CHAPTER XXVII. JOURNEY WESTWARD. PROMOTION FROM COLONEL ΤΟ BRIGADIER-GENERAL-BEGINNING OF JOURNEY WEST- AVING been summoned to Washington to receive my promo- GENERAL ORDERS. FORT KEOGH, MONTANA, November 20, 1880. In relinquishing command of the Fifth U. S. Infantry the regimental commander desires to manifest his gratitude to the officers and soldiers of this command for the zeal and loyalty with which every duty has been performed, however difficult and hazardous. He desires also to express his appreciation and acknowledgements of the most valuable services of this command and the gallantry displayed in moments of great danger. For twenty-five years the Fifth Infantry has served continually west of the Mississippi River and rendered most important service in the campaigns against the Utes and Apaches of Utah and Wyoming, the Navajos of New Mexico, the Comanches, Kiowas and Cheyennes of Texas, Indian Territory, Colorado and Kansas, and the Sioux, Nez Percés and Bannocks of the Northwest. During the past eleven years the undersigned has been in command of this regiment, and in that time, by long and intimate association, there has been engendered a feeling of the strongest attachment and highest regard. For the success that has attended our efforts the Commanding Officer desires to render to the officers and soldiers of this command their full share of credit. In taking leave of a command in which he has always felt a just pride, it occasions deep regret that, in the exigencies of the service and the various changes incident thereto, we are separated in distant fields of duty. [Signed.] NELSON A. MILES, Colonel and Brevet Major-General. I reported in Washington, where I remained on duty during the winter of 1880-81, and was then assigned to the Department of the Columbia. On my way to my new post of duty. I passed through the cities of Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake and San Francisco, stopping a few days in each. In this journey it was my good fortune to pass through an interesting zone of our country, and to see the progress that was being rapidly made at that time in the civilization of the great West. It would be impossible to describe the moral, intellectual and industrial progress that had then, and has since, been developed. I would be very glad to describe some of the principal towns and cities that were then and are now in course of rapid development, but the want of time and space renders it impossible. I will mention, however, St. Paul and Minneapolis, those twin cities of marvelous enterprise, of great industrial resources, the center of a vast productive region, located near the magnificent Falls of Saint Anthony on the upper Mississippi. These two great cities were for years rivals, but are gradually growing together to form one great commercial and industrial center, and embracing within their borders the beautiful Falls of Minnehaha, which Longfellow has described in classic verse. I would also love to describe other cities, like Helena and Butte, Montana, made rich by the mines of marvelous wealth found stored in the mountains in the vicinity of these two cities. Omaha is another city of wonderful growth, of wealth, progress and development, and the center of one of the richest agricultural districts of the United States. The same can be said of Kansas City. Colorado City is noted for its healthful climate, wonderful springs and beautiful scenery, and Trinidad for its iron and coal mines and steel works; while Los Angeles, California, is the center of commerce and communication of Southern California. Portland, Oregon; Spokane, Washington; Greely, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah, are all interesting and fair types of our western towns and cities, and have grown up practically within the last thirty years. I will pause in this journey west, however, long enough to give some description of Denver, Colorado, which is a fair type of many of our modern, typical American western cities. Denver is the chief city of one of the largest states in the Union, and the center of the Rocky Mountain country. On the 7th of February, 1858, eight men left their homes in Dawson County, Georgia, bound for the wild Rocky Mountain region in search of gold. These daring explorerswho might have suggested Whittier's beautiful lines: were the avant-couriers of the grand army that presently followed to participate in gleaning the precious deposits they had been the first to discover. They arrived in Kansas early in May, where their party was increased by the addition of ten other men. These gold-seekers left Leavenworth about the middle of May, and crossed the Kansas River at Fort Riley, striking out from that point across the country to the old Santa Fé trail, arriving at the mouth of Cherry Creek, Colorado, on the 23d of June, 1858. On the Pawnee Fork, Kansas, a party of Cherokee Indians were overtaken, who traveled to Cherry Creek in company with them. Unsettled as to future proceeding, the Indians remained at Cherry Creek, while the others hastened to Ralston Creek, where they hoped to find the treasure of which they were in pursuit. Three days of anxious search, however, brought no better reward than a very meagre quantity of gold particles, the shadows, so to speak, of the substance