Monday morning I started for Fort Selden on the Rio Grande, nearly three hundred miles away. We had a different type of stage coach, a small affair, more like a carriage, and drawn by two horses. Some eight or ten miles out of Santa Fe we almost literally dropped off into a canon that widened out into more of a valley as we continued our journey until we reached the Rio Grande some distance above Albuquerque. This town was at that time a straggling Mexican village of adobe houses along the east bank of the river. It is now a city of considerable size on the east side, with modern improvements and is a division point on the Santa Fe railway and a town of commercial importance.

The river was disappointing. I expected something bigger, and it wound around from one side of the valley to the other as though in doubt as to the best way to go. The valley was interesting because of its being occupied by an altogether different type of Indians. We had left the plains Indian at Trinidad and from there to Santa Fe had seen only Mexicans with a fair proportion of Americans whose business interests were in the country. The Plains Indian, Cheyennes, Commanches, and Kiowas and Arapahoes, were nomadic and warlike. Here was an agricultural people who lived in little villages called pueblos, a name also attached to the Indians themselves. Their villages were located at convenient distances apart and both men and women went to the fields to work. The land was divided off into little patches separated by irrigating ditches, called asacies, and there were no fences or lines to show individual ownership. It was seemingly a community interest, a kind of socialism. The Pueblo Isletta was the capital and principal town and was the place of meeting for the disposal of important questions of interest to the tribe, and for the observance of such religious services as was their wont. The hoe was the principal agricultural implement, both for making ditches and for cultivating the land. The people seemed to be kindly disposed, and in every way a contrast to the Plains Indian whose women do the work while the men do the hunting and fighting. They enter their houses by way of the roof, climbing a ladder from the ground to the roof and pulling the ladder up after them, then descending by way of an opening in the room to the room or rooms below. No doors, and only little peep-holes for windows, sometimes covered with a thin cloth of muslin. I suppose this was done in the first place as a protection against the Mountain Indians (Utes and Navajos) who in early times raided the valley and carried off anything they could lay their hands on. The valley was sparsely wooded except here and there when we would come to great groves or boscas as they were called, of immense cotton-wood trees which were very beautiful. The valley as described above was the same all the way down to Fort Selden.

After leaving the Pueblo settlements we came to a country occupied nearly altogether by Mexicans. The commercial interests were conducted by so-called foreigners: Americans, Germans and Jews, the latter predominating, but the population was principally Mexican. Stock raising and farming were the principal industries, the latter in a very primitive way. They had no modern farm implements, such as plows, harrows, wagons, etc., and only such improved tools as they could construct from the scant material at hand. I saw at one place a man driving a yoke of cattle attached to what appeared to be the limb of a tree with a projecting prong entering the ground, and at the other end, which bent up something like a handle, was another man holding it. They were going back and forth making little ditches or furrows but not turning the ground over as our plows do. It looked primitive indeed and reminded me of a picture I saw in an almanac when a kid, representing the Egyptian plowing. Stock business was more promising. A good many cattle were reported on the range and I was told the sheep numbered many thousands scattered all along the mountain range to the west. Soccorro was the principal town, typically Mexican, but a place of some business importance. There were small villages at frequent intervals all the way to Paraja, the last town near the river before crossing the Jornada del Muerto (or "Journey of Death" in Spanish) which extends from Paraja (pronounced Paraha, j having the sound of h in Spanish) to Fort Selden, nearly one hundred miles across, a desert properly named and that has some pitiful associations in my memory. It was what was known as the Apache Indian country and grewsome stories are related concerning it. Death by Indians, famishing for want of water, etc., etc. I must tell a legend concerning it and the desert country to the east and north. Near Paraja and rising bluff from the river's edge is a high bit of mountain, hardly worth the name of range, on the top of which lying in a recumbent position is as perfect profile of a face and bust as you could imagine. You get a fine view of it from Fort Craig and for a great distance to the northwest and northeast. The legend is that a friar, Christobal by name, and for whom the mountain or range was named, was traveling through the country on his work for the souls of men when he perished from thirst. Some supernatural agency brought his body to this mountain top where it hardened into stone and remains to this day a monument commemorating a tragedy, and a land mark and guide to the weary and thirsty traveler pointing the way to where he may find water.

