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OX F O R D S T U D I E S I N M E D I E VA L
E U RO P E A N H I S TO RY

General Editors
joh n h . a rn old pat r i c k j . ge a ry
and
joh n wat ts
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/09/18, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/09/18, SPi

Urban Panegyric and

the Transformation of
the Medieval City,
1100–1300
PAU L O L D F I E L D

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/09/18, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/09/18, SPi

Acknowledgements
Having read so much panegyric over the course of writing this book, it is such a
great delight to finally have the opportunity to reverse the flow and deliver my own
praise for countless individuals who have provided invaluable advice, support, and
inspiration. I thank my colleagues (past and present) in History at the University
of Manchester for numerous insightful conversations about praise and cities,
­particularly Georg Christ, Katy Dutton, Paul Fouracre, Charles Insley, Stephen
Mossman, and Martin Ryan. I am also very grateful for the support of the
University in granting a period of research leave, and also to the British Academy
for the award of a mid-career Fellowship for six months in 2016, both of which
provided me with valuable time and space to enrich and develop this project. In
addition, I have had the great fortune to receive superb support from staff at vari-
ous libraries: the document supply team in the University Library for locating
numerous inter-library loans on my behalf; and staff in the Special Collections at
the John Rylands Library, Manchester, those at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and
the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh who enabled me to consult important
incunabula and manuscripts. I must also thank the editorial team at Oxford
University Press, Stephanie Ireland, Cathryn Steele, the anonymous readers, and
the series editors John Arnold and especially John Watts, all of whom have sup-
ported and guided me with great patience and skill: this book is immeasurably
stronger as a result. A great pleasure in working on such a big project is the oppor-
tunity it opens up for speaking with and learning from colleagues elsewhere in
academia. Aside from my aforementioned colleagues at Manchester and Oxford
University Press, I have also had the great fortune to have received crucial assistance
and expert advice from Laura Ashe, David Bachrach, Andrew Brown, Ardis
Butterfield, Jan Dumolyn, Tim Greenwood, Tom Licence, Maureen Miller, James
M. Murray, David Rollason, Dennis Romano, Jeffrey Ruth, Graeme Small,
Fabrizio Titone, Steven Vanderputten, Gary Warnaby, and Chris Wickham. A spe-
cial thanks is always reserved for Graham Loud and his willingness to offer his
expertise and guidance and for Ian Moxon likewise with his invaluable assistance
with difficult Latin passages and for generously offering his own translations.
The support and enthusiasm of friends and family has, however, been the most
crucial factor in helping me see this project through to its completion. Their curi-
osity and comfort repeatedly served as a tonic and I am left amused and touched
at being surrounded by loved ones who now know far more than any non-academic
should about things medieval! But, in particular my wife Kate, and my young sons
Finlay and Sebastian, have truly demonstrated to me the paradox of praise; that the
more praiseworthy a thing is, the harder it is to articulate that praise. For where to
start and where to stop praising three so very important individuals to me? To say
Kate encouraged and strengthened me, and to report that Finlay and Sebastian
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/09/18, SPi

vi Acknowledgements

showed such pride and delight in my endeavours, reflects mere glimmers of a much
deeper, much more inspiring, and wholly irreplaceable support which they
unknowingly but unconditionally gave. No praise can encapsulate what this has
meant to me. No praise can convey how fortunate I feel. And no praise can stand
as thanks for the smile that now crosses my face as I think of all their warmth and
of all their mischief.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/09/18, SPi

Contents

Introduction 1
1. The Sources: An Overview 23
2. Interpretation and Audience 36
3. The Holy City 61
4. The Evil City: Urban Critiques 95
5. The City of Abundance: Commerce, Hinterland, People 111
6. Urban Landscapes and Sites of Power 130
7. Education, History, and Sophistication 160
In Praise of the Medieval City: Conclusions 187

Bibliography 191
Index 212
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/09/18, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/09/18, SPi

Introduction

A process of intensive urbanization marked Europe’s twelfth and thirteenth ­centuries.

This much has been abundantly clear ever since Henri Pirenne’s pioneering thesis
and the rich and contested historiography it has generated on the history of
medieval Europe’s cities.1 If one can question the morphologies, chronologies,
continuities, and intensities evident throughout the course of medieval urbaniza-
tion, the tangible reality of physical change affected in those cities is irrefutable.
Demographic, material, commercial, and topographic transformation occurred
within cities—in simple terms they became bigger, more influential within wider
economic networks, and their layout more complex and more textured—while
numerous urban settlements were established ex novo; and these processes reached
their apex, or experienced crucial accelerations, roughly during the two centuries
running from 1100 to 1300. Consequently, cities could now harness newfound
political, commercial, cultural, and military influence which positioned them at
the centre of Europe’s map of power politics.
To note, however, that change occurred, and to try to measure it in quantifiable
terms (this city’s population doubled, that city built twenty new churches), is to
present only half the picture. The other half was an imagined city built on con-
stantly renewable cultural memories, emotions, and affinities; a malleable city
which could be more meaningful and intrinsic to an urban inhabitant’s lived
­experience. Thus, another crucial facet to change and urbanization in our period
was the formation of civic consciousness.2 It was underpinned by the rapid growth
of urban populations and conurbations and the concomitant competition for
resources and status which this aroused among urban centres. This necessitated
greater focus on affective conduits for affinities—the language of citizenship, the
cultivation of patron saints, the production of civic histories, the construction
of civic buildings, and the delineation of more expansive and regularized public
spaces, to name but a few—all of which could bind together expanded urban

1 H. Pirenne, Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade, trans. F. D. Halsey (Princeton,
1925); examples of wide-ranging comparative works on the medieval city include: E. Ennen, Die
Europäische Stadt des Mittelalters (Göttingen, 1972); D. Nicholas, The Growth of the Medieval City:
From Late Antiquity to the Early Fourteenth Century (London, 1997); K. D. Lilley, Urban Life in the
Middle Ages, 1000–1450 (Basingstoke, 2001); P. Boucheron et al., Histoire de l’Europe urbaine. Tome.
1. De l’Antiquité au XVIIIe siècle. Genèse des villes européenes (Paris, 2003); C. Loveluck, Northwest
Europe in the Early Middle Ages, c. a d 600–1150: A Comparative Archaeology (Cambridge, 2013).
2 For important, though broad, discussion see: P. Riesenberg, Citizenship in the Western Tradition:
Plato to Rousseau (Chapel Hill, 1992), pp. 118–39.
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2 Urban Panegyric and the Medieval City, 1100–1300

l­andscapes and communities in ways which personal, face-to-face relationships

alone could not, and which could project a positive (often imagined) image of the city.
Integral to the generation of civic consciousness was the capability to d
­ isseminate
its core messages, and in the period post-1100 we see such capabilities put into
practice in ways which had arguably not been achieved on such a widespread scale
since antiquity. Increased literacy rates and the development of new centres of
education, the maturation and expanded aspirations of urban governments, the
management of the physical urban landscape, and novel expressions of religious
devotion, particularly among the laity, all stimulated more articulate attachments
to, and understandings of, the city which attempted to transcend the increasingly
eclectic groupings which co-habited the urban landscape. This civic consciousness
created appreciation of the positive values connected with the urban world,
attached pride to one’s home city, and countered negative, disparaging perspectives
on the city. It was nuanced in scholarly circles by exposure to Aristotle’s Politics,
which became available once again in the thirteenth century, and also by a deeper
engagement with Ciceronian texts which emphasized the unified communitas and
its civic obligations.3 Drawing from these ideas, that influential medieval thinker
Thomas Aquinas identified the ‘ultimate community’ in the self-sufficient civitas.4
Thus, identifying and understanding the development of civic awareness opens
up the possibility of evaluating what the more fundamental urban transformations
of the period meant, in qualitative terms, to some of those who directly experi-
enced them. Crucially, it allows us to assess which aspects of this great phase
of urbanization challenged, empowered, bewildered, and defined contemporary
city-dwellers, and to evaluate what the city represented to them. And framing the
foregoing sketch is the acknowledgement that medieval notions of urban living
can continue to question the so-called myth of modernity ‘as a radical break with
the past’.5 For civic consciousness in the Central Middle Ages was very much a
conscious ‘mode of being’ well before commentators of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries—such as the celebrated cultural observer Walter Benjamin—identified
‘civicness’ as an emblem of modernity.6
Civic consciousness is, of course, a more ephemeral entity to identify than a
newly built city wall or parish church; it can appear in all manner of guises, often
underlying rather than directly defining developments, and its interpretation

3 D. Luscombe, ‘City and Politics before the coming of the Politics: some illustrations’, in D. Abulafia,
M. Franklin, M. Rubin (eds), Church and City in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 41–3.
4 Luscombe, ‘City and Politics’, p. 48; H-J. Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana in civitate: Städtekritik
und Städtelob im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift, CCLVII, ii (1993), pp. 333–4.
5 See D. Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (Hoboken, 2013), who prefers to see the formation of
modernity less in terms of breaks and more so in ‘decisive moments of creative destruction’ (p. 1).
6 For an overview on Walter Benjamin’s interpretation of the city see G. Gilloch, Myth and
Metropolis. Walter Benjamin and the City (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 1–20. A. Butterfield, ‘Chaucer and
the Detritus of the City’, in A. Butterfield (ed.), Chaucer and the City (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 3–22
offers an excellent survey on how Benjamin’s approach can be applied to thinking on the city, and
concludes with the observation, important for assessing the medieval city, ‘that modernity is always
changing, and has always been there’ (p. 22). See also M. Boone, ‘Cities in Late Medieval Europe. The
Promise and the Curse of Modernity’, Urban History, XXXIX (2012), pp. 329–49 for an excellent
discussion of the role of the medieval city in scholarly discourses on modernity.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/09/18, SPi

Introduction 3

invariably open-ended. Fortunately, many of the key components of civic

­consciousness were absorbed into, and articulated most vividly by, literary works
which offered praise of cities—urban panegyric—which were produced in far
greater quantity during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than at any previous
point. Crucially too, the messages within these works of urban panegyric reached
a far greater audience than had been the case for comparable forms in the Early
Middle Ages. Their material ostensibly addressed the most prominent, laudatory
features of urban living, but at the same time tapped into a range of qualitative,
quantitative, and functional transformations that were occurring throughout
Medieval Europe’s cities so as to serve as commentaries on what the medieval city
meant to (at least some of ) its inhabitants. Indeed, used reflectively these works
also demonstrate what the city was not, or what it should not be, those points on
which urban life might be censured. In short they act as cultural texts, a ‘storage
medium’ for the construction of cultural memories.7
The present study thus utilizes this vital body of material which has, to my
mind, not been sufficiently integrated into studies of medieval urban life. Urban
panegyric has often been dismissed as being too bound by convention, rhetoric,
and exaggeration and therefore rather sidelined from understandings of the medi-
eval city. The aim of this study is to demonstrate that the messages within urban
panegyric are indeed highly valuable ones. It represents the first sustained
­examination of the content and significance of urban panegyric in the Central
Middle Ages. It will connect the production of urban panegyric to two major
underlying transformations in the medieval city. It will explore how the physical
and functional changes in medieval cities influenced the production of laudatory
material on the city and by extension how this shaped civic consciousness.
Connected to this, it will ask, vice versa, what that material can reveal about urban
transformation. It will also locate the role of urban panegyric in the wider ideological
battle which orbited around the concept of the medieval city; one in which new
discourses emerged after c.1100 and which contested notions of the evil and the
good city.

