Centennial (65 page)

Commencing at the Red Butte, or the place where the road leaves the north fork of the Platte River; thence up the north fork of the Platte River to its source; thence along the main range of the Rocky Mountains to the headwaters of the Arkansas River; thence down the Arkansas River to the crossing of the Santa Fe road; thence in a northwesterly direction to the forks of the Platte River, and thence tip the Platte River to the place of beginning.

This meant that 6400 Indians now owned in perpetuity some ninety thousand square miles, or more than fifty-seven million acres. Thus each Indian received fourteen square miles, or about thirty-six thousand acres for a family of four. In later years this Cheyenne-Arapaho allocation would support more than two million white men, who because they understood agriculture and manufacturing, would earn from it a good living.
(
See Map 07 – Indian Lands After the Treaty of 1851
)

Why was so much potentially valuable land given to the two tribes in 1851? Simply because both groups involved in making the treaty had false understandings of the land they were dealing with. Still prisoners of the mistaken concept promulgated by Major Mercy, whites believed the plains to be a desert which could not be farmed; Indians were convinced they were useful only for the buffalo. As always, when the significance of the natural resource is misunderstood, any land settlement must end in disaster.

Only two men refused to lose their senses in the general euphoria that marked the final days of treaty-making. The first was Chief Broken Thumb, who knew that no white man could possibly honor a treaty that surrendered lands so spacious. “Go home in peace,” he told his young braves sardonically, “but prepare for war. The treaty will soon be broken and soldiers will march out from the forts we have given them.” Seeking Lost Eagle, he called for Jake Pasquinel to translate, and warned, “Go to Washington, little brother, and humble yourself before the Great White Father, but as you go, remember that when the time comes for you to collect the promised money, there will be a different father, and when you petition him for your annuity, he will cry, ‘Who is this fool, Lost Eagle? Never saw him before.’ And there will be no buffalo and no money and no peace, and on that day you will follow me to war. As this campground now gives off a mighty stench from all of us gathered here, so, too, will this treaty.”

The other cynic was Jake Pasquinel, for when Broken Thumb finished speaking, he said on his own, “Lost Eagle, you are a great fool. When we came here Captain Ketchum promised us two things. Food and presents. Do we have either? You foolish man, they have broken your treaty before it even started.”

Lost Eagle did not know how to answer his critics. He, more than any other Cheyenne or Arapaho, had persuaded the two tribes to accept the new order, but even before the smoke had left the calumet, the first promises seemed to be broken. Still he had faith, and he said, “If a man like Major Mercy breaks his word, there is no meaning in the world. We will get our presents.”

And he moved among all the tribesmen, advising them to stay at Fort Laramie a few days longer. “The presents will be here. Major Mercy said so,” and then he went to the major and said, “Broken Thumb and the others are growing desperate. They are hungry,” and Mercy promised him, “The food will come.”

And then, after three days of miserable waiting, a scout came roaring in from the east with tremendous news: “Twenty-seven wagons! Half a day’s journey to the east!”

An escort of two thousand Indians fanned out across the plains, and when they saw the loaded wagons, their hubs dragging dust, a soaring hope rose in the hearts of all men, for this was a good omen.

It required the chiefs three days to unload the wagons and distribute the presents: tobacco, coffee so highly treasured, sugar, warm blankets from Baltimore, Green River knives, beads sewn on cardboard from Paris, dried beef, flour, jars of jam and preserves. Feasts were held at which Father De Smet said prayers and men ate till they were sick.

But the real gifts came on the final day! Then Captain Ketchum summoned the principal chiefs and told them, “The Great White Father in Washington loves his children, and when they have worked wisely with him, he gives them gifts which make them part of his family. To each of you chiefs who have signed the treaty he sends a uniform ... a full uniform of his army ... you are now all army officers.”