We left Paraja and the river and valley at night after a good supper, having supplied ourselves with water enough for the trip, expecting to get breakfast at a place about half-way across, called the Alaman (Allemand) literally meaning "Dutchman" where it was reported a German had been found some years before, killed and scalped by Indians. There had been repeated efforts made to find water on this desert. General Pope when a young officer of the service had spent a large amount of government money digging for water. Finally a man by the name of Martin, a Scotchman, who furnished the meat supply at Fort Selden, was so persistent with the commanding officer in asserting his ability to find water, that he was furnished a body of soldiers as an escort and guard and commissary supplies for the undertaking. He had been working faithfully and persistently for some months. He had also put some adobe rooms and had them furnished, his hauling his water supply from a spring in a canon some six or eight miles away and had built an adobe wall around his camp. He had also put some adobe rooms and had them furnished, his wife being an important assistant in the undertaking, and he was still sinking his well deeper and expressing an abiding faith in the result. It must be a glorious feeling to be vindicated in such an undertaking. It was rumored along the overland route that Jack Martin had found water but not enough, and upon our arrival we found that he not only had water but had an abundance of it and our stage was the first to arrive after he struck it. After eating a late breakfast, which was a very good one, we started for Fort Selden still some fifty miles away. This part of the trip was uneventful as we only stopped once to feed and water the team, having carried the necessary supplies with us. We arrived at Fort Selden in the evening. All the way from Santa Fe down I frequently noticed little piles of stone by the wayside, sometimes with little hand-made wooden crosses standing up in the center marking the place where someone had met a violent death, maybe by Indians or maybe at the hands of some renegade Mexicans. It is the custom among the Mexican people in passing to toss another stone on the pile and in this way some of them became of considerable size, the size of the pile indicating in a way the time that had elapsed since the murder had been committed.

I reported to the commanding officer at the post and the following day was assigned to duty. By invitation I took dinner with one of the officers the evening of my arrival. Among other good things we had a choice roast of beef which they informed me was from their very choice and only milk cow. It seems the herders were not sufficiently on guard and this animal had become separated from the herd but in rounding up the herd in the evening it was discovered that this particular cow had an Indian arrow in her side and on examination it was thought best to kill her. The good woman did not have much appetite for beef but grieved over the loss of her favorite cow. There was some small timber and underbrush along the streams affording a good hiding place for sneaking Apaches who might be disposed to commit depredations. It was the rule at this post that when the officers' wives wanted to take an airing to send an escort along with the ambulance as a protection against the Indians.

It was a two company post and the duties of the medical officer were light; so much so as to become a little monotonous, but was sometimes varied by a trip to Las Cruces or Messilla, some fifteen or eighteen miles distant. These towns were at one time separated by the river but some years before an unusual flood had swept down the valley and the river had made a new channel leaving the towns close neighbors. Even in those days they were places of some importance.

While stationed at this post I made my first acquaintance with gambling. It did not take me long to learn that it was the universal custom in the country. The Sutler's or Post Trader's store was a favorite resort for those who indulged in the various games. I remember an old man camping not far from the post who made it his business. He remained there for some time and in conversation one day I expressed my surprise at the universal custom and he informed me that he had rather bet his money on Monte than loan it out at ten per cent interest, and yet his dress and camping outfit did not indicate a man of fortune.

One of the most interesting incidents of my experience here was one Sunday morning after inspection when a group of officers were standing out on the parade grounds talking on various subjects when one of them was attracted by something at our feet and called attention to it. Upon closer investigation we discovered it to be the outlines of a human skull, the top of which had been worn away by the trampling of many feet over the parade ground. The post commander ordered the dirt removed from around it and thus unearthed a complete human skeleton except where the top of the head had been worn away. It was in a sitting position with the knees flexed up close to the chin but the bones crumbled upon being exposed to the air. There was no evidence of shroud or other covering to the body. What race of people buried their dead that way? How long had it been in its resting place?

This post at that time was about seven hundred miles from the railroad. I doubt if there is a place in the United States today outside of Alaska or our insular possession where one could go and be seven hundred miles from a railroad.

Along in the first part of May of that year I received orders from the chief medical officer of the district to exchange places with Dr. Seguin, post surgeon at Fort Craig. General Grover was the commanding officer at Fort Craig and was considered a good deal of a Martinet. As explained to me by Doctor Seguin, it seems that Mrs. Grover wanted something from the hospital which the doctor declined to send her and General Grover thereupon ordered it sent. The doctor disobeyed the order and the matter was carried to district headquarters and probably higher up for it involved the question of military discipline and also the rights of medical officers under army regulations. It is well enough here to say that the medical corps is a corps to itself, distinct from any other branch of the service, and orders come through the medical officers from the surgeon general down to the divisions; departments and districts, and yet at the military post the commanding officer is supposed to be "monarch of all he surveys" as you see there was a chance for controversy. Any way it was settled by Doctor Seguin being ordered to Fort Selden to take my place and I to his place at Fort Craig.

