Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1890-02-13
SOME VANISHED TYPES.
characteristics of Famous Frontiers
men Who Were Types of
American Manhood of
Old Time.
The Rocky Mountain ''Pass Finder"
Noble Old Kit Carson and
Colonel Boone.

With the disappearance OF the Dor
der" has vanished a type of American
manhood that will only hereafter live in
story, and it would require volumes to tell
of their remarkable adventures if it were
possible at this late date to collect all the
facts IN their wonderful careers
Kit Carson, "Old John Smith, " Jim
Bridger, Colonel Saint rain, Maxwell,
the Bents, Boones and a host of fro
tiersmen, who made the ''border" ring
with deeds of daring, and whose exploit 8
are indelibly woven in the history of our
country, are now all dead! They died
with harness on, and far beyond that
civilization which has now closed up thesgap
to the very foot of the Rockies" amid
which there is nothing that would have
been congenial to them. So they passed
away while there yet remained the silent
prairiess the solitude Of the mountains and
the noIseless streams!
1t has been my fortune to have known
intimately all those ] have mentioned and
| have sat me down to
Summon from the vanished past
The forms that once have been,
50 that they may appear to my mental
vision as knew them in the flesh -
KIT CARSON.
Kit Carson, one of the noblest
Of the brotherhood until few
years ago-when his remains were re-
moved to Taos and an appropriate monu-
ment erected over them-slept peacefully
under the gnarled old cottonwoods at Fort
Lyon on the Arkansas. that Nile of Amer
lea, where he died in 1863 1t was Sitting
that for time at least he should rest by
that silent stream, every mile Of whose
gently flowing waters could tell story of
his daring.
Carson was below medium height, a
very little dialetic in expression of thought,
and possessed the power of reading man s
character at sight. Upon that Judgment
you stood or fell. There was never any
thing of the desperate about him; he was
one of natures noblemen, and your table
would have been honored by his presence.
COLONEL BOONE.
Colonel A. G.. Boone was another grand
old man. He was over six feet tall, straight
as an arrow. finely educated, a delightful
raconteur and worthy grandson of the I'M
mortal pioneer of Kentucky. He died
at a ripe age, in full possession of all
his faculties, in Denver, only few gears
ago.
He knew more of the plains and noun
tain tribes than any other of his time, was
strongly urged by Western members of
Congress for Commissioner OF Indian
Affairs during President Grants second
administration, but he lacked the one es-
sentlal In our American system of prefer
ment-he was not a politician-conSe-
quently failed of appointment to the po-
sition for which he was so eminently quail
fed
Colonel Saint Vrain, a splendid repre-
sentative of the early French voyageur-
every inch a gentleman-was one of the
pioneers in the trade with then far
off Santa Fe sixty-six years ago. He lies
In the venerable cemetery at Mora, n NJ,
that quaint old town that was his home
for so many decades, and where he enter
tanned his host of friends so royalty.
UNCLE JOHN SMITH.
Every one who travelled on the plains
during the period included between the
years 1922 70 - almost half a century
remembers ''Old John Smith, or Uncle
John, as he was familiarly called. He
was q celebrated ''trapper" and guide, =
had lived with the Cheyennes off and on
from boyhood, which tribe adopted him
long before the establishment of the
Santa Fe Trail or any such thing as
the commerce of the prairies" He fig
ured only little less conspicuously in the
history of the ''border" than Kit Carson,
Lucien B. Maxwell and other famous men
of those times.
His resemblance to President Johnson
was astonishing.
Uncle John" was a character-full of
superstitions as a plantation negro He
n
forty years ago, Just as he was about to
pull the trigger of his rifle to kill buffalo
he had drawn a bead on, one of the little
birds jumped on his front sight and inter
fered with his aim, thus saving his
life, as he declared. for the tall grass was
full of Indians, who killed two of his COM
rades, who had discharged their pieces at
the buffalo.
He was one of the principal guides and
Interpreters during the celebrated 'Win-
ter campaign" of General Sheridan
against the allied Cheyennes, Arapahoes
and Kiowas, under the head of the
dreaded Sa-tan-ta, in 1S6S-69. He died
the following summer on the Cheyenne
reservation, in the Indian Territory, among
the tribe that had adopted him half a cen
fury before.
PASS FINDER BRIDGER.
Jim Bridger was another of the famous
eeterie especially distinguished for dis
eovery of defles through the intricate
mazes of the Rocky Mountains in the
early days of intra-continent travel, one OF
the principal northern passes of which
is named in honor of him. He died at his
boyhood home, Western Missouri, a few
years ago.
He used to relate some curious expert
enees of his life in the mountains. He
told of petrifed forest he had visited
where the birds were still sitting on the
limbs of the trees, all petrifed, too. Gen
sral Gatlin, an officer of tie old regular
army who was stationed at Fort Gibson
In the Cherokee nation, over half a cen.
fury ago, said to me last summer when
met him in Arkansas, that he asked
Bridger when young man if he had ever
been in the valley othe great Colorado,
then veritable terra incognita.
Eyes, sir, replied Bridger, land there
where the peaches, oranges and lemons
bear all the year round. It's the only
place, too, I've ever seen where the moor
Is always full"
Bridger became absolutely blind before
his death, which occurredin the fullnes.
Of mans allotted period and in the pos
session of all his faculties, with that ont
exception.
At one time, early in the sixties,
while the engineers of the Union Pacif
were temporarily in Denver, then an in
significant place, they become somewha
confused in relation to what was the mos
feasible point In the mountains over whicl
to run their line. They summoned Bridg
er from st. Louis.
I l., Il,