouth
of the YeUowstone. But while they waited the two elder men
died. When the time came for the other two to depart, the Gen
eral sent them presents from the Government to carry back to
their people, and received them in great state when they made
their visit of ceremony to bid him farewell. A young man who
was one of General Clark's escort was so interested in the two
grave, sad men that he wrote down the farewell speech which
the older made on behalf of both of them, and later sent it to a
friend in the East.
Farewell of the Nez Perces Chief
"I came to you over a Trail of many moons from the
setting sun. You were the friend of my fathers who have
all gone the long way. I came with one eye partially opened,
for more light for my people who sit in darkness. I go
back with both eyes closed. How can I go back to my
blind people? I made my way to you with strong arms,
through many enemies and strange lands, that I might carry
back much to them. I go back with both arms broken and
empty. The two fathers who came with me — the braves
of many winters and wars — we leave asleep here by the great
water. They were tired in many moons and their moccasins
wore out. My people sent me to get the white man's Book
of Heaven. You took me to where you allow your women

The Tetons, Idaho.

THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 57
to dance as we do ours, and the Book was not there. You
took me where they worship the Great Spirit with candles,
and the Book was not there. You showed me the images
of good spirits and pictures of the good land beyond, but
the Book was not among them. I am going back the long
trail to my people. You make my feet heavy with the bur
den of gifts, and my moccasins will grow old carrying them,
but the Book is not among them. When I tell my poor
blind people in the big council that I did not bring the Book,
no word wiU be spoken by our old men or our young braves.
One by one they will rise up and go out in silence. My
people wiU die in darkness and go forth to the Hunting
Grounds. No white man will go with them, and no white
man's Book to make the way plain. I have no more words."
When the letter bearing this beautiful and sad lament
reached the East the man who read it sent it to a noted Western
explorer named Catlin. "Can this be true?" he wrote. CatUn
wrote immediately to General Clark asking him for the facts.
General Clark confirmed the report of the speech. "It is true,"
he said. "The sole object of their visit was to get the Bible."
He explained to some one else the hopelessness of giving
them the Book they asked for; no one of their tribe was able to
read or to interpret it. The Government had more than it could
well accomplish, just then, to keep peace among the fierce and
restless tribes of the West. Fort Leavenworth was at that time
the last outpost of military authority west of the Mississippi.
Beyond was lawlessness, except where here and there over
the Northwest were the scattered forts belonging to the EngUsh
of the Hudson Bay Fur Company.
The life of the Indians before the coming of the Pale Faces
must never be thought of as a peaceful, beneficent life. One
tribe preyed upon another, the strongest stole from the weaker.

58 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
treaties were made only to be broken, sometimes treacherously
at the next good opportunity, friendUness changed to hate with
out warning. At his best the Indian was a good, imaginative
child, at his worst he was a mad dog.
Perhaps the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the North
west judged shrewdly enough also that the Way to the Happy
Hunting Grounds so desired by the Nez Perces was not the steep
and fUnty path of self-denial towards which the Book pointed,
but an easy, magic road to be gained by spells and incantations,
that led to some earthly Garden of Eden, visible to the eyes of
mortal men. Perhaps he guessed from his experience of Indian
laziness and Indian ignorance that when the reaUties of the Book
were taught to them, few of the braves would condescend to the
hard path of gentleness and forgiveness and unselfishness and
steadfastness. At all events the Nez Perces returned to their
people without the Book, and the spring turned into summer
and summer into winter with no sign from the Pale Faces that
any one cared one way or the other for their strange appeal.
But though they were quite ignorant of it, the name of the
Nez Percys was on the lips of many men and women that year,
and their request for the Book lay heavy on many hearts. In
deed, the call pressed so vitally on some hearts that in all six men
laid down the work that they were doing in the Eastern States
and said that if a bare Uving were assured them they would go
West, into the unknown Northern Pacific country, and carry the
Book, and all that it stood for of love and devotion, to those In
dians. Five of these men were ministers. Four of them were Meth
odists, and their missionary society very gladly sent them upon
their brave journey. They crossed the Rockies after many ad
ventures, and arrived under the escort of some traders of the
Hudson Bay Company on the banks of the Willamette River,
not far from which stream they established a mission. This

THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 59
mission grew and prospered, but the story of it does not belong
to this tale.
The other two men who had volunteered to go West to
carry the Book to the Nez Percys were New Englanders. One
of them was a young physician. His name was Marcus Whit
man. He had not been thought a very strong boy; people doubted
if he would ever be up to much physicaUy. He had not been
brilliant at his profession, nor did any one in the town in which
he Uved regard him as a remarkable young chap. When the
call of the Nez Percys sounded in his heart something told him
that if he dared to refuse it he would miss his greatest chance of
serving God in the world; but he was dreadfully tempted to refuse,
none the less. Yet no one would have been the wiser if he had re
fused, and no one would have blamed him. He had every reason to
wish to stay at home, for he was in love with a young girl who loved
him. In those days to take a woman to Uve where he should have
to Uve, would be to subject her to untold, and perhaps fatal hard
ships. He made up his mind that unless he could give her a
decent home out there in the unknown region beyond the Rock
ies he would not ask her to go. From what he could learn from
the hunters and naturaUsts and traders who had gone to the base
of the Great Divide, an attempt to carry household furniture,
or any goods which could not be tied to the backs of mules, across
those terrible mountains would prove a failure. However, Mar
cus Whitman resolved to go and see for himself.
In 1835 he and his feUow-missionary set out to explore.
They were sent by the American Board of Foreign Missions and
the funds came from the Presbyterians and the Congregational-
ists of the East. This journey, which was to mean so much for
the United States, was paid for by a missionary society. Always
remember that!
Young Whitman and his companion Parker crossed the
Rockies at South Pass. They found that plenty of men had

6o FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
crossed that way before them; hunters, traders, Indians, but
no white woman and no wagon. Whitman squared his jaw and
said that, though it had not been done, it could be done, and he
returned to New England and told the girl he loved that he could
take her and her household possessions across that Great Divide.
That was enough for her. Had she not been praying all those
months that he had been gone from her, that he would "find a
way?" Could she hesitate now, when her prayers were answered?
They were married, and they said their long goodbyes and set
out. The men of the Mission Board were much pleased with the
pluck and determination of young Whitman. He had reported
Parker as already established on the lands of the tribe near Walla
Walla, and awaiting his arrival; the Board determined to send
another missionary and his wife to accompany the Whitmans,
and to re-enforce the new mission; their name was Spalding.
In those days all immigrant parties to the West began the
journey into the wilderness at St. Louis. They generally went
by boat up the Missouri as far as what is now Council Bluffs,
and from that point travelled by horseback or by wagon by the
Wilderness Trail. This trail was a pretty easy one as far as
the Hudson Bay Fort, Laramie, on the Platte River. That is, if
you were not massacred by Indians or stampeded by vast buffalo
herds, or upset and swamped crossing the quicksands of the
rivers, or did not miss the way over prairies, you found it com
paratively easy. It was like a highroad compared to what lay
beyond Fort Laramie, that is certain!
At Fort Laramie Whitman's party were allowed inside the
Company's fortified enclosure, and the two white women were
much stared at by the squaws and the children herded there.
The Hudson Bay agents shook their heads at the sight of Whit
man's wagon. He could never get it across, they said. "Such
a thing had never been attempted," they added sullenly. But

THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 6l
Whitman had begun to suspect that something lay back of this
persistent discouragement and suUen disapproval of theirs.
Besides he had crossed that South Pass, and he knew! So the
heavy, springless wagon with its canvas top and its four sturdy
mules set out. But neither the mules nor the wagon's well-
built wheels would ever have got it up and down those gulches
and across that rocky way, or over those sheer ascents, if Mar
cus Whitman had flinched in his determination for a single foot
of that terrible way. Over the Rockies he guided it, and down
on the other side, across the hills and mountains and rivers and
valleys to the Columbia River itself, and with it, and often in
it, went the two plucky women, Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spald
ing. To the chiefs of the Nez Perces who came down the valleys
in great state to escort the long-desired Messengers with the
Book, the wonder of that journey of the Pale Faces who had
dared to bring their "house on wheels" and their women, in
creased a hundre.dfold. Not far from WaUa WaUa they found
suitable sites for two missions, and in 1837 they were planting
their gardens, building their schools and churches and log dwell
ing houses. So far, so good! But they had learned a good many things
on that trip, things over which Whitman squared his jaw more
than once. Something was wrong up there in that Northwest!
And it was not the Indian hostility, for the Indians were very
friendly and almost too eager for the white man's knowledge.
It was not the country, for it was the richest farming country
Whitman had ever seen. It was not the rivers, nor the streams,
nor the forests, nor the mountains; for the rivers were alive with
fish and were navigable, the forests were immensely valuable,
while the mountians were rich in minerals. No, it was not the
country that was wrong, — that was all that man could desire!
It was the strange spirit of enmity, — unspoken, intangible, yet

62 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
always there, always working, always barring the way, — that
Whitman and Spalding and Parker, and every man not employed
by the Hudson Bay Company who penetrated to that delectable
country, met sooner or later.
Warnings from more than one traveUer came to the mis
sionaries, to have a care how they ran counter to the wishes of
the great white man's company, which ruled that land and its
inhabitants for its own interests. One of the warnings was more
explicit than the rest, and came from a man who had every rea
son for knowing the truth. He was an American, a naturalist,
Townsend by name, who had spent two years in the Northwest and
had travelled much with the hunters in the service of the EngUsh
Fur Company. "The Company will be glad to have you come
and settle here," he told them, "for they need physicians and
they need teachers for the half-breed wives and children of the
Company agents. But as for the Indians whom you have come
to teach, they do not want them any more enlightened; the
Company might then lose control of them. Should the agents
find that you continue in your resolve to make friends with the
Indians and to teach them, one of two things will happen; they
will either refuse to sell you goods from the Company stores and so
starve you out in time, or else they will turn the Indians against
you and you will perish among them."
The missionaries had an opportunity to find that this man
spoke the exact truth. But much was to happen before that.
In everything that they tried to do, from building their houses
fo sending East for materials, seeds, utensils, stock, etc., they
tound themselves against a blank wall. No man went or came
into that land save by the Fur Company's express permission.
The forts were so placed along the trails and the rivers as to com
mand them. They were the only safe places from the roving
bands of Indians, — the rough, uncouth inns of that dangerous
land, but woe to the traveller against whom those strange

THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 63
landlords closed their doors, or to whom the door was opened
treacherously! Yes, it was quite plain that the Hudson Bay
Company, for reasons of its own, guarded the exits and the en
trances to the land with jealous care! Before very long Marcus
Whitman realized what lay behind this jealousy.
The business of this EngUsh Company since 1670, when King
Charles II had granted it a charter, had been to make money in fur.
It had spread its trading posts from Quebec to the Pacific, and em
ployed many men, — Indians, half-breeds and French Canadians.
It was run by a board of directors in London. Its aim was to
monopoUze the fur trade of America, and in the century and a
half of its Ufe it had nearly succeeded. The directors in London
and the stockholders whom they represented made huge profits
in money, the Company agents who traded with the half-
breed post employees made large profits in stores, arms, and
provisions, which they traded for furs at the Company forts,
and lastly the Indians, who brought the furs to the forts and
trading posts to barter for the things the white men had which
they craved, — beads and cloth and rations, — also made a profit
that compensated them, at least in their own eyes. That it was
a poor and unfair compensation for the peril and hardship which
they had endured to procure the skins, they were quite too ig
norant to know.
Therefore you see, as Marcus Whitman saw, why it was to
the interest of the Company to keep the Indians ignorant of the
things white men knew. You will see too why any attempt
on the part of the missionaries to cultivate the wonderful soil
of Oregon, or to teach the Indians to cultivate it, was met with
disfavor. If the Indians learned to raise their own crops they
would grow independent of the Company and do its bidding
with less readiness, and if the Americans of the United States
knew what a wonderful farming country this was that they had
bought from France, and which they now held so Ughtly and

04 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
indifferently, it would mean immigration of farmers and home
steaders to the Northwest, and an end of the vast, uncleared,
uncultivated, uninhabited lands from which the EngUsh Fur
Company got its huge and easy gains.
The question of boundaries was at this time in process of
settlement between the United States and Great Britain. Neither
country at large knew or cared much for what lay south of Van
couver; the great British Fur Company therefore had things pretty
much in its own hands. One cannot blame it for thinking only of its
own interests. It was "good business" to keep the Indians in
a wild state. It was "good business" to pay them almost nothing
for what they risked their lives to get. It was "good business"
to make the people of the United States believe Oregon and
Washington and the border States were barren, unprofitable land
with impassable mountains and unnavigable rivers and treacherous
Indians. It was "good business" for the agents holding such forts
as Laramie to turn the white-topped prairie schooners down to the
Santa F6 or along the Southwest trails towards CaUfornia. What
if the United States Government had bought the Louis
iana claim from France, and the Northwest with it! What if
Lewis and Clark had made their surveys and their maps, and had
discovered the rivers! The men who held the Indians held the
land, and the men who held the forts held the Indians!
It was plain to the missionaries that at any cost, even that
of honesty and honor, the EngUshmen of the Hudson Bay Company
meant to hold the Indians. But Marcus Whitman and his feUow
Americans resolved that they would neither be scared out of that
country nor starved out of it. Two other tribes besides the Nez
Percys, the Cayuses and the Spokanes, showed the greatest eagerness
to come to the white man's schools and to learn the words of the
Great Book. In the next four years many Indians turned from
their hunting to farming. Whitman sent East for more helpers,
and the Board of Missions added four more men to the mission.

THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 65
with their wives. This made a small colony of United States
citizens in the very heart of Oregon. By 1842 they had about
them, as near neighbors in their three mission stations, three
hundred and twenty-two Indian families, who were actually
living on their farms, and whose children were in the mission
schools. These people had so learned the white man's wisdom as to
depend no longer on the stores of the Hudson Bay Company for
their daily bread.
The falUng off of the Company's enormous profits in that
region reached the knowledge of the London directors. It was
the business of these gentlemen to see that the shareholders of
the vast enterprise got their money; that was why they held their
great positions of trust. The word was passed down the Une
from directors to agents, from agents to the half-breed factors
who ruled the Company posts, that this religion and this education
must not be allowed if they interfered with "good business."
The London directors did not quite put the matter so baldly.
What they said to their agents in Canada was: "Cannot you
give these Indians a reUgion, if they want it, that won't interfere
with the Company profits?" And what they said to the Ca
nadian Governor was: "Cannot we have a few more British sub
jects pushed down there into Oregon while this boundary ques
tion is being settled, so that we can claim a majority of white
settlers?" They did not desire white immigrants for permanent
settlers and they cared nothing for what should become of them
later. They were to be got rid of promptly after the land had
become part of the British possessions; but that fact was not
mentioned to the Governor, nor to the Scotch and Irish and Eng-
glish settlers which the Government was at that time importing,
almost free of cost, into British America, for colonization purposes.
To both their requests the London directors of the Hudson
Bay Company got singularly prompt answers. The French
Canadian agents looked about them for men who would serve

66 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
the Company's interest, and give the Indians religion without
education. They found a few Jesuit priests who were eager for
the opportunity. These men beUeved that they were serving
their Church and their Order by the work that they set them
selves to do. Not only did they use their position in the Company
forts to bring the Indians into the Roman Church by baptism,
but they set themselves with equal vigor to undermine the work
of the American missionaries. To do this they used the danger
ous weapon of evil-speaking, and false-witness bearing against
their neighbors. They would probably have argued that much
that they taught the Indians to believe against the Yankee mis
sionaries they themselves also believed to be true, and that in
order to bring to an end the missions of the heretics any means
was justified. It is hard to say what lay back of the methods
they used, but the results which they unwittingly brought upon
the Company they served, and the Order to which they belonged,
and the Church they had meant to uphold, were far more dis
astrous than the worst enemy of the Company, or the Order, or
the Church could have devised. But that you will see for your
self before this story ends.
While these new plans of the Hudson Bay Company were
pending, Marcus Whitman went upon his doctor's rounds, ad
ministered his mission affairs, making his reports to the Board
at home, writing to the farmers he knew vivid letters telling of
the wonderful opportunities of that wonderful country, and, in
spite of opposition and unfriendhness on the part of the Hudson
Bay officials, he continued to teach the Indians how to live by
the sweat of their brows and to obey the laws of God.
Although he and his fellow missionaries had had to bear
actual affronts from some of the Company agents, and had been
subjected to actual loss by acts of tyranny and dishonesty from
some of the Company Indians, as a physician he never refused
a call for his services even from an open enemy. Hence it came

Bandon Beach, Oregon.

THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 67
about that he happened to be at the Hudson Bay Company Fort
at Walla WaUa one day in September, 1842, visiting a patient,
when dispatches were brought to the officials which were of grave
moment, not only to the Company, but to the United States.
The dispatches came while the big meal of the day was being
served in the official quarters, and as there were present on a
tour of inspection a number of important men of the Company,
as well as some Jesuit priests who were in the Company's employ,
the news which the dispatch contained was rather more freely
commented upon than might usually have been the case. Per
haps the majority of those present did not know that the silent
man down at the far end of the table was a citizen of the United
States. At all events the fact that a large colony of Scotch and
EngUsh immigrants which had been sent by Sir George Simp
son, the Governor, had got across the mountains and were to
winter at Fort Colville, three hundred and fifty miles up the
Columbia, preparatory to entering Oregon in the early summer,
was hailed with such joy by most of those present that the silent
American pricked up his ears for what might foUow.
Suddenly a young priest sprang from his seat and gave a
toast: "Hurrah for Oregon! America is too late! We have
got the country!" he cried.

An hour later the American doctor, whose departure from
the fort no one had much heeded, was gaUoping down the trail
to Waiilatpu, his mission station. He knew now, past a doubt,
what all the suUen opposition, the barriers to progress, and the
Ues to travellers meant. A big steal was in the last stages of
successful completion and he and a few American fellow-mis
sionaries and some two hundred settlers were aU that stood in
that Northwest against the triumph of this "good business!"
Help was three thousand miles away; winter with its terri-

68 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
ble blizzards, the wilderness with its implacable Indians, the
desert with its awful thirsts, barred the way. The horse galloped
on and on and the man in the saddle stared grimly ahead as mile
after mile was covered. Could he do it? There was only one
chance in twenty that he would win out. Should he take that
chance. There was his wife! Ought he to risk never returning
to her? There was his work! Should he leave it unfinished?
But there was a great wrong being done to his country which he
could right. Should he right it?
Before dismounting from his horse, he told his great de
cision to the little group of men gathered about the door of his
home. "I am going to cross the Rocky Mountains and reach
Washington this winter, God carrying me through," he said.
"And I shaU bring out an immigration over the mountains next
spring, or this country is lost!"
Then he got off his horse and went to his wife. It was she
who helped him make his preparations for that journey of six
months. In less than twenty-four hours she had him ready.
After their first surprise the other men at the station were vehe
ment in begging him not to take so terrible a risk as a journey
East at that time of the year involved, but his mind once made
up, Marcus Whitman was not to be moved by talk of risks. In
the end, one of the men, Lovejoy, went with him part of the way.
They took a circuitous route to the South, over the Santa
F6 trail from Taos, and then down to Bent's Fort on the Arkansas
River. By this they avoided being snowed under completely
in the Northern trail, but they suffered horribly from the winter
storms of December along the Upper Santa F6 trail and in the
mountains of Colorado. More than once they were lost and
on the point of freezing to death, more than once they were nearly
starved, and twice they crossed rivers covered with tons of float
ing ice that swept their horses down roaring currents. What
saved them was Marcus Whitman's determination to fight for

Marcus Whitman

THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 69
Ufe to the last gasp and to get on. At Bent's Fort Lovejoy had
to fall behind; he was worn out and broken by the cold. Whit
man pushed on to St. Louis alone.
His arrival caused a great stir. To have come from Bent's Fort
at that time of the year was an unusual feat, but to have ridden
down from the Columbia River and to have crossed the Rockies
was an unparalleled journey. People stared at him, questioned
him and came by the dozens to consult him. They found a
square, stocky man with broad shoulders and a large head set
on a thick buU neck. He had not shaved for four months, and
his keen eyes looked out from a thickly-bearded face. The
hair on his head was iron gray. His clothes were fur or buckskin,
his buffalo coat with its hooded cape was wrapped behind him
on his saddle as he rode, and he wore huge boot moccasins that
quite fiUed his big Mexican stirrups. His entire dress on the
street, one who saw him relates, did not show one square inch
of woven fabric.
His manner was abrupt, a Uttle stern and brusque. "Yes,
Oregon was a wonderful country. The soil would yield im-..
mense crops. How did he know? He had farmed land there
and had proved it."
"Yes, the trail was possible for wagons and for women. How
did he know? He had tried it."
"Yes, the Rockies and the mountains and rivers beyond
the Rockies were passable. How did he know? He had crossed
them." "Would he guarantee a good country for immigrants out
there? Yes, he would; and he would do more than that: he would
lead any who cared to try their fortunes in the finest country
the United States possessed, along the Oregon trail from Laramie
to the Colimibia in the coming spring."
Meanwhile he in turn asked questions. He was impatient
for the answers and would not be drawn into stories of Indians