U R B A N PA N E G Y R I C A N D I T S S O U RC E S

This work aims to track both physical and ideological change associated with the
city during the crucial period of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and uniquely
to do so through the prism of urban panegyric, a vastly undervalued textual
record which offers a significant voice on these transitions and which has yet to
be examined extensively nor fully connected to wider urban transitions. It will
provide a wide and comparative geographic analysis, incorporating material on
England, Flanders, France, Germany, Iberia, Northern and Southern Italy and
Sicily, and (occasionally) the Near East. In Chapter 2 we will discuss at greater
length how the material within some of the sources can be interpreted. But it is

7 A. Erll, Memory in Culture, trans. S. B. Young (Basingstoke, 2011), pp. 161–2.

 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/09/18, SPi

4 Urban Panegyric and the Medieval City, 1100–1300

important to establish some very broad methodological parameters at the outset,

by considering how this study defines urban panegyric.
Urban panegyric appears in many literary shapes and sizes, but simply put,
I identify it here as any textual record that can be interpreted as praising (implicitly
or explicitly) an aspect of urban life. Thus, for example, seemingly uncomplicated
‘descriptions’ of cities can often be viewed—as will be shown in this study—as
implicit praise. At the more explicit end of the scale, at its most formulaic, and
arguably most discernible, urban panegyric was influenced by the laus civitatis.
This literary template crystallized during Antiquity via rhetorical treatises on
the construction of panegyric and encomium which were produced by some
of the most renowned rhetoricians and grammarians of the day: Quintilian,
Hermogenes, Priscian, and Menander Rhetor to name some of the most ­important.8
Collectively these works demonstrated ways in which praise could be applied to a
city, and their guidance remained influential, not least because its flexibility ­covered
most of the fundamental characteristics of the city in the Middle Ages. Popular
subjects for praise included: the origins of a city and the etymology of its name,
its physical size, its material legacy (religious and secular buildings; monumental
structures such as city walls, towers, and gates; public spaces such as squares,
amphitheatres and marketplaces), its wealth and commercial vitality, its geographical
situation and layout (including fertility of surrounding lands), the attributes/
achievements of its inhabitants (especially if they were pious, learned, or famous)
and (from the Christian era) of its chief patron saints, and the city’s status com-
parative to other urban centres. The classical influences derived from the early
rhetorical texts on urban panegyric were subsequently overlaid by Christian under-
standings of the city (for more see Chapter 3) to ensure that there were some
broader framing devices, agendas, and commonalities which underpinned some of
the medieval praise we shall encounter.
An eighth-century Lombard text called De Laudibus Urbium did attempt to aid
an author in the production of urban panegyric, and echoes some of the earlier
classical rhetoricians:
The first praise of cities should furnish the dignity of the founder and it should include
praise of distinguished men and also gods, just as Athens is said to have been established
by Minerva: and they shall seem true rather than fabulous. The second [theme of praise]
concerns the form of fortifications and the site, which is either inland or maritime and
in the mountains or in the plane. The third concerns the fertility of the lands, the boun-
tifulness of the springs, the habits of the inhabitants. Then concerning its ornaments,
which afterwards should be added, or its good fortune, if things had developed unaided
or had occurred by virtue, weapons and warfare. We shall also praise it if that city has
many noble men, by whose glory it shall provide light for the whole world. We should
also be accustomed for praise to be shaped by neighbouring cities, if ours is greater, so

8 For an excellent summary of the pre-1100 material see J. Ruth, Urban Honor in Spain. The Laus
Urbis from Antiquity through Humanism (Lewiston, 2011), Chapters 1–2.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/09/18, SPi

Introduction 5
that we protect others, or if lesser, so that by the light of neighbours we are illuminated.
In these things also we shall briefly make comparison.9
The tract then showed the reader how to perform such a comparison. Yet, this
type of explicit instruction on the praise of cities was remarkably rare in the Middle
Ages. Thus, despite the guidance of classical rhetorical manuals and the evident
continuities and recurring themes within aspects of medieval urban panegyric, no
linear literary tradition of urban praise developed nor any authoritative taxonomy
of laudatory qualities was established. Astrid Erll’s analysis suggests that ‘only when
authors and recipients of a mnemonic community share the knowledge of genre
conventions [ . . . ] can one speak of the existence of a genre.’10 For the Middle Ages
it remains problematic to establish how far authors and audience were explicitly
aware of such genre conventions rather than absorbing them at a more subcon-
scious cultural level. For these reasons the present study makes no attempt to delin-
eate nor to offer a definitive model of what constitutes the laus civitatis and urban
panegyric in general. Praise within the laus civitatis model could focus on any
combination of laudatory attributes, exclude some, and nuance others. The laus
civitatis template (and urban panegyric more broadly) is at best a loose category,
which in itself demonstrates the variety of ways to praise and conceptualize cities.
Each example of praise (and conversely censure) needs to be assessed individually
and then comparatively by considering authorship, context, purpose, and type of
source, and then, of course, by focusing on the content of the praise itself. Text and
context cannot be separated.11
Understandably, the type of distinctive praise which formed extensive passages
of texts, or which represent ‘free-standing’ works in their own right, has dominated
scholarship on urban panegyric. Some of the most celebrated examples, all of
which will be encountered in this study, are the Mirabilia Urbis Romae on Rome
(c.1143), William FitzStephen’s description of the city of London, its origins, and
its future (c.1173), and Bonvesin da la Riva’s distinguished De Magnalibus Urbis
Mediolani on the city of Milan (1288).12 Indeed, J. K. Hyde’s seminal study in the
1960s showcased the importance of many of these works.13 Yet on closer inspec-
tion it becomes apparent that these major laudes civitatum are a mixed bag, diverse

9 De Laudibus Urbium, Latin text in G. Fasoli, ‘La coscienza civica nelle “Laudes Civitatum” ’, in
her Scritti di storia medievale, ed. F. Bocchi et al. (Bologna, 1974), p. 295 n. 6.
10 Erll, Memory, p. 74. 11 Erll, Memory, p. 171.
12 An edition of the Mirabilia Urbis Romae can be found in Codice topografico della città di Roma,
eds. R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, vol. III (Rome, 1946), pp. 17–65; William FitzStephen, Vita
Sancti Thomae in Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. J. Craigie Robertson, Rolls Series,
LXVII, vol. III (London, 1877). There is also a translation of FitzStephen’s description of London by
H. E. Butler, reproduced in F. Stenton, Norman London: An Essay (Introduction by F. Donald Logan)
(New York, 1990), pp. 47–60; Bonvesin da la Riva, De Magnalibus Mediolani (Le Meraviglie di
Milano), ed. and trans. P. Chiesa (Milan, 2009).
13 J. K. Hyde, ‘Medieval Descriptions of Cities’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XLVIII
(1965–6), pp. 308–40.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/09/18, SPi

6 Urban Panegyric and the Medieval City, 1100–1300

in content, purpose, and form.14 Many are embedded in much larger tracts,
like the aforesaid description of London which serves as a prologue to William
FitzStephen’s Vita of Thomas Becket. In some works too—the Gesta Treverorum
for Trier, Boncampagno da Signa’s for Ancona, or Martin da Canal’s for Venice, for
example—praise is conveyed implicitly through an entire text which takes a city as
its central reference point. The Gesta Treverorum, for instance, has been described
quite rightly as written by an author ‘who incorporated into his chronicle every-
thing that contributed to the glory of the Treveri’.15 In others it can be detected
indirectly in strategies which enhanced a city’s reputation without applying overt
praise, perhaps by simply recording an urban foundation legend which projected
the city’s origins into a distant past.16 Furthermore, some works which considered
the city as a universal entity and presented that entity in a positive light—such
as the Christian philosophers Alain de Lille in the twelfth century and Albert Magnus
in the thirteenth—have also been included here as types of urban panegyric.17 All
of this reflects the varied forms panegyric could take and the diversity of the textual
source types through which it appeared: chronicles, annals, poems, chansons and
romances, hagiographies, letters, sermons, legal, political, and theological treatises,
customary tracts, and administrative documents.
The approach in the present study therefore recognizes the heterogeneity within
the body of works conventionally labelled as laudes civitatum and takes a more
holistic interpretation of what constitutes urban panegyric and where to locate
it. The corpus of ‘major’ laudes civitatum distract from the considerably larger
occurrence of what Elisa Occhipinti termed microlaudes, smaller passages of urban
­panegyric and description of varied forms and length inserted into larger works.18
Sometimes these may simply be a line or two within a text, sometimes more, but
their concision and subtextual implications can be powerful and articulate deep-
rooted messages. This approach allows us to consider small passages of praise in
the same terms, and potentially of the same value, as ‘recognized’/‘major’ laudes
civitatum. Thus, to offer two seemingly polarized examples from the thirteenth
century, it might be possible to compare and utilize on an equal footing John de

14 D. Romagnoli, ‘La coscienza civica nella città comunale italiana: il caso di Milano’, in F. Sabaté
(ed.), El mercat: un món de contactes i intercanvis (Lleida, 2014), pp. 59–62 notes the fluid overlap evi-
dent in the so-called mirabilia, itineraria and laudes civitatum genres.
15 W. Hammer, ‘The Concept of the New or Second Rome in the Middle Ages’, Speculum, XIX
(1944), pp. 57–8.
16 Gesta Treverorum, ed. G. Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, VIII (Hannover,
1848), pp. 130–200; see the important work by H. Thomas, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtsschreibung
des 11. Jahrhunderts, insbesondere zu den Gesta Treverorum (Bonn, 1968); and K. Krönert, L’Exaltation
de Trèves. Écriture hagiographique et passé historique de la métropole mosellane VIII–XIII siècle (Ostfildern,
2010), pp. 277–87.
17 Alain de Lille, Opera Omnia, ed. J-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, CCX (Paris, 1855), cols. 200–3;
the sermons in which Albert delivered his discourse on the city are edited by J. B. Schneyer in ‘Alberts
des Grossen Augsburger Predigtzyklus über den hl. Augustinus’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et
médiévale, XXXVI (1969), pp. 100–47 [henceforth: Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle].
18 E. Occhipinti, ‘Immagini di città. Le Laudes Civitatum e la rappresentazione dei centri urbani
nell’Italia settentrionale’, Società e Storia, XIV (1991), p. 25.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/09/18, SPi