General Grover was a severe looking man past middle age, and had seen service on the frontier before the Civil War. He was a strict disciplinarian and held himself aloof from everything around. I have seen him walking down the line of officers' quarters straight as an arrow, maybe with hands clasped behind his back and an orderly walking the proper distance behind. He never entered an officer's quarters but if he wanted anything he would send his orderly to the officer with "the General's compliments and would like to see you." The officer then walked out to where the general was standing and at the proper distance stopped, stood at attention and saluted and waited for such communications as the general would make. He then saluted again and returned to his quarters and the general went on his way.

Mrs. Grover was confined soon after my arrival at the post and gave birth to a daughter. When the general was called in to see the new arrival he merely looked at it, gave a grunt, or "huh," and then turned and walked out. Mrs. Grover was the most queenly looking woman I ever saw; a magnificent physique; a commanding presence and a dignified and gracious manner. She seemed to possess all the qualities my imagination had conjured up as befitting a queen. She was the daughter of Dr. Austin Flint, Sr., whom I mentioned in an earlier chapter, and a sister of Dr. Austin Flint, Jr., the eminent physiologist. I was frequently called to their quarters to see the baby, not I thought, that it needed anything, but that the mother wanted someone to talk with. The general was civil enough to me but never cordial. I think it was not his nature to be so. He invited me occasionally to go with him in his carriage to places away from the post, say to Paraja some twelve miles away, or perhaps just for a ride, a courtesy he never extended to other officers of the post. On these little excursions I found that the general was an interesting talker, mostly with reference to his experiences on the frontier before the war. The war itself and the army since the war was never mentioned that I remember. He had been a major general during the war and was now a colonel and it was thought by most of the officers that he felt humiliated by being assigned to a negro regiment, the twenty-fourth infantry. I was invited to their quarters one morning for breakfast and maybe one or two other meals during the summer but as I remember them now they were rather formal and uninteresting.

Fort Craig was a walled fort, made so in early days as a protection against Indians. It was typical of most of the posts at which I served in being built in the form of a square. The parade ground being a square plot varying in size at different posts, around which are located the buildings. The officers occupying one side of the square; the barracks being directly opposite and the commissary and quarter master department generally occupying one side and the commanding officer's quarters and post headquarters and adjutant's office occupying the other side. At Fort Craig just outside of these buildings was an adobe wall about ten feet high. Next to the guardhouse was an opening large enough for wagons to enter the parade ground with heavy gates to close at night, and there were some small openings in the wall for other purposes, one being near the hospital. The walls of the buildings were of adobe with heavy timbers across to support the roof of dirt. The floors were what the Mexicans called "Jaspa" (pronounced Haspa), a kind of cement made of gypsum or lime sulphate which is found in great beds through a great portion of New Mexico. It is quarried or blasted out, heated to drive out the water or crystalization, then ground into a powder and when mixed with sand and water makes a pretty fair quality of cement. It was used altogether in the floors for the military posts along the Rio Grande.

The water supply at Fort Craig was obtained from the Rio Grande river and there were times about June when the snows melted in the mountains that it answered very well to a description I once read of the Missouri river water, "Too thick to drink and too thin to cultivate." This was a great bother to us during the summer rise for it was persistent for more than a month. I conceived the idea of making a filter by making a good sized ball of jaspa and charcoal which I held together by mixing a little cotton batting carefully in the mortar and kneading it into a very stiff paste. After it hardened I bored a hole in the ball and inserted a rubber tube and then put the ball in a "Tanaja," a large ungalvanized earthen jar holding eight or ten gallons of the muddy water. This jar was put in an army blanket and was swung in the hallway. The jar being porous would let enough water through to keep the blanket damp, which cooled the water. By swinging another tanaja just below the first and having it blanketed in the same way, and having a rubber tube connecting the two, I had a filter that furnished clear, sparkling, cool water. I put one in the hospital and they became quite the vogue at the post.

The wood supply was brought from the mountains some thirty miles away. Trains comprising several wagons would be sent out in charge of a wagonmaster with men enough to load them promptly and by starting early and returning late they sometimes made the round trip in two days, but generally they were three days out.

For a month or more I was in the officers' mess, consisting only of single men or those whose families were away. The meals were rather stately affairs and to me seemed a little tinged with the ridiculous in that far-away place. There was a colored man standing behind each officer's chair dressed in the proper toggery to do his duty and to give him every attention. I never saw any more perfect service at any hotel and the table was the best the commissary department and the surrounding country would provide.

