Cañon City record., 1909-06-17

| When the Pixies Peakers came
across the plains In their schooners
in the latter fifties they were accus-
toned to see volunteer squash and
pea vines flourishing In abundance on
the bottom lands along the Missouri,
Platte and Arkansas rivers. The pea
vines made excellent cattle feed and
the squashes were cultivated by the
scattering inhabitants for food long
after the FIRST settlement OF the coun-
try by the whites. The sQuashes were
known as Indian squashes and were
probably originally planted by the
Kckapoos. The pea vines may have
come from a cultivated species but 1t
Is more probable that they were an
Indigenous plant mentioned by La
trobe in his Travels In North America
in 1928. He refers to . sort OF pea
vine which to our notion may have
been the wild lupine. and speaks OF 1t
as a very nutritious plant which
abounded in all wooded, alluvial
grounds or bottoms Of the western
prairies and upon which the horses
fed. The plant seems to have dis
appeared from all that region.
During the long, severe winters,
when other feed gave out. many of
the early settlers saved their stock
by turning them into the bottoms
where they subsisted ON the rushes
that covered the bottom lands in many
places. Horses also found consider
able nourishment in the bark and
twigs of cottonwood timber. The old
settlers still tell how the cattle not
only subsisted in the rushes but
came out fat In the spring. Rev. Isaac
Mccoy. a missionary and government |
surveyor. was on a survey expedition |
in the winter Of 1888 and In his His |
tory of Baptist Indian Missions he
says: "In order to subsist our horses |
we sought bottom lands OF rushes
which, remaining green all the winter.
afforded a nutritious. though some
times unhealthy food. When rushes
could not be found, we often cut down |
the cottonweeds. upon which the hor-
ses would feed and which was moder-
ately nutritious"
Captain Stansbury in 1S49. while
on his way to Great Salt Lake, pass
ing through this region, refers to ,
the prele or common securing rush,
which the mules ate with avidity.
By the way the early settlers used |
these rushes for securing their tinware ]
and some squatters use them at the
present day for that purpose. While
on a march from Fort Leavenworth
to the west in the winter of 1851.
Major Chilton's troops felled cotton
wood trees for their horses to browse
on. all of which Is explanatory OF
the winters some of the oldtimers |
experienced on the plains and which |
for ferocity and privation must have [,
been quite as strenuous as the pres |
ent one.
The old and respected veterans OF
the White River Utes used to take
a good deal about the hard winter Of
1S49. They had hunted each year In
the high mountains that are steep /
and which sweep down from the
north-the grand continental divide
and there we're always many deer and !
elk and buffalo. But suddenly in that |
terrible year. 1s49. the SHOWS came /
much earlier than OF other years. As |
tall as a very tall Indian, was the
snow-about six feet six inches-and |
the buffalo and the elk and the deer |
could not escape from the mountains.
nor could they find grass to eat 30
that they died in great numbers as
well as most Of the ponies OF the In
dians OF the White River Utes.
Such was the winter Of that ter
rible year as they related 1t. There
fore the great tribe OF Utes mourned |
many day. A few years ago Judge |
Paddock of Leadville, discovered buf- /,
falo horns in Iowa gulch and others |
have been found at the headwaters |
OF the Arkansas river where no white |
man ever saw a live buffalo. Judge |
Paddock Is confident that the tradi- |
tion OF the Utes is true and that the |
buffalo that died in Iowa gulch on the |
Of tha Arkansas were
HOW THE Rnn2RVRTT