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- [00:00]
Podcast Host
I got in my hand here. It was just clipped to my pocket, but it's in my hand right now. The Montana. It's MKC Montana Knife Company's first folding knife design tested. Built by actual hunters, the Montana is the first folder Josh Smith has built at production scale with a team of engineers and machinists who could match what he does on the bench. Head to mkc.com today. That's mkc.com these things are great. You are gon love this folding knife. You ever get that feeling? The walls closing in the concrete jungle suffocating you? You crave some wide open spaces, the chance to connect with nature. Maybe in a spot all your own. Well, head over to land.com they've got ranches, forest, mountains, streams, you name it. Search by acreage. You can search by location. You can search by the kind of hunting and fishing you're dreaming of. Land.com it is where the adventure begins. When you're in the back country, don't forget your own back country. Keep it pristine and confidently clean by bringing along wet extra large Dude Wipes. Just like your truck gets muddy out in the wild soaking your butt. You never clean your vehicle with dry paper towels, so why would you clean your butt with dry toilet paper? Wetter cleans better. So ditch the itch and switch from TP to wet extra large Dude Wipes. Dude Wipes it is the best clean. Pants down. They're available at Amazon. That's where I usually order mine from, but you get them at Walmart nationwide. Fantastic product. Proud to be doing ads for these boys at dude wipes.
- [01:40]
Dan Flores
Like Apollo 13 in the 1970s, Thomas Jefferson's 1806 Red River Expedition into the west was a failure. This is part two of how their story should have gone. I'm Dan Flores, and this is the American West. The river that flowed from nowhere. Part 2 January 15, 1807 Natchitoches Dr. Sibley's home. My dearest President Jefferson. And so our journey continued on 30 September, with the red river commencing to flow from a northwest direction and the unfamiliar mountains gathering their strange shapes around us. We came to a considerable stream of water coming in from the west, directly exiting the mountains, its waters salty but less so than the main river here. Our Pawnee guide, Tadoussuk, advised us that this was the last point for several days where the river's waters could be drunk, that we must ascend this west fork called the Thule with our pack mules to where the water became sweet and and fill Every skin bag we possessed for continuing the journey up the main river. Mr. Freeman thus split the party, leaving 18 at a camp at this place, while nine of us followed the Thule into its mountain. Fastness, wholesome and sweet water was obtained within 5 miles of travel up this little stream and our skin bags were soon filled to brimming. But. But so weird and oddly enchanting was the country that it drew us onward. And with one of the Indians and Mr. Talapoon, Mr. Freeman and I decided to explore further this narrow and most interesting defile. This was our first experience with a kind of scenery which became frequent, though never common to our eyes during the next months of our travel. A scenery, if I may, never before known within the confines of the United States. The majority of the views we here submit to the presidential eye, recorded with our camera obscura box, are of these canyons and of the rock mountains along the river Dunbar. Yet I must add the sensible fact that none of the profiles we recorded can give an adequate impression of this country, which would require all the imagination and skill of Europe's best painters of landscape to capture. It's now four months since I've returned from this region, yet its fantastical shapes and hues of its coloring linger in my mind like the faint impressions of a dream. Had I not seen it all with my own eyes, I would not believe such a place as the region about the head sources of the Red river exists. The chasm of the Thule, which is called by those familiar with the country a canyon, continued for another 10 miles beyond the point where we left the pack mules. The reading with our instruments was taken far up it in a grassy basin surrounded by astonishing freestanding columns of red sandstone rock. But short of its ultimate source, here was the first place in more than 15 miles that the canyon could be crossed by horse, and through it a large and well traveled Indian road was found. Remarkable as this place was, however, it paled in comparison to a point passed the day before this place, which we called the defile, for stirring the mind of thoughts of awe exceeded any view we had during the entire journey. In this defile, the opposing red brown sandstone walls, filled with pebbles and shells, closed to less than 60ft apart one from the other and rose sheer and vertical to giddy heights. Strange lyrical bird song and the roar of a spring that gushed from a rock amphitheater filled the canyon with sound. Owing to some superstition, Tadoussuk was struck by a sudden desire to escape the spot and finding some foot holes Carved into the north face, he attempted an ascent, which I accompanied with the barometer. A two hour climb brought us to the crest of one of the surrounding peaks. Yet imagine my astonishment when we found ourselves not atop a mountain as I had supposed. While the defile we had traveled was visible to the east, we Westward we stepped onto the margins of an open prairie so flat, extensive and glaring in the sun, that, coupled with the stupendous rent in the earth from which we had escaped, produced in me several moments of utter disorientation. El yano staccato Tadoussuk said to me simply, a plain so flat it appeared, staked in at the edges like a hide. The barometer showed an elevation of 3,400ft above the sea and a difference of 800ft from the floor of the defile. On returning from this journey on October 7th, we found our main camp well supplied with meat from the fortuitous appearance of buffalo, which had been almost absent since we had left the Pawnee villages, but now presented mixed herds of cows and bulls in the throes of the rut. Swirling dust tornadoes obscured tremendous battles between bulls for the favors of the cows, the grunting and roaring of their violent jousts joining the mournful all night serenades of the wolves to fashion a very symphony of the primeval provisioned now by these distracted herds. On the 8th, we once again turned our horses up the Main or Jefferson fork and began to follow its wide sandy bed in a north northwest direction. As the river wound deeper into the surrounding mountains, which now gathered a mile distant from the river. On both sides of our passage, the strangeness grew daily, the colors of the cliffs and raw earth growing brighter with brick reds and oranges, yellows, chocolates, and myriads of other hues, sometimes laid one atop the other in striped mounds that appeared and disappeared and appeared again. It was a place so bizarre to the experience of civilized man that the language to describe it fails. Of all of us, I believe Mr. Freeman was. Was most astonished at the country, finding it so utterly unlike the misty Ireland of his youth, and wondered aloud more than once whether this was the same hemisphere as that fabled isle. During the time when Mr. Freeman and I had ascended the Thule, our waiting party had found much sign of Indians, and on several occasions we observed smokes at a