And from the bales Mr. Tutt broke forth a series of resplendent uniforms, complete with shoes, cap, sashes and swords. A captain’s uniform, “Better than mine,” Ketchum pointed out, went to each of the minor chiefs. For the major chiefs there were the starred uniforms of a brigadier general. And for Washakie of the Shoshone, Lost Eagle of the Arapaho and three others, there were the costly uniforms of major general, the epaulettes shimmering in gold.

At Captain Ketchum’s request, the chiefs donned the uniforms, and although some did not exactly fit, the new officers made a fine display, except that before they could line up for a dress review, an Oglala Sioux who had been sent south to scout for meat reported: “Buffalo on the South Platte!” and the newly commissioned officers dashed off toward Rattlesnake Buttes.

Levi Zendt followed them south at his own pace, satisfied that when they had made their kills they would bring the skins to Zendt’s Farm for trading. They did. But the profit that resulted caused no joy, for his attention was diverted by a letter from the east.

Lampeter, Penna.

The Five Zendts

Brother Levi,

I received your letter with the $12 to buy a Fordney gun, yours having been stolen, but there is nothing I can do to help you now, as God has seen fit to visit Lancaster and strike down the blasphemer who lusts after evil ways.

Four times our church directed Melchior Fordney either to marry the woman with which he was living in lust and four times he laughed at the elders. Four times too many for God
’s
patience.

So John Gaggerty, acting on behalf of God, took a broadax and went for sinner Fordney and chopped him down, severing his head, and then he went after the scarlet woman Mrs. Trippet and chopped her down too, slaying her in the scene of her sin. Thus does God revenge himself on the infidel.

I am ashamed to report that the courts in Lancaster saw fit to condemn that good man Haggerty for what he done and they hanged him in Lancaster jail. Many good people are outraged, but the courts in Lancaster often seem to do the work of the devil

Since Fordney is dead, I am applying your $12 against the
value of the two horses you stole from me. Your debt is now $88.

Your loving brother in God,

Mahlon Zendt

When Levi finished reading, he told Lucinda, “Michael Fordney was one of the best men I knew in Lancaster.” And as he compared the gunsmith with his own brothers, he became increasingly irritated. “Damnit,” he stormed. “I have four brothers back there, and you’d think Mahlon would tell me whether they were married or had children or what.”

“You never sent him news about yourself,” Lucinda teased.

“But I’m the one away from home. He didn’t even tell if Momma is still livin’,” and he thought of the farm and the trees and the little buildings in which he had made souse and smoked hams, and he was overcome with homesickness.

Then he laughed at himself and rose and walked around the table to kiss Lucinda. “What I really wanted to know, if I told the truth, is did he marry the Stoltzfus girl? The mean pig, he didn’t even tell me that.”

And suddenly the concerns of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, seemed far away. Here in the west the future of a great part of the nation was being determined, yet his petty-minded brothers knew nothing of it. “We can draft a good treaty,” Levi growled as he wadded up the letter, “but when those Lancaster lawyers James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens get through with it in Congress, it won’t amount to much.” He saw that treaties were made by men of vision like Major Mercy and administered by mean-spirited men like Mahlon Zendt, and he saw little likelihood that any good would come from this particular one.

He was right. When the treaty reached the United States Senate that body, without consulting the Indians, arbitrarily reduced the payments from fifty years to ten, then contemptuously refused to ratify the whole. It was rejected before it ever went into effect, and the Indians were left with no secure title to their land.

The man who destroyed even the residue of the treaty never realized what he was doing. In 1857 a thin, medium-sized drifter, thirty years old, haunted the waterfront at St. Louis, volunteering occasionally for odd jobs that developed along the levee. When entertainment boats were there he sometimes collected tickets, but more often he held horses for people visiting the boats or helped slaves unload shipments from Pittsburgh.

He was known as Spade Larkin, from his habit of carrying with him a short-handled miner’s spade, and it was said that he had already crossed the continent twice, once on his way to the gold fields in California empty-handed and once returning in the same condition except for the spade which he had bought in Sacramento. The spell of gold was upon him, for with his own eyes he had seen men no better prepared than he strike veins which had made them famous throughout California, and it was his determination to do the same when the next field opened.