Introduction 7

Garlande’s Parisiana Poetria (c.1231–35), a student textbook on Latin prose and

verse, which contains under the section on constructing hyperbole a short sentence
on the city of Paris (‘The famous name of Paris reaches to the stars, and its borders
contain the human race’), alongside Bonvesin’s aforementioned De Magnalibus
Urbis Mediolani, a book dedicated to the praise of the city of Milan and consisting
of eight chapters covering the cities virtues: location, buildings, inhabitants, wealth,
strength, faith, liberty, nobility.19 John’s praise of Paris, as short as it may be, merely
reflects the tip of an iceberg. Below it, submerged, lie numerous literary and
­cultural traditions and evident links to urban realities which were left u ­ narticulated
but believed by the author to be sufficiently understood and resonant to serve as
part of a pedagogic tool for local university students. The brief praise of Paris’s
hosting of a large and eclectic population taps into some of the oldest literary fea-
tures of urban panegyric but also speaks directly to thirteenth-century e­ xperiences
of urban life, as cities (particularly Paris) expanded, became the locus of diverse
communities, and their rulers willingly promoted their power through the govern-
ance and protection of the mosaic of peoples inhabiting their cities. Bonvesin, on
the other hand, might provide far more explicit and explicated praise, but the same
background of literary and cultural influences mixed with lived urban experiences
suffuses the text. Approached in this way, the issue then is one of degree not type.
Similarly, one could compare the often passing, but crucial representations of
the city in any number of ‘secular’ and ‘fictionalized’ Epic and Romance works
with the extensive, and distinct, prologue of William FitzStephen’s Vita of Thomas
Becket which was entitled Descriptio nobilissimae civitatis Londoniae (c.1173).20 In
some of the former, for example Jean Renart’s L’Escoufle (c.1200–2), supportive
urban inhabitants and the city itself (in this case Montpellier) act as agents e­ nabling
the redemption of the chief characters (Aelis and Guillaume).21 Several scholars
have demonstrated how these types of works can be used as entry points into the
conflicted aristocratic and mercantile perceptions of the city while telling us a great
deal about both positive and negative experiences of urban life in the Central
Middle Ages.22 In FitzStephen’s work, the description of London is informative
and rich, but like L’Escoufle its ‘background’ noises are equally as important (par-
ticularly the use of classical authors such as Virgil and Plato, and the imperial claims
made for London) as is the juxtaposition of this descriptio with a hagiographical

19 John de Garlande, The Parisiana Poetria of John of Garlande, ed. and trans. T. Lawler (New
Haven, 1974), Chapter 6, p. 129: ‘Sidera Parisius famoso nomine tangit, Humanumque genus
­ambitus Urbis tangit’.
20 William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, pp. 2–13.
21 Jean Renart, L’Escoufle, trans. A. Micha (Paris, 1992).
22 J. Le Goff, ‘Warriors and Conquering Bourgeois. The Image of the City in Twelfth-Century
French Literature’, in his Medieval Imagination, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago, 1992), pp. 151–76;
U. Mölk, ‘Die literarische Entdeckung der Stadt im französischen Mittelalter’, in J. Fleckenstein and
K. Stackmann (eds), Über Bürger, Stadt und städtische Literatur im Spätmittelalter (Göttingen, 1980),
pp. 203–15; M. Harney, ‘Siege Warfare in Medieval Hispanic Epic and Romance’, in I. A. Corfis and
M. Wolfe (eds), The Medieval City Under Siege (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 177–90, emphasizes the
broad distinction between epics which presented the knights’ desire to acquire the city against the
chivalric romances which showed the knights being absorbed into the city (pp. 187–8).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/09/18, SPi

8 Urban Panegyric and the Medieval City, 1100–1300

text. Both tell us much about medieval urban identities and the conceptualization
of the medieval city.
Thus, the present study will also utilize less well-known, and often shorter,
pieces of laudatory and conceptual material. This heterogeneity of source
types—which will be set out in more detail in Chapter 1—represents another
salient indicator of transformation in the urban world. Through combining this
diverse corpus of material it will be demonstrated that the messages within the
so-called ‘major’ laudes civitatum were simultaneously far more quotidian and
far less generic than had previously been thought, and that some of the seem-
ingly derivative material within them become more meaningful once properly
contextualized.

H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y

Fortunately, this study has been able to utilize some key scholarship on medieval
urban identities, on literary criticism, on audience and reception, on cultural
­studies, and on cultural geography.23 It has also drawn on studies from the social
sciences to help further understand, for example, the formation of group identities,
notions of legitimacy, and interpretations of crowds, all of which shaped medieval
perceptions of the city.24 While there exists a huge historiography on the medieval
city, scholarship directly on medieval urban panegyric is remarkably meagre.
Among the broader (though still regrettably brief ) treatments there are, however,
several important studies. The aforementioned work by J. K. Hyde played a crucial
role in placing medieval works of urban panegyric on the radar of many scholars.
While Hyde’s analysis is rather narrow with its approach to city descriptions
(descriptiones) which rejected works which he deemed too short or interconnected
with another text to be autonomous, it nonetheless presented an important under-
pinning interpretation:

23 A work which remains fundamental in any discussion of urban identities is S. Reynolds,

Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford, 2nd edition, 1997), pp. 155–218;
on literary criticism see A. Minnis and I. Johnson (eds), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism.
Vol. 2: The Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2005) and A. Bennett and N. Royle, An Introduction to Literature,
Criticism and Theory (Edinburgh, 4th edition, 2009); on literacy, audience, and reception see:
J. Tompkins (ed.), Reader-Response Criticism: from Formalism to Post-Structuralism (Baltimore, 1989);
D. H. Green, Medieval Listening and Reading. The Primary Reception of German Literature, 800–1300
(Cambridge, 1994); W. J. Ong, ‘Orality, Literacy and Medieval Textualization’, New Literary History,
XVI (1984), pp. 1–12; M. Mostert and A. Adamska (eds), Uses of the Written Word in Medieval Towns:
Medieval Urban Literacy, II (Turnhout, 2014); Erll, Memory; on cultural geography in a medieval
urban context see: K. D. Lilley, City and Cosmos. The Medieval World in Urban Form (London, 2009).
24 For example: M. J. Hornsey et al., ‘Relations between High and Low Power Groups: the
importance of legitimacy’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, XXIX (2003), pp. 216–27;
D. Waddington and M. King, ‘The Disorderly Crowd: from Classical Psychological Reductionism to
Socio-Contextual Theory: the impact on public order policing strategies’, The Howard Journal, XLIV
(2005), pp. 490–503; R. M. Chow et al., ‘The Two Faces of Dominance: the differential effect of
ingroup superiority and outgroup inferiority on dominant-group identity and group esteem’, Journal
of Experimental Social Psychology, XLIV (2008), pp. 1073–81.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/09/18, SPi

Introduction 9
The gradual elaboration of descriptive literature from the tenth to the fourteenth
­centuries represents not so much the growth of a literary tradition as a change in its
subject-matter. The medieval descriptiones are a manifestation of the growth of cities
and the rising culture and self-confidence of the citizens.
Indeed, for Hyde, prior to 1400 a genuine medieval literary tradition of the laus
civitatis ‘was either lacking, or at the best sporadic’, and these works of praise
instead tend to ‘reflect successive stages in the fortunes of medieval cities’.25 Later,
Occhipinti’s work, although solely examining Italy, suggested a compelling meth-
odological approach to urban panegyric. By acknowledging the importance of (the
already noted) microlaudes, Occhipinti highlighted the impossibility of construct-
ing an evolutionary line of development among such works owing to the extreme
diversity among the types of sources. Instead, Occhipinti saw greater value in ­mining
these sources for what they tell us about civic self-identity and their representations
of the city rather than in attempting to identify an autonomous literary genre with
distinct characteristics.26 Aligned to this approach, Harmut Kugler’s study empha-
sized the need for scholars to recognize the heterogeneity of works praising cities.
It acknowledged the value of studying these as literary works but also stressed the
importance of contextualizing them within their contemporary urban settings.27
Hyde’s, Occhipinti’s, and Kugler’s methodologies underpin this present study.
Other studies have done a great deal to frame some of the key themes of this
study, by elucidating the spiritual and ideological understandings of the city, and
highlighting the interrelationship between urban praise and condemnation. Hans
Hans-Joachim Schmidt’s masterful analysis of the Christian moralizing and alle-
gorical interpretation of the medieval city in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
makes much of the interplay with fundamental urban transitions, and is comple-
mented by Thomas Renna’s works on Cistercian thinking on the city.28 And Paolo
Zanna’s excellent study built a nuanced picture of the classical and biblical legacies
framing medieval urban descriptions, and his examination of elegiac works dem-
onstrated their significance for medieval conceptions of the city.29

25 Hyde, ‘Medieval Descriptions’, pp. 308–10.

26 Occhipinti, ‘Immagini’, pp. 25–6.
27 H. Kugler, Die Vorstellung der Stadt in der Literatur des deutschen Mittelalters (Munich, 1986),
especially pp. 17–26.
28 Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, pp. 297–354; T. Renna, ‘The City in Early Cistercian Thought’,
Citeaux: Commentarii cistercienses, XXXIV (1983), pp. 5–19 and ‘The Idea of the City in Otto of
Freising and Henry of Albano’, Citeaux: Commentarii cistercienses, XV (1984), pp. 55–72.
29 P. Zanna, ‘Descriptiones Urbium and Elegy in Latin and Vernaculars in the Early Middle Ages’,
Studi Medievali, XXXII, 3rd series (1991), pp. 523–96. More focused, localized, examinations have
also been produced. A sample would include: Fasoli, ‘coscienza civica’, pp. 293–318; M. Accame
Lanzillotta, Contributi sui Mirabilia urbis Romae (Genoa, 1996); D. Kinney, ‘Fact and Fiction in the
Mirabilia Urbis Romae’, in É. Ó Carragáin and C. Neuman de Vegvar (eds), Roma Felix. Formation
and Reflections of Medieval Rome (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 235–52; Ruth, Urban Honor; G. Rosser,
‘Myth, Image and Social Process in the English Medieval Town’, Urban History, XXIII (1996),
pp. 5–25; J. Scattergood, ‘Misrepresenting the City. Genre, intertextuality and Fitzstephen’s Description
of London (c.1173)’, in his Reading the Past. Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Dublin,
1996), pp. 15–36; Le Goff, ‘Warriors’, pp. 151–76; Mölk, ‘literarische Entdeckung’, pp. 203–15;
Kugler, Vorstellung der Stadt; A. Haverkamp, ‘ “Heilige Städte” im hohen Mittealter’, in F. Graus (ed.),
Mentalitäten im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1987), pp. 119–56.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/09/18, SPi

10 Urban Panegyric and the Medieval City, 1100–1300

Two additional works require particular mention, however, because they have
been important to the present study in addressing specific topics that will be
­covered here. Carrie E. Beňes’ study on urban origin legends demonstrates the
growing interest (in this case in Northern Italy from 1250 to 1350) in civic histories
and foundation myths in an increasingly classicizing environment.30 The work will
be drawn upon, particularly in Chapter 7, but the way Beňes demonstrated how
such legends were projected to a wider audience in several different media supports
some of my methodological approaches presented in Chapter 2. Keith Lilley’s
monograph likewise combines the abstract with the concrete to show how theoretical
conceptions of the city could be mapped onto, and influence the layout of, the
physical city, and used to promote the notion of holy cities: this approach will be
valuable for the analysis in Chapters 2 and 3 below.31
Perhaps the most salient feature of the entire body of scholarship is the dearth of
in-depth book-length studies on a European-wide spectrum. Carl-Joachim Classen
produced a welcome and erudite monograph on descriptiones and laudes urbium.
However, in reality it represents an extended article-length study, half dedicated to
the classical period, and the brief examination halts at the twelfth century.32 Chiara
Frugoni also offered a thought-provoking examination of the changing concept of
the city throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In combining an ­analysis
of architectural, topographic, iconographic, and textual sources, Frugoni pointed
the way towards a more holistic and interdisciplinary approach. That said, as the
work proceeds, it becomes increasingly and then (in chapters covering the Later
Middle Ages) exclusively focused on Italy.33 There is, therefore, a need for an in-
depth, methodologically flexible and interdisciplinary approach to this subject, but
it has yet to be achieved and very little sustained comparative analysis across medi-
eval Europe has been conducted. The present study aims to offer a small step
towards addressing this.

