The Lake of the Sky Part 32

This was enough. There were bound to be higher grade ores deeper down.

The finder filed his necessary "locations," and doubtless aided by copious draughts of "red-eye" saw, in swift imagination, his claim develop into a mine as rich as those that had made the millionaires of Virginia City. Anyhow the rumor spread like a prairie fire, and men came rushing in from Georgetown, Placerville, Last Chance, Kentucky Flat, Michigan Bluff, Hayden Hill, Dutch Flat, Baker Divide, Yankee Jim, Mayflower, Paradise, Yuba, Deadwood, Jacka.s.s Gulch and all the other camps whose locators and residents had not been as fortunate financially as they were linguistically.

Knox started a "city" which he named Knoxville, the remains of which are still to be seen in the shape of ruined log-cabins, stone chimneys, foundations of hewed logs, a graveyard, etc., on the left hand side of the railway coming from Truckee, and about six miles from Tahoe.

One has but to let his imagination run riot for a few moments to see this now deserted camp a scene of the greatest activity. The many shafts and tunnels, dump-piles and prospect-holes show how busy a spot it must have been. The hills about teemed with men. At night the log store--still standing--and the saloons--tents, shacks and log houses--were crowded with those who sought in the flowing bowl some surcease from the burden of their arduous labors.

Now and again a shooting took place, a man actually "died with his boots on," as in the case of one King, a bad man from Texas who had a record, and whose sudden end was little, if any, lamented. He had had a falling out with the store-keeper, Tracey, and had threatened to kill him on sight. The former bade him keep away from his store, but King laughed at the prohibition, and with the blind daring that often counts as courage with such men--for he a.s.sumed that the store-keeper would not dare to shoot--he came down the following day, intending himself to do all the shooting there was to be done. But he reckoned mistakenly. Tracey saw him coming, came to the door, bade him Halt!

and on his sneering refusal, shot the bad man dead.

In September, 1913, I paid a visit to Knoxville. Just above the town, on the eastern slope of the mountain, were several tunnels and great dump-piles, clearly showing the vast amount of work that had been done. The quartz ledge that caused the excitement was distinctly in evidence, indeed, when the Tahoe Railway roadbed was being graded, this quartz ledge was blasted into, and the director of operations sent a number of specimens for a.s.say, the rock looked so favorable.

Here and there were the remains of old log-cabins, with their outside stone chimneys. In some cases young tamaracks, fifteen and twenty feet high, had grown up within the areas once confined by the walls. These ruins extended all the way down to Deer Creek, showing the large number of inhabitants the town once possessed.

I saw the graveyard by the side of the river, where King's body was the first to be buried, and I stood in the doorway of the store from which the shot that killed him was fired.

In imagination, I saw the whole life of the camp, as I have seen mining-camps after a stampede in Nevada. The shacks, rows of tents, and the rudely scattered and varied dwellings that the ingenuity and skill of men hastily extemporized. Most of the log-houses are now gone, their charred remnants telling of the indifferent carelessness of campers, prospectors or Indians.

The main street was in a pretty little meadowed vale, lined on either side with trees, and close to the Truckee, which here rushes and dashes and roars and sparkles among the bowlders and rocks that bestrew its bed.

When it was found the ore did not "pan out," the excitement died down even more rapidly than it arose, and in 1863-4 the camp was practically dead.

It has been charged that the Squaw Valley claims were "salted" with ore brought from Virginia City. I am inclined to doubt this, and many of the old timers deny it. They a.s.sert that Knox was "on the square"

and that he firmly believed he had paying ore. It is possible there may have been the salting of an individual claim or so after the camp started, but the originators of the camp started it in good faith, as they themselves were the greatest losers when the "bottom" of the excitement dropped out.

About a mile further up the river is still to be seen the site of the rival town of Claraville, founded at the same time as Knoxville.

There is little left here, though the a.s.say office, built up against a ma.s.sive square rock still stands. It is of hewed timbers rudely dovetailed together at the corners.

It would scarcely be worth while to recount even this short history of the long dead,--almost stillborn--Squaw Valley camp were it not for the many men it brought to Lake Tahoe who have left their impress and their names upon its most salient canyons, streams, peaks and other landmarks. Many of these have been referred to elsewhere.

