Page 37 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

James Ohio Pattie and his father, Sylvester, leased and reoccupied the Santa Rita del Cobre mine in 1825 and, with partners James Kirker and Nathaniel M. Pryor, worked it successfully, even though a dishonest employee ruined them later. Toward the last of Oc- tober in 1825, James Pattie returned to the mine from El Paso del Norte after an extended trip into the interior of Mexico. Because he traveled up the river for two days before turning west, he very likely went by way of Cooke’s Spring to reach Santa Rita del Cobre. During the next year, Pattie hunted in the mountainous areas around the mine and on at least one occasion was
as far south as Cooke’s Peak, because he described the “Membry [Mimbres River]” as running a southerly course before becoming lost in a wide arid plain"
Not long after the disappearance of their clerk with $30,000, Sylvester Pattie and his two partners were forced out of the copper mine by Robert McKnight and Stephen Courcier. The new operators quickly extended their control to other holdings and soon dominated copper mining in Chihuahua. However, at the Santa Rita, the Apaches, rather than a dishonest
100
clerk, would prove their downfall.
A final trail was “opened” through the area in 1832
by David Jackson when he and 11 companions traveled to California from Santa Fe. The map of their journey shows them breaking away from the Rio Grande just above the bend (at present-day Hatch) and traveling southwest for an appreciable distance before turning
101
riot. He later led some of the Sioux against the Sak and Fox tribes during the Black Hawk War, after first supplying the rebelling tribes with illegal guns and ammunition.
Under warrant for arrest, he fled down the Mississip- pi River and turned up in Independence, Missouri in 1833. After business failure there, he journeyed to California and convinced the Mexican officials that he was a doctor. He then proceeded to set up a profitable practice and became a substantial landowner. From here he conducted his exhortation for people to follow him. He was one of the first and strongest agitators in trying to convince more American emigrants to move
103
their families and belongings to California.
“Juan Jose” Warner, also called “Juan Largo” (Long John — he stood 6 feet 3 inches), was probably a much more desirable citizen in the eyes of southern Califor- nians. He left Connecticut in 1830 for his health and reached St. Louis in November. In the spring of 1831, he accepted a clerk’s position with a wagon train headed for Santa Fe organized by Jedediah Strong “Peg Leg” Smith, David E. Jackson, and William Sub- lette. Smith was killed by the Comanches before the
train reached Santa Fe on July 4, 1831.
At Santa Fe, Warner joined the reorganized com-
pany, now headed by David Waldo, Ewing Young, and David Jackson along with seven others that left for California August 29, 1831, to trade for mules to be sold in Louisiana. They traveled a route later fol-
•'
1 04
lowed, at least in part, by Philip St. George Cooke. Warner remained in California, married, and after a few years working in Los Angeles, he started his own mercantile business in 1837 near the corner of Main and Temple streets. In December 1839 he returned to the states where he remained until 1841. He delivered two lectures in New York in which he stressed the significance of the Pacific coast in the future develop- ment of the United states. Warner returned to California and in 1844 was granted the San Jose Valley where he settled the famous Warner Ranch near Temecula. From this vantage point on the only viable route into southern California, he would witness the
unfolding of a fabulous new era, and nearly every journal that recorded the trip to California b^M:he
1
southern route would mention Warner’s Ranch. Meanwhile, nothing the Mexicans tried in dealing with the Apaches seemed to work, so on September 7, 1835, an earlier program of paying bounty for Indian scalps was resumed. The government of Sonora of- fered 100 pesos for an adult male, and Chihuahua soon
almost due west.
assuredly have camped at Cooke’s Spring.
Along this route they would almost
The major route to the “far west” for 25 years prior
to the Mexican War was the overland road from Mis-
souri to Santa Fe. In the 1830s, however, merchants
and traders began extending their pack-train opera-
tions to San Diego and Los Angeles over routes
referred to as the Gila River Trail and the Old Spanish
Trail, respectively. The Gila River Trail crossed
westward bv what would later become known as
• 1(P
Cooke’s Spring. “ John Marsh and Jonathan Trum-
bull Warner (called “Juan Jose” by the Spanish who had difficulty with his Anglo name) were two very different entrepreneurs among the several who made this journey west.
John Marsh traveled to California over the Gila River Trail in 1836, arriving in the San Joaquin Valley in February. His checkered past branded him somewhat as a promoter of ideas mainly beneficial to himself. He had graduated from Harvard, after having been thrown out for breaking a window during a student
Chapter 1
23