Concise History of New Mexico

The Old Santa Fe Trail

By COLONEL HENRY INMAN

CHAPTER XVIII.
MAXWELL'S RANCH.

One of the most interesting and picturesque regions of all New Mexico
is the immense tract of nearly two million acres known as Maxwell's
Ranch, through which the Old Trail ran, and the title to which was
some years since determined by the Supreme Court of the United States
in favour of an alien company.[59] Dead long ago, Maxwell belonged
to a generation and a class almost completely extinct, and the like
of which will, in all probability, never be seen again; for there
is no more frontier to develop them.

Several years prior to the acquisition of the territory by the
United States, the immense tract comprised in the geographical limits
of the ranch was granted to Carlos Beaubien and Guadalupe Miranda,
both citizens of the province of New Mexico, and agents of the
American Fur Company. Attached to the company as an employer,
a trapper, and hunter, was Lucien B. Maxwell, an Illinoisan by birth,
who married a daughter of Beaubien. After the death of the latter
Maxwell purchased all the interest of the joint proprietor, Miranda,
and that of the heirs of Beaubien, thus at once becoming the largest
landowner in the United States.

At the zenith of his influence and wealth, during the War of the
Rebellion, when New Mexico was isolated and almost independent of
care or thought by the government at Washington, he lived in a
sort of barbaric splendour, akin to that of the nobles of England
at the time of the Norman conquest.

The thousands of arable acres comprised in the many fertile valleys
of his immense estate were farmed in a primitive, feudal sort of way,
by native Mexicans principally, under the system of peonage then
existing in the Territory. He employed about five hundred men, and
they were as much his thralls as were Gurth and Wamba of Cedric of
Rotherwood, only they wore no engraved collars around their necks
bearing their names and that of their master. Maxwell was not a
hard governor, and his people really loved him, as he was ever their
friend and adviser.

His house was a palace when compared with the prevailing style of
architecture in that country, and cost an immense sum of money.
It was large and roomy, purely American in its construction, but the
manner of conducting it was strictly Mexican, varying between the
customs of the higher and lower classes of that curious people.

Some of its apartments were elaborately furnished, others devoid of
everything except a table for card-playing and a game's complement
of chairs. The principal room, an extended rectangular affair,
which might properly have been termed the Baronial Hall, was almost
bare except for a few chairs, a couple of tables, and an antiquated
bureau. There Maxwell received his friends, transacted business
with his vassals, and held high carnival at times.

I have slept on its hardwood floor, rolled up in my blanket, with
the mighty men of the Ute nation lying heads and points all around me,
as close as they could possibly crowd, after a day's fatiguing hunt
in the mountains. I have sat there in the long winter evenings,
when the great room was lighted only by the cheerful blaze of the
crackling logs roaring up the huge throats of its two fireplaces
built diagonally across opposite corners, watching Maxwell, Kit Carson,
and half a dozen chiefs silently interchange ideas in the wonderful
sign language, until the glimmer of Aurora announced the advent of
another day. But not a sound had been uttered during the protracted
hours, save an occasional grunt of satisfaction on the part of the
Indians, or when we white men exchanged a sentence.

Frequently Maxwell and Carson would play the game of seven-up for
hours at a time, seated at one of the tables. Kit was usually the
victor, for he was the greatest expert in that old and popular
pastime I have ever met. Maxwell was an inveterate gambler, but
not by any means in a professional sense; he indulged in the hazard
of the cards simply for the amusement it afforded him in his rough
life of ease, and he could very well afford the losses which the
pleasure sometimes entailed. His special penchant, however, was
betting on a horse race, and his own stud comprised some of the
fleetest animals in the Territory. Had he lived in England he might
have ruled the turf, but many jobs were put up on him by unscrupulous
jockeys, by which he was outrageously defrauded of immense sums.

He was fond of cards, as I have said, both of the purely American
game of poker, and also of old sledge, but rarely played except with
personal friends, and never without stakes. He always exacted the
last cent he had won, though the next morning, perhaps, he would
present or loan his unsuccessful opponent of the night before five
hundred or a thousand dollars, if he needed it; an immensely greater
sum, in all probability, than had been gained in the game.

The kitchen and dining-rooms of his princely establishment were
detached from the main residence. There was one of the latter for
the male portion of his retinue and guests of that sex, and another
for the female, as, in accordance with the severe, and to us strange,
Mexican etiquette, men rarely saw a woman about the premises, though
there were many. Only the quick rustle of a skirt, or a hurried view
of a reboso, as its wearer flashed for an instant before some window
or half-open door, told of their presence.

