Sacramento daily record-union., 1890-04-19
VANISHED TYPES.
CHARACTERISTICS OF SOME FAMOUS
FRONTIERsMEN.
Kit Carson and Colonel Boone-Colonel
yrain, the French yoyageur-
"Uncle john Smith.
From the New York Herald

has vanished 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 career.
Kit Carson, "Old John Smith," jim
Bridger, Colonel Saint Vrain, Maxwell,
the Bents, Boones and host of famous
frontiersmen, who made the border" ring
with deeds OF daring and whose exploits
are indelibly woven in the history of our
country, are now all dead They died
with harness on" and far beyond that
civilization which now closes up the gap
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
prairies, 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
So 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 removed to Taos and an
appropriate monument erected over them
slept peacefully under the gnarled old cot
tonwoods at Fort Lyon, on the Arkansas,
that Nile of America, where he died in
1868. 1t was fitting 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 hight. yery
little dialecticin expression of thought, and
possessed the power Of reading a mans
character at sight. Upon that Judgment
you stood or fell. There was nothing Of
the desperate about him; he was one of
natures noblemen, and your table would
have been henored 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, de-
lightful raconteur and worthy grandson
of the immortal pioneer of Kentucky. He
died at a ripe old age, in full possession OF
all his faculties in Denver, only few days
ago.
He knew more of the plains and mount.
ain tribes than any man Of his time was
strongly urged by Western members OF
Congress for Commissioner of Industrial
Affairs during President Grants second
administration, but he lacked the one es-
sential in our American system of prefer
ment-he was not politician-conse.
quently failed of appointment to the posi-
tion for which he was so eminently quail
fled.
Colonel Saint Vrain, specimen repre-
sentative of the early French voyageuf-
every inch gentleman was one of the
pioneers IN the "trade" with the ''far Off
Sante Fe sixty years ago. He lies in the
venerable cemetery at Mora, n. NJ, that
quaint old town which 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 192l-70-almost half century-re.
members "Old John Smith, or. Uncle
John" as he was familiarly called. He
was a 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 things as "the
commerce of the pralries." He figured
only little less conspicuously in the his
tory of the border" than Kit Carson, Lu-
cier B. Maxwell and other famous men Of
those times.
His resemblance to President johnson
was astonishing.
Uncle John" was character-full OF
superstitions as plantation negro. He
would never eat quail, because some
forty years ago, just as he was about to
pull the trigger of his rifle to kill buffalo
he had drawn bead on, one of those 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 comrades
who had discharged their pieces at the
buffalo.
He was one of the principal guides and
Interpreters during the celebrated winter
campaigns of General Sheridan against
the allied Cheyennes and Arapahoes and
kiowas, under the lead of the dreaded Sa-
tan-ta, in the Cheyenne reservation, in the
Indian territory, among the tribe that had
adopted him half a century before.
PASS FINDER BRIDGER.
Jim Bridger was another of the famous
coterie especially distinguished for discov-
cry of defiles 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. few
years ago.
He used to relate some curious expert
ences 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. General Cat
lin, an officer of the old regular army, who
was stationed at Fort Gibson in the 'sCher-
okee Nation" over half a century ago.
said to me last summer when met HIM in
Arkansas, that he asked Bridger when he
was a young man if he had ever been in
the valley of the great Colorado, then
veritabie terra ineognita.
" Yes, sir, replied Bridger, and there's
where the peaches. oranges and lemons
bear all the year round. It's the only
place, too, Eve ever seen where the moon
is always full !"
Bridger became absolutely blind before
his death, which occurred in the fullness
of mans allotted period, and in the pos
session of all his faculties, with that one
exception.
At one time, early in the Sixties"
while the engineers of the Union Pacific
were temporarily in Denver, then an in
significant place, they became somewhat
confused in relation to where was the most
feasible point in the M yuntains over which
to run their line. They summoned Bridger
from St. Louis.
In due time-about two weeks-the old