The Personal Narrative of J. O. Pattie ... during an Expedition from St. Louis, through the regions between that place and the Pacific Ocean. ... With a description of the country. ... Edited by T. Flint

Front matter

THE PERSONAL NARRATIVE OI JAMES O. PATTIE, OF KENTUCKY, DURING AN EXPEDITION FROM ST. LOUIS, THROUGH THE VAST REGIONS BETWEEN THAT PLACE AND THE PACIFIC OCEAN, AND THENCE BACK THROUGH THE CITY OF MEXICO TO VERA CRUZ, DURING JOURNEYINGS OF SIX YEARS; IN WHICH HE AND HIS FATHER, WHO ACCOMPANIED HIM, SUFFERED UNHEARD OF HARDSHIPS AND DANGERS, HAD VARIOUS CONFLICTS WITH THE INDIANS, AND WERE MADE CAP- TIVES, IN WHICH CAPTIVITY HIS FATHER DIED; TOGETHER WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY, AND THE VARIOUS NATIONS THROUGH WHICH THEY PASSED. EDITED DY ' TIMOTHY FLINT. CINCINNATI: PUBLISHED BY E. H. FLINT. 1833. Entered according to act of Congress, in tho year of out Lord ono thousand eight hundred and thirty-three, by John H. Wood, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of tho District of Ohio. EDITOR'S

Preface

. It has been my fortune to be known as a writer of works of the imagination. I am solicitous that this Journal should lose none of its intrinsic interest, from its being supposed that in preparing it for the press, I have drawn from the imagination, either in regard to the incidents or their coloring. For, in the literal truth of the facts, incredible as some of them may appear, my grounds of conviction are my acquaintance with the Author the impossibility of inventing a narrative like the following, the respectability of his relations, the standing which his father sustained, the confidence reposed in him by the Hon. J. S. Johnston, the very respectable senator in congress from Louis iana, who introduced him to me, the concurrent testimony of persons now in this city, who saw him at different points in New Mexico, and the reports, which reached the United States, du ring the expedition of many of the incidents here recorded.

When my family first arrived at St. Charles' in 1816, the fame of the exploits of his father, as an officer of the rangers, was fresh in the narratives of his associates and fellow soldiers. I have been on the ground, at Cap au Gris, where he was besieg ed by the Indians. I am not unacquainted with the scenery through which he passed on the Missouri, and I, too, for many years was a sojourner in the prairies. These circumstances, along with a conviction of the truth of the narrative, tended to give me an interest in it, and to qualify me in some degree to judge of the internal evidences contained in the journal itself, of its entire authenticity. It will be per ceived at once, that Mr. Pattie, with Mr. McDuffie, thinks more of action than literature, and is more competent to perform exploits, than blazon them in eloquent periods. My influence upon the narrative regards orthography, and punctuation EDITOR'S

PREFACE.

. IV and the occasional interposition of a topographical illustration, which my acquaintance with the accounts of travellers in New Mexico, and published views of the country have enabled me to furnish. The reader will award me the confidence of acting in good faith, in regard to drawing nothing from my own thoughts. I have found more call to suppress, than to add, to soften, than to show in stronger relief many of the incidents. Circumstances of suffering, which in many simitar narratives have been given in downright plainness of detail, I have been impelled to leave to the reader's imagination, as too revolting to be recorded. The very texture of the narrative precludes ornament and amplification. The simple record of events as they transpired, painted by the hungry, toil-worn hunter, in the midst of the de sert, surrounded by sterility, espying the foot print of the savage, or discerning him couched behind the tree or hillock, or hearing the distant howl of wild beasts, will naturally bear characteris tics of stern disregard of embellishment.

To alter it, to at tempt to embellish it, to divest it of the peculiar impress of the narrator and his circumstances, would be to take from it its keeping, the charm of its simplicity , and its internal marks of truth. In these respects I have been anxious to leave the narrative as I found it. The journalist seems in these pages a legitimate descendant of those western pioneers, the hunters of Kentucky, a race pass ing unrecorded from history. The pencil of biography could seize upon no subjects of higher interest. With hearts keenly alive to the impulses of honor and patriotism, and the charities of kindred and friends; they possessed spirits impassi ble to fear, that no form of suffering or death could daunt ; and frames for strength and endurance, as if ribbed with brass and sinewed with steel.

For them to traverse wide deserts, climb mountains, swim rivers, grapple with she grizzly bear, and en counter the savage, in a sojourn in the wilderness of years, far from the abodes of civilized men, was but a spirit-stirring and holiday mode of life. EDITOR'S

PREFACE.

. V To me, there is a kind of moral sublimity in the contemplation of the adventures and daring of such men. They read a les son to shrinking and effeminate spirits, the men of soft hands and fashionable life, whose frames the winds of heaven are not allowed to visit too roughly. They tend to re-inspire something of that simplicity of manneis, manly hardihood, and Spartan energy and force of character, which formed so conspicuous a part of the nature of the settlers of the western wilderness. Every one knows with what intense interest the community perused the adventures of Captain Riley, and other intrepid mariners shipwrecked and enslaved upon distant and barbarous shores. It is far from my thoughts to detract from the intre pidity of American mariners, which is known, wherever the winds blow, or the waves roll ; or to depreciate the interest of the recorded narratives of their sufferings.

A picture more calculated to arouse American sympathies cannot be presented, than that of a ship's crew, driven by the fierce winds and the mountain waves upon a rock bound shore, and escaping death in the sea, only to encounter captivity from the barbarians on the land. Yet much of the courage, required to encounter these emergencies is passive, counselling only the necessity of sub mission to events, from which there is no escape, and to which all resistance would be unavailing. The courage requisite to be put forth in an expidition such as that in which Mr. Pattie and his associates were cast, must be both active and passive, energetic and ever vigilant, and never permitted to shrink, or intermit a moment for years. At one time it is assailed by hordes of yelling savages, and at another, menaced with the horrible death of hunger and thirst in interminable forests, or arid sands.

Either position offers perils and sufferings sufficiently appalling. But fewer spirits, I apprehend, are formed to brave those of the field, •Where wilds immeasurably spread, Seem lengthening as they go.' than of the ocean, where the marine.* cither soon finds rest be neath its tumultuous bosom, or joyfully spreads his sails again to the breeze.