| Jacob
Snively—the name
is sometimes spelled Schniveley—was either a con-man, a fool, or probably the
unluckiest man on earth. It’s hard to tell which. He claimed to be a mining man
who’d prospected the Sierra Madres. He also claimed he’d found one of the richest
gold mines on the continent in the mountains below El
Paso, on the Texas side of the Rio Grande.
The catch is, there is
gold out there. Lodes have been found—and lost—several times. Samples have been
produced. A sample in the possession of retired railroad conductor Lock Campbell,
in San Antonio in the 1920s, was
provided by a Seminole Negro named Bill Kelly. It assayed, in the 1920s,
when gold sold for $20 per ounce, at $20,000 to the ton. Another, of wire gold—Kelly’s
was not wire gold—assayed at a similar amount in the same period. A third sample,
picked up somewhere along the original route of the Southern Pacific Railroad,
probably somewhere in Brewster County, assayed even higher. However, the locations
of the prospects were never properly documented. If they have been subsequently
found no reports have been made of the find. Snively, then, could have found one
of those lodes, of which there are at least three and possibly more.
In
the fall of 1866 Snively and Col. William C. Dalrymple of Williamson County
started to raise an expedition to locate and claim Snively’s lode. That year was
a very unsettled one in Texas. The state was under martial law during reconstruction.
There was little money anywhere. Almost any prospect of finding something valuable
would attract the war-impoverished people of Texas.
Snively wanted an
expedition of 30 to 40 men. Col. Dalrymple, an experienced frontiersman and Indian
fighter, disagreed. He insisted an expedition of 10 hand-picked frontiersmen would
make a far better group. Besides, the fewer the men, the larger each man’s share
would be. Snively finally agreed. Col. Dalrymple picked first old Mose Carson,
brother to the famous Kit Carson. Other names are given as Tom Jones, Tom Holly,
John Cohen, Malcolm, Warren, and Abe Hunter, Temp and W. H. ‘Bud’ Robinson,
and A. Whitehurst. All the men were experienced frontiersmen and excellent
shots.
In January of 1867 the expedition was organized and started west.
Every member of the expedition furnished his own mount, weapons, and ammunition.
The group left Camp Colorado well mounted, with ample provisions and equipment
for opening the mine.
On February 3, on the old stagecoach trail along
the North Concho—about where present Sterling
City is—the group spotted a trail of a large number of unshod horses. Dalrymple
and Snively decided the trail was made by mustangs and were of no concern to the
party.
Two of the men, Jones and Warren Hunter, both experienced Indian
fighters, disagreed. After examining the trail they saw signs which convinced
them the trail was made by a party of Indians, either Comanches or their allies,
Kiowas. The trail was a straight one, made by horses being ridden in single file,
a dead giveaway that the animals weren’t mustangs. Mose Carson agreed. After some
discussion the party tightened their ranks and kept the pack animals under closer
guard.
That night the party camped on what is now known as Kiowa Creek,
a tributary of the Concho River. They kept the horses and mules close to camp
all night in order to prevent them from being stampeded in the night. The next
morning they remained in camp until about 11 AM, allowing the animals to graze,
since they’d been unable to the night before. Since no Indians had been seen most
of the party decided Snively and Dalrymple were right and relaxed their vigilance.
About six hundred yards from where they’d camped the night before two of the men
who were lagging behind suddenly began yelling for help. The men looked back to
see two columns of Indians in hot pursuit of the stragglers. Jones, Hunter, and
Carson were right—the horses were those of a war party. The Indians were combined
party of Comanches and Kiowas, about 120 in number, outnumbering the frontiersmen
12 to 1.
The Indians were armed primarily with bows and lances. Hunter
remarked that he saw only four long guns, though several apparently had pistols
or revolvers. Each of the frontiersmen had a rifle, some of which were 7-shot
Spencer repeaters, as well as several revolvers. It was necessary to carry several
revolvers, since once fired a percussion revolver is very slow to reload.
As
soon as the Indians, in particular the Kiowas, came in range, the rifles began
to talk and saddles were emptied. The chief was the main target, but he had a
heavy buffalo-hide shield, probably reinforced inside with books—that was a common
practice—and he was able to stop or avoid every shot fired at him. Dalrymple,
the most experienced other than Carson, ordered the men to stay in the saddle
and charge the Indians, which they did. The tactic was very effective any time
it was used, and it worked this time, as well. Jones’ horse was shot from under
him. He managed to avoid a lance, grabbed the bridle of the Indian’s horse, shot
the Indian out of the saddle, and took his horse.
