The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-07-09
ONE R1yRR,s THREE NAMES.
Why the Las Animas Is Also Called the Purgatorio and the Picket Wire.

Why the Las Anmas Is Also Called the Purgatorio and the Picket Wire. | [From the Washington Evening Star,l
 Some queer kinks in nomenclature are discoverable in this country of ours said Colonel William Stap'eton of Trinidad, Col Running right through the town of Trinidad, iA which live, Is little river, which fomilia:ly and indiseriminately does its muddy, flowing business under three names. It is called variously the Las Animas, the Purgatorio, and the Picket Wire. The names came about In this way:
 santa Fe, N, M, claims to be and is about the same age as St. Augustine, Fla, Both towns are considerably over three hundred years old, although I forget the exact date of their settle ment.
 Back in the middle of the sixteenth century the Spaniards at Santa Fe made up military detachment to go overland to St. Augustine. The old Dons didn't know anything of the coun- try which lay between. All they were posted on was the distance and the gen. eral direction, as they knew the lati- tude and longitude of both places. Rather late in the fall some seven hun dred 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 what is now the site of Trinidad, which sits fairly in the mouth Nf Htn GoA A.N,A CO .t,,r. A,t4 N,. t,% plains.
 There they were on the very thresh- old of the Rockies. To the east of them, over which their course must trend, lay an utter waste of plains, apparently without limit. All that winter the Spaniards camped in the mouth of Ra- ton Canon. With wine, woman and song they put in a hilarious time, and probably had as much fun as they ever had 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 adventurers burnished their armor, fitted up their horses, and got ready to move. The camp followers, the women and the extra baggage they sent back to Santa Fe. When last seen the party bound for St. Augustine, numbering several hundred. were marching down the valley of the little river by which they had camped
 That was the last ever heard of them. Not a feather ever floated back to tell the story of their fate. With the last flap of the banner, and the last sun-glint on the rearrnost steel cap, they disappeared from the earth. To this day no one is able to make sug- gestion 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 Con1anche chief named Iron Shirt, be- cause of rusty old shirt of chain mail of the other Comanches knew anything of the origin of the garment nor where 1t came from. It had been In the tribe further back than the short Comanche memory could reach. Many have SUD- posed that it was a relic of this Spanish expedition of three centuries ago, which had apparently marched off the earth that far-away spring day in the mouth of the Raton Canon.
 But now for the kink in the nomen- clature I was thinking of. The disap- pearance of these Spanish soldiers seemed so eerie and witch-like that ii made profound impression on the su- Iperstitious people they had left behind . They named 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's dark fate and , repeat it to itself in the river language which the Mexicans do not pretend tc understand.
 "When the French fur traders under Sublette and Saint Vrain came trap ping in those waters from St. Louis, ir a French effort at translation they made out the River of the Lost Souls , must mean the Purgatory river, and SC gave the river the translated name ot Purgatorio.
 . Later. when the American bull whacker marched through on his way i to Santa Fe he accepted the French name, but called 1t Picket Wire Te this day the river wears all three titles as the reader would soon learn by turn | ing to the Trinidad newspapers, where he would find cattle brands advertised as having their ranges variously on thu ,, Las Animas, the Purgatorio and thu : Picket Wire
 i Every man picks out his name fol
 himself, but they all mean the sam, , river. It isn't much of river either
 only about twenty feet wide at Trini dad. The Mexicans. however. loyall! stick to the name Rio de Las Animas, and Mexican mothers tell their chil dren of the soldiers who hundreds o z years ago marched from there and wer, | never heard of again"
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