distance. Having traveled the entire distance from the Pawnees without meeting Indians. Although signs of their camps were abundant, we daily expected an encounter. These expectations grew as we encountered truly astonishing numbers of buffalo, their ranks sometimes barely parting sufficiently to allow us to pass. Throughout the days, they poured in brown streams down from the mountains, up on every side, thousands in view. At a glance, we had the impression that in entering this gathering passageway, we had stumbled onto the very sanctum sanctorum of the Buffalo tribe. On October 12, having traversed in a rare morning fog a most fantastical and colorful part of the narrowing defile we were ascending, the course of the stream turned abruptly to the west, now began a journey through a different setting. Springs gushing from the walls grew abundant. The water became sweet, and the winding canyon became clothed with a forest of cedars, some low and rounded like hedges with berries, blue on some, red on others. Against the cliffs, another kind of cedar grew as tall and pointed and massive of trunk and as the cedars above The Kushatta village 1200 miles downriver, our way now much blocked by boulders falling from the rocky rims above us. On the 14th, discovering a trail leading up through an opening in the rocks, we ascended to the cliffs above and once again found ourselves confronted by the great plain. Apart from Mr. Freeman and myself and a few others, the most of the party had yet to witness this phenomenon, and great were the exclamations of surprise when the summits of the mountains yielded to a featureless yellow plain extending into a jiggling infinity of heat waves. The dried stalks of the soap plants the only vertical objects. Except for its exposure to the sun and the occasional drain running into the canyon below, the great Plain presented no obstacle to travel. We were thus moving more rapidly than heretofore when one of the Pawnees appeared with word that a very considerable camp of aietens was fixed in the defile some miles before us. By late afternoon, we were in sight of their tents gleaming whitely in the sun and. And scattered about the canyon floor just below a place where the stream cascaded down several very picturesque waterfalls. Captain Sparks sent Tadoussuk and Talapoon forward to announce us, and before sunset we again descended into the canyon, where we entered a camp of 120 tents, almost 1,000 persons, hundreds of very noisy dogs and. And round about which grazed several thousand horses and mules that were constantly coming and going to pastures at some distance from the main camp. This camp had more than one chief, for it was made up of several divisions. But we were escorted to the tent of its generally acknowledged leader, a man who appeared near 50 years of age, extremely fit, with a bright eye, and, as we were soon to learn, a. A quick mind, wary at first, for they had been in the country upon the Arkansas and had heard nothing of our coming. He soon inclined, as some others were not, towards greeting us in friendly fashion, and inside a spacious high tent copiously fitted, he bade us smoke with him. Through our interpreter, Telepun, who spoke with him in both signs and the Aytin language, a tongue entirely unrelated to that of the panees, Mr. Freeman explained the nature of our journey when he began to speak. He said he was known to the Spanish as Cordero, but that in his language he was Issam Banbi, meaning handsome wolf. Issa, the Haitian word for wolf, was a common cognomen among their warriors. His people were the Catzoticas, or buffalo hunters, he said, and they traded in both Santa Fe and San Antonio, where the Spaniards called them by the name Comanches. The Haitians, or Comanches, he said, were as numerous as the stars and owned all the country from San Antonio to Santa Fe and north to the Arkansas. He told us frankly and with a prim satisfaction that it was good that the great mystery had placed a forest towards the sunrise to hem the Comanches in, for if there were prairies and buffalo and horses in that direction, he would fear for the people of the United States, as the Comanches would surely overrun us. He said they were at peace with the Spaniards who traveled and traded among them freely and and whom they suffered to raise horses for them. He called the river we were on, Kiche Ake Hono, meaning burrowing squirrel river, for the countless numbers of the towns of these animals along it. He said the traders from Santa Fe called this canyon Palo Duro. On specific inquiry to Mr. Freeman's questions, Cordero added to doubts already growing among us. This river would not take us to near Santa Fe, he said. Beyond the great tableland was a river that came down from the Spanish peaks near Santa Fe, but it took a course almost due south. A few days ride to the north of us was another river that came out of the snowy Sierra in the country of one of their divisions called the Yamparika. Told of our instructions to locate only the head sources of this river we were on, he remarked again that it and the river to Santa Fe were not a part of the same water, but said he would show us all the waters of any rivers we wished to see. Cordero accepted Mr. Freeman's offer of a United States flag and showed it utmost respect. He said they welcomed our traders among them, but that Natchitoches was too far to come to trade. He did not like the idea of a trade factory in Their country thus embarked a period of near to a month when a significant portion of these Indians traveled with us, a circumstance not entirely pleasing to us because of the inclination of their young men to make off with our horses and goods. With apology to Cordero returned or replaced what he could. Yet the annoyance sometimes strained our daily intercourse. The Haitians or Comanches are a large people, heavier than many Indians, with broad faces and slow movements until they alight their horses, at which horse and rider achieve a remarkable unity of movement and activity. Watching their feats of horsemanship in their home country, and more especially, the flair with which they pursue and drive their arrows entirely through the buffalo whilst riding at full gallop, I was put in mind of the cavalry of the Tartars on the steppes of Mongolia. Like the Mongols, they are herders of horses, yet they rarely eat of them. Their horses are a means to hunt and. And they also trade them widely. They live exclusively in buffalo skin tents, the covers and poles of which they are endlessly replenishing, but which endure the constant winds which sweep this open country and are dissembled so rapidly by their women that a camp can be broken to search for fresh pasture for their herds. In moments, the men have as many horses as they can accumulate and and as many wives as they can care for the younger of which accompany them on their hunts and raids. Comanche women engage daily in the labor of processing animal skins, the results of which are exceedingly handsome. But among these hunters, they do not appear to share political power to the extent the Pawnee women do. The Comanches are at war with the Osages and the Apaches. The but were at this very time in the process of making peace through intermarriage with their neighbors, the Kiowas. Beyond any expectation, Indians from other tribes and a great many Spaniards captured as children are found among them living as Comanches and apparently wishing for no other life.