PA R A M E T E R S O F T H E S T U D Y

It is important to acknowledge where this study’s limits lie. First, the very idea of
the city has always been a contested subject field. Indeed, the terminology used for
urban settlements in the Middle Ages itself was highly fluid and open to various
interpretations. The most frequently used label, civitas, reflected ‘a double heritage
from Antiquity, a concept of political philosophy and an administrative term’.34

30 C. E. Beňes, Urban Legends. Civic Identity and the Classical Past in Northern Italy, 1250–1350
(University Park, Pa, 2011).
31 Lilley, City and Cosmos.
32 C-J. Classen, Die Stadt im Spiegel der Descriptiones und Laudes Urbium in der antiken und mit-
telalterlichen Literatur bis zum Ende des zwölften Jahrhunderts (Hildesheim, 1980). See the assessment
of Classen’s book in Kugler, Vorstellung der Stadt, pp. 23–4.
33 C. Frugoni, A Distant City. Images of Urban Experience in the Medieval World, trans. W. McCuaig
(Princeton, 1991).
34 P. Michaud-Quantin, Universitas: expressions du mouvement communautaire dans le Moyen-Âge
latin (Paris, 1970), p. 111.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/09/18, SPi

Introduction 11

It represented both the Ciceronian ideal of a city as a community of individuals

brought together under the same law, and as an imperial jurisdictional category for
an urban centre and its dependent territories.35 In the Early Middle Ages, as
­bishops invariably took over political and administrative leadership in many post-
Roman cities, the term civitas also became synonymous with urban episcopal centres.
However, other meanings abounded in the Middle Ages. Civitas could imply a
walled or fortified centre, a settlement with a legal status recognized in a charter of
privileges, an administrative locus, a place of a certain demographic density and
physical size, or one with particular commercial and consumer functions. Alongside
this, other terms were applied to centres which could appear to have urban charac-
teristics: urbs, municipium, villa, or oppidum could often be used interchangeably
with the label civitas.36 Thus, the ‘richness of the general lexicon’ of the medieval
city undoubtedly poses challenges for establishing typologies, particularly when we
add in seemingly intermediary terms such as portus, burgus (a term originally con-
nected to a settlement’s military functions), and suburbium, all of which could
contain urban associations.37 This terminology likewise varied depending on the
education and agenda of the author applying the term.38
For some commentators the city could be the physical entity—its buildings and
infrastructure—for others, like the Christian philosopher St Augustine (d.430) it
is the inhabitants, or a particular mode of being.
In his Etymologies (c. ad 615–636) Isidore of Seville offered his own influential
interpretation of the city:
A city (civitas) is a multitude of people (hominum multitudo) drawn together by a bond
of community, named after its ‘citizens’ (dicta a civibus), that is, from the inhabitants
of the city (ab ipsis incolis urbis) [. . .] Now urbs is the name for the actual buildings,
while civitas is not the stones, but the inhabitants.39
Isidore thus echoed the Ciceronian and Augustinian position of the city (civitas)
as a community, which dwelled in a particular physical setting, the urbs. Later
Christian thinking of the Middle Ages witnessed a partial shift from Augustine’s
equation of city with community, to twelfth-century ideas of the city as a ‘place’,
in line no doubt with the marked material expansion of many urban centres at this

