Gold!

by Fred Rosen

  “We remained ten days encamped on the bank of the river opposite Reynosa. From our encampment every morning and every evening, we heard about three hundred bells ringing in Reynosa, so terrifically that we thought at first the town was on fire, or about to be attacked by some enemy, and felt inclined to cross the river to render our assistance; but found afterwards they were ringing for religious purposes. The Mexicans called them Joy Bells, but it was an obstreperous joy to which we were not accustomed.

  “On the second day of our stay there, we were surprised on seeing a Hungarian gentleman ride into our camp, stating that he belonged to a company of traders from Mexico, returning to the United States, with three wagons laden with silver in the bar and coin, which they had received for goods during their expedition, adding that they had smuggled it across the river three miles above Reynosa, and wished to encamp that night with us for protection, which we readily granted. We were glad we did so, for the Hungarian adventurer gave us much valuable information respecting our route.

  “As we are encamped on the bank of the Rio Grande, the shoemaker must have a little liberty to shoe some of its traits. Rio Grande, in English, means the Great River, and I can assure our readers that it is the greatest river for winding I ever saw. Descending this river the first prominent town is Santa Fe, an old Spanish town. It is a great trading place, where most of the goods sold and stored there were brought overland from St. Louis, 1500 miles distant in the United States.”

  Traders from the East would return with rich furs, peltry, Mexican silver, and gold. Matamoros, opposite Fort Brown, is another of the principal towns on the Rio Grande’s banks, “60 miles above its mouth, containing a population of 8,000. One of its principal curiosities is a barberess, a French girl, pretty and smart, who cuts the heart and the beard at the same time.”

  The idea of being entertained by an exotic French barberess must have filled the parochial shoemaker from Lancaster, whose eyes were rapidly being opened, with much glee. But once the barberess finished her ministrations to McNeil’s person, and the others in the Lancaster party who wished to partake of her wicked, scissor-filled fingers, it was time to move on.

  In traveling west, Lewis and Clark sometimes had to collapse their entire party into boats that would transport them over liquid terrain that could not be traversed in any other way. McNeil’s band was forced to adapt similarly.

  “On the 30th we crossed to Reynosa, in canoes, taking our wagons to pieces and crossing them in the same way, swimming over our mules, which occupied us three days. Of course, we were soon saluted by the custom house officers, for their dues. While our committee waited on them to settle that matter, the rest of our company rushed into the Rio Grande to bathe, which proved a delicious treat.

  “Some senoritas, married and unmarried, I presume, had been watching us, and came down to bathe and show off their celestial charms, stripping to the skin while talking like so many parrots, and then mingled with us in the nautical amusement. As we had too much modesty to do in Mexico what they do there, we left the watery angels to their sweet selves, and going ashore, dressed, and watched them a considerable time while they scrutinized us critically.”

  McNeil goes quickly from the philosophical to the sublime, anticipating this question: With so many beautiful senoritas and so many horny men, not one of them attempts a seduction?

  “One cause why we did not stay in the water with them was this—We were aware of the excessive jealousy existing in the Spanish Mexican character, knowing, that although it would have passed unnoticed had we been Mexicans, that, being Americans, it might have ended fatally had we remained with them in the water, and we should have experienced from their male friends the stiletto or pistol instead of words of friendship.

  “I love to follow the advice of a celebrated traveller [sic], who says, that in order to get along safely with the males in foreign countries, he avoided the females as much as possible, knowing that jealousy is accompanied by the same fatality in every land.”

  Considering that murders are frequently committed because of jealousy, McNeil showed good judgment.

  “Reynosa contains about 3000 inhabitants, who were terribly frightened and scathed by cholera, during our stay of three days in the place. The day we left, sixty persons died in the place from its effects. In fact, every house we passed in our progress from Fort Brown to Saltillo had one or more persons in it dead from cholera. Eight of our company, who were Romanites [Catholics], before leaving, fearing that disease, purchased from a Spanish priest a sufficiency of prayers that would last them till we got to Monterey or to some other place in the other world if they died on the way.”