- [18:48]
Podcast Host
You guys have heard me talk all about Montana Knife Company for a few years now on the podcast. Hands down, these are my absolute favorite hunting knives. Every blade they make is a high performance, durable tool that you can rely on, whether you're butchering, hunting, working on the farm, out in the field, doing chores, whatever. And I've got a massive update for you. People have been asking for this forever. MKC finally did it. I've been asking it forever. The wait is over. They're launching their very first folding knife. It's called the Montana. It's going to be dropping very soon. I'm telling you right now, these things are going to sell out fast. If you aren't ready the moment they go live, you're probably going to miss out. So here's what you need to do. Get over to mkc.com right now. Make sure you sign up for their email and text message notifications so you get the alert the exact second the knife drops. Montana Knife Company working knives for working people head to mkc.com today. That's mkc.com I can't wait to check out one of these folders. You ever get that feeling? You're stuck inside staring at screens and a primal urge kicks in. You crave wide open spaces, fresh air, the chance to connect with the land. Well, maybe it's time to find your own piece of the wild. But searching for property can be a maze. That's where land.com comes in. They got millions of listings across the country, from mountain ranches to hidden fishing holes. Their search tools are like a seasoned guide, helping you narrow down what you want. Land.com isn't just about buying and selling. It's about finding a place to hunt, fish, explore, or simply sit by a campfire and listen to the crickets. So head over to land.com today to turn one day into today. Because trust me, there's nothing quite like the feeling of standing on your own piece of earth.
- [20:39]
Dan Flores
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- [21:03]
Podcast Host
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- [21:09]
Dan Flores
I befriended one of their physicians, a man of particular influence among them, who instructed me in their materia medic. Particularly interesting are three of their cures. The first, a plant which he said inhibits a woman's ability to conceive of child. They also have a method of curing toothache, or the common aching head, viz. By the chewing of the stems of the ordinary willow. The third cure came from a kind of small cactus, which they have only recently learned the use of the and which grows far to the south. They consume it in a ceremony as a general tonic of good health, he said, and to speak with the Great Spirit. He wore the skin of a very large spotted leopard of their country, and on seeing my interest, said the living Creature was fierce and preyed on colts and buffalo, calves and sheep in the high mountains. In Spanish he called it El Tigre. I think it must be the large cat Linnaeus calls jaguar and named Filis onca. On the morning of October 17, having remained here as long as we thought prudent, we commenced our journey up the river, now finding it to dwindle rapidly in size. Accompanied by Cordero and and more than a hundred of their warriors and young women, we now found ourselves traveling through a shallow canyon like valley set 200ft below the surface of the immense plain. As we moved west, various other shallow drains joined the main fork, but Cordero directed us to one with the best water, although scarcely a trickle, which he called Tierra Blanca. It contained a highway along its banks fully the equal of the road across the Cumberland. On the 22nd, at a spring below one of the last of the rocky bluffs that had defined this valley for many miles, Cordero bade us fill our bags full and gave us to understand that we were now not far from from the sources of our river. The stream water, found only in some holes at intervals during the previous day, now gave out entirely, as did the white rock strata above the drain, and the bed became merely a low winding depression across the plain. This plain was thick with buffalo and herds of gazelle goats as far as the eye could penetrate, their forms very often appearing outrageously distorted in the wriggle of the heat waves. Our hunters had endured merciless hilarity from the company when reporting the difficulties of shooting buffaloes walking on 20 foot stilts, but now had the satisfaction of confirmation atop the shimmering Elyon. Thus it was that at midday on 23rd October, 1806, the depression we had been following almost fading into the general surface of the great plain. One of the men gave a shout that he saw some break ahead and within an hour we had all gathered on the brink of a tremendous precipice falling 1,000ft below us to the west, its cliffs stretching the as far as we could see southwest and northeast. Before us to the west lay outliers broken off from the enormous tableland over which we had come. Those outliers composing a country of flat topped mountains extending away into the opalescent distance. It was the grandest sight I ever beheld in these United States. But the snowy peaks the said to stretch north from Santa Fe were nowhere in view. Our readings indicated a position of west longitude 103 degrees 30 minutes and an elevation of the headwaters of the red river of 4,975ft above the sea, proof that the immense plain had been steadily rising as we had tracked west. Mr. Freeman asked of the Indians if there were a route to Santa Fe through the tortuous country below us, and how far? They answered yes, that only two days ride west was a river running south that came from the high mountains above Santa Fe, but that the sun rose and fell 10 times between here and the Spanish towns during the rest of this day. Mr. Freeman took no counsel, but consulted his written orders by lamp well after dark. A huge golden moon rose out of the plain to the east this night, illuminating the prairie in a silvery blue cast. When one walked away from the fires and lighting the gashes and throwing immense shadows across the wild tablelands west of us, the wolves sang in and the buffaloes