The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-04-05

bill recently offered in the legislature
of California at Sacramento to give
pension of $500 a year to aged Nancy
Harris, of Los Angeles county, win
not become a law, but it has turned at
tention to one of the most wonderful
women of the Pacific coast. She lives
in a rude rough wooden house near
the mouth of the long and wide San
Gabriel canyon, "a miles north
west from Pomona, and twenty-five
miles east from Los Angeles city. She
has been an invalid for several years,
and but for her granddaughter fam
lily would be a subject of public char
ity Several women of Pasadena have
now taken her case in hand, and she
will probably be well provided for dur
ing her remaining days
Nancy Harris is the widow of Daniei
Harris. She was the third white wOm-
an to come across the plains to Califor-
MIA, and she is one of the few persons
now living who was we'll acquainted
with Jim Marshall, the first white
American to find gold on the Pacific
coast. 1t is also believed that she was
the first among persons now living To
come by OK team to California. Her
memory is good, and she never tires OF
telling of the picturesque life in the
Golden state of California as she saw
it in her early womanhood. She long
ago learned to smoke cigarettes with
the Spanish senOras and senoritas, ami
the visitor who brings her a few pack
ages of cigarette tobacco and a book OF
cigarette papers (fOr the old lady is
as dexterous as a Spanish dude in roll
Ing her own cigarettes) may have an
hour of interesting tales about re-
mantle life.
she ,-as born in Gloucester, Mass.
In 1923, and her relatives were whalers
and fisherfolks. In 1897, when a girl
of fourteen years, her father gave up
fishing and, hearing OF the possibii-
tiles of fortune on the frontier Of Mis-
souri, and Illinois in those days, started
for the West. Chicago was the objective
point. They travelled by the Erie canal
to Buffalo, and were three weeks going
on boat from Buffalo to Chicago VIA
the lakes. Chicago was at that time d
place of 1900 or 5000 inhabitants. In
lS4O, when Mrs. Harris father became
convinced that Chicago was on the de-
cline and would retrograde into a wild
Western village, the family removed
to st. Louis, which was then a fast
growing city of some II, 900 population.
There Mrs. Harris was married in 1872
She was eighteen years ola, at the time,
and her young husband had received
letters from an uncle, who was a sailor
saying there was a fortune to be made
on the Pacific coast in dealing with the
Indians for furs. The young people
talked over a project of going to Cali,
fornia almost daily during the first
year OF their married life. That was
Six or seven years before Marshall
found the gold in Suffers mill race.
and no one but few restless traders
and daring missionaries among the In,
dams ever went across the plains from
the East to the Pacific coast.
Several more letters came from the
sailor uncle, and young Harris and his
wife decided that they would risk their
lives in travelling across the prairies
and mountains to the Pacific ocean
Ihey heard of two young Catholic
priests who were getting ready to
start across the plains for Suffers Fors
with the intention of being teachers
among the Indians, and a few weeks
later they found, also, that a company
of young men, fired with a spirit of adj
venture and a desire to become traders
among the Spanish and the Indians.
were about to start from Fort Leav-
enwOrth for California. When the
party was made up for the Journey in
April, 1912, there were twenty-five men
and two women in the party Mrs
Harris says that for days her friends
and relatives besOught her and her
husband to abandon their plan to Jour
ney across the plains, and her brothers
and sisters wept bitterly at what thev
believed was constructive suicide by
going out with little band Of men
among untold thousands of fierce saw
ages.
I'VE were from April II until Sept.
rs in going from Fort Leavenworth
TO what is now COlfaX, Cal, Mrs.
Harris says. I'VE hired a man at
Fort LeavenwOrth, who had been
across the plains once, for our guide.
1 believe he was to get $500 for his
work, and he expected to become a
sailor when he reached this coast.
Our first mishap was on the Platte
river, where a young man named Daw-
son was captured by the Indians and
stripped of his clothing. They let him
go and then followed him, so that
without knowing it he acted as their
guide to our camp. The redskins sur
rounded our camp and remained all
night, but when daylight showed them
our strength they went away. We had
a picket guard about the camp nearly
every night we were on the plains. We
saw literally millions of buffalo. Many
a time the galloping of immense herds
of the beasts across the prairies sound
ed like distant thunder
I'VE left our wagons this side of
Salt lake and finished our journey on
horseback and drove our cattle AT
one place the Indians surrounded us
armed with their bows and arrows
but my husband and four other men
lcvelled their guns at the chief and
made him order his Indians out of ar
row range. Before we had been two
months on the plains we had become
so used to hardships, had seen
four of our party welcome death from
sickness, and had had such rights al
threatened death by the savages, that
we lost a good part of the natural
alarm that one has when environed by
denger.
1--WE crossed the Sierra Nevadas at
the head waters of the San JOAQUIN
river On Sept. 1 we camped on the
summit. 1t was my twentieth birthday
That day one Of the priests in our party
drank at a spring of clear, cold water
1t was strong alkaH water, however
and he came near dying in the next
few days, and it ruined his stomach sc
that he lived only year longer. We
had a difficult time to find a way down
the mountains. At one time | was
left alone for nearly half day. and
rs l was afraid of Indians l sat al
The while with my six-months-old baby
In my lap on the back of my horse