The Old Santa Fe Trail: The Story of a Great HighwayInman, Henry
History
The Old Santa Fe Trail: The Story of a Great Highway
Inman, Henry
Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.); New Mexico -- History; Santa Fe National Historic Trail
Court was daily in session; five more Indians and four Mexicans were
sentenced to be hung on the 30th of April. In the court room, on the
occasion of the trial of these nine prisoners, were Senora Bent the late
governor's wife, and Senora Boggs, giving their evidence in regard to
the massacre, of which they were eye-witnesses. Mrs. Bent was quite
handsome; a few years previously she must have been a beautiful woman.
The wife of the renowned Kit Carson also was in attendance. Her style
of beauty was of the haughty, heart-breaking kind--such as would lead a
man, with a glance of the eye, to risk his life for one smile.
The court room was a small, oblong apartment, dimly lighted by two
narrow windows; a thin railing keeping the bystanders from contact
with the functionaries. The prisoners faced the judges, and the three
witnesses--Senoras Bent, Boggs, and Carson--were close to them on a
bench by the wall. When Mrs. Bent gave her testimony, the eyes of the
culprits were fixed sternly upon her; when she pointed out the Indian
who had killed the governor, not a muscle of the chief's face twitched
or betrayed agitation, though he was aware her evidence settled his
death warrant; he sat with lips gently closed, eyes earnestly fixed
on her, without a show of malice or hatred--a spectacle of Indian
fortitude, and of the severe mastery to which the emotions can be
subjected.
Among the jurors was a trapper named Baptiste Brown, a Frenchman, as
were the majority of the trappers in the early days of the border.
He was an exceptionally kind-hearted man when he first came to the
mountains, and seriously inclined to regard the Indians with that
mistaken sentimentality characterizing the average New England
philanthropist, who has never seen the untutored savage on his native
heath. His ideas, however, underwent a marked change as the years rolled
on and he became more familiar with the attributes of the noble red man.
He was with Kit Carson in the Blackfeet country many years before the
Taos massacre, when his convictions were thus modified, and it was
from the famous frontiersman himself I learned the story of Baptiste's
conversion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account