Oh What a Slaughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

state, more or less passively; when something
did
happen in the north—the Bear Flag Revolt—he postured a good deal but offered no real help.
    Just before he headed north to the Sacramento River he decided, rather cavalierly, to challenge the Mexican authorities in Monterey. He and his men occupied a nearby hill—Gavilan Peak—threw up some breastworks, raised the American flag, and waited for the Mexicans to attack, which they declined to do. The flag fluttered in the breeze for three days; then the breeze became a gale and the flag blew down. The Pathfinder decided that honor had been satisfied, so he packed up his troop and went north. This strange retreat earned Frémont the undying contempt of the famous rather dandified mountain man Joseph Walker, who said Frémont was the worst coward, morally and physically, that he had ever known.
    Frémont didn’t know it, but his adventure in California was to end even less gloriously because of his refusal to recognize the authority of General Stephen Watts Kearny, who, after the Mexican defeat, took the Pathfinder back to Washington and court-martialed him.
    Meanwhile, though, Frémont took his men far to the north, past Sutter’s Fort, to bivouac for a time at the ranch of Peter Lassen, where the Sacramento River comes out of the mountains. Not long after Frémont’s arrival, the Indians also arrivedand the locals began to get nervous. They asked Frémont for protection. What happened next is related by Thomas Martin, in a memoir that surfaced in 1878:
    They asked Fremont to protect them. He replied that he had no right to fight Indians but he told us that those who wished to take part in the expedition against the Indians he would discharge and take us again afterward. … At the foot of the low hills where the Sacramento River comes out of the mountains…we found the Indians to the number of 4,000 to 5,000 on a tongue of land between the bends of the river, having a war dance preparatory to attacking the settlers. Our advance guard of 36 immediately charged and poured a volley into them killing 24. They then rushed them with sabres. The rest of the party came up and charged in among them and in less than 3 hours we had killed 175 of them. Most of the Indians escaped into the neighboring mountains.
    His fellow writer Thomas Breckenridge, however, thought the war party, if it
was
a war party, consisted of “only 150 bucks and 250 women and children.”
    Kit Carson’s brief commentary agreed with neither of the above as to the number of Indians awaiting them:
    During our stay at Lawson’s [Lassen’s] some Americans that were settled in the neighborhood came in stating that there were about 1,000 Indians in the vicinity making preparations to attack the settlements: requested assistanceof Fremont to drive them back. He and party and some Americans that lived near started for the Indians encampment, found them in great numbers, and war started.
    â€œHe and party” seems to have convinced various biographers that Frémont led the attack, an action that would have been, for John Charles Frémont, entirely out of character. Unlike Chivington, Frémont had no desire at all to wade in gore. He rarely (if ever) fought, preferring, as his biographer Andrew Rolle observed, to use Kit Carson as a hit man. Kit was a thorough hit man too.
    Thomas Martin’s account, if examined closely, seems rather startling. If the advance guard of thirty-six men thought there were four to five thousand waiting for them, then they were certainly bold to launch an attack: as bold as Custer was, thirty years later.
    Even if the first volley killed twenty-four, that still left a lot of Indians; many would have thought twice before attacking this group with sabers. Even if we lower the count to Breckenridge’s four hundred, a saber attack was still bold. And if twenty-four fell to a single volley, why would it take three hours