Page 53 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

honed to assault the wilderness west of the Rio
was precisely 36 feet square and contained exactly
8
five rooms.
pany B) noted that the ground appeared to have been cultivated sometime long ago.
The weather was miserable during the next day’s travel. Cookereportedthatthewindhadblowna gale all day out of the west-southwest and that the weather had alternated between raining, snowing, and shining throughout the day. Williams recorded that he became wet and cold but was fortunate to have a little cayenne pepper and ground ginger left. He took about one-half teaspoonful, dry, which soon warmed his system.90 When they camped for the night, the spring there was named for the worn-out white ox Cooke ordered slaughtered for “the smal- lest and poorest beef’ imaginable. He calculated that they had 90 days of meat and 96 of flour remain- ing (on half rations) now that their numbers had
91
been reduced for the last time.
They were camped about six miles from a snow-
clad mountain, and the men complained about the temperature and the quality of the ox which had
92
Wil- liams did not care for the meat of the worn-out oxen distributed to the men. He preferred either a foot square portion of the hide or three to four feet of
entrails to the “slimy ropy gelly [sic] looking stuff
Grande and pioneer the
caped de Anza and others, continued down the river a few miles farther. William Coray’s wife (Melissa Burton Coray) had been riding with Mrs. Lydia Edmonds Hunter (who was three and one-half months pregnant) in Captain Hunter’s wagon. Hunter’s team was becoming jaded, and he feared they might give out entirely. To lighten the load it was necessary that Melissa find other means of travel.
Coray had been riding an Indian pony he pur- chased for $25 on July 24, and now Melissa joined
him on one of their mules.
parently unused to the saddle, for according to her
82
husband she “was very fatigued at night.”
the day Cooke recorded that three more men went to join the returning party; two were ill, but one was “the only active and efficient man of the whole [returning] detachment,” making a total of 58 for those backtracking to Santa Fe.
When the Battalion left the Rio Grande on Novem- ber 13 near present-day Hatch, the command in- cluded 339 men, 4 women, 15 wagons, and a large herdofcattleandsheep.84 TheBattalionproceeded generally west (Figure 18) along what Whitworth and others referred to as the “Old Spanish Trail”
and Cooke called the Sonora Road.
85
The men
93
If he were fortunate enough to draw
camped that night near a huge natural cistern'that
they named Foster’s Hole. The water at this natural
cistern was about 100 feet lower than the camp and
surrounded on three sides by overhanging rocks. It
was nearly inaccessible for the animals. However,
the men were able to draw the water with ropes and
buckets and empty it into two lower basins where two
or three animals could be accommodated at a
.. 86 time.
Either the selection of the men to return to Santa Fe was not sufficiently careful or more were rapidly succumbing to the short rations and rigorous marches. Thomas James Dunn recorded that in his
07
company (B) there were three men sick.
On November 14, 1846, the men camped near a mountain stream and noted the remains of a stone house, fragments of pottery, and other Indian ar- tifacts. It is interesting to note that the men and officers of the Battalion frequently recorded observ- ing different phenomena or interpreted events in diverse ways. If they mentioned the abandoned structure, however, they universally recorded that it
the hide, he would singe the hair and scrape off any
remainder with his butcher knife. After boiling the
slab for three or four hours, he claimed it was as
tender as tripe, and the soup most delicious. If
instead he received guts as a ration, he turned them
inside-out and, if water were available, washed them.
Either roasted or boiled, he thought them “relish-
wagon road that had es-
Only Samuel Hollister Rogers (Com-
Mrs. Coray was ap-
During
Chapter 2
39
made it this far only by continual beatings.
called beef.”
able.”
94
Rogers noted that some of the men went
hunting up a ravine and about five miles from the
camp found a deserted vineyard with some tasty
grapes still hanging on the vines, on which they
95
They were camped near the base of Cooke’s Peak.
The 15-mile march the next clear, cold day brought the Battalion to a marshy water hole that was given the name “Cooke’s Spring” by one of the Lieutenants in the command. Whitworth, perhaps because of having experienced winters in England,
96
Were it not for this spring, the only substantial and reliable source of water between the Rio Grande and the Rio Mimbres, the column would have taken another
feasted
called it a “beautiful day.”