Pattie's Personal Narrative, 1824-1830; Willard's Inland Trade with New Mexico, 1825, and Downfall of the Fredonian Republic; and Malte-Brun's Account of Mexico — Key Ideas to Explore

was at last released, in recognition of his services as an interpreter, and in order that he might vaccinate the natives of the missions, among whom a smallpox epidemic had broken out. The adventurer now set forth up the coast, stopping in turn at each mission and presidio, and presenting us with a graphic picture of the pastoral life of the neophytes and rancheros. Arrived at San Francisco, he pushed on to the Russian fort on Bodega Bay, returning to Monterey in time to describe and participate in the Solis revolt of 1829. Here he consorted with the small American colony, and in his narrative probably magnifies his own part in this affair, which, seen through the mists of memory, bulked larger than the facts would warrant. At Monterey he encountered his old enemy, Governor Echeandia, who with apparent surprise found his former captive among those who had aided in suppressing the revolt. Proffered Mexican citizenship, Pattie represents himself as showering reproaches on the governor for the indignities he had suffered. Advised by his new friends to make a formal statement of his injuries, and the losses suffered by refusal to permit the securing of his furs, Pattie embarked for Mexico in May, 1830, together with the revolutionists who were being sent to the capital for trial. Upon his departure he conveys his impressions of Alta California in a few striking sentences: "Those who traverse it [the California coast] ... must be constantly excited to wonder and praise. It is no less remarkable for uniting the advantages of healthfulness, a good soil, a temperate climate, and yet one of exceeding mildness, a happy mixture of level and elevated ground, and vicinity to the sea." He then proceeds to animadvert upon the inhabitants and the conduct of the mission padres in their treatment of the natives. The companions of his long and adventurous journey he left settled among the Mexicans; most of them made California their permanent home.

At the City of Mexico, Pattie visited the American diplomatic representative, also the president of the republic, but failed to obtain satisfaction for his losses or injuries. On the way to Vera Cruz, Pattie's travelling party met with an incident then common to travel in Mexico--being halted by the outlawed followers of the recently-deposed president, their arms seized, one of their number hanged, and the remainder relieved of their valuables. From Vera Cruz our adventurer found passage to New Orleans; thence, through the kindly help of compatriots, who loaned him money for the steamboat passage, he ascended the Mississippi to Cincinnati and his early Kentucky home. Here the narrative closes. The only clue we have in reference to his after life, is the one given by H. H. Bancroft, the historian, who thinks he was again in San Diego, California, after the American advent.[1]

When poor Pattie arrived in Cincinnati, August 30, 1830, he not only was penniless, but long incarceration in Mexican prisons had broken his health and spirits. The tale of his adventures was doubtless received with slight credence by his simple relatives. But the Reverend Timothy Flint, the young editor of the _Western Monthly Review_ of Cincinnati, who was already enamored of stories of Western pioneering, prevailed upon Pattie to write an account of his curious experiences. Thus originated the _Personal Narrative_, which we now republish in full for the first time.[2]

Pattie appears to have written from memory, without the aid of notes taken on the journey--a fact which accounts for the occasional discrepancies in dates, and the obvious confusion of events. Upon the whole, however, the narrative impresses the reader with a sense of its verity, and has the charm of simplicity and vigor. The emendations of the editor, we are assured, were chiefly in the matters of orthography and punctuation, "with the occasional interposition of a topographical illustration, which my acquaintance with the accounts of travellers in New Mexico, and published views have enabled me to make." It is probable that we thus owe to Flint most of the descriptions of scenery, for there is abundant textual evidence that Pattie was not possessed of a poetic fancy. To expand the dimensions of the book, Flint added an article on "Inland Trade with New Mexico," composed chiefly of extracts from the journal of a Doctor Willard, who in May, 1825, set out from St. Charles, Missouri, with an overland party bound for Santa Fé. Thence, practicing medicine on the way, he visited Chihuahua and the northeastern provinces of Mexico, ending his journey at Matamoras. This article, together with another by the same author, on the "Downfall of the Fredonian Republic," also included in the volume, had appeared three years before in Flint's magazine. The volume closes with an extract on Mexican manners and customs, from Malte-Brun's _Géographie universelle_.

