Land of Enchantment: Memoirs of Marian Russell Along The Santa Fé Trail

Marion Sloan Russell

• Publisher: Normanby Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781786258038
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Few of the great overland highways of America have known such a wealth of color and romance as that which surrounded the Santa Fé Trail. For over four centuries the dust-gray and muddy-red trail felt the moccasined tread of Comanches, Apaches, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes. These soft footfalls were replaced by the bold harsh clang of the armored conqueror, Coronado, and by a host of Spanish explorers and soldiers seeking the gold of fabled Quivira. Black and brown-robed priests, armed only with the cross, were followed in turn by bearded buckskin-clad fur traders and mountain men, by canny Indian traders, and lean, weather-beaten drovers with great herds of long-horned cattle. […]The story dictated in such vivid detail by Marian Sloan Russell is a unique and valuable eyewitness account by a sensitive, intelligent girl who grew to maturity on the kaleidoscopic Santa Fé Trail. "Maid Marian, " as she was known by the freighters and soldiers, made five round-trip crossings of the trail before settling down to live her adult life along its deeply rutted traces.—From Foreword
"When it was first published in 1954, Marian Russell's Land of Enchantment was praised as an outstanding memoir of life on the Santa Fe Trail…Now readers everywhere can enjoy Mrs. Russell's recollections,... And those readers will discover that Mrs. Russell described much more than just life on the Trail. Indeed her memoirs cover virtually every aspect of life in the West...—Southwest Review"These memoirs reveal a strong, energetic woman whose perceptions of old Santa Fe and pioneer life on the trail paint a vivid picture of the nineteenth-century West. The unusual and exact details which Marian Russell recalls make her story enthrallingly real."—American West

CHAPTER ONE—The Old Northwest

IT IS my desire that these memoirs may help preserve to posterity the truth and the warmth of an unforgettable period in American history; the stirring decades in which sturdy pioneers blazed trails across a strange and wondrous land of prairies, plains and mountains.

Life has dealt me adventure with a lavish hand and yet the way stretches very fair behind me. It is the brightness, not the darkness that I see as I look backward.

It is in the little incidents of life that the interest of existence really lies, not in just the grand results. For that reason I hope the reader will bear with me if I stray at times from the main thread of my story to linger over some cherished personal remembrance. Dear to me is the memory of that cloud of dust that swirled away behind a lumbering herd of buffalo, of curlews dipping in a moist meadow, of cows in a line ambling to the milking shed, of trips across the Great Plains in a covered wagon, of my honey-moon in little Camp Nickols on the Santa Fé Trail, of Colonel “Kit” Carson and Colonel Francis X. Aubry. I like to remember how the Santa Fe Trail traffic flowed like a river through Santa Fe’s great arched gateway.

I am the third and last child of William and Eliza St. Clair Sloan, who were of Scottish ancestry. They named me after Lady Marian Wallace whose tragic story touched my mother’s heart. I was born in Peoria, Illinois, on January 26,1845. The first child of my parents’ union died in infancy. The next, my brother, William, lived to manhood and shared with me many of the incidents of which I write.

My father, an army surgeon in the Mexican War, was killed at the Battle of Monterey. He passed from my life at such an early age that I have no remembrance of him. An old daguerreotype shows him in a gaily-flowered waist coat, with long straight dark hair and serious eyes like brother Will’s.

I became so familiar with my mother’s face as it was in later years that her earlier image evades me. She was a small very dark but lovely woman. She was courageous, educated and cultured. One hundred years ago educational advantages were difficult for a boy and girl to obtain, yet mother managed to give both Will and me educations far beyond the average.

At times I seem to see her standing by a flickering campfire in a flounced gingham dress and a great sun-bonnet. Behind her looms the great bulk of a covered wagon. I think I can hear her singing,

“Flow gently sweet Afton,

Among thy green braes.”