The charge required the
men to abandon the pack animals. The Comanches immediately started after the packs,
but seeing the Kiowas disrupted by the charge, rallied with their allies. Dalrymple,
seeing the pack animals beginning to scatter, ordered two of the Hunters to round
them up and head them for the creek, where there would be both water and timber
for cover. He then ordered another charge. A number of the white men’s horses
were killed in the second charge and several men were wounded including Dalrymple,
who took a lance wound in one arm. By this time both his pistols and his rifle
were empty. With a lance still hanging from his arm he made a break for the timber.
Several Kiowas got behind him, cutting him off from the rest of the men, but the
two Hunters began to pursue the Kiowas who were chasing Dalrymple, emptying a
couple of saddles.
The chase continued for about 300 yards when the Indians,
realizing they were too far from the main body and were in danger of being cut
off themselves, broke it off. The white men then took cover in a small creek,
where the lance was removed from Dalrymple’s arm. The wound was bandaged with
a neckerchief. In taking cover, the men had to abandon their pack animals, which
the Indians immediately rounded up.
The Indians settled into a siege.
The white men were cautioned to fire low, shooting for the hips, legs, or lower
bellies of the Indians, which were not protected by their shields. A number of
them were wounded that way and likely later died. A shot at a shield was considered
a waste of ammunition.
The
war party formed for yet a third charge. Dalrymple gave the order to hold fire
until the Indians were within point-blank range, then fire a volley and begin
firing at will. Dalrymple allowed the charge to get within 10 or 12 yards of the
whites before he ordered the volley, which proved devastating, nearly every round
taking out an enemy. The men with Spencers continued firing their rifles and carbines,
while other men opened up with revolvers. That ended the charge—but began a siege.
One of the
Indians had an excellent rifle and was apparently a very good shot with it. He
took cover in some rocks and began shooting the white men’s horses. Warren Hunter
waited his opportunity and when the sniper showed his head to aim Hunter, in his
own words, “…took the whole top of his head off.”
Several of the Indians
tried to sneak through the grass, but—upon seeing a disturbance in the grass—the
white men fired at it, which put an end to the attempts. The Indians then tried
to rain arrows into the defile to hit the frontiersmen, but a strong wind blew
the arrows aside. Most of the horses and mules had been either captured or killed
by this time. During the night the Indians put arrows into the last two, leaving
the whites completely afoot and without provisions. Finally the Indians, apparently
deciding they’d sustained too many casualties, withdrew.
About 10 PM the
whites decided to make their escape in the darkness. Some members of the group
wanted to follow the creek down to the Concho, but Carson and others said that
would be what the Indians would expect. They would be waiting in ambush. Accordingly,
the party started out across the prairie. Just before dawn they came to the Concho
and took cover in a dense thicket, where they rested a day. Hunter and Jones spotted
a small herd of buffalo. Since the herd was windward of the men it wouldn’t catch
their scent. Hunter managed to get close enough to kill a buffalo cow, so the
men had their first meal in nearly 48 hours. As soon as night fell they struck
out afoot. At daylight they holed up in another thicket, rested, and ate more
buffalo meat—“…half raw and without salt,” or so the account says.
The
following day the party met with a wagon train headed for the salt lakes to gather
salt. From the wagons they got provisions other than buffalo meat for the first
time since the fight. The party then split up, half headed for Fort Mason
and half headed home. Dalrymple and Snively told the men to go home, rest up,
and early in the spring be prepared to set out again. This time the expedition
would have 100 men, wagons, and beef on the hoof.
The
second expedition actually reached the Big Bend country, though not without incident.
While the expedition itself was not attacked, it did manage to rescue another
party that had been cut off without food or water for three days. The party survived
only because the people took refuge in roofless adobe along the road. They lost
all their horses and some 400 head of cattle to the attacking Indians.
On
arrival in the Big Bend, it became obvious that Snively either had never been
there or had never been in the part of the Big Bend the party hit. Eventually
he confessed to having received his ore samples from a dying US soldier, who described
to him where they were found. He could not connect the description with anything
he saw. While a number of his companions were contemplating lynching him for having
brought them on a wild-goose chase, cooler heads prevailed. The party returned
to central Texas. Snively went to Arizona where he was killed by Apaches in 1870,
never having found the gold mine he craved. |
