Gold! (15 page)

By now the McNeil party from Lancaster had traveled more than two thousand miles of a none too hospitable continent. One of its members was dead, one had turned back, and many others stricken with terrible disease, in addition to the daily deprivations all of them went through. Worse, they were not yet to the gold fields. There was more wild and unfriendly country in front of them.

“Passing from Monterrey to Saltillo [across northern Mexico], we proceeded to Paras, finding the road skirted luxuriantly with the palmetto, prickly pear, and a plant called the King's Crown. We stayed three days at Paras, where we got our wagons repaired and the mules shod, and disposed of some of our loading in order to facilitate us on our journey. At this point the Comanche [sic] Indians became numerous.”

McNeil and company now had the misfortune of encountering the most skilled and fearsome cavalrymen of the Great Plains tribes, the Comanche. In pre-Colonial times the Comanche had been on offshoot of the Wyoming Shoshone. The Comanche moved south in stages, attacking and defeating other Plains tribes, until by 1800 they had a total population of seven thousand to ten thousand, many of whom were warriors.

The Comanche were different from the other Plains Indians. Rather than functioning as a true tribe with a
central group of traditions and elders, the Comanche were organized into twelve totally autonomous bands. Fitting in well with their nomadism, they had acquired horses from the Spanish in the seventeenth century and were one of the few Plains tribes to breed them.

Comanche bands raided frontier towns and settlements, killing whites and looking for booty and captives to ransom. Their raids took them as far south as northern Mexico, where the men from Lancaster ran into one of those twelve Comanche bands.

“Eight miles from that town before reaching it, nine of those [Comanche] Indians attacked a Mexican train, consisting of mules packed with silver, which thirty Mexicans were taking to Durango. We saw the transaction. The Indians left the silver on the ground and drove off the mules, as the Mexicans ran to us for protection. We tried to save a wounded Mexican, but seeing us hastily approaching; the Indians killed him [with lance and arrows] and rapidly fled,” leaving a mutilated, bleeding corpse in their wake.

“The inhabitants hailed us as if we were delivering angels. The Alcalde offered us $50 each, if we would lead the citizens against those Comanches. But, we concluded not to interfere as it might afterwards hinder our journey and endanger our lives, should those Indians hear of our interference.”

McNeil's prescience was proven that afternoon when the Mexicans had a battle with Comanches in which five Mexicans were killed and twelve wounded, while only one Comanche bit the dust, literally.

“He [the Comanche] was dragged into town at the end of a lasso, the other end being affixed to the horn of a saddle occupied by a vaunting Mexican.”

McNeil notes nothing special about this treatment of the hostile, but that is not surprising. While Lewis and Clark had tremendous respect for the Indians and showed it, subsequent generations had begun to systematically take the Indian land by force, resign them to poor reservations, and try to eliminate by gunfire the rest who wouldn't come to the treaty table.

Like all “foreign” enemies, the red Indians had become dehumanized by the now white majority spreading across the continent. The Gold Rush hastened this demise by decades because the Plains had to be made “safe” for white men to cross in search of California gold.

“Thence to Durango, where we arrived April 19th. It is one of the largest and oldest cities in Mexico, containing, as I thought, about 125,000 inhabitants. The houses look like prisons, the doors and windows being plentifully supplied with iron bars, as if to prevent the beaux from carrying off the ladies or the Indians from capturing the whole family. The churches are among the most splendid in the Roman Catholic world. On entering one of them I thought that I had prematurely got into California, so valuable and splendid were the ornaments glittering with gold and silver.”

On that Sunday afternoon, the shoemaker from Ohio attended his first bullfight. Anti-Catholic feeling was then high in America, and McNeil represents those
dominant feelings in some of his subsequent observations about the bullfight and its aftermath:

“I there saw, among the gayest of the gay, the [Catholic] bishop and his entire congregation. He had licensed the fight and was determined to see it out, believing that it is as good to act proudly in sin as it is to act humbly in religion, a very accommodating faith to those who worship
God
and
Devil
at the same time.