From the shadowy background of infancy come pictures of amazing clarity. Across a room of immaculate cleanliness I send my toddling feet. There is white Chinese matting on the floor, and in a corner a stand table, the top of which I cannot reach, bearing a big conch shell and a vase of flowers. There are guests: A man with black side-burns who has carefully parted his long coat tails before sitting down; a woman whose silken skirts billow softly as she sweeps across the Chinese matting. She wears black silk halfhanders and carries a large fan. Her blue eyes stare solemnly at me from above the widespread fan. This is my first remembrance of our home in St. Louis, Missouri.

Out of childhood come other memories: The vegetable garden behind the house in which we later lived in St. Louis was a wild unexplored jungle in which strange beasts might be found hidden among the currants and cabbage. Once a wild Indian with a feather in his hair arose with blood-curdling war whoops from among the tomato vines. On closer inspection the savage turned out to be brother Will, yet the vegetable garden remained a wild jungle.

My step-father, whose name was Mahoney, killed a snake in my jungle garden. It was a rattle-snake with eleven rattles. I stood with my hand in my mother’s and, from a safe distance, looked at the dead snake. Suddenly, the dead snake opened its mouth wide and out jumped a big green toad. For a moment, it stood blinking its eyes at us, then went hopping off amid the cabbages. I think perhaps that the memory of the rattle-snake and the hop-toad has always inclined me to believe a wee bit in ghosts and goblins.

The world! What a vast mysterious place it seemed to my childlike eyes! What a trackless continent the vegetable garden! What marvelous explorations I could make in our attic!

Then there was the street; the street that stretched long and dim from our doorstep. It led to a strange unknown world, of that I was certain. Through the long summer days it beckoned and so at last I did follow. Soon the street became dreadful and unfamiliar, and an almighty and devastating sadness descended upon me. I wanted my mother. But all around me stretched St. Louis, a dreadful and strange St. Louis. I was tired. I was sick and I wanted my mother. I climbed some white wooden steps to where a door stood hospitably open. A woman’s sweet voice bade me enter. I would not talk to the woman. How could she know of a street that invited and enticed small children away from their mother? She gave me bread and milk in a blue bowl and a gray kitten came and softly rubbed against me. I was comforted.

There were no radio patrol cars in St. Louis in 1848. When three year old children strayed away from their mothers they depended upon an old negro to find them. Soon an old negro came along that now frightening street. He was ringing a bell as he walked, and his soft voice was calling, “Little while chile lost. Have you seen a three year old chile in a blue pinafore? Little Marian Sloan is lost from her mother.” So, I was found and, fast asleep, I was carried home to my mother. I only remember cradling my head on a warm black neck before slumber engulfed me.

I remember sitting in a great room. The air was close and heavy from the breathing of a large audience. I had leaned my head against mother sleepily when the curtain before us suddenly went up with a clatter. Little Tom Thumb, all dressed in red velvet and golden tassels, drove out on the stage a team of tiny Shetland ponies hitched to a little buggy. The audience laughed and clapped. The tiny ponies danced as little Tom stood up in the buggy, removed his top hat and bowed to us. Then a man came and stood at the edge of the stage and talked for a while. He said that the buggy and ponies had been given to Tom Thumb by Queen Victoria.

I often had to be reminded to say my prayers, but Will never had to be reminded. I can see him kneeling by his bed that was always across the room from mother’s and mine, his thin brown neck rising above the collar of his outing flannel night shirt. Once I laughed at the sight of the brown soles of his bare feet sticking out behind him. I laughed but mother’s glance reproved me. Will never noticed. His piping voice had begun the child’s prayer, “Now I lay me...” He hesitated one night when he had finished and, after a moment added a bit defiantly, “Please God, I want some day to see your face. Dear God, I will be a good boy.”

I turned shocked eyes upon my mother. She dropped my long hair she was braiding and crossed the room to kneel at Will’s side. I seem to see them kneeling there. I see their shadows flickering on the wall. I hear a child’s voice saying, “Please God, I want to see your face.”