A thrilling tale of pure adventure, ranging all the way from encounters with grizzly bears, and savages who had never before seen a white man, to a revolution in a Latin-American state, Pattie's narrative has long been a classic. Its chief value to the student of Western history depends upon the vast extent of country over which the author passed, the ethnological data which he presents, especially in relation to the Southwestern tribes, and his graphic picture of the contact between two civilizations in the Southwest, with the inevitable encroachments of the more progressive race. One sees in his pages the beginnings of the drama to be fought out in the Mexican War--the rich and beautiful country, which excited the cupidity of the American pioneer; the indolence and effeminacy of the inhabitants, which inspired the virile backwoodsmen's contempt; and the vanguard of the American advance, already touching the Rockies, and ready to push on to the Pacific. The Spanish-American official, displaying his little brief authority, but irritated the restless borderer, whose advent he dreaded, and whose pressure finally proved irresistible. As a part of the vanguard of the American host that was to crowd the Mexican from the fair northern provinces of his domain, Pattie's wanderings are typical, and suggestive of more than mere adventure. His book is well worthy of reproduction in our series.

The present Editor is under obligations to Louise Phelps Kellogg, Ph.D., and Edith Kathryn Lyle, Ph.D., for assistance in preparing this volume for the press.

R. G. T. MADISON, WIS., July, 1905.

FOOTNOTES to Preface:

[1] Bancroft, _History of California_, iii, p. 171, note 44.

[2] The first edition was published at Cincinnati in 1831; this is, however, less commonly seen than one dated 1833. Both are, however, from the same plates, and differ only in date and style of title-page and form of copyright clause. We follow the earlier edition, in these respects. In 1847, one Bilson published a book in New York under the title, _The Hunters of Kentucky; or, the trials and toils of traders and trappers during an expedition to the Rocky Mountains, New Mexico and California_, in which much of Pattie's narrative was incorporated verbatim. _Harper's Magazine_, xxi, pp. 80-94, also gives a résumé of Pattie's adventures, with slight embellishments.

PATTIE'S PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF A VOYAGE TO THE PACIFIC AND IN MEXICO JUNE 20, 1824--AUGUST 30, 1830

Reprint of the original edition: Cincinnati, 1831

DURING AN EXPEDITION FROM ST. LOUIS, THROUGH THE VAST REGIONS BETWEEN THAT PLACE AND THE PACIFIC OCEAN, AND THENCE BACK THROUGH THE CITY OF MEXICO TO VERA CRUZ, DURING JOURNEYINGS OF SIX YEARS; IN WHICH HE AND HIS FATHER, WHO ACCOMPANIED HIM, SUFFERED UNHEARD OF HARDSHIPS AND DANGERS, HAD VARIOUS CONFLICTS WITH THE INDIANS, AND WERE MADE CAPTIVES, IN WHICH CAPTIVITY HIS FATHER DIED; TOGETHER WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY, AND THE VARIOUS NATIONS THROUGH WHICH THEY PASSED.

EDITED BY TIMOTHY FLINT.

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY JOHN H. WOOD.

DISTRICT OF OHIO, TO WIT:

Be it Remembered, that on the 18th day of Oct., Anno Domini 1831; John H. Wood, of the said District, hath deposited in this office, the title of a Book, the title of which is in the words following, to wit:

"The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, of Kentucky, during an expedition from St. Louis, through the vast regions between that place and the Pacific ocean, and thence back through the city of Mexico to Vera Cruz, during journeyings of six years; in which he and his father who accompanied him, suffered unheard of hardships and dangers; had various conflicts with the Indians, and were made captives, in which captivity his father died, together with a description of the country, and the various nations through which they passed."

The right whereof he claims as proprietor, in conformity with an act of Congress, entitled "An act to amend the several acts respecting copyrights."

_Attest_, WILLIAM MINER, _Clerk of the District_.

It has been my fortune to be known as a writer of works of the imagination. I am solicitous that this Journal should lose none of its intrinsic interest, from its being supposed that in preparing it for the press, I have drawn from the imagination, either in regard to the incidents or their coloring. For, in the literal truth of the facts, incredible as some of them may appear, my grounds of conviction are my acquaintance with the Author, the impossibility of inventing a narrative like the following, the respectability of his relations, the standing which his father sustained, the confidence reposed in him by the Hon. J. S. Johnston,[2] the very respectable senator in congress from Louisiana, who introduced him to me, the concurrent testimony of persons now in this city, who saw him at different points in New Mexico, and the reports, which reached the United States, during the expedition of many of the incidents here recorded.