70 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
or of hunting or of fur traders and trappers. Was there a treaty
pending between the United States and Great Britain? Yes, the
Ashburton treaty. Did it cover the Northwest? Not the entire
Northwest, only the section of the Great Lakes. Then where, and
what, and whose, did it leave Oregon?"
To this last there were confused answers. It seemed that
no one well knew what was in the mind of the President about
Oregon. Congress was to adjourn on March 4th that year.
Many things might happen. Marcus Whitman did not wait
for them to happen, but leaving the immigration plans in the
hands of others in St. Louis he hurried on to the Capital.
There has been much questioning and contradicting as to
what was transacted between Whitman and the President and
the Secretary of State during that March of 1843. President
Tyler and Daniel Webster listened to his statements with grave
interest. Whether or not they at this time formed any fixed
decision as to the boundaries which the United States would
claim from England in the Northwest, there is still some doubt.
Webster had said earlier in one of his writings on the subject:
"The government of the United States has never offered any
Une south of 49 degrees with the navigation of the Columbia,
and it never will."
However much Marcus Whitman may have influenced the
President and the Committee on Foreign Affairs to abide by
that stand, or however little, he was the last man to stop and
wait for recognition on the subject. From Washington he hur
ried on to Boston to urge the Board to send more missionaries,
more suppUes and more money. Then he hurried West to meet
his emigrants. Hurry as he would, however, it was the 20th of May before
he caught up with them on the Platte River. He was none too
soon. Many a prairie schooner and its mules would have got
hopelessly tangled in that sandy bottomless river but for him.

A Bit of The West

THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 7 1
"Those who saw him for three days crossing and re-crossing the
wide stream, swimming his horse to find the best ford, and at
last heard him order the one hundred or more canvas-topped
wagons to be chained together, four mules or four horses to each
wagon and, driven in one long Une, to ford for two miles that river
swollen by spring floods, cheering the drivers, permitting not
an instant's halt, encouraging the women and bellowing at the
mules lest they sink in the quicksands, will never forget the man
nor his deed." So wrote one who was a pioneer on the Oregon
Trail that fateful year of '43.
At Fort Hall, beyond the South Pass, the guides and scouts
of the Hudson Bay Company almost induced the emigrants
to turn south along the CaUfornia trail to Sacremento — almost,
but not quite! "Trust me," urged Marcus Whitman, "I know
it can be done! Trust me and by early fall you will be in Oregon."
Word came by his Indian friends that he was needed at his mis
sion. Some one was ill, and it was Ufe or death. He put his
emigrants in charge of a Cayuse chief, whom he had healed and
converted, and whom he trusted impUcitly. The Indian's name
was Isticus, and he was splendidly faithful to his great trust.
Under his guidance the party consisting of eight himdred and
seventy-five men, women and children, some two hundred wagons,
and thirteen himdred head of cattle, reached Dallas, Oregon, in
September, 1843, and the Northwest was saved to the United
States. The end for Whitman, the revenge of the Company, and the
terrible results of "good business" upon savage and undisciplined
minds, came five years later. The one who suffered least was
Whitman himself, for by it he went to his reward in a Far Coun
try beyond the Great Divide. This was the manner of his going.
"It came about through the request of two Walla Walla
chiefs that the Doctor should visit the sick in their villages. The

72 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
people had been attacked with a violent form of measles, and
many had died. Those that died who had taken the medicine
of the Americans were said by some of the Hudson Bay Company
men to have perished by poisoning. 'The Americans wish your
lands!' said they. Sometimes it was told to the Indians that
the white men of the Mission only waited until they got more
white men, and then they would destroy the tribes and drive
them out.
Sometimes Tilokaikt, the Chief of the Casoises, beUeved this,
sometimes he did not. At this time when his people were dying
of measles and dysentery and when the medicine of the Ameri
cans did no good, and could not bring them to life, he believed
that it was true. So he went to Father BrouiUet, the priest of
the Company, and asked him to come and Uve in Whitman's
house and take his lands, saying 'I will send him away.' But
this Father BrouiUet refused to do. Instead he took the place
offered by Young Chief at UmatiUa. This did not please the
Cayuse Chief.
When the Doctor went through UmatiUa to visit the sick
of the two chiefs of the WaUa WaUa he called upon the priest
at his new station; he also lodged one night with his friend Is
ticus. Then he crossed the river and prescribed for the sick.
Then being anxious about those whom he had left suffering from
the disease at his own mission he left for home.
He arrived very early the next morning, November the 28th.
On the afternoon of the next day, very suddenly, the mission was
surrounded by Tilokaikt and his tribesmen; with them were
Joseph Scanfield, a Canadian Frenchman, Joe Lewis, a Canadian
Indian, and Nicholas, a half-breed. Marcus Whitman and his
wife and eight others were massacred and terribly mutilated;
one man was shot next day, one escaped but died of exposure,
the men at the Fort refusing to shelter him; three children that
were taken captive died, and eight days later two young men

THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 73
were killed who had worked at the mission. Fifteen persons in
all were massacred, all of them Americans, all connected with
Whitman's mission.
Neither the Hudson Bay Company men nor the missionary
priests suffered at the hands of the Indians, nor did they punish
the Indians in their turn. The Company oflicials announounced
themselves as taking no part one way or the other, except to re
deem the few women and children who were spared. The priest
BrouUlet was the first white man to visit the camp of Tilokaikt
after the murder. He reached there on November 30th and
remained all night, and baptized some of the children of the
Cayuses. Next morning he visited the plundered mission, saw
the mutilated bodies, asked that they be buried and departed.
Meeting Spalding, whose mission lay some distance off and
who was ignorant of what had happened, the priest warned him
and advised him to escape while there was time. The poor man
was terror-stricken as to what might have happened to his wife.
But he found her protected by the faithful Nez Percys, safe and
ignorant of what had happened.
Marcus Whitman had faced death so often, and worse than
death — failure, that this sudden last moment could not have
found him unprepared or afraid. This time too there was to be
no long parting from his plucky wife. They died together de
fending each other.
Their Uves had not been in vain for Oregon, "or for their
country," or for God! And who shall say what Oregon and the
Northwest, which they helped to make, may yet mean to the
world and to our country.
But the forts of the Hudson Bay Company along the Co
lumbia River are gone. They could not stay the advance of the
army of homesteaders or shut the gates to progress. And the
Jesuit priests are gone from the Indian reserves. Their bap
tisms did not make Christians. Their absolution and pennances