Prices outside the commissary were much higher than we had then in Iowa. Eggs were fifty cents a dozen; butter a dollar and a quarter a pound. I paid these prices regularly when I started my own mess. I had what was called a student's lamp in those days and paid five dollars a gallon for coal oil, as it was then called. Of course that was before oil tanks were known and it was carried across the plains in barrels, maybe in hot weather, and on slow moving ox trains, being months on the way. The evaporation would necessarily be very great, and by the time the sutler's store got its percent of profit (probably one hundred percent or more) one could easily see that fifty cent oil in Iowa could easily be five dollars in New Mexico. Some years later at Fort McRae, further down the river, we got it for two dollars and a half per gallon by sending a five gallon can to Santa Fe to be filled.

Thinking that I was a fixture at Fort Craig for some time I wrote my wife and asked her to join me after her visit in the East was over. In view of her coming I started a mess of my own and had a little colored drummer boy detailed as servant and cook. He was as black as night and I called him Sandy. To start with I laid in a pretty good supply of commissaries, among them ten pounds of cut loaf sugar. I had my first dinner on Saturday and the following Monday morning I asked Sandy if anything was needed. "Yas sah, Doctor, we needs some moah sugar." Why Sandy, I said, we got ten pounds of each kind on Saturday, which kind do you want? "We needs some moah cut loaf sugar, sah," he said. What, cut loaf sugar? "Yas sah, Doctor, it takes a powerful sight 'o sugar for deserts." Well all right Sandy, I said, I'll see about it. I thought it was going pretty fast for only two dinners so I stopped on my way back from the hospital at Major Sweet's quarters and asked Mrs. Sweet how much cut loaf sugar they used. She was bright and quick as a flash, and wished to know, while trying to look serious, why I asked such a question. Finally she broke out into a jolly rippling laugh and said, "I know what's the matter, Sandy has been carrying your sugar off to the laundresses." I told Sandy when I returned to my quarters that I did not mind his having all the sugar he wanted himself but I did not want to feed all the laundresses at the post on cut loaf sugar. He did better afterwards but I still think the laundresses got some sugar.

There is no other part of the country so far as I know where skunks were so plentiful as in New Mexico. They were a nuisance at all the posts at which I served in that territory, but if possible were worse at Fort Craig than elsewhere. One evening I had gone to the post trader's to get my mail and upon my return I found the odor in my quarters so pronounced that I investigated and found that Sandy had killed a skunk in the kitchen. He explained by saying that he had tried to drive it out and could not do so and that he had killed it. I told him to open up all the windows and doors and scrub the kitchen floor and I went back to the sutler's store in self protection. I did not return until late when I found the odor worse than ever and Sandy explained the matter this time by saying another skunk came in and had made its way into my bed-room and got under the wardrobe and he could not get it out and was compelled to kill it. This he did by punching it to death. The result can be imagined, but not very well described. I slept on a cot in the front room for some time afterwards and found hunting and out-door exercise more interesting than remaining in my quarters.

The sand storms at Fort Craig were something to remember, or rather I should say impossible to forget. They are simply a straight wind blowing with terrific force and loaded with fine sand and dust and very fine gravel. I remember particularly one that came up one day when the steward and I were making out the monthly reports at the hospital. The windows and doors were closed and everything made as snug as possible, yet when the storm was over one made tracks when walking across the floor as visible as he would have made walking along a sandy highway. It was a serious matter to be out in one of them, for unless the face was covered one would suffer severely from the stinging sand and fine gravel, and everything a short distance away was shut out from sight. There are also some pleasant things to remember of my experience at this post. The hunting, particularly of wild fowl, was very good, the ducks remaining late in the spring and returning early in the fall. The sunsets were beautiful beyond my power of description. It was my first summer in a rarified atmosphere and I imagined at times I could see objects moving along the mountain range some thirty miles away. I remember one evening when Doctor Seguin was visiting a few days with me on his return from Fort Selden to New York, having left the service, we were out for a walk together and were up on a little mound just west of the post as the sun went down and his attention was called to the beautiful cloud effects. He remarked that he had never seen anything more beautiful in Italy. The doctor was a Frenchman by birth; his father was a medical man of distinction, and while most of his life had been spent in this country he had traveled extensively abroad and his education, particularly in medicine, had been acquired in Europe. He was now returning to New York to take up his work as a lecturer on nervous diseases in the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