So they come, these childhood memories. They are fragmentary and disconnected, life’s loose beads with no straight string running through them.

Mother had remarried when I was but three years old and the memory of my step-father’s kindness colors many of my childhood memories. He was a tall man, an Irishman with a red face and broad shoulders. I do not know why I was not taught to call him “father.” To me he was always Mr. Mahoney. He carried himself with an erect military bearing and seemed to know all there was to know about Indians. The tales he told of the red men! He had an eager boyish laugh and fine even white teeth that gleamed when he laughed. I remember that he would play the banjo and sing Irish ballads with a good strong voice with a rollicking note in it.

He seemed to love to be near mother. They made a nice looking couple though mother could stand under his out-stretched arm, she was so small. He was tall, yellow haired and florid. She was short, dark and utterly lovely.

I do wish you could have seen mother in her hooped skirts and snowy pantalettes. Her hoops were never over-large, but the pantalettes were so glistening, stiff-starched and lace trimmed. They were embroidered and ruffled and removable. She took them off like a pair of stockings. She anchored them above her knees with elastic and was always changing them.

Mother parted her black hair in the middle and combed it smoothly back to a bun that she anchored with bone hairpins. No matter how smoothly she combed that black hair tendrils of it always came loose and flew about. Her eyes were large and Madonna-like ‘neath the heavy, parted hair. When she became excited her face flushed like a rose leaf.

I remember sitting on the floor holding Mr. Mahoney’s new boots in my lap. My feet, shod in black sandals, were stretched out before me. Somewhere I had seen a picture of a mouse running out of a hole in the toe of a boot. So with mother’s forbidden scissors I cut a small hole in the toe of Mr. Mahoney’s new boot. Outraged, mother quickly lifted her hand against me. But Mr. Mahoney took me from her. He laughed as he held my face hard against his own. To my very angry mother he said, “Of boots there are many, but I have only one dear little daughter.” I loved Mr. Mahoney.

In 1849, Mr. Mahoney was appointed custodian of Fort Snelling and Prairie du Chien, military outposts on the upper Mississippi.{1} Garrisons of soldiers were stationed there to guard against Indian outbreaks. Mr. Mahoney was an experienced scout and knew the way of the red man.

We packed our belongings and took passage on a funny little stern-wheeler that churned up the muddy waters, leaving a foamy, ivory colored trail in its wake. It was a bit like a sawmill in full operation moving off up the river. Then, too, there was a charm and a mystery about the river. We were enroute to a new home in the great north-west. Everything along the Father of Waters was different from our life in St. Louis.

On the western side of that great yellow river rippled the silvery prairies, with their danger from Indians and wild buffalo. We saw herds of buffalo grazing. Little towns perched on the bluffs above the eastern bank of the great river. There were tall trees and vines whose tendrils hung down into the murky water. All the little towns were on the eastern bank. The western bank was left to the buffalo and to the Indians.

We passed many islands and wondered how the pilot of the threshing little stern-wheeler found his way through them. In places there were so many islands that we had the illusion we were sailing through a series of many little lakes.

Sometimes we passed under angry red bluffs that frowned down at us. One such tall prominence was named “The Maiden’s Leap,” and mother told us the story of the Indian girl who had thrown herself from the precipice when her lover had proved unfaithful. Mr. Mahoney said that he hoped her lover was a Sioux and not a dirty Chippewa. Mr. Mahoney did not approve of the Chippewas.

In later years I was to learn the full legend. A hundred years before, an Indian girl named Winona, of the tribe of Wapasha, fell in love with a young Indian hunter. Her love was returned but her parents wanted her to marry another warrior who had signally distinguished himself in battle against the hated Chippewas.