74 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
did not make saints out of sinners. ReUgion without education
did not save the Indians, any more than education without re
Ugion can help them.
It is always well to remember that great truth once uttered
by a missionary who had lived — and learned: "Devotion to be
kept pure, needs ideas as well as feelings."
When God makes history, in order to compass some far-reach
ing purpose He gives such simple, plain people chances to do
great things! St. Paul once threw out a clue to this mystery,
which the rulers of this world would do well never to forget in
their measurement of men and things: "For God hath chosen the
foolish things of this world to confound the wise : And God hath
chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty,
and base things of the world and things which are despised hath
God chosen, yea, and the things that are not, to bring to naught
the things that are; that no flesh should glory before God."
Certainly you and I, little known and little regarded as we
may be by those about us, need never let our obscurity or our
unimportance be a bar to brave and noble service in His Name.
Our part in this great opportunity called. Life, is to be ready!
Just as Marcus Whitman was ready when his summons came.
For whatever influence the visit which Whitman paid to
Washington may or may not have had on the poUcy of the Gov
ernment a few years later in deciding the question of our North
west boundaries, it was he, more than any other man, who in
fluenced the people of the United States to take possession of
their land beyond the Rockies. He opened the gate, he made
possible the first civilized home, and he led the first real immi
gration of nearly one thousand souls into Oregon. He and his
fellow missionaries first proved for what the soil of that wonder
ful land was meant and he endured untold dangers to make
the discovery known to his fellow countrymen. While he accom-

THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 75
plished all this, he worked night and day for the Indians, and in
spite of threats and heavy penalties stood for the education and
the civilization and the real conversion of those first owners of
the Northwest. He also, quite literally, died for the Indians.
The men who were punished for his murder were not as guilty
as those who went unpunished. The Hudson Bay Company, and
the few Jesuit priests in its employ cried: "Not guilty!" over the
broken bodies of the American missionaries, and for years the bit
terest controversy raged between Romanists and Protestants over
the evidence upon which that plea was based. One thing became
certain long before the controversy died out; neither the Roman
Church nor the Order of Jesus had given or received a blessing in
this last of their great missionary enterprises to our country. As
for the Hudson Bay Company, it was proved before all the
world of onlookers to have done one stroke of "good business"
too much! Such open punishments, such open shame in the face of the
world is not the worst misfortune that can befall an organization.
The Roman Church whose priests, on this occasion, by their ignor
ance, served it so ill must not be judged as therefore unfit to carry
on the cause of missions. Who knows what yet may be in store
for that great Missionary Society, which once led the world in devo
tion and courage and humility!
Nor should we onlookers judge the poUcy of the Hudson Bay
Company so harshly as to blind ourselves to the business methods
which we as a nation stand for to-day before the world. The
"good business" of that ancient company is very like our own
"good business" in this year of 1911-12.
Ask the missionaries how much our methods of making money
in the world and at home help men to beUeve in Jesus Christ!
Ask yourself if our great American trade motto: "Buy at the
lowest and seU at the highest," can be made to fit in any sense
with the law of God: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

76 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL

NOTES ON THE OREGON TRAIL
What is No Man's Land is Every Man's Land. The first to come gets
first choice, but the last to hold out is the real possessor. Three European
nations claimed our Northwest :— Spain, by right of discovery; France, by
right of exploration; England, by right of conquest.
Spain, by 1820, had let go. Whatever claims she may have had fell to
Mexico with California.
Long before this, in 1804, France, had parted with her claim to the United
States of America for a consideration of $16,000,000. Napolean and Thomas
Jefferson made this bargain. Napoleon needed the money to arm France
for an invasion of England; and he offered the Mississippi Valley and all
the French towns from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, with the Northwest
thrown in; that is, all the land north of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, and
west of the Mississippi River comprised the purchase, — California and part
of Utah and Nevada being excepted. It was a pretty good bargain! The
amusing part of it was that at the time Congress grumbled a good deal about
ratifying it.
Soon after the appropriation was made for the purchase money, and before
the French governors and officials of New Orleans, St. Louis, and the other
towns had all of them handed over their commands to the Americans, the
President had dispatched two army officers, Captains Lewis and Clark, with
a small escort and several guides to explore the land north of St. Joseph on
the Missouri River in a westerly direction until they reached the Pacific.
Very httle was known about the Pacific coast north of California. The
Enghsh had coasted along those western shores several times in the 16th,
17th and 18th centuries and yet had failed to find what remained to an Amer
ican to discover in 1792 — the mouth of the great Columbia River! Captain
Gray of Boston, the discoverer, had planted the United States flag on the
shores of the river, and even before the French purchase it was regarded as
United States property.
Lewis and Clarke were directed by the government to make, if possible,
a junction with the Columbia River as near its source as was navigable, and
follow it to the ocean. It was supposed at that time that this water route
via the Missouri and the Columbia, was the only possible land way of reach
ing the Pacific coast, except by the Santa F6 and lower California route
through Spanish and Mexican lands and across the deserts. The Rocky

NOTES ON THE OREGON TRAIL 77
Mountains, so long regarded as unsurmountable barriers, threatened to
cleave the tide of immigration which the great West was soon to receive,
into two widely separated streams. Indeed it is quite conceivable that if a
wagon trail had been found an impossibility over the Rockies there would
have been no settlement of the Northwest from the United States; for the
Lewis and Clark expedition proved that the journey up the Missouri, even
for men used to hardships, was too dangerous and difficult to be undertaken
lightly. And although the two officers reported a great country and wonder
ful rivers on the west side of the Great Divide it was looked upon as at best a
region for hunters and trappers.
Indeed neither the United States Government nor that of Great Britain
were much more enlightened for a long time after this. Had they been so
the question of boundaiies would not have remained unsettled so long after
Lewis and Clark had returned from that now famous journey. The people
who really did know, were the agents of the Hudson Bay Fur Company, and
the French half-breeds whom the Company sent out to gain a hold over the
Indians who wandered in savage hordes over the land, and upon whose child
ish ignorance the factors and agents traded to bring them in their largest
gains. It was natural that they should regard any settlement of that great hunt
ing-ground by the citizens of another government as a calamity. An attempt
on the part of John Jacob Astor, merchant, of the City of New York, to found
a fur agency at the mouth of the Columbia at a settlement which he named
Astoria, had given the Hudson Bay Company considerable trouble to suppress.
In order that no other rivals should bother them the Company encouraged a
kind of surly incivihty among the so-called bourgoise, or half-breed factors,
who ruled the Company forts. This incivility they were encouraged to show
towards all traders or settlers.
These forts extended down as far as the river Laramie in Colorado, and
along the Columbia to WaUa Walla in the west, and eastward to the Great
Lakes. By the year 1846 the Company employed fifty-five officers and five-
hundred and thirteen agents, had twenty-three forts with three great trading
centres, and ran two large steamers along the Pacific coast from Mexico to
Russian America. Their agents represented what httle civihzation there was
from Fort Laramie to Sacramento City.
It will be plain to any observer that no great secret about the value of
the Northwest was hid from them. The wonder is that for twenty-five years
after Lewis and Clark had made their surveys of this great purchase of the
United States these English fur merchants should have kept the gateway to so