While the doctor was visiting with me we went up to San Marcial to witness the games on St. John's day, June 24th. San Marcial was at that time a small straggling Mexican village of one street with adobe houses on each side and all told maybe had one hundred inhabitants. We did not go into any of the houses and only witnessed one game of any interest, it was a rough-and-tumble affair and excited great interest among the Mexicans. A rooster with its legs tied would be buried in a little mound of sand in the middle of the street, leaving only its head and neck sticking above the mound. The game was for the horsemen to form in line some distance up the street and come at full speed swooping down from the saddle, grab the chicken by the head, and then the battle was on for the chicken. The possessor of the unfortunate chicken would strike out over adobe walls and across irrigating ditches, anywhere to get out of the way of his pursuers and when at last he would be cornered, or surrounded, a battle royal would follow. I could not determine how the matter was decided but when the game was over they would come back and repeat the performance. There were many misses in their efforts to pick up the rooster, but a few of the contestants were more expert than the others and several succeeded in swinging down and retrieving the rooster from the mound of sand. We left while the game was still in progress. In all the games I witnessed among the Mexicans there appeared the element of cruelty in some form or other.

During the summer of 1869 while stationed at this post I went to Paraja to see the Penitentes parade. I don't know why it was called a parade for it was an exhibition of cruelty that I have never at any other time in my life seen equaled. It was supposed to be a religious ceremony but consisted of a procession in single file of those who had committed great crimes or sins. The one in front carried a great wooden cross, the cross-bar of which rested on his neck and shoulders, he carrying it in a somewhat stooped position. It was of an enormous size, the cross-bar extending as I estimated it, at least eight feet in length and the stem in proportion. It had been made of dry cotton-wood logs and hewn out to probably eight or ten inches square and was a crude looking affair, but was probably not as heavy as it looked. The one bearing this cross took the lead and was naked to the waist and from there down wore only a single cotton garment, pants-like in shape, but very full, something like a skirt, and all those following were dressed in a similar way. All were bare-footed and there were probably twenty or more of them. Each carried thongs with which he struck the man in front of him on the bare back, all acting in something like uniformity as to time and repeating in unison and in a drone like voice something in Spanish that I could not understand. Before the procession ended the backs of most of the participants were notably bloody and some of them very much so. Paraja is located literally in a bed of sand and I wondered how they could stand it that hot August day in their bare feet and the bloody work of the thongs left the impression on my mind of being a most brutal performance. But they were sincere and no doubt believed they were atoning for sins committed. What kind of a God is it who would accept such an atonment or approve of its offering? The faces of the participants were mostly of a brutal type and they looked as though they were capable of committing almost any crime. This exhibition did not impress me as in any way religious but on the contrary as exceedingly barbarious and superstitious.

By act of Congress during the winter of 1868 and 1869 the army was ordered reduced, which to me was a serious matter as it rendered improbable any convening of a medical board for examination of medical officers for promotion, at least for some years to come. As I remember such line officers as wished to resign could do so with the privilege of a year's additional pay, and enough others would be dropped from the service to bring the number down to the required standard, also with a year's additional pay. The only difference being that of resigning or being dropped from the service. Quite a number of line officers preferred resigning. Among those who did so was Lieutenant Page of the twenty-fourth infantry at Fort Craig. He proposed selling me his cow and I proposed trading him my pistol for it. He thought the matter over and said that he proposed locating on a farm in Missouri and the pistol might come very handy, so we made the exchange. He came to visit me at Girard, Kansas, after I had quit the service and gave me a farther history of the pistol. He had missed a good deal of corn from his fields and watched for the thieves and shot one of them quite seriously. The matter got into the courts and being so soon after the War the factional feeling had not died out, and the long litigation that followed almost bankrupted Mr. Page, rather a disreputable record for a pistol to make, but I imagine that there have been comparatively few occasions where pistols were used in personal encounters, that it would not have been better if they had never been made.

I expected my wife in September. In the meantime Captain Lawson had returned from a leave of absence and joined my mess until his wife should come. Just before I expected my wife to start on her trip to join me, a command came up from Texas, an exchange of regiments had been ordered. The fifteenth infantry went to the Department of the Missouri, and the twenty-fourth infantry to the Department of Texas, and I was ordered to accompany a part of the fifteenth infantry from Fort Craig to Fort Wingate, New Mex. I at once wrote my wife to await developments. She had already started and got as far as Fort Wallace, Kans., near the terminus of the railroad when word reached her from Fort Wingate that I was to go with one company of the fifteenth infantry to Fort Dodge, Kans., and she could meet me at Fort Lyon, Colo., which would be on my way to Fort Dodge.

THE OLD GOVERNOR'S PALACE
Santa Fe, New Mexico, as it appeared in 1869. Army Headquarters for the
District of New Mexico was located at the far end of this building.