The greater portion of his table-service was solid silver, and at
his hospitable board there were rarely any vacant chairs. Covers
were laid daily for about thirty persons; for he had always many
guests, invited or forced upon him in consequence of his proverbial
munificence, or by the peculiar location of his manor-house which
stood upon a magnificently shaded plateau at the foot of mighty
mountains, a short distance from a ford on the Old Trail. As there
were no bridges over the uncertain streams of the great overland
route in those days, the ponderous Concord coaches, with their
ever-full burden of passengers, were frequently water-bound, and
Maxwell's the only asylum from the storm and flood; consequently
he entertained many.

At all times, and in all seasons, the group of buildings, houses,
stables, mill, store, and their surrounding grounds, were a constant
resort and loafing-place of Indians. From the superannuated chiefs,
who revelled lazily during the sunny hours in the shady peacefulness
of the broad porches; the young men of the tribe, who gazed with
covetous eyes upon the sleek-skinned, blooded colts sporting in the
spacious corrals; the squaws, fascinated by the gaudy calicoes,
bright ribbons, and glittering strings of beads on the counters
or shelves of the large store, to the half-naked, chubby little
pappooses around the kitchen doors, waiting with expectant mouths
for some delicious morsel of refuse to be thrown to them--all assumed,
in bearing and manner, a vested right of proprietorship in their
agreeable environment.

To this motley group, always under his feet, as it were, Maxwell was
ever passively gracious, although they were battening in idleness
on his prodigal bounty from year to year.

His retinue of servants, necessarily large, was made up of a
heterogeneous mixture of Indians, Mexicans, and half-breeds.
The kitchens were presided over by dusky maidens under the tutelage
of experienced old crones, and its precincts were sacred to them;
but the dining-rooms were forbidden to women during the hours of
meals, which were served by boys.

Maxwell was rarely, as far as my observation extended, without a
large amount of money in his possession. He had no safe, however,
his only place of temporary deposit for the accumulated cash being
the bottom drawer of the old bureau in the large room to which I
have referred, which was the most antiquated concern of common pine
imaginable. There were only two other drawers in this old-fashioned
piece of furniture, and neither of them possessed a lock. The third,
or lower, the one that contained the money, did, but it was absolutely
worthless, being one of the cheapest pattern and affording not the
slightest security; besides, the drawers above it could be pulled out,
exposing the treasure immediately beneath to the cupidity of any one.

I have frequently seen as much as thirty thousand dollars--gold,
silver, greenbacks, and government checks--at one time in that novel
depository. Occasionally these large sums remained there for several
days, yet there was never any extra precaution taken to prevent its
abstraction; doors were always open and the room free of access to
every one, as usual.

I once suggested to Maxwell the propriety of purchasing a safe for
the better security of his money, but he only smiled, while a strange,
resolute look flashed from his dark eyes, as he said: "God help the
man who attempted to rob me and I knew him!"

The sources of his wealth were his cattle, sheep, and the products
of his area of cultivated acres--barley, oats, and corn principally--
which he disposed of to the quartermaster and commissary departments
of the army, in the large military district of New Mexico.
His wool-clip must have been enormous, too; but I doubt whether he
could have told the number of animals that furnished it or the
aggregate of his vast herds. He had a thousand horses, ten thousand
cattle, and forty thousand sheep at the time I knew him well,
according to the best estimates of his Mexican relatives.

He also possessed a large and perfectly appointed gristmill, which
was a great source of revenue, for wheat was one of the staple crops
of his many farms.

Maxwell was fond of travelling all over the Territory, his equipages
comprising everything in the shape of a vehicle, through all their
varieties, from the most plainly constructed buckboard to the
lumbering, but comfortable and expensive, Concord coach, mounted on
thorough braces instead of springs, and drawn by four or six horses.
He was perfectly reckless in his driving, dashing through streams,
over irrigating ditches, stones, and stumps like a veritable Jehu,
regardless of consequences, but, as is usually the fortune of such
precipitate horsemen, rarely coming to grief.

The headquarters of the Ute agency were established at Maxwell's Ranch
in early days, and the government detailed a company of cavalry to
camp there, more, however, to impress the plains tribes who roamed
along the Old Trail east of the Raton Range, than for any effect on
the Utes, whom Maxwell could always control, and who regarded him
as a father.