they were seeking; but still to them an evidence that gold was somewhere in that region, and with what courage they could summon they resolved to prospect thoroughly. Ralston Creek lies about eight miles distant from the mouth of Cherry Creek, their first halting place, and the Cherokees being still there the company decided to return and make that point their base of operations. To do this they recrossed the Platte River, but found upon joining them that the Indians had determined to return to their own nation, and accordingly they started on the following day, leaving the explorers with the whole range of mountains, the various creeks and their tributaries, the cañons beyond, and the plains stretching out in the distance, from which to choose a beginning for their investigations. Possessed of marked constancy to a purpose once formed, the leader of the company, upon observing signs of discontent among some of his companions, declared firmly his purpose to prospect the country even if he did it alone, and to that end he proceeded to work with untiring patience, closely examining the soil in every direction. Meanwhile Lawrence, Kansas, was being excited by whispers of golden sands to be found in the water around Pike's Peak. Two Delaware Indians, Fall Leaf and Little Beaver, brought the story that gold in paying quantities was to be found in those streams, and very secretly a company was organized at the old Commercial Hotel in that city to cross the desert on a tour of discovery. Fall Leaf claimed the distinction of having been a guide to Fremont on one of his exploring expeditions, and as in Fremont's report mention is made of two Delaware Indians, "a fine looking old man and his son," engaged to accompany that expedition as hunters, Fall Leaf and Little Beaver may have been the Indians with Fremont, although they were not so designated by name in his journal. Fall Leaf contracted to guide the party formed at the Commercial Hotel to a locality where gold could be found near Pike's Peak. He was to receive five dollars per day for such service until satisfactorily performed; but pending the deliberations of the party he was to lead, a fall from his horse while in a state of intoxication. disabled him, upon which they resolved to proceed notwithstanding and prosecute their investigation without a guide. On May 22, 1858, close upon the departure of the company from Leavenworth, this Lawrence party, numbering forty-four, two of whom were women accompanying their husbands, started from Kansas to cross the plains with eleven wagons and provisions for six months. From their course over the Santa Fé trail the travelers approached Pueblo, and having joined some members of the Leavenworth party were with them on the 6th of July, 1858, encamped upon the same ground in the Garden of the Gods, where Long's expedition had rested thirty-eight years before. There is not a trace of the Long explorers left there, while the pioneers of 1858 have graven upon the rocks a record of their presence, an interesting testimonial now plainly visible. Inside one of the gateways on the great sentinel stones appear the names of several of the party with the year "1858" cut beneath them. Members of both companies had prospected in various directions for the treasure sought without success, until it was told them one day that those who had remained behind were washing from the sands of the Platte River about three dollars a day to the man. This news reached them in September, after three months' fruitless quest, and they hastened to the locality where fortune smiled, and found that not only were the other members from the Leavenworth company washing gold from the sands, but that also a man named John Rooker, together with his son, had come in from Salt Lake to enjoy a like prosperity. The staying qualities of the leader of the Leavenworth company served him well. Here, within a radius of ten miles from the point where he first stopped, he had by dint of sheer perseverance found in the sands golden returns so valuable as to induce the whole party to become settlers on the ground and hold it under the title of squatter sovereignty, and to found a town which they named Montana. On the 4th of September, 1858, there were assembled at this point on the Platte River, some five miles from the mouth of Cherry Creek, portions of the Leavenworth company and of the Lawrence company, and the Mormon family consisting of four persons-a colony numbering a little over fifty. Illustrative of the American character it has been said that if a dozen were gathered anywhere, even at the most distant portion of the globe, they would be found at the earliest possible moment framing a con stitution and making laws for self-government. True to the instinct of the race this little band of pioneers far beyond the outposts of civilization. were making this their first care. Montana, on the Platte River, burst abruptly into existence governed by a code of laws framed by its founders early in that memorable month of September, 1858, although it was not until February 5, 1859, that a charter for the new town was obtained from the legislature of Kansas. On September 7, 1858, William McGaa, who subsequently became a local celebrity under the alias of "Jack Jones," arrived at the town of |