35 Michaud-Quantin, Universitas, pp. 111–12.

36 Boucheron et al., Histoire de l’Europe urbaine, pp. 287–8; sometimes urbs could denote a city of
higher status, connected no doubt to its intrinsic association with the city of Rome: Michaud-
Quantin, Universitas, pp. 117–19; for specific examples from Normandy see P. Bouet, ‘L’image des
villes normandes chez les écrivains normands de langue latine des XI et XII siècles’, in P. Bouet and
F. Neveux (eds), Les villes normandes au Moyen Âge. Renaissance, essor, crise. Actes du colloque de Cerisy-
la-Salle, 8–12 octobre 2003 (Caen, 2006), pp. 320, 327–8.
37 Boucheron et al., Histoire de l’Europe urbaine, pp. 369–70. Burgus/burg became a particularly
common urban designation in medieval Germany and to a lesser extent France: F. Opll, ‘Das Werden
der mittelalterlichen Stadt’, Historische Zeitschrift, CCLXXX (2005), pp. 567–73.
38 Opll, ‘Das Werden der mittelalterlichen Stadt’, p. 567.
39 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911), vol. II.
XV.I.II. My translation slightly adapts the one found in The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans.
S. A. Barney et al. (Cambridge, 2006), XV.II.I, p. 305.
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 Taking off my belt and pointing to my Creedmoor, I said, "I'll take
your carbine. Give me your belt," which he did. Then I was
immediately off on the back track.
I had barely started when I saw two men approaching from the
salt lake. Turning and meeting them, I found it was Rees and Foley.
They had struck too far east, and were coming back. They told me
to hurry to Louie Keyes, Cornett and Squirrel-eye. They had given up
the struggle.
I hurried ahead, and about a mile and a half from there I met
John Mathias afoot. I offered him water. He said: "No, I know where
the water is. Go on; hurry to the other boys; Carr has wandered off.
You get to Keyes, Cornett, and Emery first. They are east of the
route, about two and one-half miles back."
Hurrying on a half-mile, I met the rest, except the three or four
alluded to. I left three canteens of water with them. They said:
"Burn the earth, Cook, to reach Keyes, Cornett and Squirrel-eye. You
will see their horses, two of them, by going this way," they pointing
out the course.
I did not take time to hear all the truth, but made my horse fairly
fly, and soon I was beside them. They were lying down, side by side,
having been very methodical about it. They were lying on their
backs, facing the east. They had written their names and had them
fastened to their saddles. I dismounted and tied my horse to the
neck-rope of Cornett's horse, which stood there, a melancholy wreck
of what I knew he had been. Each man had his face covered with a
towel.
Charles Emery's horse had been killed and its blood drunk by the
three men. They had severed his jugular vein and used their tin-cup
in which to catch the blood. The dead horse was lying about twenty
feet from the men. I got down upon my knees at their heads and
lifted the towel from Cornett's face. His eyes were closed, apparently
in death. Then I opened a canteen of water; saturated one of the
towels, and began rubbing their faces alternately.
Squirrel-eye was in the middle, and was the first to respond. Dried
blood was on their lips and mustaches. Their lower jaws had
dropped. Louie's tongue was swollen and protruding. It was not
death. They were all in a comatose condition. The first murmur
came from Emery; but it was only a mutter. I opened all their shirt
collars, took off their cartridge-belts, pulled off two pairs of boots
and took off the other one's shoes. I began to talk loudly to them. I
said anything and everything I thought would arouse them.
Now, let the infidel laugh; but, feeling my utter helplessness, I
said, "Oh, God, help me to save these men's lives." I dashed water
in their faces and on their chests. I raised Keyes up to a sitting
posture; but his head dropped to one side, and I began to think he
was a "goner," sure.
Just then Emery raised himself up of his own accord and said,
"Where am I?" I placed Keyes back into a reclining position, and,
holding the canteen to Emery's mouth, said, "Squirrel-eye, drink!
there is lots of water; we must hurry." I talked loudly. At the first
swallow he clutched the canteen with both hands, and would have
drained it of all the water had I allowed him to do so. His
consciousness came to him when I said, "Now, help me with the
other boys."
Just then Rees came to us, and asked: "Did you find Carr?"
I said, "No, Sol.; I've not had time yet."
Just then Cornett arose to his full height and said, "Oh! God, how
long is this to last?"
Rees got him to drink some water.
Two of the canteens were nearly exhausted, when Rees said:
"John, for God's sake try to find Carr; my own horse is about done
up and that Government horse will carry you like the wind. I'll attend
to the boys and get them to the water-hole."
Anticipating where Carr was from what Mathias had told me about
where he last saw him, I rode west for several miles around the
Casa Amarilla.
The plains were wavy or slightly undulating or rolling. I hurried on.
After going some three miles I saw to my right, and about one mile
west of the upper water-hole, a riderless horse. Having left my
glasses on my own saddle, that was all I could make out. I hurried
on to the horse, and on near approach I saw that it was "Prince."
Carr was lying on the shady side of him, but the sun was nearly
down. I dismounted, threw the rein of the horse I was riding over
the saddle-horn on Prince, went around to the side Carr was on, and
said to him: "Well, you're making it into camp, I see." I was holding
the canteen in my hand. He raised himself up to a sitting position
and said, "It's Cook's voice, but I can't see you." I put one hand
upon his brow and the canteen to his lips, when he, too, with the
first swallow, seized the canteen with both hands.
After a good long drink, I took it from him, he letting go
reluctantly. I wet his head, washed his face, trickled some water
down his neck, and gave him another drink from the canteen. I
saturated Sam's pocket-handkerchief with the little water that
remained and moistened Prince's nostrils and lips with it; then said:
"Now, Sam, get on your horse and let's go to camp, for there is lots
to do."
I helped him to mount and got him to the upper water-hole. To
my great surprise there were our pack animals, except the two head
we had with us in the morning.
The absence of Wilkinson the night before was now accounted for.
He had awakened before the shooting in the night, and, missing the
pack-mules and his own horse, he went out away from the main
crowd, and, lying flat upon his belly, he skylighted one of the mules
moving off toward the Casa Amarilla; and he followed, passed by it
looking for more, until he got to the lead of all, except his own
horse, which he could not get up to, nor would his horse stop at his
call. Knowing what animal instinct was, and as they were all going
the same direction, one after another, he waited until the last one
had passed him, when he followed in the rear. That took him to the
big Dripping Spring at the Casa Amarilla.
He had killed a large buck antelope, and skinned him shot-pouch
fashion. Turning the hide back like a stocking, he had tight-laced up
both ends, and, filling the hide full of water through the opening of
one of the front legs, closed it by tying a rawhide thong around it.
He got forty-two quarts of water. While he was filling the hide, Waite
went down to where I had struck the water, and finding Mathias,
Foley, and the darky soldier there, and the rest of the party except
Rees and the three men who had "thrown up the sponge," he
explained to them about the pack outfit, and that he and Dick would
start immediately for the relief of Harvey and those who were with
him.
Mathias and the darky went back up to the Dripping Springs,
leaving Foley to state matters to the others upon their arrival. It was
now dark. Dick and Al. started across the country to find the
footmen if possible. I rode down the draw to the Casa water-hole,
where the main party had arrived. Getting the three canteens, I
started for Rees and the three other men.
Soon it began to thunder in the southwest. The lightning was
flashing in the south and west near the horizon. After I had gone
some distance, it became quite dark. Fearing I would miss finding
the men, I fired the carbine. I soon saw the flash and heard the
report of a gun a half-mile or so to my left. Turning that way, I
would fire now and again, and get an answer.
It was Rees and the three men, Rees walking and Emery riding
Rees's horse. They were all burning with thirst; and soon the four
men had drunk the contents of the canteens.
 The deep rumbling, muttering thunder was now almost
continuous. The sky was overcast with heavy black clouds. The vivid,
forked lightning was "cavorting" high above the horizon. We
necessarily moved very slowly between lightning intervals, on
account of the inky darkness.
On top of the Casa bluff, at short intervals, a streak of blaze would
go up thirty or forty feet high and fall back to the ground. "Soap-
balls," said Squirrel-eye, who had been raised in Texas. And so they
were. There was a soap-root growing profusely in all this region,
with which the Mexicans washed their clothes. From the top of its
stalk grew a round, fuzzy ball about four inches in diameter, which
would ignite at the touch of a burning match. They were something
like the turpentine balls, which the boys of my generation used to
sport with on Fourth of July nights. And this lurid blaze could be
seen for many miles at night.
When we got within speaking distance that well-known clarion
voice of John Mathias told us with vim, to "follow up the draw." He
added: "We've got a coon cook, and he has a supper ready of
antelope, bread and coffee."
Mathias was a man whose countenance had but one expression. It
never changed. He always looked as if dire misfortune had suddenly
overtaken him. Yet withal he was the most affable, sociable, and
humorous man in our company. He was always turning the sublime
to the ridiculous. But when others were in distress he was tender-
hearted. His help was free, and he was kind and generous. We had
no sooner reached camp when his solicitation for the welfare of
Harvey, Kress, Perry, and Williams cropped out.
The violent thunder had abated, and the air was perfectly still,
when Mathias said: "Now, boys, after you all eat, let's all string out
from here southwest toward where we left the boys, those in front
with the canteens keeping within speaking distance of one another,
and we will throw up burning soap-balls to signal them in if they are
on the move."
 Some of the men could not eat at all. Those who did, were not
ravenously hungry. It was water, water, water, they wanted first.
Leaving the darky soldier and Louie Keyes, whose vitality was at a
low ebb, we all filed out on the yarner, and with two men holding the
four corners of a blanket, to hold soap-balls in, dark though it was
we gathered many a one, over a hundred, by shuffling and scuffling
our feet along and around.
All the while we were busily gathering them, one man would light
and toss the blazing ball as high as he could throw it, and in the
light of a blazing ball as it was ascending and descending, we would
see others and skip toward them by this light. We kept from one to
as many as five soap-balls in the air at once. These brightly burning
blazing balls were fine night signals.
Loud thunder and bright lightning could be heard and seen, then
continuous, deep roaring thunder like the sound of artillery which
was not far distant, could be distinctly heard. Then to the south and
southwest we heard a deafening and I may say an appalling roar
that lasted, it seemed, for at least three minutes. The sound was like
the rushing of a mighty torrent.
When it ceased the stillness of the tomb prevailed for a while. We
all returned to camp, and to sleep.
Not a drop of rain fell where we were. But the next morning when
the second relief party went out they found the earth deluged six
miles south of our camp, and rode through one basin where the
water was belly-deep to their horses. They said the rain strip was
two miles wide; and one mile south of it they found our boys; Waite
and Wilkinson had found them early in the morning. They had
traveled on about seven miles after they had found the bottle of
brandy, and they were in earnest when they declared that had it not
been for that stimulant they would have succumbed.
Another thing helped them: they held a bullet in their mouths,
which caused the saliva to flow, which kept the mouth moist and
they did not experience that dry, hot, hacking sensation in their
throats that we did.
But when found they were very weak. Hudson was delirious. On
the evening of the 30th of July they arrived in camp, where we
remained three days resting and recuperating from this disaster.
Benson was the only man of our party not present.
Hosea and the negro soldiers that went with him to Laguna Plata,
with the exception of the colored soldier with us, found the lake near
morning of the 29th.
At this lake occurred an act on the part of the mulatto sergeant
which was a disgrace to manhood, and purchased the sergeant a
home in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for a period
of twenty years at hard labor, when he should have been shot, as
Mathias said, with all the buffalo-guns on the range. This sergeant
refused to go back to the relief of his officers and comrades, and
ordered his squad not to return. But one did disobey him, and
followed Hosea with forty-four canteens full of water, and they struck
the back track.
Faithful Hosea returned to where he found the previous night's
halt; found that the soldiers had taken one course, we another. He
followed the soldiers until he felt assured they would get to the
Double Lakes or Laguna Sabinas. He thought they could not miss
both, as they were nearly in sight of them then. Hosea turned and
crossed that thirty miles of trackless waste to the Casa Amarilla, and
found us the morning of the 31st.
The sergeant and his men put back to Fort Concho; and we
hunters went east to our old battle-ground at the head of
Thompson's cañon, where we found Benson, who had left the
soldiers, after traveling half the day of the 29th, and when night
came on he lost his horse and had walked the rest of the way, he
being ninety-six hours without water. When we came to where he
was he was as crazy as a bug. It was three weeks before his mind
was thoroughly restored.
Here we found our missing pack-mules. Now we were all together,
not losing a man, after undergoing one of the most horrifying
experiences that ever fell to mortals' lot on land. We read of horrors
of the sea, where castaways resorted to cannibalism when they
became frenzied, where seemingly there was nothing else could be
done and live. But here in this great "Lone Star State," with water all
around us, was a party of strong men who became demoralized by
thirst, which, together with intense heat, will weaken the body and
impair the mental faculties far quicker than hunger or any other
calamity that can happen to man.
The soldiers first found Laguna Rica, then the Double Lakes,
where Captain Lee was encamped at the time; but in covering the
vast distance from where they left us they had killed and drank the
blood from twenty-two of their horses; and yet five of them died on
the route. So Lieutenant Ward told us when he went out from Fort
Concho afterward, with a part of his company, and buried the dead.
For twenty miles this route was strewn with carbines, cartridge-
belts, blankets, hats, blouses, pants, and cooking utensils, dead
horses and mules, so that one object or a number of objects could
be seen from one to another.
With those two officers and their colored soldiers was big raw-
boned Barney Howard, black as a crow, and as kinky-wooled as his
Congo Basin progenitors. He was the true hero of the occasion. After
his own horse had been sacrificed, he said to the officers and men,
"It would take worser dan dis for me to drap." And when Lieutenant
Cooper handed him his watch and money that he had with him he
asked Barney to give them to his (Cooper's) wife, if he (Barney) got
through. Barney tied them up in the silk handkerchief that Mrs.
Cooper had monogrammed, and said:
 "I'll carry dese for you, sah, till we git to watah, for you isn't gwine
to peter out and worry dat pooh little black-eyed woman, is you? No,
sah, dat talk am all nonsense."
He threw military discipline aside and told Captain Nolan he ought
to be ashamed of himself to set a whining patten (pattern) befo' his
men. He would walk around among his weak, discouraged
comrades, and tell them of the good things in store for them in the
future. I had a long talk with this ebony-colored child of Ham,
afterward, at Fort Concho. He was cut out for a regular, and it is but
fair to presume that he climbed the San Juan hill, doing his duty in
his capacity equally as well as Theodore Roosevelt did in his.
After recuperating, the soldiers went to Concho, and Captain Lee
back to Fort Griffin.

What about the Indians?