  But one member of the company was not as circumspect as McNeil.

  “While those Catholics were absent purchasing prayers, a Lancaster lawyer, of our company, asked a splendidly dressed and lovely senorita, if she would go into another room with him, stating that he wished to have some private conversation with her. She understood enough of his speech to reply, ‘Sí, Senor.’

  “He thinking that she said that some one would see them during their innocent interview, I told him that ‘Sí’ did not mean see but ‘Yes,’ and that she was perfectly willing that he should have a harmless kiss. On returning from the interview, the lawyer, thinking that her sweet lips might have imparted the cholera or some other awful disease, requested me to give him some linament immediately, with which he rubbed himself all over, but, it smarted his tender flesh so excessively that he howled around the room like an old wolf, caught at last in a baited trap.

  “Oh! these attractive women! whom we find at the bottom of every evil prevailing in every land. The lawyer paid dear for his whistle, and he surely whistled with excessive pain for about one long hour, and then had to receive jokes about it forever afterwards!”

  Then it was on the road again.

  “Proceeding we reached, after two days travel, a town called Chenee, on a river pronounced San Whan, (San Juan) one of the tributaries of the Rio Grande, 50 miles from Reynosa.”

  The shoemaker and company had arrived someplace near present-day Los Aldamas, about 100 miles northeast of Monterrey, the provincial capital.

  “We arrived at 11 o’clock at night. Progressing, we lost our way, in attempting to find the ford across the San Whan, so that we were obliged to encamp on this side of it. A singular occurrence happened that night.”

  The shoemaker was on guard duty when, he was “suddenly startled by the screaming of Strode, who, in his fright, declared that he saw a Comanche [sic] Indian or Mexican crawling towards the encampment. Leverett, who had slept in the same tent,” descended into a wild, racial hysteria, “wrapping a blanket around him, rushed into the chapparel [sic], shrieking that the Indians were about massacreing [sic] the whole band. Of course, we awakened the others, and all who remained, prepared in military order for the expected combat.”

  Looking into the gloom, McNeil could have sworn that he heard and saw something threatening moving toward them. If he had known Indian ways, he would have known that if Comanches had intended them harm, they would already be dead. But something was coming toward them from the darkness of night, and assuming hostiles, they marched out to meet it, determined to fight and die, “in the defence [sic] of our rights,” even as Strode and Leverett continued rooted to the spot, screaming in fear.

  Handguns had cleared leather, rifles were up with keen eyes gazing down the barrels. Good with a blade, McNeil made sure his bowie knife was at the ready. “We boldly advanced—advanced—advanced—and found the enemy to be—not a Comanche Indian, not a renegade Mexican, or a wild beast—but an expanded umbrella rolling on the ground towards us, moved by a gentle breeze.”

  Strode and Leverett slept well that night. The next morning they forded the San Juan River.

  “Leverett was on a very small weak mule. The force of the current swept both away into deep water. As he could not swim, his situation was a critical one. Stripping as fast as possible, I leaped in to h
is rescue, and succeeded, after much difficulty, in bringing him to shore. The mule, after losing the saddle, swam out.”

  On April 10, 1849, the McNeil party finally arrived at Monterrey.

  “As the Cholera was raging badly in the town, we disputed whether we should remain or proceed to a mill five miles farther, where there were many conveniences both for health and comfort. The committee determined that we should remain there, which highly displeased the rest of the company.

  “That night, about 6 o’clock, a colleague and myself were attacked by cholera. At 6 o’clock the next morning my colleague died, but fortunately I recovered to tell the readers my adventures. We buried him at the Walnut Springs, about eight miles from the city, as we could not be permitted to bury him in a Catholic burial ground in Monterrey, the deceased having been an Episcopalian [sic].

  “O cursed hell-born bigotry that separates the living, and then separates the holy dead! A Mr. [Henry] Hyde, from the same place in Virginia, and belonging to the same Episcopal Church, after helping to drink or finish three kegs of the best 4th proof French brandy, preached an appropriate funeral discourse over our deceased comrade before starting to the grave.”

