1807: John Colter Explores Hell.

Colter's Hell is a mostly inactive geyser district located just west of Cody, Wyoming, at the mouth of the Stinkingwater River Canyon

While geyser activity has been minimal in recent times, there are accounts of geothermal activity similar to that inside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park in the not too distant past.

John Colter, an intrepid member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, gave the first accounts of the area to non-native Americans following his solo journey of 1807-1808. But Colter's descriptions of gloomy terrors, hidden fires, smoking pits, noxious streams and the all-pervading smell of brimstone were too wild for his listeners to believe. They derisively dubbed the imaginary place "Colter's Hell."

Timeline
History and American West Titles
Artwork: Colter Stone

1844: Attack with Force, or Die!

April 24, 1844. Mojave River, California.

Two Mexicans, Andreas Fuentes and an eleven-year-old boy named Pablo Hernandez, rode into camp with an appalling tale... They had been traveling east with a large caravan from Los Angeles. Since the caravan was slow, the small group of family and friends had gone ahead to Archilette Spring where they planned to rest and wait for the caravan.

After they settled in at the spring, Indian warriors attacked them and drove off their horses. Fuentes and Pablo had escaped. Fuentes asked (Brevet Capt. John C.) Fremont to help find his horses and, presuamably, to learn the fate of the other members of the small party. Fremont gave permission to any of his men who wanted to go. Onl;y (Kit) Carsoin and Alexis Godey volunteered.

Carson recalled years later: "Godey and myself volunteered with the expectation that some men of our party would join us. They did not."

After twenty miles of hard riding, they came upon the thieves who had butchered some of the horses and were feasting on the meat. Carson and Godey waited for nightfall to sneak off with the remaining horses.

"The Indians noticed the commotion among the animals and sprang for their arms," Carson recalled.

Now arose the imperative that border men who long survive learned early: If outnumbered by an enemy, hesitate not. Attack with force, or die!

"We now considered it time to charge... They were about thirty in number. We charged. I fired, killed one. Godey fired, missed, but reloaded and fired, killing another... The remainder run."

Carson and Godey gathered the remaining horses and returned to Fremont, who wrote glowingly about the event in his "Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843-'44" that he delivered to Congress, saying civilization had triumphed over savagery.

Kit Carson

The Life of an American Border Man 

by David A. Remley

University of Oklahoma Press, 2012

Artwork: Kit Carson Fighting an Indiana
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History and American West Titles
Out of the Past

What Happened to The Space Race?

Remember the great Space Race between the USA and the USSR?

It started with the Soviet Union's launch of the Sputnik, the first satellite in space, on October 4, 1957. The perception that its Cold War nemesis was gaining a technological upper hand, shocked the United States government into action and inspired the NASA space program and President John F. Kennedy's famous 1961 promise to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth within the decade.

For most of a decade, the USSR seemed to be leading the race. The Soviets had the first artificial satellite, the first Moon probe, the first man in space, and the first spacewalk.

"The Soviet Union was engaged in a secret but all-out attempt to beat America to the Moon," writes Claude A. Piantadosi in his history of human space exploration, Mankind Beyond Earth.

Yet, well before the finish line in 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon, the Soviets were out of the race. Why did their space program pull up lame after such a strong start?

Piantadosi succinctly attributes it to the unexpected death of its leading rocketeer, Ukrainiand aeronautical engineer Sergei Korolyov, who died of a heart attack during colon cancer surgery at the age of 59.

"When the United States announced its plan to land men on the Moon, the USSR had diverted its N1 rocket project to a lunar program in an effort to beat the Americans again," he explains. "Korolyov's untimely death dealt the Soviets' N1 a death blow, and it never flew... Had he lived, the Moon race certainly would have been closer."

Mankind Beyond Earth
Out of the Past: History Lessons
Timeline
History and American West Titles
Artwork: Russian Rocket

1864: The Long Walk ~ Aftereffect

A new independent documentary film titled "Sun Kissed" appearing in film festivals links a rare and horrific disease known as XP with The Long Walk of 1864 in which the U.S. Army forced marched the Navajo tribe from its homeland to stockades at Bosque Redondo, New Mexico.

