Evening capital. (Annapolis, Md.) 1884-1910, 1895-12-05

N46 04CN0hE4 &LAI Az Was ~~-D%~I
ours, said Colonel William Stapleton
Of Trinidad. Colo. Running right
through the town Of Trinidad, in which
I live, is q little river. which familiarly
and unfortunately does its muddy.
flowing business under three names. Ii
is called yariously the Las Animgs. the
Purgatorio and the Picket Wire. The
names came about in this way:
santa Fe claims TO be and is about
the same age as ST. Augustine, Fla
Both towns are considerably over 500
years old, although forget the exact
date Of their settlement.
Back in the middle of the sixteenth
century the Spaniards at Santa Fee made
up a military detachmentto go overland
TO st. Augustine. The old dons didn {
know anything Of the country which
lay between. All they We're posted on
was the distance and the general direc-
ton, as they knew the latitude and
longitude Of both places. Rather late in
the fall some zoo of them, steel clad
soldiers, camp followers, baggage train
and women, pushed in through the
Ration pass over the trail now followed
by the Santa Fe railroad, and at the be-
ginning Of winter made camp at what
is now the site Of Trinidad, which sits
fairly in the month of the Ration can
yon, looking ont ON the plains.
"There they Were on the very thIesh-
old of the Rockies. To the east of
them, over which their course must
trend, lay an utter waste Of plains, ap-
parently without limit All that win
ter the Spaniartls camped iii the mouth
Of the Ration canyon. With wine, wom-
an and song they put i'll hilarious
time, and probably had as much fun as
they even bad before or since. Winters
are not rigorous and spring comes early
in the vicinity of Trinidad.
"With the first coming of the early
grass the Adventures banished their ar
NOR, fitted up their houses and got ready
to move. The camp followers, the wom-
en- and the extra baggage they sent back
to Santa Fe. When last seen, the party
bound for st. Augustine. numbering
several hundreds, were marching down
the valley of the little liver by which
they had camped
"That was the last ever heard of them.
Not feather ever fioated buck TO tell
the story of their fate. With the last
flap of the last banner and the latest
sun CLINT ON the Iearmost steel cap they
disappeared from the earth. To this
day no one is able to make suggestion
even as to what became of them, except
that it is supposed they were butchered
by the Indians.
Fifty years ago there was an old Co
manche chief named Iron Shirt, because
of rlsty old shirt of chain mail which
he wore, but neither he nor any of the
other Comanches knew anything of the
origin of the garment nor where it came
from 1t had been III the tribe further
back than the short Comanche memory
could reach Many have supposed that
it was a relic Of this Spanish expedition
Of three centuries ago, which had APP
parently marched off the earth that far
away spring day in the mouth of the
Ration canyon.
"But now for the kink in nomencla-
ture was thinking Of The disappear
ance of these Spanish soldiers seemed so
eerie and witchlike that it made pro-
found impression on the superstitious
people they had left behind. They nam
ed the little river Rio de Las Animas,
meaning the River of the Lost Souls,
and it is supposed to hold the story of
the expedition 5 dark fate and repeat it
to itself III the river language, which
the Mexicans do not pretend to under
stand.
"When the French fur traders under
Sublette and ST. Vrain came trapping
in those waters from St Louis, in
French effort at translation they made
out that the River of the Lost Souls
must mean the Purgatory river, and so
gave the river its translated name of
Purgatorio.
Later, when the American bull
whacker marched through ON his way
to Santa Fe, he accepted the French
name, but called it the Picket Wire.
To this day the river wears all three
titles, as the reader would soon learn
by turning to the Trinidad newspapers,
where he would find cattle brands adj
vertised as having their ranges variously
on the Las Animas, the Purgatorio and
the Picket Wire.
EVERY nau picks out his name for
himself, but they all mean the same
river. 1t isn't much of river either,
only about 90 feet wide at Trinidad.
The Mexicans, however, loyalty stick
to the name of Rio de Las Animas,
and Mexican mothers tell their children
of the soldiers who, hundreds of years
ago, marched from there and were
never heard of again. Washington