When my family first arrived at St. Charles' in 1816, the fame of the exploits of his father, as an officer of the rangers, was fresh in the narratives of his associates and fellow soldiers. I have been on the ground, at Cap au Gris, where he was besieged by the Indians. I am not unacquainted with the scenery through which he passed on the Missouri, and I, too, for many years was a sojourner in the prairies.

These circumstances, along with a conviction of the truth of the narrative, tended to give me an interest in it, and to qualify me in some degree to judge of the internal evidences contained in the journal itself, of its entire authenticity. It will be perceived at once, that Mr. Pattie, with Mr. McDuffie, thinks more of action than literature, and is more competent to perform exploits, than blazon them in eloquent periods. My influence upon the narrative regards orthography, and punctuation {iv} and the occasional interposition of a topographical illustration, which my acquaintance with the accounts of travellers in New Mexico, and published views of the country have enabled me to furnish. The reader will award me the confidence of acting in good faith, in regard to drawing nothing from my own thoughts. I have found more call to suppress, than to add, to soften, than to show in stronger relief many of the incidents. Circumstances of suffering, which in many similar narratives have been given in downright plainness of detail, I have been impelled to leave to the reader's imagination, as too revolting to be recorded.

The very texture of the narrative precludes ornament and amplification. The simple record of events as they transpired, painted by the hungry, toil-worn hunter, in the midst of the desert, surrounded by sterility, espying the foot print of the savage, or discerning him couched behind the tree or hillock, or hearing the distant howl of wild beasts, will naturally bear characteristics of stern disregard of embellishment. To alter it, to attempt to embellish it, to divest it of the peculiar impress of the narrator and his circumstances, would be to take from it its keeping, the charm of its simplicity, and its internal marks of truth. In these respects I have been anxious to leave the narrative as I found it.

The journalist seems in these pages a legitimate descendant of those western pioneers, the hunters of Kentucky, a race passing unrecorded from history. The pencil of biography could seize upon no subjects of higher interest. With hearts keenly alive to the impulses of honor and patriotism, and the charities of kindred and friends; they possessed spirits impassible to fear, that no form of suffering or death could daunt; and frames for strength and endurance, as if ribbed with brass and sinewed with steel. For them to traverse wide deserts, climb mountains, swim rivers, grapple with the grizzly bear, and encounter the savage, in a sojourn in the wilderness of years, far from the abodes of civilized men, was but a spirit-stirring and holiday mode of life.

{v} To me, there is a kind of moral sublimity in the contemplation of the adventures and daring of such men. They read a lesson to shrinking and effeminate spirits, the men of soft hands and fashionable life, whose frames the winds of heaven are not allowed to visit too roughly. They tend to re-inspire something of that simplicity of manners, manly hardihood, and Spartan energy and force of character, which formed so conspicuous a part of the nature of the settlers of the western wilderness.

Every one knows with what intense interest the community perused the adventures of Captain Riley,[3] and other intrepid mariners shipwrecked and enslaved upon distant and barbarous shores. It is far from my thoughts to detract from the intrepidity of American mariners, which is known, wherever the winds blow, or the waves roll; or to depreciate the interest of the recorded narratives of their sufferings. A picture more calculated to arouse American sympathies cannot be presented, than that of a ship's crew, driven by the fierce winds and the mountain waves upon a rock bound shore, and escaping death in the sea, only to encounter captivity from the barbarians on the land. Yet much of the courage, required to encounter these emergencies is passive, counselling only the necessity of submission to events, from which there is no escape, and to which all resistance would be unavailing.

The courage requisite to be put forth in an expedition such as that in which Mr. Pattie and his associates were cast, must be both active and passive, energetic and ever vigilant, and never permitted to shrink, or intermit a moment for years. At one time it is assailed by hordes of yelling savages, and at another, menaced with the horrible death of hunger and thirst in interminable forests, or arid sands. Either position offers perils and sufferings sufficiently appalling. But fewer spirits, I apprehend, are formed to brave those of the field,

'Where wilds immeasurably spread, Seem lengthening as they go.'

than of the ocean, where the mariner either soon finds rest beneath its tumultuous bosom, or joyfully spreads his sails again to the breeze.