XP causes extreme sensitivity to sunlight and occurs primarily in children. It leads to the early onset of skin cancer and even blindness. Children who contract the disease experience fatal neurological degeneration and rarely live past 20 years of age. They are unable to care for themselves even minimally.

In the general population, XP is a one is a million disorder. On the Navajo Reservation it is appearing in one in every 30,000 Navajo children.

The documentary links the affliction to the The Long Walk of 1864, which reduced the Navajo population from an estimated 25,000 to about 5,000 before they were allowed to return to their homeland. Some geneticists contend that the numerical reduction of the Navajo people coupled with genetic isolation fostered susceptibility to increased genetic disorders, such as XP.



The Long Walk ... 1864
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Kit Carson: The Life of an American Border Man 
History and American West Titles
Artwork: Long Walk of the Navajos by Olaf Wieghorst

1948: Disappearance of the Star Tiger

On the day in 1948 that airplane inventor Orville Wright passed away and Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, "one of the greatest peacetime air-sea searches ever conducted was being carried out in the Atlantic northeast of Bermuda," reports John Wallance Spencer in Limbo of the Lost: Actual Stories of Sea Mysteries.

"A desperate attempt was underway to find 25 passengers and 6 crewmen reported missing along with their British South American Airways, 4-engine, Avro, Tudor IV, luxury airliner, Star Tiger.

"The 32-passenger plane, on a flight from London to Havana, was on its third stage from Santa Maria in the Azores to Hamilton, Bermuda, a distance of 1,960 miles."

At 03:04 Radio Officer Robert Tuck aboard the Star Tiger requested a radio bearing from the Bermuda airport, but the signal was not strong enough to obtain an accurate reading. Tuck  repeated the request eleven minutes later, and this time the Bermuda radio operator was able to obtain a bearing of 72 degrees, accurate to within 2 degrees. The Bermuda  operator transmitted this information, and Tuck acknowledged receipt at 03:17.

That was the last communication with the aircraft. The Bermuda operator tried to contact Star Tiger at 03:50 and receiving no reply, thought that it had gone over to direct radio contact with Bermuda Approach Control. However, Approach Control reported that this was not the case. The Bermuda radio operator tried at 04:05 to contact Star Tiger, again without success, and after trying again at 04:40 he declared a state of emergency.

Continued in ... 1948

Limbo of the Lost: Actual Stories of Sea Mysteries by John Wallace Spencer
Timeline
Outrider Books
Artwork: British South American Airways

Calamity Jane

How did Martha Jane Canary get the name Calamity Jane?

In her autobiography, Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane, Canary says it came from a Capt. Egan whom she rescued during an Indian fight:

“When fired upon Capt. Egan was shot. I was riding in advance and on hearing the firing turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle as though about to fall. I turned my horse and galloped back with all haste to his side and got there in time to catch him as he was falling. I lifted him onto my horse in front of me and succeeded in getting him safely to the Fort. Capt Egan on recovering, laughingly said: 'I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains.' I have borne that name up to the present time."

In his recently published biography, Calamity Jane: The Woman and the Legend, James D. McLaird dismisses her story as fictional. The only "Capt. Egan" on the plains at the time served at Fort Laramie and there is no record of him being injured in an Indian fight. His only recorded encounter with Canary was ordering her out of the fort after impersonating a soldier.

Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane
Calamity Jane: The Woman and the Legend
Artwork: Calamity Jane
Out of the Past: History Lessons

The Mackay and Evans Expedition

If Spain had fared better in its 1796 war with Great Britain, or if Napoleon's fortunes hadn't soured in 1803, the team of Mackay and Evans might be celebrated today instead of Lewis and Clark.

Like the Mercury astronauts who rode rockets into space in the 1960s following in the wake of test pilots like Chuck Yeager who had braved the edges of the atmosphere months earlier, the 1804-6 Corps of
Discovery led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark followed a course previously blazed by James Mackay and John Evans.

The first 700 miles of Lewis and Clark's journey, in fact, was made following a detailed map of the Upper Missouri River surveyed by the 25-year-old Evans. And much of the Corp's knowledge of Indian tribes and their customs came from Mackay, the most widely traveled and experienced fur trader in America at the time.

Continued in ... The Mackay and Evans Expedition

Corps of Discovery Opens the West
Lewis & Clark Overwinter at Fort Clatsop
History and American West Titles
Out of the Past