On the 4th of July, 1867, Maxwell, who owned an antiquated and rusty
six-pound field howitzer, suggested to the captain of the troop
stationed there the propriety of celebrating the day. So the old
piece was dragged from its place under a clump of elms, where it had
been hidden in the grass and weeds ever since the Mexican War probably,
and brought near the house. The captain and Maxwell acted the rôle
of gunners, the former at the muzzle, the latter at the breech;
the discharge was premature, blowing out the captain's eye and taking
off his arm, while Maxwell escaped with a shattered thumb. As soon
as the accident occurred, a sergeant was despatched to Fort Union on
one of the fastest horses on the ranch, the faithful animal falling
dead the moment he stopped in front of the surgeon's quarters, having
made the journey of fifty-five miles in little more than four hours.

The surgeon left the post immediately, arriving at Maxwell's late that
night, but in time to save the officer's life, after which he dressed
Maxwell's apparently inconsiderable wound. In a few days, however,
the thumb grew angry-looking; it would not yield to the doctor's
careful treatment, so he reluctantly decided that amputation was
necessary. After an operation was determined upon, I prevailed upon
Maxwell to come to the fort and remain with me, inviting Kit Carson
at the same time, that he might assist in catering to the amusement
of my suffering guest. Maxwell and Carson arrived at my quarters
late in the day, after a tedious ride in the big coach, and the
surgeon, in order to allow a prolonged rest on account of Maxwell's
feverish condition, postponed the operation until the following evening.

The next night, as soon as it grew dark--we waited for coolness,
as the days were excessively hot--the necessary preliminaries were
arranged, and when everything was ready the surgeon commenced.
Maxwell declined the anaesthetic prepared for him, and sitting in a
common office chair put out his hand, while Carson and myself stood
on opposite sides, each holding an ordinary kerosene lamp. In a few
seconds the operation was concluded, and after the silver-wire
ligatures were twisted in their places, I offered Maxwell, who had
not as yet permitted a single sigh to escape his lips, half a
tumblerful of whiskey; but before I had fairly put it to his mouth,
he fell over, having fainted dead away, while great beads of
perspiration stood on his forehead, indicative of the pain he had
suffered, as the amputation of the thumb, the surgeon told us then,
was as bad as that of a leg.

He returned to his ranch as soon as the surgeon pronounced him well,
and Carson to his home in Taos. I saw the latter but once more at
Maxwell's; but he was en route to visit me at Fort Harker, in Kansas,
when he was taken ill at Fort Lyon, where he died.

A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

How true it now seems to me, as the recollections of my boyish days,
when I read of the exploits of Kit Carson, crowd upon my memory!
I firmly believed him to be at least ten feet tall, carrying a rifle
so heavy that, like Bruce's sword, it required two men to lift it.
I imagined he drank out of nothing smaller than a river, and picked
the carcass of a whole buffalo as easily as a lady does the wing of
a quail. Ten years later I made the acquaintance of the foremost
frontiersman, and found him a delicate, reticent, under-sized,
wiry man, as perfectly the opposite of the type my childish brain
had created as it is possible to conceive.

At Fort Union our mail arrived every morning by coach over the Trail,
generally pulling up at the sutler's store, whose proprietor was
postmaster, about daylight. While Maxwell and Kit were my guests,
I sauntered down after breakfast one morning to get my mail, and
while waiting for the letters to be distributed, happened to glance
at some papers lying on the counter, among which I saw a new periodical
--the _Day's Doings_, I think it was--that had a full-page illustration
of a scene in a forest. In the foreground stood a gigantic figure
dressed in the traditional buckskin; on one arm rested an immense
rifle; his other arm was around the waist of the conventional female
of such sensational journals, while in front, lying prone upon the
ground, were half a dozen Indians, evidently slain by the singular
hero in defending the impossibly attired female. The legend related
how all this had been effected by the famous Kit Carson. I purchased
the paper, returned with it to my room, and after showing it to
several officers who had called upon Maxwell, I handed it to Kit.
He wiped his spectacles, studied the picture intently for a few
seconds, turned round, and said: "Gentlemen, that thar may be true,
but I hain't got no recollection of it."

I passed a delightful two weeks with Maxwell, late in the summer of
1867, at the time that the excitement over the discovery of gold on
his ranch had just commenced, and adventurers were beginning to
congregate in the hills and gulches from everywhere. The discovery
of the precious metal on his estate was the first cause of his
financial embarrassment. It was the ruin also of many other prominent
men in New Mexico, who expended their entire fortune in the construction
of an immense ditch, forty miles in length--from the Little Canadian
or Red River--to supply the placer diggings in the Moreno valley with
water, when the melted snow of Old Baldy range had exhausted itself
in the late summer. The scheme was a stupendous failure; its ruins
may be seen to-day in the deserted valleys, a monument to man's
engineering skill, but the wreck of his hopes.

For some years previous to the discovery of gold in the mountains and
gulches of Maxwell's Ranch, it was known that copper existed in the
region; several shafts had been sunk and tunnels driven in various
places, and gold had been found from time to time, but was kept a
secret for many months. Its presence was at last revealed to Maxwell
by a party of his own miners, who were boring into the heart of
Old Baldy for a copper lead that had cropped out and was then lost.

Of course, to keep the knowledge of the discovery of gold from the
world is an impossibility; such was the case in this instance, and
soon commenced that squatter immigration out of which, after the
ranch was sold and Maxwell died, grew that litigation which has
resulted in favour of the company who purchased from or through the
first owners after Maxwell's death.

He was a representative man of the border of the same class as his
compeers--"wild-civilized men," to borrow an expressive term from
John Burroughs--of strong local attachments, and overflowing with the
milk of human kindness. To such as he there was an unconquerable
infatuation in life on the remote plains and in the solitude of the
mountains. There was never anything of the desperado in their
character, while the adventurers who at times have made the far West
infamous, since the advent of the railroad, were bad men originally.

Occasionally such men turn up everywhere, and become a terror to
the community, but they are always wound up sooner or later; they
die with their boots on; Western graveyards are full of them.

Maxwell, under contract with the Interior Department, furnished
live beeves to the Ute nation, the issue of which was made weekly
from his own vast herds. The cattle, as wild as those from the
Texas prairies, were driven by his herders into an immense enclosed
field, and there turned loose to be slaughtered by the savages.

Once when at the ranch I told Maxwell I should like to have a horse
to witness the novel sight. He immediately ordered a Mexican groom
to procure one; but I did not see the peculiar smile that lighted up
his face, as he whispered something to the man which I did not catch.
Presently the groom returned leading a magnificent gray, which I
mounted, Maxwell suggesting that I should ride down to the large
field and wait there until the herd arrived. I entered the great
corral, patting my horse on the neck now and then, to make him
familiar with my touch, and attempted to converse with some of the
chiefs, who were dressed in their best, painted as if for the
war-path, gaily bedecked with feathers and armed with rifles and
gaudily appointed bows and arrows; but I did not succeed very well
in drawing them from their normal reticence. The squaws, a hundred
of them, were sitting on the ground, their knives in hand ready for
the labour which is the fate of their sex in all savage tribes,
while their lords' portion of the impending business was to end with
the more manly efforts of the chase.

Suddenly a great cloud of dust rose on the trail from the mountains,
and on came the maddened animals, fairly shaking the earth with
their mighty tread. As soon as the gate was closed behind them,
and uttering a characteristic yell that was blood-curdling in its
ferocity, the Indians charged upon the now doubly frightened herd,
and commenced to discharge their rifles, regardless of the presence
of any one but themselves. My horse became paralyzed for an instant
and stood poised on his hind legs, like the steed represented in
that old lithographic print of Napoleon crossing the Alps; then taking
the bit in his teeth, he rushed aimlessly into the midst of the
flying herd, while the bullets from the guns of the excited savages
rained around my head. I had always boasted of my equestrian
accomplishments--I was never thrown but once in my life, and that was
years afterward--but in this instance it taxed all my powers to keep
my seat. In less than twenty minutes the last beef had fallen; and
the warriors, inflated with the pride of their achievement, rode
silently out of the field, leaving the squaws to cut up and carry
away the meat to their lodges, more than three miles distant, which
they soon accomplished, to the last quivering morsel.

As I rode leisurely back to the house, I saw Maxwell and Kit standing
on the broad porch, their sides actually shaking with laughter at
my discomfiture, they having been watching me from the very moment
the herd entered the corral. It appeared that the horse Maxwell
ordered the groom to bring me was a recent importation from St. Louis,
had never before seen an Indian, and was as unused to the prairies
and mountains as a street-car mule. Kit said that my mount reminded
him of one that his antagonist in a duel rode a great many years ago
when he was young. If the animal had not been such "a fourth-of-July"
brute, his opponent would in all probability have finished him, as he
was a splendid shot; but Kit fortunately escaped, the bullet merely
grazing him under the ear, leaving a scar which he then showed me.

