On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:00:05 -0600, A Muzi <
[email protected]>
wrote:
>> On Jan 29, 6:33 am, "Qui si parla Campagnolo" <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>> When it's 85 degrees, I'll ski..hate the snow, the cold, not a fan of
>>> CO at the moment...
>
>[email protected] wrote:> Myth and lore!
>> The weather was so nice yesterday that I went for a bicycle ride.
>> It was so much fun that I may do it again, if the temperature rises
>> above freezing today.
>> My guide, Mr. Williams, assures me that he knows the way and that even
>> if we do get lost, he'll find something to eat.
>> For some reason, my other guide, Mr. Carson refuses to walk in front
>> of Mr. Williams at supper time.
>> Cheers,
>> J.C. Fremont
>
>Does this have something to do with Alferd Packer? A CO in-joke?
Dear Andrew,
Fremont County is west of Pueblo and hosts not only the state prison,
but Supermax, Colorado's answer to Alcatraz.
James C. Fremont followed the disaster of his court martial (who the
hell _was_ the military governor of California?) with an even more
disastrous fourth expedition, looking for a railroad route through
what is now southern Colorado.
Unlike Fremont's first three expeditions, this one lacked Kit Carson
as a guide. Instead, Bill Williams led 36 (or 33 men) and 120 mules
off through the gap in the Wet Mountains visible from my window, over
the Sangre de Cristos, across the San Luis Valley, and into the San
Juan mountains, where Williams went up the wrong pass.
Fremont wrote that Williams "proved never to have in the least known,
or entirely to have forgotten, the whole region of country through
which we were to pass."
But it probably didn't matter which way Fremont's expedition went,
since a hideous winter set in and there's no damned railroad route
through the San Juan mountains, a sprawling mess of extremely high,
rugged country that later led Alferd Packer to establish the legal
point that Colorado had no law against cannibalism.
(The unfortunate Packer was convicted not of bad table manners, but of
merely killing his dinner guests, having signed two confessions and
escaped from jail, details often overlooked by proud Coloradoans who
argue endlessly about who shot, axed, and ate whom.)
Anyway, most of the mules died one terrible night, and Fremont's party
struggled to stay alive in snow drifts forty feet deep. The kindly
Forest Service offers a hiking guide to the area, where ten-foot-high
stumps still show how deep the snow was where the expedition cut
firewood:
http://gorp.away.com/gorp/resource/us_national_forest/co/see_riog.htm
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_2700_132/ai_108791284/pg_8
Desperate, Fremont split the expedition into two groups and headed
south for help, leaving the weakest men behind.
By the time that Fremont returned to rescue them, ten (or eleven) of
the men left behind were dead, and cannibalism was not quite as
well-controlled as it is in the Royal Navy, with the guide Bill
Williams being voted most likely to have put aside gourmet prejudices
in favor of survival.
Accounts are muddled, since Fremont's memoirs were most likely written
not by him, but by his wife. The unkind comment that "no man who knew
him ever walked in front of Bill Williams in starving time" is
attributed to Carson, the guide on the first three successful Fremont
expeditions.
Some argue that Fremont headed into awful country in hopes of
salvaging his reputation after the court martial, paid no attention to
anyone's advice, and simply made a scapegoat of Williams.
But Fremont went on to California, leaving the survivors behind in
Taos, and lived to write the history (or to have his wife write it).
Williams had no chance to defend himself--indeed, he never had a
chance to read Fremont's memoirs. Early that spring, Williams headed
back to the scene of the disaster with a partner, possibly to salvage
equipment, and was killed by Utes.
(Nowadays, the advantages of wandering around Colorado in large,
well-armed groups with plenty of mules are forgotten. On an earlier
expedition, Fremont was censured for taking a howitzer along.)
Debate continues about whether Fremont or Williams was responsible for
the disaster and the details of what happened, but it's a cheery story
to keep in mind whenever I pedal out the highway toward Hardscrabble
Creek in late autumn along Fremont's route.
Today, it was almost too cold to ride. Snow and high temperatures
below freezing are predicted for the next week.
Bon appetit!
Carl Fogel