That is another story, part of which was a revelation to us. They
knew where we hunters were from day to day, and through an
interpreter at Fort Sill, the next June, I listened to Cuatro Plumas's
(Four Feathers) statement. He was born at the Big Springs of the
Colorado.
They knew that Quinnie was coming to them. He was born at the
south end of Laguna Sabinas, on the Staked Plains. One of the
runners met Quinnie at the old camp they were in when they killed
Sewall, and they told him where we were. After we had killed and
wounded so many of them in March, they said they would never
fight the hunters again, in a body. The lesson of the Adobe Walls,
and that of the Casa Amarilla, as they called the place where we
fought them in March, had taught them to not go up against the
long-range guns that the hunters carried; and that they would just
dodge and elude us until we got weary of the chase.
 Quinnie knew perfectly well, when he was observed coming
straight to us, where we were, soldiers and all. He also knew where
the Indians were camped, which was in the Blue sand-hills, not to
exceed seven miles from where we finally abandoned the trail. He
would never have thought of coming to our camp if the soldiers had
not been with us, fearing we would seize him and under penalty of
death make him take us to the Indians, which we surely would have
done had it not been for Captain Nolan.
Quinnie expected us to follow him when he left our camp at the
head of the Colorado. He would accomplish two purposes in coming
out of his way some forty miles in all, to reach our camp and then
get back again to the Indians: one was, "To show his commission
and orders, thus hoping to allay the vengeance of the hunters, and
check the movement of the soldiers against their camp;" the other
was, "To get us as far south as possible, when he would, under
cover of night, turn and hurry to the sand-hills and get the hostile
Indians moving for Fort Sill, with us too far away to overtake them."
But we did not follow him. In the end we really did worse. Quinnie
was supplied with a pair of army field-glasses from Fort Sill, and
from their point of observance in the sand-hills they noted our
approach on the 28th; and in the early evening they were all moving
east, keeping in the basins of the sand-hills. When they saw our
command turn toward the Laguna Plata, following the water party,
they halted and camped. They saw as separate the morning of the
29th, and watched us all the forenoon. Then, on the evening of the
29th, they started to run the gauntlet between us, and, some of
them knowing these plains from childhood, they could safely
anticipate where each party was that night; and keeping a course as
far from us hunters as possible, and crossing Nolan's trail well in his
rear, they got through to the eastern breaks of the Staked Plains
without being seen, and hurried on to Fort Sill as fast as they could.
They left nearly 200 head of horses and mules in the sand-hills.
They camped one day, the 30th, in the rough broken country
northeast, a little way from the old first camp, where Freed and his
party first fought them. They left more than one hundred head of
stock here in these breaks. They were so scared and in such a hurry
they were afraid to take time to gather them up. In fact, they lost
more or less stock until they got across Red river into the Indian
Territory.
After leaving the old battle-ground, where we found Benson, we
followed down Thompson's cañon at easy stages, and when we
were near the mouth of the cañon we ran onto a large surveying
party. At sight of us they fortified in a hurry, the best they could.
When we were within a quarter of a mile of them, we sent a truce
ahead, and soon there were joyful greetings. They saw the Indians
during the 30th, and were about to leave for Fort Griffin, on account
of their close proximity, but seeing the next morning that they were
gone and their horses scattered in every direction, they concluded to
remain close in camp, awaiting developments. And when they first
saw us coming down the valley of the Thompson Fork of the Brazos,
they thought and feared we were Indians.
Their story of the Indians' scattered horses interested us
considerably. We passed on out into the region where they were to
be found. We went into camp below where the Indians had stopped
over on the 30th, and went to work scouring the country over for
horses. The next day we gathered in 136 head. Poor old "Keno" was
there! His back on each side was raw and swollen, the top of his
withers was bruised and chafed raw. When John Mathias saw him,
and as I was using a lot of words about it, which I refrain from using
here, he said: "It just makes a fellow feel like he wanted to scalp the
Chairman of the Indian Rights Association."
None of us had ever seen the most of this stock. The big spotted
horse belonging to George Williams, that one of the Indian warriors
had caught, mounted, and rode through Rath, when the Rath raid
was made, was even in worse condition than "Keno." Billy Devins's,
Freed's, and the two Englishmen's stock were all here, and some
belonging to other hunters, who were not members of the Forlorn
Hope, were also identified.
 That evening we held a council. We looked over the descriptions in
the "bills of sale" the ranchmen had given us. It was decided to
divide the party, one-half taking the Indians' back trail for the sand-
hills, the other half to take the stock, follow the Indians' trail to the
north prong of the Salt Fork of the Brazos, thereby hoping to pick up
more stock that the Indians might have left behind them, then turn
and go to Rath and there await the return of the party that would go
back to the sand-hills. Some of us were eager to go back, more from
curiosity than otherwise; and we did so.
The next morning we were up by daylight. Breakfast was over and
the division of the party about to be made. Harvey said:
"Now, boys, fix it up among yourselves which end of the trail you
will take. I won't make the division. Some of you want to go back to
the sand-hills. For myself, I am feeling badly. The last few days' work
have been hard on me. You boys have readily performed every duty
I have imposed upon you ever since we left Rath, and I now hand
the responsibility over to you for the future."
"No, no," we told him, one and all of the same voice; "you make
the detail. We will stay organized until the stock question is settled.
You take one-third of the men then and go to Rath's Store. Take all
the extra stock along and wait for us to come in."
He took Carr, Keyes, Cornett, Squirrel-eye, the two Englishmen,
the negro soldier, the Boston boy, and poor Benson, whom we had
to watch to keep him from wandering off; as he would keep saying,
"I must go and find the boys." Had he suffered during his ninety-six
hours of thirst?
I was one of the party who went to the sand-hills.
We separated, all three parties leaving camp at once, with "So-
long to you," and "So-long to you," calling back to each other by
name. "Don't let the Quohadas get those horses again." "Yes, and
look out for the pale-face rustlers, too, Harvey." This last was an
admonition with a meaning. For the cattle-men along the border had
given us the names of a few professional horsethieves.
We were two days going back to the sand-hills. We followed the
trail the Indians had made in their flight for Fort Sill. When we got
fairly out of the breaks and on top of the "yarner," we met Tonkawa
Johnson and his five scouts. From him we learned the condition of
Nolan's command. Johnson had been sent out to hunt for that part
of Nolan's missing pack train which was finally found at Laguna Rica.
We entered the Blue sand-hills where the Indians left them. After
following the trail about seven miles we came to the place where
they had lived since Captain Lee captured their camp at Laguna
Plata. We passed by horses, mules and ponies for two miles before
we came to the camp. We stayed in these sand-hills for three days.
We went out to where we had abandoned the trail on the evening of
the 28th of July. Seven miles on an air line would have led us to
their camp. Twice that distance was the trail we abandoned, the trail
leading past their camp on the north some five miles, and looping
back again. We could not but admire their strategy. We rounded up
in these sand-hills 107 head of stock, and drove them to Rath,
where the other boys who had followed the Indian trail to the Brazos
had arrived two days before us.
We placed all the stock in one herd, and sent out word in every
direction for the hunters to come and get their stock. Rath boarded
us at the restaurant until we got our outfits rigged up for the fall and
winter hunt. In September we scattered over the range from the
South Concho to the Pease river, as secure in our camps as if we
were in a quiet and peaceful Quaker neighborhood, so far as Indians
were concerned.

The summer of 1877 is on record as being the last of the

Comanches in the rôle of raiders and scalpers; and we hunters were
justly entitled to credit in winding up the Indian trouble in the great
State of Texas, so far as the Kiowas and Comanches were
concerned. Those Indians had been a standing menace to the
settlement of 90,000 square miles of territory in Texas and New
Mexico.
And to-day, 1907, it is a pleasing thought to the few surviving
hunters of the old Southwest to know that the entire country of the
then vast unsettled region is now dotted over with thousands of
peaceful, prosperous homes.
I pulled out of Rath September 21st for the head of North Concho;
and that winter hunted along the eastern edge of, and on, the
Staked Plains.
The last great slaughter of the buffaloes was during the months of
December, 1877, and January, 1878, more than one hundred
thousand buffalo-hides being taken by the army of hunters during
that fall and winter. That winter and spring many families came onto
the range and selected their future homes, and killed buffaloes for
hides and meat. More meat was cured that winter than the three
previous years all put together.
In the spring of 1877 but few buffalo went north of Red river. The
last big band of these fast-diminishing animals that I ever saw was
ten miles south of the Mustang Spring, going southwest. They never
came north again. And I afterward learned that the remnant of the
main herd that were not killed crossed the Rio Grande and took to
the hills of Chihuahua in old Mexico. This last view was in February,
1878. During the rest of the time that I was on the range, the
hunters could only see a few isolated bands of buffaloes. And if one
heard of a herd which contained fifty head he would not only look,
but be surprised.
In May the hunters were leaving the range. Some went to the San
Juan mines, some to the Black Hills, and some "back to the States,"
as they would say.
 Many picked out one of the many fine locations that he had had
an eye on for a year, two years, or three years, as the case might
be, and he would settle down to ranching. In a few years, personally
I lost track of them. But in memory, never.
Speaking of the members who took part in the battle of March
18th, 1877, and were also members of the Forlorn Hope: I can now
look back in my evening of life, with very many pleasant
recollections. It was the most democratic body of men imaginable.
Different in religious views, politics, financial standing, and in the
social scale of life, yet, as the phrase goes, all "common as old
boots." There were men with a classical education; some there were
who could not read, write, or cipher; but they could name the
brands and could tell you the peculiarities of the owners from the
Rio Grande to the Red river. One of the Englishmen, as we called the
two whose camp was literally destroyed, and who were with us in
the Casa Amarilla fight, also a member of the "Forlorn Hope," was
not wholly English, for Scotch blood flowed in his veins. He was a
poet. He never told the author, but it came to him second-hand, that
Harry Burns, the Scotch-Englishman, was a descendant of Bobbie
Burns, the famous Scotch poet. His verses composed and published
in the Dodge City Times, addressed to the "hunters" after the ninety
days' scout, and which are reproduced in this book, are timely, and
surely will be appreciated by the hunters of those days.
Another hunter, a "Prodigal Son," also composed a few verses
when he was leaving western Kansas to hunt in Texas. The words
were sung all over the range with as much vim as the old-time "John
Brown's Body." It had a very catchy tune, and with the melody from
the hunters' voices it was beautiful and soul-inspiring to me. One
stanza and the chorus is all that I can now recall of it. It ran thus:
 "I love these wild flowers, in this fair land of ours,
I love to hear the wild curlew scream
On the cliffs of white rock, where the antelope flock,
To graze on the herbage so green.

CHORUS

"O, give me a home, where the buffalo roam,

Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the sky is not cloudy all day."

We were camped at the Casa Amarilla on the Fourth of July. We

made a flag from a part of a blue shirt; the red stripes from a red
shirt, the white stripes from a flour-sack. We used the tin-foil from
around our plug tobacco for stars. Our standard was a tepee-pole.
We planted it on top of the pyramid which we made, twelve feet
high, from the stones from the old Indian fort. After the flag was
hoisted, it floated about twenty-five feet above the ground.
One of the boys said, "It's a little trick, ain't it?" Then he added,
"But it's got a mighty big meaning."
"Yes," said another; "I fit agin it wunst, but it's sacred now; I love
it. It's got a portion of my old red shirt in its folds."
We delivered patriotic orations; declaimed some of Daniel
Webster's and Henry Clay's speeches to Congress. We belabored
King George in particular, and Great Britain in general, much to the
delight of the two Englishmen, whom we had told in advance that
"present company was excepted"; but that all Englishmen not
present would "catch fits."
We had a code of etiquette, and woe to the man that violated it.
There was a kangaroo court always in session, with Judge Kress
(Wild Bill) on the bench. Men were even tried for imaginary offenses,
and always found "guilty." The sentence was to go out a given
number of steps from camp and bring in buffalo-chips to cook with.
All those dry hot days there was not the semblance of ill-feeling one
toward another. Some had singular peculiarities, but they were all by
common consent passed by.
I remained in Texas until the fall of 1879; helped to organize
Wheeler county in the Panhandle, it being the first county organized
in that part of Texas. From Texas I went to Chautauqua county,
Kansas, and from there to Fort Berthold, in the Dakota Territory; was
in the U. S. Indian service, serving as Superintendent of Indian
farming; was there during the Sioux Indian Messiah craze, the winter
Sitting Bull was killed.
I first saw Sitting Bull, that crafty old Medicine-man, in the winter
of 1885, when he came to visit the Mandan, Gros Ventre, and
Arickaree Indians. He was then paving the way to get into their good
graces in order to get those friendly tribes to violate their peace
compact with the Government. While living in Dakota Mrs. Cook was
one of the unfortunate victims of the great blizzard of January, 1888.
She lay in a snow-drift two nights and one day, over forty hours, and
from the effects of this experience, her feet were badly frozen, so
much so that she had to undergo a partial amputation of both feet.
And when the wounds healed she suffered so with chilblains that I
was compelled to take her to the Cascade mountain region of
Oregon, where we now reside.
 ALICE V. COOK.

Having no living children of our own, we took to raise, as best we

could, an orphan child of an Confederate ex-soldier. When we took
him, he was four years old. He is now (1907) near fourteen years of
age, a manly little man. His father had been one of Robert E. Lee's
veterans, enlisting in Virginia in 1861, and surrendering at
Appomattox in 1865, having been continuously in the service four
years, fighting for the principles that his conscience told him were
right. He has the distinction of being one of the victims of the
"Petersburg Mine Explosion." He was thrown many feet into the air,
and fell back into the crater unharmed.
And if I am the only Union ex-soldier who has cared as best we
could for the baby-boy of one of General Lee's valiant soldiers, I will
feel it is a distinction that Mrs. Cook and myself can take great
consolation in.
John Crump was the name of the Confederate soldier spoken of. I
never changed his son's name, but left it by his father's request—
John Nelson Crump. The Crumps were a credit to the State of
Virginia.
JOHN NELSON CRUMP.
 CHAPTER XII.