bellowed across a country wilder and more remote than any man in our party, save for the Indians, had ever witnessed or even imagined. Before I retired, Mr. Freeman came to my tent and told me, with very evident regret and not a little heat, that given the specificity of his orders from the president's own mouth, our outward journey was now at an end, that I should prepare for the return journey two mornings hence. That because the Spanish force from Santa Fe might still be searching for us, he and Captain Sparks agreed we should attempt to return by a more direct route to the Pawnee villages and descend the river with our barge as soon as water and weather permitted. That the Indians with us would were in any case urging escape from the surface of Elyon before the great cold winds from the north swept the exposed plain. But that he and Captain Sparks, with Talapoon and Tadoussuk and our AEN escort had thought to ride along the precipice on the morrow and welcomed my company. We rose with the moon low in the sky to the west and rode from camp along the precipice. And as the glow began in the east, notwithstanding that our course lay away from the sunrise, over the next hour we repeatedly reined in our horses to observe a phenomenon of these immense deserts, the sun's rays fingering the eastern sky in a most regular pattern, resembling the spokes of a wheel. At one point, Captain Sparks rode up to take tell me that the hunters referred to this singular occurrence by the name Prairie Aurora. Given Mr. Dunbar's interesting studies of the rainbow, I preserved an image of it with the camera obscura. Although the rays of the aurora lack a prismatic effect, I suppose that refracted sunlight must account for it. The Indians had no interest in in this explanation but made much of the phenomenon. And when it finally faded at the moment the dazzling orb crested the horizon, I observed Cordero to face the sun with outspread arms and perform a small ceremony immersing himself, horse and weapons in smoke. We use up this day riding the great western precipice of Elyon I collecting plants and mineral samples in the declivities of the steep and dry sandstone mountains below the brink, Mr. Freeman and Captain Sparks and taking readings at the head of a more southerly headwater drain of the river than we ascended, one called Freo. It was here that I saw the new species of dwarf Pinus, collected the delicate little pea shrub, I believe a new genus, and found the silvery shrub of the Aster family growing with and in appearance very like the feathery Artemisia of this country, but with flower bracts blooming a most vivid yellow. I believe it a new genus. These were among many other species of an alien world. On October 25, we reluctantly turned our faces eastward once again and began to follow a trace to the northeast that Cordero's people led us along with the broken lands below the plains, sometimes visible and close, while at other times we crept across the stupendous flat surface of Elyon as if the world were aught but plain and sky. No one was allowed to straggle or even hunt during these crossings for fear fear of losing them. In a country of no landmarks. The plain is dotted at intervals with shallow ponds round like plates of cracked mud trampled by the surrounding herds. But when watery, these ponds are frequented by animals and by such an array of ducks, geese, waders and a species of gray crane that, viewed from afar, we first thought the air above the them suspended vortexes of bee swarms. When we finally heard the cries of the geese and the cranes, I and others of the men found this enormous plain, swept by constant strong winds, monotonous in its scenery, entirely lacking an echo to be oddly stirring. This is undoubtedly one of the largest planes in the world, and it has the kind of stern, self assured grandeur of a great ocean. We made the crossing from the sources of the Jefferson Fork to the head gullies of the north, or Dunbar Fork. In six days of riding, always angling towards particular springs and camps known to the Indians. At the second of these there occurred an interesting encounter in at a most fascinating spot, an alcove carved by sweet water gushing from a spring in a rock amphitheater that was covered top to bottom in various painted and carved Indian symbols. These were many and varied, some painted in red ochre, some including what appeared to our eyes as a Spanish bull in black charcoal. In the midst of these frescoes and extending the length of the alcove was a large and remarkable serpent painted in red ochre and capped by a single horn on its forehead. Whilst in investigation of these interesting symbols, a party appeared in sight and within an hour disembarked near our encampment. And they proved to be traitors. Some Spanish, the greater part, Indians from the New Mexico towns and the Indian pueblo of Saint Domingo. They were much astonished to see us with two rickety and noisome carts filled with breads, vegetables, blankets and wares. They were bound for a rescate, or trade fair, they said, at a place along the eastern precipice of Elyon they called Kitaquay. Here was presented an interesting opportunity, and so I engaged them, through Talepun's translation, as to the meanings of the symbols on the wall behind us, particularly with respect to whether the great serpent depicted some creature not known to science. Their response was that the serpent did indeed represent a creature which they called ganado, the great horned serpent that protected the waters, and that because of its appearance on this wall, weary travelers could always find water here. To further inquiry, they said that ganado appeared only in dreams or ceremonies, but that the rattlesnakes were his familiars and common emissaries. This group accompanied us for two days before turning southeast to their rendezvous with certain Aitan bands. One of them was a Spaniard from a town called Teos on the waters of the Rio Bravo, a man of about 40 years who was not only literate but literary. We made ourselves known to one another using Latin terms and phrases, and he gave me to understand