When the fateful day came that Winona was to be married to the man of her parent’s choice, she ascended to the summit of the high red bluff and, in a clear ringing voice, upbraided her father for being cruel to her lover and driving him alone into the forest. She then lifted her hands to the sky above her and began singing a plaintive song to her lover. When the song was finished she threw herself into the river.

Standing that day on the deck of the little stern-wheeler I saw in imagination the slender Indian girl hurtling down into the water. I leaned far over trying to see the bottom, but the water was yellow and muddy. Poor little Winona!

At last we anchored beneath a high cut bank. On the top stood Fort Snelling. There was a tall round tower in the center of the parade ground and from it a sentry on duty scanned the countryside for roving bands of Indians.

Across the river from Fort Snelling were Indian encampments of Sioux and Chippewas. One could not help noticing how much cleaner were the Sioux than the Chippewas. Even from across the river the gaily colored blankets of the Sioux contrasted oddly with the dirty, be-draggled ones of the Chippewas.

Once the Sioux came scampering to the gates of the fort for protection. Hard on their heels were the screaming Chippewas. In an instant all became bustle and confusion. A detachment of soldiers marched out between the warring factions. The Chippewas muttered and grumbled. The Sioux brought out a big peace pipe. There was some smoking and grunting. At last the laughing soldiers trooped back into the fort and the Indians returned to their camp across the river. The “battle” was over.

Many distinguished officers had been in charge at Fort Snelling. Zachary Taylor had been in command there twenty years before. He had four beautiful daughters, one of whom was my mother’s friend. She married Jefferson Davis.

Dred Scott, too, had lived at Fort Snelling. He was a negro slave belonging to Dr. Emerson, an army surgeon. Dr. Emerson also owned a mulatto girl with a skin like yellow satin. Dred married this pretty negress at Fort Snelling in 1836. Later when Dr. Emerson was transferred to St. Louis he sold Dred and his wife “down the river.” It was then that Dred brought suit for his freedom. The case was carried to the Supreme Court and resulted in the infamous Dred Scott Decision.

Prairie du Chien was not far south of Fort Snelling. Many of the officers were stationed at Prairie du Chien. While we lived at Fort Snelling we made many trips down to Prairie du Chien in mule-drawn covered wagons. On one such occasion we passed through the village of the French voyageurs. Tall houses edged streets so narrow that they seemed hardly wide enough for our great wagons. Women with bright black eyes and shawls over their heads called to us from open doorways. The voyageurs were famous hunters, trappers, fishermen and boatmen. Often at Fort Snelling we would see them coming up the river in keel boats. Each boat had four tiny sails and a cabin amidships.

One such voyageur was Antony, a gnome-like fellow with a face like a withered apple. Never did he come to Fort Snelling but that he found Will and me waiting for him. He had a pleasant sun-burnt face and a little choppy mustache beneath which his teeth shone when he smiled. Many were the tales he told of murderous French priests and an ancient folk he called “the Druids.” Druid legends had the Indian stories beat. The Druids lived in haunted woods and though they looked like people they were not human. They had long tails and they lived in the heart of the forest trees. If one was unfortunate enough to cut a bough from a tree in which a Druid made his home, that person would either die suddenly or become crippled in one of his limbs.

Old Antony told us that the cotton wood trees that grew along the river had a spirit that was a bit like a ghost, and that Will and I must learn to respect that spirit. The ghost of the cottonwood tree had helped the voyageurs in all of their undertakings. When the Mississip...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DOWN THE TRAIL....
• CHAPTER ONE-The Old Northwest
• CHAPTER TWO-On the Santa Fé Trail
• CHAPTER THREE-Life in Santa Fé 1852-1856
• CHAPTER FOUR-Fort Leavenworth 1856-1860
• CHAPTER FIVE-Back To New Mexico 1860
• CHAPTER SIX-Land of Enchantment 1860-1866
• CHAPTER SEVEN-Tecolote Traders 1866-1871
• CHAPTER EIGHT-Stonewall Valley Ranch 1871-1936