One of the first to arrive was William Pomin, the brother of the present captain of the steamer _Tahoe_. His wife gave birth to the first white child born on Lake Tahoe, and she was named after the Lake. She now lives in San Francisco. When she was no more than two or three months old, her mother took her on mule-back, sixty miles over the trail to Forest Hill, _in one day_. Pomin removed to the north sh.o.r.e of the Lake when Squaw Valley "busted," and was one of the founders of Tahoe City, building and conducting one of the first hotels there.

Another of these old timers was J.W. McKinney, from whom McKinney's was named. He came from the mining-camp of Georgetown over the trail, and engaged himself in selling town lots at Knoxville. He and Knox had worked together in the El Dorado excitement.

He originally came over the plains in the gold-alluring days of '49.

When his party reached the land of the Indians, these aborigines were too wise to make open attacks. They hit upon the dastardly method of shooting arrows into the bellies of the oxen, so that the pioneers would be compelled to abandon them. One night McKinney was on guard duty. He was required to patrol back and forth and meet another sentinel at a certain tree. There they would stop and chat for a few moments before resuming their solitary march. Just before day-break, after a few words, they separated. On answering the breakfast call McKinney found he was alone, and on going back to investigate, found his companion lying dead with an arrow through his heart. The moccasin tracks of an Indian clearly revealed who was the murderer, and a little study showed that the Indian had swam the river, waited until the sentinel pa.s.sed close by him, and had then sent the arrow true to its fatal mark.

The next night the Indians shot an arrow into an ox. In the morning it was unable to travel, but McKinney and his friends had determined to do something to put a stop to these attacks. Taking the ox in the shadow of a knoll, they shot it, and eight men then hid in the shelter of some brush where the carca.s.s was clearly in view.

When the train pulled out it seemed as if they had abandoned the ox.

It was scarcely out of sight when the watchers saw eight Indians come sneaking up. Each man took the Indian allotted to him, but by some error two men shot at the same Indian, so that when the guns were fired and seven men fell dead the other escaped. On one of them was found seven twenty-dollar gold pieces wrapped up in a dirty rag, which had doubtless cost some poor emigrant or miner his life. Some of the party wished to leave this gold with the dead Indian, but McKinney said his scruples would not allow him to do any such thing, and the gold found its way into his pocket.

Though a man of practically no education--it is even said by those who claim to have known him well that he could neither read nor write, but this seems improbable--he was a man of such keen powers of observation, retentive memory, ability in conversation and strong personality, that he was able to a.s.sociate on an equality with men of most superior attainments. John Muir was a frequent visitor to his home, especially in the winter time when all tourists and resort guests had gone away. John McGee, another well-known lover of the winter mountains, was also a welcome guest, who fully appreciated the manly vigor and sterling character of the transplanted Missourian.

John Ward, from whom Ward Creek and Ward Peak (8,665 feet) are named, was another Squaw Valley mining excitement stampeder. He came in the early days of the rush, and as soon as the camp died down, located on the mouth of the creek that now bears his name.

The next creek to the south--Blackwood's,--is named after still another Squaw Valley stampeder. For years he lived at the mouth of this creek and gained his livelihood as a fisherman.

The same explanation accounts for d.i.c.k Madden Creek.

Barker who has peak, pa.s.s and valley named after him, came from Georgetown to Knoxville, and like so many other of his unfortunate mining brethren from over the divide, started a dairy on the west side of the pa.s.s which bears his name. The valley, however, was so high and cold that more than half the year the cream would not rise, so he gave up dairying and went elsewhere.

These are but a few of many who might be mentioned, whose names are linked with the Tahoe region, and who came to it in the hope of "making their everlasting fortunes" when Squaw Valley "started up."

CHAPTER x.x.xV

THE FReMONT HOWITZER AND LAKE TAHOE

Hundreds of thousands of Americans doubtless have read "How a Woman's Wit Saved California to the Union," yet few indeed know how intimately that fascinating piece of history is linked with Lake Tahoe.

Here is the story of the link:

When Fremont started out on his Second Exploration (fairly well dealt with in another chapter), he stopped at the Kansas frontier to equip.

When he finally started, the party (108) was armed generally with Hall's carbines, which, says Fremont:

with a bra.s.s twelve-pound howitzer, had been furnished to me from the United States a.r.s.enal at St. Louis, agreeably to the command of Colonel S.W. Kearny, commanding the third military division. Three men were especially detailed for the management of this, under the charge of Louis Zindel, a native of Germany, who had been nineteen years a non-commissioned officer of the artillery in the Prussian army, and regularly instructed in the duties of his profession.