that he had been born in Galicia, where he studied some law and had immigrated to New Mexico in search of adventure and wealth. That the former had found him, but that he had eluded the latter entirely. His name was Trujillo, and he expressed a most interesting view of the surrounding country and its potential. It was his opinion that the Spanish approach to these vast plains and mountains would be the more workable than ours, for they would leave the country a grazing commons, and the only harm would be to the wild herds. But we Americans, with our zeal for possessing the world, would try to turn these lands into a place of individual grasping, and having no tolerance either for. For the wild beast nor the Indians, would entirely banish both. To my protest, he wondered, good naturedly if I had read Cervantes and gave me to understand that Our two nations jousting for this region was an affair of the windmills that nature had ever owned these expanses and ever would, among the other interesting particulars of our short acquaintance. And he showed us his method of hunting El Cibola, the buffalo, from horseback with a lance. Mounting their fastest horse, he proceeded to run at one of the herds that constantly surrounded us in this region and within a space of minutes had plunged a steel tipped lance deep into the vitals of two fully grown buffalo running flat out across the prairie. It was as daring a display of courage and skill as pitted against large, dangerous beasts as I've ever witnessed. He told us he had learned the technique emulating bullfighters as a child in Spain. Before they left us, they told us that a party of Kiowas they had met the week before related that other Americans, led by a man named pike, known to Captain Sparks as a favorite of General Wilkinson, were ascending the Arkansas river north of us. On the afternoon of October 31st. We suddenly came within view of the head gullies of the northern branches of the Red river and realized we were approaching the eastern edge of the great tableland. The plunging vertical drainages here possessed springs of good water and small copses of the cotton tree, and their sides were rich in the bright hues of rock and mineral we had seen on the main Red River. This, Cordero assured us, were waters of the mountainous river we had named the Dunbar Fork. On our outward journey here, we experienced a most astonishing occurrence never witnessed for a full day. We rode through a migration of of hundreds of massive teacup sized spiders. Their bodies brown, legs black and hair covered, all traveling northward. Although I could not discern the object of their journey, the barometer here indicated an elevation of 3,200ft above the sea at a longitude of 101 degrees, seven minutes west of Greenwich. During the night of November 4, having rested and provisioned ourselves for beginning our exploration of this Dunbar Fork of the Red river, we were struck by the first of the great north winds of which the Indians had spoken with such awe and urgency. Nowhere in the eastern states, save during a hurricane along the Carolina shore, have I ever experienced the equal of this wind. The thermometer, which had stood at 67 degrees Fahrenheit the evening before, had dropped to 6 degrees Fahrenheit by morning. All day the wind blew relentlessly from the northwest, pushing before it a fine yellow dust that coated us as if with volcanic ash. It sensibly slackened some 30 hours after it commenced and and clouds of stars then Appeared in the intense night cold. The night was then filled with a cacophony of strange flutings and weird cries from unfathomable numbers of birds. Passing over, heading south, four days journey down this little river and passing through immense numbers of buffalo, all drifting southward, we left the last outliers of the strange flat topped tablelands. The next morning, Captain Sparks, riding ahead with the Indians, spied the blue uplift of conical mountains on the eastern horizon. And by that afternoon we made camp in a place where the river cut directly through the most westerly range of them. These ranges of peaks are, for there are several scattered one from the other across the plain. Are not a spur of the western Sierra or Mexican mountains, nor are they lofty. We ascended to the topmost points of several of them, including the highest peak in the main cluster, and measured an elevation by barometer of 2,400ft. The peaks of these mountains thus lie below the lowest surface. We measured on the tablelands of the Yano. They present the appearance of immense piles of granite blocks, A mineral not seen elsewhere on Red River. Their vegetable clothing is oaks and cedars only, Though the main range preserves on its height spacious meadows glowing orange in the summer of the knee high bunch grass of this country. We found elk and buffalo plenty about these mountains, but no animal caught our attention in this region so much as the droves of wild horses here in vast numbers. Knowing the president's fascination with the subject, I took special pains to observe them. In its wild state, the horse naturally segregates into droves, or manatas, as the old h horse catcher Talopoon calls them. Each ruled by a stallion whose chief occupation seems the difficult work of keeping his harem together and adding to it by theft and seduction. If he can ungroomed, the wild horse presents a striking sight. Its mane flowing below its neck, its forelock extending to its nostrils and its teeth tail sweeping the ground. The eye is glowing and alert. Though small, many appeared exceedingly well made, and they present all the colors of hounds in a Virginia kennel, the tan with black mane and tail predominating. Given the value of horses in the United States. These immense droves are already being sought out by our hunters, who stealthily avoid the Spanish patrols and corral them or trade metalware to the Indians for them. A famed horse catcher named Nolan drove thousands of these prairie steeds to the states before losing his life to the Spaniards. Irrespective. Descending the river, we thrice met with hunters engaged in the wild horse trade. On November 14, following a night when the north wind lay four inches of snow across the country, our descent of the mountain fork of the Red river took us to its confluence with the main stream and to our own campsite of 9-18-20. Here, Cordero and his people, anxious to join their companions wintering in the deep canyons far up the river, begged to take their leave of us, notwithstanding certain minor frictions which had developed from so long a travel together. Mr. Freeman honored them with a feast and dance which lasted for some until the morning planet glowed a molten silver in the rose sky. Anxious now to descend the river before winter set in, we proceeded rapidly for the Pawnee villages, encountering nothing noteworthy except that for some weeks we had observed that the plains round about us were seen to be on fire. These fires the Indians had set to direct the movements of the buffalo, freshen the grass for their horses, and to burn up the snakes and annoying insects. This practice seems to confirm Mr. Dunbar's assertion that these immense and grass plains exist because of fire. A few in which Mr. Freeman concurs. I am not so certain. The rising elevation of the country up the river, which is seen to correspond sensibly with the diminution of the grass and oaks and other common species, should not be dismissed. But I'm anxious to discuss with Mr. Dunbar my theory that the spread of grasslands and the dwarfing of vegetation are related instead to a sensible and gradual decrease in atmospheric precipitation as one journeys into the interior of Louisiana. Consequently, the country about the sources of the Red river can never beckon the farmer. It's a region the architect of nature has instead fitted perfectly for wild beasts. We were greeted warmly at the Pawnee villages on the 23rd. Finding our craft and stores left with them in good shape, we remained there, awaiting a rise in the river until the second instant of December. During that time, with Samson's assistance, as he has become very skilled in these tasks, the I was able to dry and repackage my specimens from the sources of the river. A total of 41 vegetables, 13 used as cures by the Indians, 15 grass, shrub and tree specimens, and a collection of 17 birds and 11 quadrupeds. The last includes the skins and horns of the hopping deer, a skin and skull with fangs of the large leopard cat of this country, and a necklace of four imposing claws of the giant white bears said to be numerous farther into Louisiana. Also live specimens of a curious lizard beset with projecting horns and knobs, and an active, vividly colored iguana from the Palo Duro, the greater part of These I believe to be new species and several new genera. Also 18 ink sketches of the country upriver done with the camera obscura, to which notes have been added, indicating coloration in hopes that paintings may be worked up from them. Although I dare not speculate on the receptivity of our nation to an art of such scenery as exists on our western borders, three boxes of minerals representing the geological strata we met with accompany the collection as well. Those who may be inclined to doubt our reports as to the astonishing hues of much of western Louisiana may there satisfy themselves. On the second, we pushed off into the river and began our descent to the village of the cachetas, where Mr. Freeman planned to leave the barge until the high water of the spring enabled a more favorable penetration of of the Great Swamp. The voyage downriver was made without incident. We passed the great southward swing in the river the day before Christmas 1806 and made the Kushatta village five days after. There being insufficient horse to transport the party overland to Natchitoches, Mr. Freeman left the major portion, under command of Captain Sparks, to march the road eastward around the great rock raft in the Great Swamp. While he and I rode in advance, we reached Dr. Sibley's home in Natchitoches on the fifth day of the new year. I should be in New Orleans in February after reporting to Dr. Dunbar in Natchez. With respect to the country up the Red river, it is unnecessary to say more. It is so entirely unlike any other in the United States. A scenery of vast horizontal spaces and stupendous defiles of bizarrely colored earth that is so strange, nay, even alien to the eye, that one wonders now what our people would ever make of it. Neither the country nor the course of the river turned out, upon examination to bear a resemblance to what the president expected. Many of us, although Mr. Freeman refuses to concede the idea, wonder whether the Spaniards permitted our exploration precisely because they knew this. Which explains why the Spanish commander never referenced Santa Fe or the Snowy Mountains in transmitting his government's demands with respect to our course of travel. Indeed, some among us believe that this region might best be left to the Indian, the hunter, the buffalo and wolf and wild mustang forever. I am, sir, your most obedient servant, Peter Custis.
- [48:56]
Podcast Host
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- [51:09]
Dan Flores
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- [51:29]
Podcast Host
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- [51:40]
Randall
Dan, it's good to be with you as always.
- [51:43]
Dan Flores
Yeah, Randall, good to see you, man.
- [51:46]
Randall
Today we are talking about the second part of your sort of counterfactual account of the Freeman and Custis expedition. Written from sort of a first, it's a letter to Jefferson, essentially explaining what they're finding as they go up to seek out the headwaters of the Red River. And at the end. I'm going to start at the end. At the end of this, it closes with a line about the headwaters not being what the President expected. And that leads me to wonder, given that you're the expert on this expedition, did they have an understanding of what Jefferson anticipated they'd find? Was it just a blank spot on the map or did they. Was there actually a vision against which they were sort of. They would have measured their findings?