  By now the McNeil party from Lancaster had traveled more than two thousand miles of a none too hospitable continent. One of its members was dead, one had turned back, and many others stricken with terrible disease, in addition to the daily deprivations all of them went through. Worse, they were not yet to the gold fields. There was more wild and unfriendly country in front of them.

  “Passing from Monterrey to Saltillo [across northern Mexico], we proceeded to Paras, finding the road skirted luxuriantly with the palmetto, prickly pear, and a plant called the King’s Crown. We stayed three days at Paras, where we got our wagons repaired and the mules shod, and disposed of some of our loading in order to facilitate us on our journey. At this point the Comanche [sic] Indians became numerous.”

  McNeil and company now had the misfortune of encountering the most skilled and fearsome cavalrymen of the Great Plains tribes, the Comanche. In pre-Colonial times the Comanche had been on offshoot of the Wyoming Shoshone. The Comanche moved south in stages, attacking and defeating other Plains tribes, until by 1800 they had a total population of seven thousand to ten thousand, many of whom were warriors.

  The Comanche were different from the other Plains Indians. Rather than functioning as a true tribe with a central group of traditions and elders, the Comanche were organized into twelve totally autonomous bands. Fitting in well with their nomadism, they had acquired horses from the Spanish in the seventeenth century and were one of the few Plains tribes to breed them.

  Comanche bands raided frontier towns and settlements, killing whites and looking for booty and captives to ransom. Their raids took them as far south as northern Mexico, where the men from Lancaster ran into one of those twelve Comanche bands.

  “Eight miles from that town before reaching it, nine of those [Comanche] Indians attacked a Mexican train, consisting of mules packed with silver, which thirty Mexicans were taking to Durango. We saw the transaction. The Indians left the silver on the ground and drove off the mules, as the Mexicans ran to us for protection. We tried to save a wounded Mexican, but seeing us hastily approaching; the Indians killed him [with lance and arrows] and rapidly fled,” leaving a mutilated, bleeding corpse in their wake.

  “The inhabitants hailed us as if we were delivering angels. The Alcalde offered us $50 each, if we would lead the citizens against those Comanches. But, we concluded not to interfere as it might afterwards hinder our journey and endanger our lives, should those Indians hear of our interference.”

  McNeil’s prescience was proven that afternoon when the Mexicans had a battle with Comanches in which five Mexicans were killed and twelve wounded, while only one Comanche bit the dust, literally.

  “He [the Comanche] was dragged into town at the end of a lasso, the other end being affixed to the horn of a saddle occupied by a vaunting Mexican.”

  McNeil notes nothing special about this treatment of the hostile, but that is not surprising. While Lewis and Clark had tremendous respect for the Indians and showed it, subsequent generations had begun to systematically take the Indian land by force, resign them to poor reservations, and try to eliminate by gunfire the rest who wouldn’t come to the treaty table.

  Like all “foreign” enemies, the red Indians had become dehumanized by the now white majority spreading across the continent. The Gold Rush hastened this demise by decades because the Plains had to be made “safe” for white men to cross in search of California gold.

  “Thence to Durango, where we arrived April 19th. It is one of the largest and oldest cities in Mexico, containing, as I thought, about 125,000 inhabitants. The houses look like prisons, the doors and windows being plentifully supplied with iron bars, as if to prevent the beaux from carrying off the ladies or the Indians from capturing the whole family. The churches are among the most splendid in the Roman Catholic world. On entering one of them I thought that I had prematurely got into California, so valuable and splendid were the ornaments glittering with gold and silver.”

  On that Sunday afternoon, the shoemaker from Ohio attended his first bullfight. Anti-Catholic feeling was then high in America, and McNeil represents those dominant feelings in some of his subsequent observations about the bullfight and its aftermath:

  “I there saw, among the gayest of the gay, the [Catholic] bishop and his entire congregation. He had licensed the fight and was determined to see it out, believing that it is as good to act proudly in sin as it is to act humbly in religion, a very accommodating faith to those who worship God and Devil at the same time.