78 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL
vast a possession closed, and that too by the simplest of all devices. They
pointed with lack-lustre eyes at the great mountains a hundred miles away,
rising snow-capped and terrible in the still air. "No thoroughfare!" said
they with a shrug, and went about their affairs. And the womout travel
lers, discouraged by the long journeys across endless prairies, and unfor
gettable deserts, remembering their escapes from turbulent rivers and treacher
ous quicksands, unnerved by the constant teasing depredations of the Indians,
could only look at the distant Rockies rising sheer and awful across the path,
and acquiesce. From Fort Laramie there was a well-worn trail down to Sarcamento in
California, and another down through Colorado to the old Santa F6 trail
which branched off to the southern route to California. It was along these
trails that the Hudson Bay agents pointed their unwelcome guests for a whole
generation. Looking back on the thing now it seems not unlike a huge game of chess
played by unseen powers. What it would have meant to us as a nation and
as a country to have lost the Northwest it is difficult to say; what it would
have meant to England to possess it, it is also difficult to say. But that God
in His wisdom meant it to be part of the United States is now singularly plain,
for the change was brought about naturally, not by the designs of diplomats,
not through the contending powers of two greedy nations, but rather in spite
of the indifference of two nations and of their statesmen, without wars, and by
the^most unlooked-for means and the most unknown and unexpected agencies!
A pawn, checkmating a king! A country doctor — "by faith removing moun
tains!"
THE END.

MAP OF THE FIVI

ry

f\

l\

# ' \

r^kj ^S-v^

5^ '. K

"~^v-^y>. f'ir''\-^

/ * >

^"^^^"J^"^'" V-

/ A< /

Jy ¦r--^'\ J^

y /^^-T -. y . *I^

A^ r^^^ 7:$^^^ ^ ^^^^- '^^

^w-v 5^ ^"^ A
iv >1 -V if } )
\ ( <^^^^ '"¦"" ^
XJ^N tl^J'} (
^ _y^^ 'r'^l!/
V-^- — -%^^^ \ ]
If^M/ '''^''"^^^
' ^\ ' ^^ - — '  * \ /
^ \ \ y^  ["'
^^¦'"^ ¦ u, ^¦''' ^ ]
r ^v_ s 1 -
fi^^ --^^'^'^'ky
^-  JXf 1 \
jT^^^^fi^^^
, ..."Vy S.t V L,^
I .''-/^ ^^*^ //
(\^ ,^~''"V l\ I ..»
^r -¦¦y *^ 0
,.-->^%i:ok Z^
)s^j;:-y ^^
¦ix ¦-«»
A/'^^ „^'-^"^^\rfl
\r\_.  --
__^^,.^v-^" .^^!l!r
'¦-¦¦ ... -X- juT
..v.^ 0^
1  7jt ^ a''
y^ .--v^.. /^
¦, :il—^-y—-AT,
1 -?>f i V"'
--'¦ '^ /
i ^ \
N r
^"cr^'-'i i
\ '^^
TRAILS IMDICATED Tm/3;
1 s
j 3
-^F— .
Frenck.
A / ¦
\ (
-e-O-t-
Ore6o-n.
\ \ ¦^'^ 
-¦)  "~^'" \
'
fortij -J^llnefS
Santa. Pe.
f V^^:<~^'^ ^
i--^^ \
5 ? S
_> /-s'S^^?
A \
m t M
IVllsiion.
t
IB" GREAT TRAILS
Cburcb flDi99ions publisbino Co.,
2U State Street, IbactforO, Conn.

ROUND ROBIN, PUBLISHED QUARTERLY
BERIBa FIRST
The Mission Field
1. INDIAN MISSIONS, Part I, by the Ret. Anthon T. Gesner.
2. WESTERN MISSIONS, by the Rev. Anthon T. Gesner.
6. AFRICA, a compilation from various sources.
9. INDIAN MISSIONS, Part II, by the Rev. Anthon T. Gesner.
10. DIOCESAN MISSIONS, by the Rev. T. M. Peck and others.
12. CHURCH SCHOOLS IN THE WEST, by the Rev. A. T. Gesner.
14. INDIAN MISSIONS, Part IV, by the Rev. F. W. Crook.
15. NASHOTAH HOUSE, by the Rt. Rev. W. W. Webb.
,. ) A PEEP INTO HEATHEN TEMPLES IN CHINA, by the Rt.
]o' > Rev. Sidnbt C. Partridge, Bishop of iKyoto. In two parts, 10
) cents eaoh.
20. DAYS WITH THE RED MEN, by Mrs. J. D. Morrison.
22. A SUMMER TRIP AMONG ALASKAN MISSIONS, by Bertha W.
Sabine, Deaconess. 10 cents.
23. AMONG THE SEMINOLES AND CHEYENNES, S. FLORIDA
AND OKLAHOMA. 10 cents.
24. ALASKA'S GREAT HIGHWAY, by Rev. J. W. Chapman. 10 cents.
25. CHIPPAWAY PICTURES FROM THE TERRITORY OF MIN
NESOTA, 1857, by Rev. J. Llotd Breck. 10 cents.
26. RED AND WHITE FIELDS IN MINNESOTA IN 1858, by Rev.
J. Lloyd Breck and others. 10 cents.
10 cents each. 12 numbers for $1.00

series second
stories from the Mission Field
1 AUNT SALLY, by Mrs. Buford, of Lawrenoeville, Va.
6. OPITCHI BIMlSAY, by Miss Stbh Carter, Deaconess.
7. IN THE EVERGLADES. 5 cents.
8. A VISIT TO NGANKING, by the Bishop of Shanghai. 6 cents.
11. ROSETTA, by Miss E. Wheeler. 5 cents.
12. ONE OF OUR GIRLS, by Bishop Wells and Mrs. H. M. Bartlett
5 cents.
13. A HILL-TOP PARISH, by Samuel Hart, D. D. (For older Juniori.)
14. JUANCITO, A Mexican Story, by Belle O. Mbrrtleeb. 5 cents.
16. THE JOURNEYINGS OF A JUNIOR: or. What a Little Girl Saw
in Far Japan, by K. S. F. (Special Number.) Price 20 cents.
18. NEBUCHADNEZZAR, by Miss Oakley. Price 5 cents.
21. AN OLD WORLD CHIME IN A NEW-WORLD FOREST, by Miu
K. F. Jackson. Price 10 cents.
22, 23. CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH IN MANY LANDS, by Mias
K. F. Jackson. Price 20 cents,
24. PIONEER LIFE, A SKETCH OF EARLY DAYS IN MINNESOTA
Price 5 cents.
26. THE CHURCH ON CHAPEL ISLAND, by Miss E. M. Rose, S
cents.
27. LITTLE WITNESSES FOR GOD IN OTHER LANDS. 10 eents.
28. EARLY DAYS OF CHILDREN'S WORK FOR MISSIONS.
10 cents.