- [52:47]
Dan Flores
Yeah, that's a great question. To start this out and let me say that what prompted my sitting down and writing this? What is, in effect, historical fiction? What would have happened had Freeman and Custis not been stopped by a Spanish force in the summer of 1806 and had continued into the Southwest and gotten to explore? Was being at Monticello, I don't know, it was 20 years ago, probably, and walking into the receiving room of Jefferson's home and seeing, because they had tried to. They tried to do it as sort of a period presentation, seeing on the wall of his receiving room a map of the west post Lewis and Clark that showed the Columbia River, Missouri river, the Northern Rockies, all of that route mapped out with William Clark's map and showing some of Zebulun Pike's trek across the Plains in 1807. And he returns after having been captured by the Spaniards in 1810. But the red river itself, which Jefferson said several times in his letters to various people, was to him, next to the Missouri, the most interesting water of the Mississippi. The Red river itself is unexplored. It is shown on the map only as far as the old French town of Natcherish, which is about 300 miles, 250 miles up the river in what is now central Louisiana. And beyond that, the whole southern plains and Southwest is terra incognita. Santa Fe is represented way south down the Rocky Mountains and way out beyond the plains, but it's a blank. And so I realized right until the time of Jefferson's death, because the Red river doesn't finally get explored to its headwaters until the 1870s, right up until the time that Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, he still didn't know what was up the Red River. American cartography mapmakers still didn't know and weren't going to know for a long time. And so, of course, they would have known had Freeman and Custis gotten to proceed to the sources of the river, what Jefferson based his letter of exploring instructions to Thomas Freeman on, in terms of where the Red river had its Headwaters. And where this expedition was going to lead them was a map that had been done in 1804 in the Mexican archives by Alexander von Humboldt. And von Humboldt visited Washington in 1805 and gave Jefferson a copy of this map. And using the archives in Mexico, Von Humboldt had basically combined two rivers to create the Red River. He had combined the Pecos river, which takes its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains above Santa Fe, with the Red river, which takes, which is what Jefferson and von Humboldt and mapmakers at the time assumed was one continuous stream. So Jefferson's instructions to Thomas Freeman, given to him at a private dinner in November of 1805, were that he was to explore to the headwaters of the Red river because he wanted to map out. What he wanted to do was to map the Louisiana Purchase and. And see what all he had acquired. But he told Freeman, I want you to go only as far as the headwaters of the Red river extend, no further than that. And he was very explicit, evidently, both orally and in the written instructions about where Freeman was supposed to end his expedition at the headwaters of the Red River. Freeman later, a couple of weeks after the meeting with the private dinner with Jefferson, wrote a friend of his and said, I'm going to lead an expedition into the environs of Santa Fe. How would you like to be my cashier in that country? He says to his friends, I'm not sure what that line meant. But what's obvious is that Freeman thought the Red river was going to take him to Santa Fe, New Mexico. And there may have been some supposition that what they were going to do was to try to open the later Santa Fe trail, which only 20 years later is going to actually open up between Missouri and New Mexico. In any case, didn't happen. Spanish army stopped the expedition when it had gone about 650 miles up the Red River. And so we didn't get what we got with Lewis and Clark. I mean, just imagine, because the Spaniards wanted to stop Lewis and Clark, Clark too. If Lewis and Clark had been stopped, say, at the Mandan villages and had to turn around at the Mandan villages and go back home, and never proceeded across the plains, saw the Rockies, saw the Pacific coast, the Pacific Ocean, that's kind of what, on a smaller scale, what we lost. And so this is what I wanted to recreate.
- [58:19]
Randall
And Jefferson's instructions to stop at the head of the Red River, I can assume are shaped by or in order to avoid his desire to avoid confrontation with the Spanish. And nonetheless, they still run into that.
- [58:38]
Dan Flores
Yeah, they still run into that, because Spain sends out a force both from New Mexico and a second force from Texas. And of course, and I think I said this when we were talking about part one in the last episode, it's fairly easy to stop somebody who's exploring a river. I mean, all you do is just aim for landing upstream of them on the river and then array of force across the river. And the only reason, because Spain did send expeditions out to stop Lewis and Clark, the only reason they didn't manage to do that with Lewis and Clark is that the Missouri river, of course, tracks as they're ascending it. It tracks far to the north, up into the Dakotas, into North Dakota and Montana. And sending out a military force from Texas or New Mexico, they never could actually ever get to the Missouri River. They always. The two expeditions that were sent out to stop Lewis and Clark turned around and returned before they ever got to the Missouri. But the Red river, it was close, and so they managed to pull it off.
- [59:47]
Randall
In this part of the story, you also reference kind of a fascinating aspect of this part of the country, this history, which is the horse trade that unfolded very early on in the American West, Southwest. And Jefferson. This is another thing that Jefferson's very interested in, and it's something that you've written about. So I kind of wonder if people weren't aware of this phenomenon. What you mean, if you're referring to the horse trade.
- [60:22]
Dan Flores
Yeah, I did. One of the early episodes of the podcast was on this. I think I called it Bringing Home all the Pretty Horses. And it was out of a piece of Wild New World that I had written about, the horse trade. And there's also actually a chapter in American Serengeti with that title. So in contrast to the northern west, where the fur trade is the predominant sort of extractionist kind of trade that Americans are interested in with the fur trade companies and with mountain men and all that on the southern prairies. And in the southern, in this canyon country where I have Freeman and Custis going, the primary animal that interests Americans with an eye on making money out of the west is the wild horse. And the reason they're interested in these horses is because, for one thing, the horses are basically running free on the plains. And all you have to do is just capture them or trade for them from the Indians and the Comanches and groups like that are big traders of horses to Americans who go West. But the desire for horses, the market for them back home is from the advancing American frontier across the south and the Midwest as the frontier Advances. They simply don't have enough horses. And so a horse trade begins actually before the fur trade ever does in the northern West. It begins as early as 1790, long before Lewis and Clark ever go up the Missouri River. A horse trader named Philip Nolan is going west from Natchez, Mississippi, and going out onto the plains in this country that I'm describing that Freeman and Custis explore and trading for horses and capturing horses. And so it becomes the primary commercial kind of animal from the whole Southern plains and Southwest for the period really from about 1790 up until essentially the middle of the 19th century. It's a major trade in that you
- [62:42]
Randall
touched on something I also wanted to bring up here, which is, as I was reading this, there's a certain gravity maybe in the middle of this piece when it comes to the descriptions of the Comanche. And it's a name that's familiar to a lot of people, but the Comanche have a really unique history. There's a book, Comanche Empire, that's sort of a landmark work, but I wonder if you can give the listeners sort of an overview or an impression of what makes the Comanche sort of exceptional or unique in terms of this broader story of competing and contesting empires on the plains. Yeah.