“About fifty wooden spears, saturated with brimstone, were pierced into different parts of his [the bull's] body. Those were ignited, when the bull in a perfect blaze, rushed furiously around the enclosure, still further persecuted by three Mexicans on horseback, who occasionally speared his flesh as they rode around and jumped over him, escaping sometimes almost miraculously from the horns of the animal, finally killing him by slow torture.

“In this way six bulls were killed, but not until three horses had met the same fate and one Mexican wounded. The bishop, who delighted in such barbarity, and led his congregation to admire the same brutality, professed to be a follower of that Jesus Christ who on earth would not willfully harm a fly or tread upon a feeble worm. The next morning, while passing along the street, we witnessed the following scene.

“Twelve soldiers on horseback, armed with muskets, pistols and cutlasses, a priest walking in the midst of them, while a musical band, in full operation, brought up the rear. The citizens, wherever the procession went, fell down upon their knees before his Heavenly Majesty. The soldiers motioned to us intimating that we had better pull
off our hats in honor of that cunning priest, who was thus showing publicly that the military power could at any time be brought out to sustain their interests.”

All of the McNeil party complied except the redoubtable Leverett, who, holding his hat on his head firmly with both hands, swore audibly that he would not take it off for any such purpose. The soldiers threatened to knock it off with their cutlasses, but thought twice about it when Leverett told the captain that he had obtained from the Mexican consul at New Orleans permission to travel through Mexico with his hat on and with a sound head!

It was at Durango that McNeil, thinking ahead, finally convinced the party to become more mobile, by selling their wagons and using pack mules to the Pacific Ocean and the journey north. That done, they headed the 160 miles west to the Mexican port of Mazatlán. Travelling [sic] on nothing more than a mule path, “I must here relate a laughable circumstance to relieve the tediousness of the journey.

“Fennifrock got sick at Durango with diarrhea. Previously, he had purchased some boiled beans, fully peppered and compressed into a small space. As he was sick, he could not eat the luscious mess, and gave me permission to eat some of them. I ate a small quantity, but Strode swallowed the rest at a meal.

“On Fennifrock enquiring who had eaten his stock so voraciously, Strode told him that I had eaten all of them
up
or rather
down
. Fennifrock attacked me for the deed, when I observed that I could soon prove my innocence.

As I expected, the huge meal of beans made Strode dreadfully sick. Murder will out, and beans will keep in, and extended Strode's stomach to the size of a small barrel.”

McNeil was not a man to take lying lightly, especially when someone questioned his word, even if the matter was about something as innocent as beans. Yet those beans represented more than a gaseous quantity of stomach-churning delight—they were a meal in a country where food was not plentiful. Any man accused of stealing food could not be trusted.

“Strode applied to me for medicine, but I told him I would give him none, and that he might die of the bean disorder for slandering me. However, on some one's applying a hot stone to his stomach [a queer folk remedy for upset stomach] he vomited out the whole of the beans before the eyes of Fennifrock, who was then convinced that I had spoken the solemn truth. Some have a hell upon earth for their misdeeds, but Strode had a young hell in his belly for his crime!”

Three nights out from Durango, Strode and Denman lost their mules. Obliged to foot it, “Denman and myself being on very good terms, I permitted him to ride my mule occasionally while I walked. On the third day I walked considerably ahead, and stopped to rest until the train reached me, when I found Strode riding my mule and Denman walking.” Denman had acceded to Strode's sore feet and let him ride awhile rather than walk.

McNeil was furious.

“I observed that I wished only to oblige Denman, and that Strode might walk to the devil if he pleased, even if
he wore away his legs to the knees in so doing. This so much displeased me that I would neither let Denman nor Strode ride after that. I remembered the bean affair in which Strode slandered me, and, as the Universalists say, every man must suffer in his body and feet for the evil deeds he does on earth.”