Sol Rees.—Dull Knife Raid, 1878.—His Night Ride from Kirwin to the Prairie Dog.—
Elected Captain of the Settlers.—Single-handed Combat with a Warrior on the
Sappa.—Meeting Major Mock and U. S. Soldiers.—Sworn in as Guide and Scout.
—On a Hot Trail.—The Four Butchered Settlers on the Beaver.—Finds Lacerated,
Nude Girl.—On the Trail.—Finds Annie Pangle's Wedding Dress.—Overtook
Played-out Warrior.—Hurry to Ogalalla.—Lost the Trail.—Goes to New Mexico.—
Meets Kit Carson's Widow.—Down with Mountain Fever.—Living at Home in
Quiet.

A PEN SKETCH OF SOL. REES,

As Taken From the Man's Lips by the Author, Who First Met Him in the
Panhandle of Texas, in 1876.
 WAYNE SOLOMON REES.

"I was born in Delaware county, Indiana, on the 21st day of

October, 1847. I enlisted in Co. E., 147th Indiana Regiment, March
5th, 1865. But as that greatest of modern wars was near its close, I
did not even see the big end of the last of it. I came to Kansas in
1866, stopping for a time in the old Delaware Indian Reserve,
southwest of Fort Leavenworth. From among the Delawares I went
out to northwest Kansas, in 1872, and took up a claim on the Prairie
Dog, in Decatur county. I trapped, and hunted buffalo, until the
Indians stole my stock, when I had to quit hunting long enough to
get even, and a little ahead, of the red-skins. In summer-time I
would put in my time improving my homestead; in winter, hunting
and trapping. But when Kansas passed her drastic "hunting law,"
concerning the buffalo-hide hunters, I drifted to the Panhandle of
Texas, in 1876 (after taking in the Philadelphia Centennial); for the
next three and one-half years you have had a pretty good trail of
me."

SOL REES.
 To digress for the moment. This Sol. Rees was one of the
Government scouts and guides in what is known as the "Dull Knife
War" of 1878. Dull Knife was chief of a large band of northern
Cheyenne warlike Indians.
Congress had passed an act moving all of the troublesome Indians
from the so-called Cheyenne country north to the Indian Territory.
Dull Knife and his band were taken to the Indian Territory, to near
Fort Reno, on the North Fork of the Canadian river. Totally
dissatisfied with the conditions as had been represented to him by
the United States commissioners, he asked for, and was granted, a
council. Robert Bent, a son of old Col. Bent, was a half-breed
southern Cheyenne, and was the interpreter.
After the council was in sitting, Dull Knife arose and cited his
wrongs. It has been said no more eloquence has ever come from the
lips of an Indian orator. He said in brief: "I am going back to where
my children were born; where my father and mother are buried
according to Indian rites; where my forefathers followed the chase;
where the snow-waters from the mountains run clear toward the
white man's sea; yes, where the speckled trout leaps the swift-
running waters. You people have lied to us. Here your streams run
slow and sluggish; the water is not good; our children sicken and
die. My young warriors have been out for nearly two moons, and
find no buffalo; you said there were plenty; they find only the
skeletons; the white hunters have killed them for their hides. Take us
back to the land of our fathers. I am done."
At this, Little Robe, head chief of the southern Cheyennes,
knocked him down with a loaded quirt-handle. After regaining his
feet, he shook the dust from his blanket, then, folding it around
himself, walked out of the council lodge and said: "I am going;" and
go he did.
Robert Bent said: "Little Robe, you have made a mistake." That
same night his band was surrounded at their camp, by what
effective troops there were at the fort; but, regardless of that, the
band slipped past the cordon, Dull Knife at their lead, and for 800
miles, he whipped, eluded, and out-strategied the U. S. Army, and
left a bloody trail of murder and rapine equal in atrocity to any in the
annals of Indian warfare.
The author was on Gageby creek, in the Panhandle of Texas,
twelve miles from Fort Elliott, sleeping soundly at midnight, when a
runner came from Major Bankhead, in command, requesting me to
report to him at once. And for two months I was in the saddle, but
never north of the Arkansas river. I had lost track of Rees, early in
the spring before the outbreak. Nor did I see or hear from him until
the spring of 1907, only to find that he too had served as scout and
guide on the Dull Knife raid. I here copy two official documents, now
in Rees's possession, given him at that time.
Office Acting Asst. Quartermaster, U. S. A.,
Fort Wallace, Kansas, Nov. 4, 1878.
Sol. Rees, Citizen Scout, has this day presented to me a certificate, given him by
Major Mock, Fourth U. S. Cavalry, for thirty-nine days' service as scout and guide, at $5
per day, amounting to one hundred and ninety-five dollars. This certificate I have
forwarded to Department Headquarters, asking authority and funds to pay Rees's
claim. On a favorable reply and funds being furnished, I will pay the claim.
George M. Love,
1st Lieut. 16th Inf., Acting Asst. Q. M.

Office Acting Asst. Q. M., U. S. A.,

Fort Wallace, Kansas, Nov. 26, 1878.
Mr. Sol. Rees, Slab City, Kan.—Sir: Enclosed please find my check, No. 59, on First
National Bank of Leavenworth, Kansas, for $195, in payment for your services as scout
and guide, in October and November, 1878, and for which you signed Receipt Rolls, on
your being discharged. On this coming to hand, please acknowledge receipt.
I am, sir, very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
George M. Love,
1st Lieut. 16th Inf., Acting A. Q. M.
 The author now gives Rees's experiences and his observations as
to the part he took in it. This is as he dictated it to the author:
I was in Kirwin, Kansas, when I heard of the runaways. It was on
the 29th day of September, and anticipating the route they would
follow to the Platte river, on account of water, I made a night ride,
and got home just at daylight. I met settlers the next morning, and
they told me the Indians had camped that night on the Prairie Dog,
nine miles above my home. I saddled up and struck that way. When
I got about five miles, I met a party of homeseekers, who were
bringing in a wounded man toward my place. I went on, and after a
while I found the Indians had gone to the Sappa. I then went to
Oberlin, found the people badly excited, and there I organized a
party.
Poorly armed as they were, I started on the trail. We went from
there to Jake Kieffer's ranch. There the wounded began to come in,
and the people that got away from the Indians. Here we reorganized
and I was elected captain. Then we took the trail of the Indians, and
just as we got up the divide, we saw three Indians rise up out of a
draw,—man, woman, and boy about sixteen years old. We headed
them off to keep them from joining the main band, and drove them
to the timber on the Sappa. Here we separated into three parties,
one to go above, another below, and the other to scare them out of
the brush. The party I was with, when we came to the brush, did
not want to go in close. So I saw it was up to me alone. I saw a
squaw going up a little divide. I shot twice at her. Then I saw the
buck slide down off of a bank and run into the brush, a patch of
willows. I got on my horse and rode toward the willows. He rose up
and shot at me. I was not more than twenty steps from him. I had
been leaning over on the right side of my horse, at the time he shot.
I wished to expose as little of my body as possible. I rose up and
shot at him. We took shot about for five shots, when in trying to
work the cylinder of my revolver, the last cartridge had slipped back,
and the cylinder would not work. The warrior had fired his last shot,
but I did not know it at the time.
 I then went back to a man named Ingalls, and got a Colt's
repeating rifle. When I came back to where I had left the Indian, he
was gone. He had crossed the Sappa on a drift; and I can't, for the
life of me, see how he could have done it. I dismounted and
followed over, and found he was soon to be a good Injun. Taking out
my knife, he signed to me, "not to scalp him until he was dead," but
I had no time to spare; for there was much to do—it seemed to be a
busy time of the year. So I took his scalp. I opened his shirt and
found four bullet-holes in his chest, that you could cover with the
palm of your hand.

SOL. REES'S FIGHT WITH INDIAN.