- [63:33]
Dan Flores
Well, one of the lines I have, the Comanche leader that they. They treat with and who actually travels with them for a couple of months and guides them to the headwaters of the Red River. His name, and he's a real figure in history. He was known as Cordero to the Spaniards, but his real name was Isambanbi, and in the Comanche language that meant handsome wolf. He was a man of about 50 years of age. Whenever Freeman and Custis would have gone into the Southwest up the Red River. And he. I have him use a line which I invented, but I don't think it's out of character whatsoever for the Comanches and these Comanche head men in particular. He tells Freeman and Custis, it's good for you Americans that there are not. There's not a continuation of plains and buffalo and. And horses out in the direction where you come from. Because if there were, I fear my people would overrun you. I mean, that's the way the Comanches looked at the world. They did create an empire. They were a Utah Aztecan people that had come to the southwest only about 100 years before this. This is set in 1806. And they had come to the Southwest because they regarded it as the origin of horses, as horses were traded up the Rocky Mountains to Various tribes from the Utes, the ancestors of the Comanches, who were in probably southwestern Wyoming, northeastern Utah. They were sort of Shoshone and like people related to the Shoshone's and Utes. But when they got horses, they basically came south and they took the southern plains from the Arkansas river all the way down to the Rio Grande down to the Mexican border. Basically took the country away from the Apaches who had owned it for two or three hundred years, and set up an empire that traded horses, that sort of raided Spanish ranches for cattle and horses to trade to the Americans. This was known as the Comanchero trade. John Wayne did a movie about it, in fact. And they were a kind of the analogy of the Lakotas from the Northern Plains. The Comanches were that group on the
- [66:05]
Randall
southern plains and a major power player. At the same time that the United States and Spain are figuring out who's. Who's taking what out there, the Comanches are holding strong. I wonder, there's another point here that you. Similar to the first question I asked about Jefferson's expectations, but there's a debate that's raised in the course of this chapter. I feel like whenever I'm reading historical fiction, I wonder what has this need in the evidence base and what is the invention of the author. But there's a debate about the origins of the planes, whether it's caused by aridity or whether it's caused by fire. And I feel like most people today have a sense of that. Right. But there's also. You can't ignore the fact that Native people used fire all the time. And so you could understand how sort of a new arrival to the planes might make that. Make that assumption. But I wonder if you can just sort of speak to where that. Where you pulled that from and, and how Europeans or Euro Americans arriving on the plains perhaps imagined it's its natural history.
- [67:27]
Dan Flores
Yeah, that's another good question. And I. I think, you know, one thing you have to sort of understand about the character. I tell the story, story through Peter Custis, who is the. He's the, in effect, the naturalist on the expedition. Thomas Freeman is an astronomer, so he's a scientist as well. He's the one who's doing the maps and all. But Custis is the naturalist. And so he's interested in all the things to do with. Because Jefferson has told them in his instructions. I want you to pay particular attention to. To everything you see new that's not in the Maritime States, as Jefferson puts it in his instructions. And so one of the things Custis is doing, of course, is that he's recording the presence of new animals that he's seeing for the first time. I have him discover, you know, at least evidence that there are jaguars in the Southwest. He gets the. The talons of a grizzly bear. He doesn't see a grizzly bear, but he gets the talons. And of course, he sees mule deer and pronghorns and all these various creatures and plants. But one of the things he's noticing as they're going west, and he comments on it from the very beginning even. He even does so in the first episode that I devoted to the first part of. Of this story, that as they go west, the trees are getting shorter. The same tree species will continue over a couple of hundred miles, but as they go west, the trees keep getting shorter and shorter and shorter.
- [69:05]
Randall
It's a gradient of.
- [69:06]
Dan Flores
It's a gradient until he finally, when he's there, close to the headwaters of the Red river, approaching the edge of the Llano Estacado Plateau and the canyon country they're about to enter, he talks about, we're in oak trees that are only knee high, and he had been traveling through oak trees down the Red river that were 100ft tall. And so he's wondering why this has happened. And he's noticing that the same thing is happening with grass. And so it leads him to challenge what was then the existing idea about how the Great Plains came to be. And there were two competing ideas. And he had heard both of them from William Dunbar back in Natchez, who, along with Jefferson, was. Who had sort of outfitted the expedition and told them what to look for and what sort of topics to take up. Because Dunbar had said there are two competing explanations for these planes, which, of course, Americans are just now seeing. They're not. Haven't seen them before. And here they're entering this wholly new landscape of wide open grasslands. And Dunbar says the two explanations are the plains are the remnants of ancient lake beds, or they're caused by fires burning across them all the time. And of course, I have them on the return trip. They see a fire burning. They see the plains burning. But Custis, who has observed this. This gradient of diminishing height of various plants, returns and says, I think maybe the explanation has to do with the diminishing precipitation as you go west. So I have him do kind of a first American take on aridity. As you go west, it gets drier and drier. And that's the effect it produces. And of course, people living in the east, this is not a concept that has ever occurred to them. So, anyway, that's. That's where that came from.
- [71:18]
Randall
Cool. Well, Dan, it's always fun to chat.
- [71:20]
Dan Flores
Yeah, this was a fun one. Randall, I appreciate your questions.
- [71:23]
Podcast Host
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- [72:13]
Dan Flores
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- [72:37]
Podcast Host
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