The mule path snaked around a mountain. If one of the mules stumbled, or the rider made a mistake, there was nothing to stop his descent over the edge and down thousands of feet, to be smashed on the rocks below. While McNeil had no fear in riding up and down the precipices, Stambaugh did, to such an extent that he told McNeil to quit “showing off.” McNeil, who was riding a rented mule replied:

“Stambaugh, I will ride any way that I want to. I have given $1 per day for the privilege of driving a mule up hill and down, for the privilege of riding whenever it suited my convenience, and that is all the time.”

They were traveling over high mountains. At one spot they passed over many acres of lava, which had been thrown out by a neighboring volcano, “which proved very troublesome to the feet of our mules. We visited a warm spring, apparently hot enough to scald a chicken or boil an egg, showing that the internal fires were burning beneath. But volcanoes are great blessings instead of curses, and should excite our gratitude instead of our fears. If a man has a colic, and applies no physic to remove the cause, he dies. So has the earth the colic at times, but those volcanoes remove the origin of it, or otherwise the globe would burst.”

On the fifth day out from Durango, they reached the summit of the highest mountain, “where I thought I was nearer to the good world than I would ever be again. We enjoyed a glorious prospect of mountains and plains, and, towards the west, a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean, which seemed to be pacifically inviting us to its borders.

“As we progressed, we had ice and snow on the mountains, where we encamped at night. By day in threading the valleys we enjoyed a delicious climate: watermelons, peaches, grapes, cocoa nuts, oranges, lemons, bananas and plantains. This truly romantic and solemn scenery affected us considerably.

Previously, we had almost constantly passed through scrubby chapparel [sic], and frequently could not find enough of wood to cook our meals. But here, almost for the first time since leaving the Brazos, we were traversing primeval forests. Some of the trees had witnessed, trees have eyes, the exploits of the soldiers of Cortez and Pizzaro, centuries earlier.”

On May 10, they arrived at Mazatlán, on the Pacific Ocean. There was a dispute among the party about taking passage to San Francisco, with the crooked lawyer in their party arranging the passage, and in return, traveling for nothing. McNeil had had enough of such shenanigans and decided to quit his party and travel north to the gold fields alone. It was a fateful decision.

“Before leaving, Stambaugh told me that I could do nothing without the company, and that I would certainly be murdered in California without its protection. I observed that I would rather die than travel any further
with such a swindling company. This greatly enraged him, and the Lancaster lawyer picked up a gun to shoot me.”

The lawyer took a closer look at McNeil the shoemaker. In the months since they'd left Ohio, the shoemaker had grown a waist-length beard. He wore buckskins and a stained, creased Stetson hat. Across his silver saddle, picked up in Mexico, was a Sharps buffalo rifle that spit out a large caliber bullet and could stop a buffalo at a distance of one mile. Casually, he moved the weapon in the shyster's direction in a decidedly unshoemanlike posture.

“I do not wish wilfully to kill any body or to be killed in an ordinary brawl,” said McNeil coolly, “but I am stout and stout-hearted, and either with rifle, pistol, or bowie knife, I am honorably willing to fight you on the spot.”

The lawyer quickly retracted his statement and McNeil, alone for the first time since leaving Ohio, boarded a ship for San Francisco.

“I took passage on a Danish schooner, named
Joanna Analuffa
, commanded by a gentlemanly German, paying $75, the distance from Mazatlán to San Francisco being 1500 miles. There were 200 passengers on board. I left $100 worth of articles with the company which went in a French vessel [instead] for which I never received a cent.

“After getting far out into the ocean, we ran a northeast course towards the destined port. When a week from land, we were supplied with wormy bread, putrid jerked beef, musty rice, and miserable tea. There not being enough tea to color the water, we were too wide awake for the captain, and, being 200 in number, we determined
to have the worth of our money, as the Yankee boys are number one on sea as well as on land.”

The Yankees threw the putrid beef and other “vittles” overboard and told the German captain they must have better. Infuriated, the German swore that if they did not become satisfied with the food he gave them, he would take them back to Mazatlán, and have them tried and imprisoned for mutiny.

“Hunger knows no law,” McNeil told him. “We will shoot you, and moreover, you must not only keep on the proper course to San Francisco, you must give us proper food, or we will take all the ship matters into our own hands.”