As soon as the news that he had added a cannon to his equipment reached Washington, the Secretary of War, James M. Porter, sent a message after him, post haste, countermanding the expedition on the ground that he had prepared himself with a military equipment, which the pacific nature of his journey did not require. It was specially charged as a heinous offense that he had procured a small mountain howitzer from the a.r.s.enal at St. Louis, in addition to his other firearms.

But Fremont had already started. He was not far on his way, and the message could have reached him easily. It was not destined to do so, however, until after his return. The message came to the hands of his girl-wife, Jessie Benton Fremont, the daughter of Missouri's great senator, Thomas H. Benton, and she knew, as Charles A. Moody has well written, that

this order, obeyed, would indefinitely postpone the expedition--probably wreck it entirely. She did not forward it. Consulting no one, since there was no one at hand to consult, she sent a swift messenger to her husband with word to break camp and move forward at once--"he could not have the reason for haste, but there was reason enough." And he, knowing well and well trusting the sanity and breadth of that girl-brain, hastened forward, unquestioning, while she promptly informed the officer whose order she had vetoed, what she had done, and why. So far as human wit may penetrate, obedience to that backward summons would have meant, three years later, the winning of California by another nation--and what _that_ loss would have signified to the United States none can know fully, but any may partly guess who realizes a part of what California has meant for us.

In commenting later upon this countermand of the Expedition Fremont remarks:

It is not probable that I would have been recalled from the Missouri frontier to Washington to explain why I had taken an arm that simply served to increase the means of defense for a small party very certain to encounter Indian hostility, and which involved very trifling expense. The administration in Washington was apparently afraid of the English situation in Oregon.

Unconscious, therefore, of his wife's action,--which might easily have ruined his career--Fremont pushed on. The howitzer accompanied him into Oregon, back through into Nevada, and is clearly seen in the picture of Pyramid Lake drawn by Mr. Preuss (which appears in the original report), showing it after it had traveled in the neighborhood of four thousand miles.

The last time it was fired as far as the Fremont Expedition is concerned was on Christmas Eve, in 1843. The party was camped on Christmas Lake, now known as Warner Lake, Oregon, and the following morning the gun crew wakened Fremont with a salute, fired in honor of the day. A month later, two hundred and fifty miles south, it was to be abandoned in the mountains near West Walker River, on account of the deep snow which made it impossible for the weary horses to drag it further.

On the 28th of January Fremont thus writes:

To-night we did not succeed in getting the howitzer into camp.

This was the most laborious day we had yet pa.s.sed through, the steep ascents and deep snows exhausting both men and animals.

Possibly now the thought began to take possession of him that the weapon must be left behind. For long weary days it had been a constant companion. It had been dragged over the plains, mountains and canyons.

It was made to ford rivers, plunge through quicksands and wallow through bog, mire, mud, marsh and snow. Again and again it delayed them when coming over sandy roads, but tenaciously Fremont held on to it. Now deep snow forbade its being dragged further. Haste over the high mountains of the Sierra Nevada was imperative, for such peaks and pa.s.ses are no lady's playground when the forces of winter begin to linger there, yet one can well imagine the regret and distress felt by the Pathfinder at being compelled to abandon this cannon, to which he had so desperately clung on all the wearisome miles his company had hitherto marched.

On the 29th he writes:

The princ.i.p.al stream still running through an impracticable canyon, we ascended a very steep hill, which proved afterwards the last and fatal obstacle to our little howitzer, which was finally abandoned at this place. [This place appears to be about eight or ten miles up the river from Coleville, and on the right or east side of the river.] We pa.s.sed through a small meadow a few miles below, crossing the river, which depth, swift current, and rock, made it difficult to ford [this brings him to the west bank for the first time, but the cannon did not get this far, and therefore was left on the east side of the river. This is to be noted on account of the fact that it was found on the other side of the river in another canyon], and after a few more miles of very difficult trail, issued into a larger prairie bottom, at the farther end of which we camped, in a position rendered strong by rocks and trees.

The reader must not forget that the notes in brackets [ ] are interjections in Fremont's narrative by Mr. Smith, (see the chapter on Fremont's discovery of Lake Tahoe).

Fremont continues: