The Salt Lake herald-Republican. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1909-1918, 1909-08-15

member of the party had been shot &C
cidentally and his arm shattered. The
wound became infamed, and to save the
mans life an operation was necessary.
/ The only instruments available were d
razor. a saw and bar of iron The ron
was put in a fire. and while half a. dozen
| men held the wounded man the boy
| Carson used the razor and then the saw
on the shattered arm, and next Cauter-
/ lied the stump of the arm with the hot
/ iron. And the wound was almost
healed by the time the caravan reached
/ Santa Fe.
It has been the custom to picture the
men Of the frontiers as heroes and the
] Indians as bloodthirsty savages. As a
, matter of fact. many of the frontiers
men of Carson's day We're more of the
savage than the Indians. They we're
rovers, vagabOnds and adventures
mostly. with here and there a worthy
man. They had little respect for human
life. and some of them had been muir
derers back in the states. Drink was
their bane and their carouses usually
| brought about blOOdShed. For the In
dians they had no respect. They made
no effort to treat the aboTigines honest
", as did the French voyageurs and
trappers. Their creed was that the only
good Indian was a dead one and usual
! ly they did their best TO make the creed
good.
But the Indians were many and the
whites were few in the Mississippi
country. Each Indian tribe had its own
hunting ground, beyond which it did not
venture without danger of invoking the
wrath or the vengeance of another tribe.
The Indians felt the land was theirs,
for God had placed them there.
The whites were invaders. The In
dams were honest, truthful and moral
before the whites arrived. The whites
brought theft, Untruth. whisky and i'm
morality. And when savage white men
robbed or murdered Indians it was diff
! ficult for the Indian to understand why
he should not seek vengeance on the
| tribe of whites generally. There were
so few good whites that it was difficult
for the Indians. even if bent on search,
to find them. And then the Indian
asked himself what right had the white
man in the Indians land
The white man had the right Of
might He was few in numbers, for in
| the first half of the nineteenth century
| there were, on an average, five or ten
times as many Indians west of the Mis-
souri, as there were whites, but he had
a tremendous advantage in the rife.
| The range of the arrow or the spear
was small. The rifle sent death at long
range. Even when the Indian managed
| to get a rife he was limited in its use.
| He could not make ammunition.
Trapper.
| In 1927 Carson went out as escort to a
party of traders who were going east.
| Santa Fe was the great depot of sup
| plies in the southwest Traders brought
goods from the east and exchanged
| them for beaver skins. deer skins. gold,
| copper, silver and other products of the
| far southwest. Carson went only to the
| forks of the Arkansas river and then
returned with another caravan to Santa
Fe He had decided what he was to do.
/ He had determined to become a trap
per-to fare forth after the beaver,
whose skin at that time was the only
| currency in the far west.
For fifteen years Carson hunted, and
| in that time he set his traps in nearly
| every stream in the west. He went into
| the country of the Comanches, the
Blackfeet, the Navajos the Diggers, the
Piutes, the Apaches, the Crows, the
| ArapahOes, the Flatheads, the Utahs,
the Cheyennes, the KiOwas, the Sioux,
the Pawnees, the Snakes, the Delawares,
| the MOjaves and other tribes, and rare
was the month in which he or the party
Of which he was a member did not have
battle with the Indians.
1t was one long succession of conflicts.
The whites sought the game paradises
of the land, and the Indians. for their
own safety and protection, endeavored
to keep them out. The whites were in
ever present danger of ambush and Of
night attack. Craft had to be meas
ured against craft. Tragedies were en-
acted. the only record of which is in
Gods book Of remembrance.
Occasionally bands Of trappers would
unite to make war on one particular
tribe OF Indians. Usually Carson, by
/ reason Of his executive skill. was chosen
to command One of these little wars
was on the Blackfeet. It will serve as
an illustration.
Battle With the 5Iaekfeet.
The Blackfeet had driven various
bands of trappers out of their terri
tory, stolen their horses and killed some
of the men. a company of 100 trap
pers. with nearly 200 horses and mules
| set out to seek vengeance. When near
the Blackfeet encampment Carson went
forward to reconnoiter. There were
more than 1000 warriors in the Black