After this we started back down the creek, and had gone only a
short distance when we met Major Mock, with five companies of the
Fourth U. S. Cavalry and two companies of the Nineteenth Infantry.
The troops were all angry. Col. Lewis had been killed the day before.
Here is where I met our old friend Hi. Bickerdyke. As soon as I met
him, he said: "Major, here is my old friend Sol. Rees, one of the
hottest Indian trailers I ever met. I have been with him in Texas in
tight places."
 The major said, "Glad to see you, Rees. Will you go with us as
scout and guide at $5 per day and rations, until this thing is ended?
I understand you are an old northern Kansas buffalo hunter, and
know the country well." I said: "Yes, Major, I'll go; but not so much
for the five dollars as to have this thing settled, once for all, so that
we settlers can develop our homes in peace." We struck the trail on
a divide. "Take the lead, Rees, everyone will follow you," he said. We
followed the trail down on the Beaver; and there we got into a mess.
We found where the Indians had butchered four men. They had
been digging potatoes and had been literally hacked to pieces by the
hoes they were using in their work. They were the old-fashioned,
heavy "nigger" hoes, as they had been called in slavery days.
Evidently, this had been done by squaws and small boys, for all of
the moccasin-tracks indicated it. The hogpen had been opened, so
that the hogs could eat the bodies. We did not have time to give the
unfortunates decent burial, so the major ordered the soldiers to
build a strong rail pen around the mutilated bodies, and we passed
on rapidly, fearing the devils would do even worse; and the idea now
was to crowd them.
From here the trail went up a divide. I said to Hi. Bickerdyke, "You
take the left, I'll take the right, and Amos will lead the command up
the divide." I had gone about a mile when I saw something moving
toward a jut in the draw. I rode fast, and when I got up close
instead of going around, as is usual in such cases, I rode straight to
the object. It proved to be a white girl about sixteen years old. She
was nude, her neck and shoulders were lacerated with quirt (whip)
marks. She was badly frightened and threw up her hands in an
appealing way. I said: "Poor girl! Have they shot you?"
She answered: "No; but I suffer so with pain and fright."
She was of foreign origin. It was hard for me to understand her,
she talked so brokenly. All the humane characteristics I ever
possessed came to the front, and I guess I shed tears. The sight of
that poor helpless girl so angered me that I then promised myself
that as long as there was a war-path Indian, I would camp on his
trail. When she saw me approaching her she sat down in the grass.
I said: "Poor child; what can I do for you? Where are your
people?" She understood me, and said she wanted something to
cover her body. I dismounted, unsaddled my horse, and tossed her
my top saddle-blanket. I turned my back, and she arose, wrapped
the blanket around her body, and walked toward me and said: "A
string." Turning toward her, I cut about four feet from the end of my
lariat. Unwinding the strands, I tied one around her waist; then,
folding the top of the blanket over her head and shoulders, I cut
holes in under where it should fit around her neck. I ran one of the
strands through and tied it so as to keep the blanket from falling
down over her shoulders. I then got her on behind me and started
for the troops. When I got up on the divide I was nearly two miles
behind the command. It had halted upon noticing my approach from
the rear. I rode up, and turned the girl over to Major Mock. The
major got George Shoemaker to take her back, in hopes of finding
her people, or some women to care for her.
That night we went on to the Republican river, about six miles
below the forks. The Indians camped about three miles above, on a
little stream sometimes called Deer creek. That night Major Mock
wanted to know of me if I could find a cowboy who would carry a
dispatch to Ogalalla, Nebraska. I told him I would try. I started at
once to hunt one, and had gone but a little way until I met Bill
Street. I asked him if he could get through to Ogalalla?
He said, "Yes."
"Well, come on to camp." I introduced him to Major Mock, and
said: "Here is your man."
The major handed him the dispatch, saying, "Hurry to Ogalalla."
The next morning we went up the river and struck their last
night's camp. And for a natural, fortified camp, they surely had it. I
believe they expected to be attacked here. They had not been gone
long, for there were live coals from the willow-brush fires, which was
evidence that we were not far behind them. They struck for the
breaks of the North Fork of the Republican. Across the divide, and
coming up on the breaks to the north, we could see the Indians, and
they us, at the same time. The Indians started to run. Mock started
to a creek straight ahead, on the Frenchman's Fork of the
Republican, to camp for noon.
I asked, "Major, are you not going to chase those Indians now,
and stop these horrible murders of the helpless settlers?"
He said: "No, Rees, the men and horses are worn out, and must
have a little rest and food."
We went to the creek, camped, but did not unsaddle. Ate a cold
lunch, mounted, and took the trail, which was now easily followed.
Packs were dropped; worn-out ponies left on the trail; and many
garments carried from settlers' homes. Among others was a wedding
dress that had been worn by Annie Pangle, who had been married in
my house to a man named Bayliss. I passed on at the head of the
command, and saw that Dull Knife and his band were running for
their lives.
The famous Amos Chapman and I were now riding together, when
we saw a pack ahead of us that looked peculiar. I dismounted to
look at it. It was a live Indian. Pulling out my six-shooter I would
have killed him, but Amos said: "Don't, Sol; here comes the major
on a run; let's wait until he comes up." Amos was a good sign-talker,
and tried to talk to him; but he was stoical and silent.
I put my 45 to his ear and said: "Ame, it's signs or death." He
seemed to realize what would come, and sign-talk he did, a-plenty.
He said he was tired out, and could not keep up, and his people had
left him, not having time to stop and make a travois to take him
along. Having lost so much time here, the Indians got out of sight.
When the wagons came up this played-out warrior was loaded onto
one, and hauled for two days, when some of the soldiers, who loved
their dead Colonel Lewis, sent him to the "happy hunting-grounds"
by the bullet route; and Major Mock never did find out who did it.
From where we loaded this warrior the trail was still easily
followed.
About dusk the Major rode ahead again, and asked me, "How far
is it to Ogalalla?"
I told him, "Six or seven miles northwest."
"Pull for there; for I have just got to have supplies."
We headed that way, and traveled to the South Platte, arriving
there in the fore part of the night.
Here we remained until about 2 P. M. next day, waiting for
supplies to come from Sidney. Mock thought that the Indians would
pass near Ogalalla. But a telegram reached him from Fort
Leavenworth, stating that Major Thornburg would soon be on the
ground, with fresh troops and horses, and for him to follow
Thornburg's trail. Information having been received by Thornburg
that the Indians had crossed the Union Pacific Railroad, six miles
east of Ogalalla, instead of west of there, as Mock had supposed
they would, having killed a cowboy near where they crossed. We
then followed the military road to the crossing of the North Platte.
Here we found Thornburg's supply train quicksanded. Here our
quartermaster, Lieutenant Wood [whom the author well knew],
broke "red tape." Taking all the supplies we needed and the best of
Thornburg's mules, we moved on north, and never did see him or
his command of fresh troops.
In moving north we came to a small creek and found Thornburg's
trail; also Dull Knife's trail. We followed them to the head of the
creek. From there Thornburg turned west.
But we scouts were satisfied that an Indian ruse had been played.
Riding on ahead, north, I struck a trail where some were afoot. This
was evidently the squaw and pappoose trail. About twenty miles
farther the trail gave out. By twos and fours they scattered like
quails, having agreed on some meeting-place farther on toward their
northern home; the warriors doing the same with Thornburg, when
he, too, found himself without a trail. He started a dispatch across to
Mock; the bearer was wounded and lost his horse. But we got the
dispatch. The Indians got his horse, leaving his saddle. The dispatch
was lying about twenty feet from the saddle. It seemed to me the
soldier thought the dispatch might be found by some of Mock's
scouts. The message called upon Mock to send him some practical
scouts, as he had lost the warrior trail.
Mock could not get one of us to go. We all three thought we were
pretty fair trailers and knew what Dull Knife was up to. He wanted to
make us lose all the time possible, so that he and his band could
concentrate many miles away toward the North Star, while we were
picking up the broken threads of his trail. And he did it. Amos and
Hi. reasoned the case with Mock, and I assented to all the two
scouts said. So no trailers went to Thornburg.
Dull Knife and his band were finally surrounded near Fort
Robinson, Nebraska; cut their way out; escaped to near Fort Keogh,
Montana, where they were recaptured, and finally settled down to
farming. Dull Knife died in 1885, at the age of 78 years.
While Mock, Hi., Amos and I were talking about the ruse Dull Knife
had played Thornburg, a courier arrived from Fort Sidney, with a
dispatch, ordering Mock's command to Sidney on the U. P. R. R. near
South Platte. We lay over there a few days, and started back to the
Indian Territory, with another band of disarmed northern Cheyennes,
whose chief's name I do not now recall. But Dull Knife will forever
ring in my ears.
There were about 300 of these Indians, men, women and
children. We took a course for Wallace, Kansas. We crossed a
trackless, unsettled region at the time; no roads or trails, except, at
times, the evidences of the old buffalo trails, until we struck the
head of Chief creek, a branch of the Republican. During the night's
camp there came a heavy snow-storm; no timber, no brush or wind-
breaks, and nothing but buffalo-chips to cook with. The next
morning the major asked me if I could take him to timber by noon. I
told him I could, but doubted if his command and wards could make
it.
He asked me about the route. "For three miles to the Republican,
it was good; but from there to Dead Willow over the sand-hills it was
the devil's own route."
Arriving at Dead Willow we stayed three or four days, I forget
which. During this time Lieutenant Wood had a bridge built, and a
route laid out for crossing the Arickaree. Then we went a southeast
course to the South Republican, one day's march.
Next morning Major Mock asked me if I could get a dispatch to
Fort Wallace that day? I told him I could if I had a good mount. He
said, "Take your pick from the command." I took Harry Coon's mule.
The reason for that was I had noticed him on the entire trip. He was
a careful stepper; never stumbled. Harry never used spurs or quirt
on him. So I started with the message, leading my own saddle-
horse. This message was urgent, and was addressed to the
commanding officer at Fort Leavenworth. I got to Wallace just at
sundown, and handed the message to the commanding officer at
the fort.
He asked, "Where did you leave the command?"
I said, "On the Republican."
He seemed amazed. "Orderly, take this man's stock to the corral,
and see they are well cared for." He invited me to his quarters. The
next morning, the poor faithful mule could not walk out of the corral.
I pitied him; but I had to deliver that message.
I stayed at Wallace during the four days it took the command to
arrive. Here I was discharged, at my own request, as I wanted to go
home. The officers all said, "Why not go on to the Indian Territory,
as it amounts to $5 a day going and coming."
I said: "No; I told you before, it was not the five dollars a day I
was after. It was the protection of settlers, and the love of
adventure. This thing of herding Indians with no guns in their hands
makes me feel cheap. But Amos and Hi. live down there, and that is
all right."
After returning to my home on the Prairie Dog, I remained there,
putting on improvements, until the fall of 1880. Now here on this
creek, where you just had your swim, is forty-five miles to the
Smoky, south, where our old friend Smoky Hill Thompson used to
live; and ninety miles north is the Platte, where our leader in the
Casa Amarilla battle, Hank Campbell, lived.
I liked this location and decided to keep it as my future home. But,
like yourself, I am of a restless disposition. So I rented out my farm
and went to New Mexico, and was gone three years. I was in
business in Raton.
One day Jim Carson, a son of Kit, came into my place and said:
"Mr. Rees, my mother is coming down from Taos to visit some of her
Mexican friends. She has heard of you, and would be glad to see
you."
You know Raton is the old Willow Springs you used to know before
the Santa Fe was built down through Dick Hooten's pass, in the
Raton Mountains. Well, just across the arroyo is a little Mexican
hamlet, say 300 yards from Raton proper. At the time I speak of, I
met the Spanish widow of the famous Kit Carson, the grand old
scout, guide, and interpreter. [He was the man who piloted John C.
Frémont to the Pacific Coast.] She was one of the best-preserved old
ladies I ever saw, sixty-three years of age; she could talk both
English and Spanish fluently, and was a perfect sign-talker. After
nearly an hour's talk, she said she would like to stay there if she only
had money enough to buy her a washtub, board, and some soap.
(Poor soul! profligate Jim had squandered her last dollar!) I looked
at her, and in silence I asked myself, "What has Kit Carson done for
humanity?" I went across the arroyo and bought two washtubs, and
boards, a box of soap, and several other articles. I think the bill
amounted to twenty-odd dollars. I hired some Mexicans to take
them to her. I had a log house with two rooms built for her. When
told it was hers, she said: "Oh, I can never earn money enough to
pay for this." I said: "Mrs. Carson, Kit has paid for this, through me,
for what he has done to open up the West to settlers."
She moved in. In less than two months she had twelve washtubs
busy; elderly Mexican women at work; all quiet and orderly; twenty-
five cents apiece for washing a common woolen shirt; and every day
all were as busy as could be. In three months she sent for me, and
insisted that I should tell her how much money I had paid out for
her. "I want to pay it and then tell you how grateful I feel toward
you." I saw her meaning, for she was a lady. I put the price at a
sum far under what I knew it had cost me. She opened a chest and
handed me the money, saying: "Mr. Rees, only for you, I do not
know what I should have done. I shall always feel so grateful."
Did she? Was she?
I was taken down with mountain fever. The second day I became
delirious, and finally unconscious.
What did Mother Carson do? She sent four strong Mexicans to my
room; came herself with them. A soft mattress was placed on a door
for a litter, and I was carried to her house, placed on her own bed,
and for five days and nights that angel of mercy, this simple,
dignified widow of Kit's, nursed me back to life. And when
consciousness was restored, she was lying across the foot of the
bed, not having taken off her moccasins during that long vigil.
There is a beauty-spot picked out in the "Kingdom Come" for such
noble, high-minded women.
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