One night Kit Carson, Maxwell, and I were up in the Raton Mountains
above the Old Trail, and having lingered too long, were caught above
the clouds against our will, darkness having overtaken us before we
were ready to descend into the valley. It was dangerous to undertake
the trip over such a precipitous and rocky trail, so we were compelled
to make the best of our situation. It was awfully cold, and as we
had brought no blankets, we dared not go to sleep for fear our fire
might go out, and we should freeze. We therefore determined to make
a night of it by telling yarns, smoking our pipes, and walking around
at times. After sitting awhile, Maxwell pointed toward the Spanish
Peaks, whose snow-white tops cast a diffused light in the heavens
above them, and remarked that in the deep canyon which separates them,
he had had one of the "closest calls" of his life, willingly complying
when I asked him to tell us the story.

"It was in 1847. I came down from Taos with a party to go to the
Cimarron crossing of the Santa Fe Trail to pick up a large herd of
horses for the United States Quartermaster's Department. We succeeded
in gathering about a hundred and started back with them, letting
them graze slowly along, as we were in no hurry. When we arrived
at the foot-hills north of Bent's Fort, we came suddenly upon the
trail of a large war-band of Utes, none of whom we saw, but from
subsequent developments the savages must have discovered us days
before we reached the mountains. I knew we were not strong enough
to cope with the whole Ute nation, and concluded the best thing for
us to do under the ticklish circumstances was to make a detour,
and put them off our trail. So we turned abruptly down the Arkansas,
intending to try and get to Taos in that direction, more than one
hundred and fifty miles around. It appeared afterward that the
Indians had been following us all the way. When we found this out,
some of the men believed they were another party, and not the same
whose trail we came upon when we turned down the river, but I always
insisted they were. When we arrived within a few days' drive of Taos,
we were ambushed in one of the narrow passes of the range, and had
the bloodiest fight with the Utes on record. There were thirteen
of us, all told, and two little children whom we were escorting to
their friends at Taos, having received them at the Cimarron crossing.

"While we were quietly taking our breakfast one morning, and getting
ready to pull out for the day's march, perfectly unsuspicious of the
proximity of any Indians, they dashed in upon us, and in less than
a minute stampeded all our stock--loose animals as well as those we
were riding. While part of the savages were employed in running off
the animals, fifty of their most noted warriors, splendidly mounted
and horribly painted, rushed into the camp, around the fire of which
the men and the little children were peacefully sitting, and,
discharging their guns as they rode up, killed one man and wounded
another.

"Terribly surprised as we were, it did not turn the heads of the old
mountaineers, and I immediately told them to make a break for a clump
of timber near by, and that we would fight them as long as one of us
could stand up. There we fought and fought against fearful odds,
until all were wounded except two. The little children were captured
at the beginning of the trouble and carried off at once. After a
while the savages got tired of the hard work, and, as is frequently
the case, went away of their own free will; but they left us in a
terrible plight. All were sore, stiff, and weak from their many wounds;
on foot, and without any food or ammunition to procure game with,
having exhausted our supply in the awfully unequal battle; besides,
we were miles from home, with every prospect of starving to death.

"We could not remain where we were, so as soon as darkness came on,
we started out to walk to some settlement. We dared not show
ourselves by daylight, and all through the long hours when the sun
was up, we were obliged to hide in the brush and ravines until night
overtook us again, and we could start on our painful march.

"We had absolutely nothing to eat, and our wounds began to fester,
so that we could hardly move at all. We should undoubtedly have
perished, if, on the third day, a band of friendly Indians of another
tribe had not gone to Taos and reported the fight to the commanding
officer of the troops there. These Indians had heard of our trouble
with the Utes, and knowing how strong they were, and our weakness,
surmised our condition, and so hastened to convey the bad news.

"A company of dragoons was immediately sent to our rescue, under the
guidance of Dick Wooton, who was and has ever been a warm personal
friend of mine. They came upon us about forty miles from Taos, and
never were we more surprised; we had become so starved and emaciated
that we had abandoned all hope of escaping what seemed to be our
inevitable fate.

"When the troops found us, we had only a few rags, our clothes having
been completely stripped from our bodies while struggling through
the heavy underbrush on our trail, and we were so far exhausted that
we could not stand on our feet. One more day, and we would have been
laid out.

"The little children were, fortunately, saved from the horror of
that terrible march after the fight, as the Indians carried them to
their winter camp, where, if not absolutely happy, they were under
shelter and fed; escaping the starvation which would certainly have
been their fate if they had remained with us. They were eventually
ransomed for a cash payment by the government, and altogether had not
been very harshly treated."