  “About fifty wooden spears, saturated with brimstone, were pierced into different parts of his [the bull’s] body. Those were ignited, when the bull in a perfect blaze, rushed furiously around the enclosure, still further persecuted by three Mexicans on horseback, who occasionally speared his flesh as they rode around and jumped over him, escaping sometimes almost miraculously from the horns of the animal, finally killing him by slow torture.

  “In this way six bulls were killed, but not until three horses had met the same fate and one Mexican wounded. The bishop, who delighted in such barbarity, and led his congregation to admire the same brutality, professed to be a follower of that Jesus Christ who on earth would not willfully harm a fly or tread upon a feeble worm. The next morning, while passing along the street, we witnessed the following scene.

  “Twelve soldiers on horseback, armed with muskets, pistols and cutlasses, a priest walking in the midst of them, while a musical band, in full operation, brought up the rear. The citizens, wherever the procession went, fell down upon their knees before his Heavenly Majesty. The soldiers motioned to us intimating that we had better pull off our hats in honor of that cunning priest, who was thus showing publicly that the military power could at any time be brought out to sustain their interests.”

  All of the McNeil party complied except the redoubtable Leverett, who, holding his hat on his head firmly with both hands, swore audibly that he would not take it off for any such purpose. The soldiers threatened to knock it off with their cutlasses, but thought twice about it when Leverett told the captain that he had obtained from the Mexican consul at New Orleans permission to travel through Mexico with his hat on and with a sound head!

  It was at Durango that McNeil, thinking ahead, finally convinced the party to become more mobile, by selling their wagons and using pack mules to the Pacific Ocean and the journey north. That done, they headed the 160 miles west to the Mexican port of Mazatlán. Travelling [sic] on nothing more than a mule path, “I must here relate a laughable circumstance to relieve the tediousness of the journey.

  “Fennifrock got sick at Durango with diarrhea. Previously, he had purchased some boiled beans, fully peppered and compressed into a small space. As he was sick, he could not eat the luscious mess, and gave me permission to eat some of them. I ate a small quantity, but Strod
e swallowed the rest at a meal.

  “On Fennifrock enquiring who had eaten his stock so voraciously, Strode told him that I had eaten all of them up or rather down. Fennifrock attacked me for the deed, when I observed that I could soon prove my innocence.

  As I expected, the huge meal of beans made Strode dreadfully sick. Murder will out, and beans will keep in, and extended Strode’s stomach to the size of a small barrel.”

  McNeil was not a man to take lying lightly, especially when someone questioned his word, even if the matter was about something as innocent as beans. Yet those beans represented more than a gaseous quantity of stomach-churning delight—they were a meal in a country where food was not plentiful. Any man accused of stealing food could not be trusted.

  “Strode applied to me for medicine, but I told him I would give him none, and that he might die of the bean disorder for slandering me. However, on some one’s applying a hot stone to his stomach [a queer folk remedy for upset stomach] he vomited out the whole of the beans before the eyes of Fennifrock, who was then convinced that I had spoken the solemn truth. Some have a hell upon earth for their misdeeds, but Strode had a young hell in his belly for his crime!”

  Three nights out from Durango, Strode and Denman lost their mules. Obliged to foot it, “Denman and myself being on very good terms, I permitted him to ride my mule occasionally while I walked. On the third day I walked considerably ahead, and stopped to rest until the train reached me, when I found Strode riding my mule and Denman walking.” Denman had acceded to Strode’s sore feet and let him ride awhile rather than walk.

  McNeil was furious.

  “I observed that I wished only to oblige Denman, and that Strode might walk to the devil if he pleased, even if he wore away his legs to the knees in so doing. This so much displeased me that I would neither let Denman nor Strode ride after that. I remembered the bean affair in which Strode slandered me, and, as the Universalists say, every man must suffer in his body and feet for the evil deeds he does on earth.”