20. SUGGESTIONS FOR THE JUNIORS. 10 cents.
30. CHRISTMAS BARREL, by Viroinia C. Cabtlsuan. 10 cents.
31. FAIRY DO AS YOU WOULD BE DONE BY. (Diocesan Missions.)
33. A REINDEER JOURNEY AND OTHER SKETCHES, by Rav.
J. G. Cameron. 10 cents.
33, 34. PLAYS AND RECITATIONS FOR JUNIORS.
35. A VISIT TO ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL, LAWRENOEVILLE, VA.
10 cents.
36. ST. AUGUSTINE'S SCHOOL, RALEIGH, N. C. 10 cents.
37. CONCERNING BEGGARS AND THE TRADE SCHOOL AT
ICHANG, CHINA, by Rev. D. T. Hdntington. 10 cents.
38. LITTLE BROTHERS OF THE LORD, by Rev. S. C. Hoohbon,
O. H. C, Sewanee. Tenn. 10 cents.
39. MORE SUGGESTIONS FOR JUNIORS. 15 cents.
40. TALES FROM OKLAHOMA AND CHRISTMAS AT WHIRL
WIND MISSION.
41. THE PLEA OP THE PENNIES. A Modern Mystery Play by
Gketchen Green. 5 cents.
42. NELLY AND GYPSY. Missionary Ponies of Oneida. 10 cents.
SERIES THIRD
Missions of the Church of England
2 and 3. THE S. P. G. IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES, by the Rev.
Joseph Hooper, Parft I and II. Price 10 cents each.
4 and 6. CHURCH WORK IN NEW GUINEA. Parts I and II. lOcts.
8. CHURCH WORK IN THE DIOCESE OF SHANTUNG, CHINA.
10 cents.
7. SOME FEATURES OF MEDICAL WORK IN CHINA. 10 cents.

SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES
Pioneers and Leaders of the Church in Qreat Britain and America
1. JOHN KEBLE, by the Rev. Walker Gwynnk. 10 cents.
la. BISHOP PATTESON, by Bishop R. W. B. Elliott. 5 cents.
2. GEORGE KEITH, by the Rev. Joseph Hooper. 10 cents.
8. ST. AIDAN, by Bishop Doane of Albany. 10 cents.
4. ST. COLUMBA, by Bishop Nichols of California. 10 cents.
6. DR. WILLAM CROSWELL, by the Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 10 cents.
6. RECOLLECTIONS OF BISHOP HOBART, by Bishop Coxb, 6
cents.
6a. ST. WULSTAN, by Katherinb F. Jackson. 10 cents.
7. ARCHBISHOP CRANMER AND THE PRAYER BOOK, by the
Rev. Samuel Hart, Custodian of the Standard Prayer Book. 10
cents.
8. MARTYRS OF THE REFORMATION, by the Ret. Henry Fer-
ocsoH, M. A. 10 cents.
9. DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, by the Rav. G. D. Johhbon, D. D. 10
cents.
10. BISHOP WHITE OF PENN., by the Rev. S. R. Colladay. 10c.
11. BISHOP HEBER IN INDIA. 10 oeats.
12. BISHOP BERKELEY, by Edtvjn B> Woodruff. 10 cents.
IS. BISHOP AUER OF (JAPE PALMASl by M. T. BmeViy. lOo.
14. ST. ALBAN, by The Editor of "Cantica Sanctorum"; and ST.
AUGUSTINE, by Katherine Frances Jackson. 10 cents.
15. BISHOP FIELD OF NEWFOUNDLAND, by Julia C. Emery. 10
cents.
16. BISHOP PHILANDER CHASE, a sketch by his granddaughter.
10 cents.
17. ST. PATRICK, by the Rev. Walker Gwynnb. 10 cents.
18. PILKINGTON OF UGANDA, with map, compiled by C. B. B. lOo.
19. EARLY MARTYRS OF JAPAN, by P. O. Yamaoata. 10 cenU.
21. QUEEN BERTHA OF KENT, by Edith M. Chase. 10 cents.
22. GENERAL GORDON, by the Rev. Henry W. Little. 10 cents
23. BIVOUACING IN THE BOLAN PASS, by the Rev. A. R. Mao-
duff. M. a., Dom. Chaplain of the late Lord Bishop of Lahore.
24. DR. ARTHUR NEVE OF KASHMIR, by the Rev. A; R. Macduff
25. A NEW SIR LANCELOT, by Julia C. Emery. 10 cents.
28. SOME PIONEER MISSIONARIES OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY. 10 cents.

27. BISHOP MAPLES, by Katherinb F. Jackson. 10 cents.
28. THE FIRST FOREIGN MISSIONARY OF THE AMERICAN
CHURCH. 10 cents.
29. BISHOP CROWTHER, by Mrs. J. D. Mohhibon. 10 cents.
31, 32. MODERN CRUSADERS, by the Misses Jackson. Parts I and II,
20 cents.
33. ST. NINIAN, by Rev. James Gammack, LL. D., and St. FINNIAN
by R. B. BucKHAM. 10 cents.
34. GOOD KING WENCESLAS (a Christmas pantomime). 10 cents.
35. PIONEER WORKERS IN KIUKIANG. CHINA. 10 cents.
36. BISHOPS OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH MISSIONS IN CHINA
15 cents.
37. ST. NOTBURGA. 10 cents.
38. THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE, An Easter Play, by Juliana
Conovbr. 10 cents.
89. SOME RECENT MARTYRS.
43. NOTES ON AFRICAN MISSIONS. To be used in connection with
Anglican Church Missions in Africa. 10 cents.
44. A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF AFRICA, by Sarah C. Woodward. 25 cts.
45. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. A Xmas Play for a Sunday School or
Missionary Society Festival.
$1.00 Subscribers will each receive a copy of 12 numbers, as issued.

The Kingdom Qrowlng. A series of IS lessons on the Missions ot the
American Church, by the Rev. Lester Bradner, Jr., Ph. D. 25
cents. Extra Leaflet copies of the questions on the lessons, 10 cents.
Twice Around the World, by Mrs. A. T. Twing, 250 pages and 100 illus
trations. Paper 25 cents, cloth 50 cents net.
The Japan Mission of the American Church, by Rev. R. W. Andrews of
Missionary District of Tokyo. 13 illustrations, 150 pages. Cloth
75 cents, paper 50 cents.
The Church's Mission to the Mountaineers of the South, by Archdea
cons of Va., West Va., Lexington and Asheville, and the Rev. S. C.
Hughson, O. H. C. of Sewanee, Tenn., compiled by the Rev. Walter
Hughson.
Anglican Church Missions in Africa. 190 pp., 14 illustrations, 10 maps,
tables and chronology for the use of students. Price 60 cents.
Postage 8 cents.
Queationa on "Anglican Church Misaiona in Africa.*' Six Leaaona. 5 centa.
The Charchman's Supplement to the Upward Path. Part I. For Mission
Study Classes, by Rev. Wm. E. Gardner, Secretary of the 1st Depart
ment. Part II. For the Junior Auxiliary, by Miss Lucy C. Sturgis and
Miss Grace Hutchins. 166 pp. 35 cents.
Fart II by itself, under tbe title
"The Pickaninnies' Progress." 15 cents.
Thia atudy Courae waa uaed at the Cambridge Summer Conference, 1910,
and for two of the Miaaion Claaaea at Cincinnati, in October, 1910.
The Conversion of Mormonism by Geokob Townshend. 26 cents.

The Missionary Leaflet. t° "S|*'*„*ef 'Vri^^S^i
Schools and Missionary classes. Single number, post-paid, 3 cents. Spe
cial discounts on large orders.
Series 1. The Missionary Chain in Both Primary and Junior Grades
I. The Missionary Chain.
II. What is Missionary Work?
III. Founding of the Church in Our Land.
IV. Growth of the Church in the United States.
V. Our Indian Missions.
VI. Our Missions to the Colored People.

VII. Our Mission in Liberia.
VIIL Our Mission in China.
IX. Our Mission in Japan.
X. Church Schools in the Mission Field.
XI. Church Hospitals in the Mission Field.
XII. City Missions.
Thia aet in pamphlet or leaflet a in twelve numbera of either grade. 15
cents. Ten or more aeta of the leafleta to one addreaa, 10 cents each.

Series II. Junior Grade. — The Missionary Districts.
Reviaed Edition in preparation.
Series III. Junior Grade. — Missions of the Church of England.
New South Wales— Part I.
Norfolk Island.
New South Wales— Part II.
Sierra Leone.
West Equatorial Africa.
The West Indies— Part I,
Mauritius.
The West Indies— Part II.
Corea.Singapore, Labuan ana Sara
wak.
each, 25 centa

1. Beginnings of Modern Missions. 11.
2. Uganda. 12.
3. Some Missions in Canada. 13.
4. South Africa. 14.
5. Early Missions in India. 15.
6. India and Ceylon. 16.
7. New Zealand. 17.
8. Madagascar. 18.
9. Zanzibar and Likoma — Part 19.
I. 20.
10. Zansibar and Likoma — Part
IL The Set, one copy

1. Brasil 3 cents.

Series IV. Junior Grade.

Introductory Series.
1. The Beginnings.

Senior Grade. — The Conversion of the World.

Conversion of Europe.
The (Conversion of America.

4. Conversion of Asia.

Part I.
Part II.
Part III.
Part IV.
Part V.
Part I.
Part II.
" " Part III.
" " Part IV.
Conversion of Australasia. Part I

5. Conversion of Africa.

6.

Part I. To the Revolution.
Part II. The United States.
Part III. Canada.
Assyria.
India. China.
Japan.Corea, Formosa, the Philippines,
Northern Africa.
West Africa and Liberia.
South Africa with Supplement
East Equatorial Africa.
Australia.

Part II. New Zealand.
Part III. Melanesia.
This Set, one copy each, in pamphlet 25 centa, in leaflet form 20 cents.

Series V. — Heroes In the Mission Field.
Biograplyr, with numerous additional extracts from other authorities
on the subject of the story and with maps, portraits and various il
lustrations in one envelope designed for mounting on cards or in
blank-books. 15 centa each.
1. (Jeorge Lawrence PilkingtonNo. 7. James Chalmers of New

No.
No. 2.
No. 3.
No. 4.
No. 6.
No. 6.

of Uganda.
John Selwyn of Melanesia.
John Horden of Moosenee.
Chinese Gordon.
The Lawrences of India.
John G. Paton of the New
Hebrides.

Guinea.
No. 8. Charles H. Brent, Bishop of
the Philippines.
No. 9. George Selwyn of New Zea
land.

Thb Picture Sbribs.
Teacher's Helps for the "Kingdom Growing" and for the "Missionary
Chain," each In one envelope as in Series V above. 25 cents each.
1. The Missionary Chain. 6. Missions in Alaska. Extra No.
2. The^ Church in America. in 5 envelopes for the use of
3. Indian Missions. the Interdiooesan Study
4. Missions to the White Races in Course, 76 cents. See below,
our Land. "Special Series."
S, Missions to the Colored People. 7. Missions in Porto Rioo.
8. Missions in Cuba.
0. Missions in the Philippines.
10. Missions in Africa.

Spbcial Sbribb.
Six Lessons on Alaska recommended by the Diocesan Officers' Meeting in
Boston, October 11, 1904, for a United Study (Course for the Auxiliary
Branches for Lent, 1905. S cents.
Five Helps for the Alaska Lessons. (Picture Series No. 6.) 15 cents each,
the Set, 75 cents.
NOTE: For material for lesson VI consult last 12 Nos. of Spirit of Missions
and latest official Report.
Six Lessons and five Helps on Alaska (Leader edition complete) in pam
phlet, 50 cents.
Five Lessons — Some Strategic Points in the Home Field; being the Inter-
diocesan Course, Lent, 1906. In tliree envelopes for general class use,
or one pamphlet (Leader's edition), complete, 25 cents. Extra sets
of Six Leaflets for Class use. Method B, 5 cents a dozen. Selected
papers from the above for advanced class study (Method A),
jiamphlet, IS cents.
Six Lessons on Japan,^ topics only, with references. 6 cents.
Six Lessons on China, in leaflets or boimd in paper with supplementary ma
terial 35 cents. With Bishops of the Am. Mission and other publi
cations on this list bearing on Church work in China. 81.00.
Three Lectures on Alaska
The Eldorado of the North.
In the Heart of the Alaskan Gold Field.
Down the Yukon to the Arctic Circle.
10 cents each. 25 cents for the three.
A Portfolio of some 60 loose page prints of ALASKA and its Missions.
75 cents.
Three Indian Lectures
I. Indian Neighbors in our Eastern States.
II. Across the Plains with the Red Man.
III. The Indians of the Rockies and the Pacific.
10 cents each. 25 cents for the three.
104 Prints to illustrate these Indian Lectures. SI. 00.
The above SIX LECTURES in one pamphlet under the general title
Journeylngs with our Missionaries through Alaska and the Indian
Lands of the United States. Price 40 cents.

Instruction Books for Sunday Schools
by the late Mrs. Chas. H. Smith, being part of her legacy to the Publishing
Company.
The Church Catechism, Illustrated and Explained. Price 10 cents.
136th thousand.!
Christ In the Gospels and the Church. Beautifully bound. Price 25 cents.
Christ In Type and Prophecy. For young children. Old Testament series.
With Illustrations. Cloth back, paper boards. 173 pp. 15 cents.
The Catechism of the Bible. For beginners. Old Testament Series. New
Testament. Each 5 cents.

Outlines of Church History. With Questions and Suggestions for Illus
tration. For the Use of Bible Classes. Boimd in white cloth.
Illuminated. 141 pp. Price 35 cents.
Thoughts for Lent. 35 cents.
Mrs. Smith's books can also be obtained from Edwin S. Gorham, Publisher.
37 East 28th St., New York.

Special reduction to Sunday Schools and Societies on wholesale orders.
To save charge for collecting, kindly make checgues payable on Hartford,
Ifsa York, Boston or Philadelphia, or send postal order to
MISS EDITH BEACH, Asst. Treas.
21 1 State Street, Hartford, Conn.

2860

kip''

;.^l- =' ¦ '

A 1

p"
r
; 't 1 '
iiy^iSf '.«,*
i'l^!
I. (
i H
if
I Qt'
i ¦M'M