The grandfather of the author of this Journal, was born in Caroline county, Virginia, in 1750. Soon after he was turned of twenty-one, he moved to Kentucky, and became an associate with those fearless spirits who first settled in the western forests. To qualify him to meet the dangers and encounter the toils of his new position, he had served in the revolutionary war, and had been brought in hostile contact with the British in their attempt to ascend the river Potomac.

He arrived in Kentucky, in company with twenty emigrant families, in 1781, and settled on the south side of the Kentucky river. The new settlers were beginning to build houses with internal finishing. His pursuit, which was that of a house carpenter, procured him constant employment, but he sometimes diversified it by teaching school. Soon after his arrival, the commencing settlement experienced the severest and most destructive assaults from the Indians. In August, 1782, he was one of the party who marched to the assistance of Bryant's station,[4] and shared in the glory of relieving that place by the memorable defeat of the savages.

Not long afterwards he was called upon by Col. Logan[5] to join a party led by him against the Indians, who had gained a bloody victory over the Kentuckians at the Blue Licks.[6] He was present on the spot, where the bodies of the slain lay unburied, and assisted in their interment. During his absence on this expedition, Sylvester Pattie, father of the author, was born, August 25, 1782.

In November of the same year, his grand-father was summoned to join a party commanded by Col. Logan, in an expedition against the Indians at the Shawnee towns, in the limits of the present state of Ohio.[7] They crossed the Ohio just below {viii} the mouth of the Licking, opposite the site of what is now Cincinnati, which was at that time an unbroken forest, without the appearance of a human habitation. They were here joined by Gen. Clark[8] with his troops from the falls of the Ohio, or what is now Louisville. The united force marched to the Indian towns, which they burnt and destroyed.

Returning from this expedition, he resumed his former occupations, witnessing the rapid advance of the country from immigration. When the district, in which he resided, was constituted Bracken county, he was appointed one of the judges of the court of quarter sessions, which office he filled sixteen years, until his place was vacated by an act of the legislature reducing the court to a single judge.

Sylvester Pattie, the father of the author, as was common at that period in Kentucky, married early, having only reached nineteen. He settled near his father's house, and there remained until there began to be a prevalent disposition among the people to move to Missouri. March 14, 1812, he removed to that country, the author being then eight years old. Born and reared amidst the horrors of Indian assaults and incursions, and having lived to see Kentucky entirely free from these dangers, it may seem strange, that he should have chosen to remove a young family to that remote country, then enduring the same horrors of Indian warfare, as Kentucky had experienced twenty-five years before. It was in the midst of the late war with England, which, it is well known, operated to bring the fiercest assaults of savage incursion upon the remote frontiers of Illinois and Missouri.

To repel these incursions, these then territories, called out some companies of rangers, who marched against the Sac and Fox Indians, between the Mississippi and the lakes, who were at that time active in murdering women and children, and burning their habitations during the absence of the male heads of families.[9] When Pattie was appointed lieutenant in one of these companies, he left his family at St. Charles' where he was then residing.[10] It may be imagined, that the condition of his wife was sufficiently lonely, as this village contained but one American {ix} family besides her own, and she was unable to converse with its French inhabitants. His company had several skirmishes with the Indians, in each of which it came off successful.

The rangers left him in command of a detachment, in possession of the fort at Cap au Gris.[11] Soon after the main body of the rangers had marched away, the fort was besieged by a body of English and Indians. The besiegers made several attempts to storm the fort, but were repelled by the garrison.--The foe continued the siege for a week, continually firing upon the garrison, who sometimes, though not often, for want of ammunition, returned the fire. Lieutenant Pattie, perceiving no disposition in the enemy to withdraw, and discovering that his ammunition was almost entirely exhausted, deemed it necessary to send a despatch to Bellefontaine,[12] near the point of the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi, where was stationed a considerable American force. He proposed to his command, that a couple of men should make their way through the enemy, cross the Mississippi, and apprize the commander of Bellefontaine of their condition. No one was found willing to risk the attempt, as the besiegers were encamped entirely around them. Leaving Thomas McNair[13] in command in his place, and putting on the uniform of one of the English soldiers, whom they had killed during one of the attempts to storm the fort, he passed by night safely through the camp of the enemy, and arrived at the point of his destination, a distance of over forty miles: 500 soldiers were immediately dispatched from Bellefontaine to the relief of the besieged at Cap au Gris. As soon as this force reached the fort, the British and Indians decamped, not, however, without leaving many of their lifeless companions behind them.