He explained, “I seen it time and again. Them as got the gold were them as got there fust.” He had grown up on a farm in southern Ohio, to which he had no intention of returning. “They’s oney two places a man can live properly, St. Louis or San Francisco,” and of the two he preferred the former.

“The day is gonna come—you will live to see the day, all of you—when I step off’n a Missouri River steamer and tell the cabman, ‘Planters’ House,’ and I’ll have money like you never seen—because it’s out there, just waitin’ to be picked up ... if you know the right place to dig.

“Sure, I failed in California,” he often confessed. “Come home with fifty cents and a shovel. But I also come home with an idea. I know how to placer and I know how to dig. I carry this spade so when the next news breaks, I’m off. I got me a piece of paper that tells me where the next big strike is gonna be.” Here he would take from his pocket the oilskin pouch in which he carried his tobacco, and from it he would take a second pouch in which he carried a piece of cardboard onto which was pasted a well-worn clipping from the
Missouri Republican
of 1845:

Miss Lucinda is not only unusually attractive, with her dark flashing eyes, but she is famed throughout the west as the granddaughter and only heir of Chief Lame Beaver, the Arapaho hero who discovered a gold mine in the Rockies.

Spade was the least surprised man in St. Louis when in 1858 the extraordinary news flashed up and down the Mississippi valley: “Gold discovered in Nebraska Territory at Pikes Peak!” He left St. Louis that night, carrying only his Sacramento spade and a determination to be first at some new field.

He took a steamer to St. Joseph, now a thriving city to which railroads from the east were delivering hundreds of gold-seekers daily. Some had funds to purchase wagons on whose sides they painted “Pikes Peak or Bust,” and others could even employ guides to lead their large trains of horses laden with enough equipment for a year.

Larkin and seven men like him proposed to walk to the Rockies. They would ferry across the Missouri at St. Joe, ask directions to the Platte River and then walk the six hundred miles to the new gold fields. They formed a pitiful brigade, plodding along in the dust raised by the thousands who were riding west. They cadged food where they could, cut timber for other travelers who required it and helped wagons across the Big Blue, still a formidable barrier.

When they reached the Platte they lounged like beggars at Fort Kearny for a couple of days, picking up things that other travelers had disposed of because of overweight, and gearing themselves for the long hike west. They had only one bit of good fortune: because they were headed for the Rockies, they did not have to ford the South Platte. By staying close to its southern bank, they were sure to reach the gold fields.

In their passage they came naturally to Zendt’s Farm, where stones had been laid across the Platte so that travelers could cross over to buy their last stores for the final push to the mountains, and it was here that Spade Larkin, weighing less than a hundred and thirty pounds because of near-starvation on the route, struck his great fortune.

He and five other foot travelers who had persisted to this point limped exhausted into the crowded stockade, and with one glance Spade saw that this store must be making a mint of money. Quietly he discussed with two of his companions the possibility of robbing it, but there were so many armed Indians camped nearby, and so many gold-seekers crowding in that they abandoned the idea. The other five bought a few necessities for the last stage of their journey and passed on, but for some reason Larkin stayed behind, fascinated by the stockade and the tremendous business it was doing.

“You want to help with the travelers?” Levi Zendt asked the drifter.

“Yeah, yeah!” he said. “It’s gold I’m after, but I need a grubstake, too.” So he got the job of carrying goods across the river to those travelers who could not make it to the northern side, and one day as he was packing goods to ferry across the river he happened to hear Zendt refer to his pretty wife as Lucinda, and in a flash he comprehended that this woman, stuck away in a trading store on the South Platte, was the girl in the newspaper story! He quit what he was doing and moved inconspicuously to the outhouse along the riverbank. Secreting himself within its dark and odorous confines, he brought out his tobacco pouch and carefully unfolded the clipping. There were the heady details: “Miss Lucinda ... granddaughter and only heir of Chief Lame Beaver ... gold mine in the Rockies.”