brought before Echeandía and questioned, the younger Pattie, who had learned a little Spanish in New Mexico, serving as spokesman, and expressing his ideas with great freedom on this as on every other occasion when he came into contact with the Spaniards. The governor believed nothing of their story, accused them of being spies for Spain — worse than thieves and murderers — tore up their passport as a forgery, cut short their explanations, and remanded them to prison. On the way they resolved to redress their wrongs by force or die in the attempt; but their arms had been removed,[1] and they were locked up in separate cells. The father was cruelly torn from the son, and died a month later without being permitted again to see him. The cells were eight or ten feet square, with iron doors, and walls and floor of stone. Young Pattie's experience alone is recorded, as no communication was allowed. Nauseating food and continued insults and taunts were added to the horrors of solitary confinement. From his grated door Pattie could see Echeandía at his house opposite. "Ah! that I had had but my trusty rifle well charged to my face! Could I but have had the pleasure of that single shot,
- ↑ Dr Marsh, Letter to Com. Jones, MS., 1842, p. 3, says they came to S. Diego on a friendly visit, 'were well receive at first, and shown into comfortable lodgings, where they deposited their arms and baggage. They were shortly after invited into another apartment to partake of some refreshment, and when they returned found that their arms had been removed, and that they were prisoners. I mention this incident, trivial as it is, because I consider it as a characteristic trait of the whole Mexican people. Gen. Echeandía in his own capital, with all his troops, could not take live American hunters without resorting to an artifice which would have been disdained by the most barbarous tribe of Indians on the whole continent. These poor men were kept in close confinement a long time. ... Two or three of the number are still in the country.' Where Marsh got this version, which leaves even Pattie in the shade, does not appear.
Spanish Californians. In Harper's Magazine, xxi. 80-94, J. T. Headley tells the story of Pattie's sufferings, taken from one of the preceding works, and erroneously called the first overland expedition to California. Cronise, Nat. Wealth of Cal., 45, says, 'the particulars of Pattie's journey were published with President Jackson's message to congress in 1830.' The subject is vaguely and incorrectly mentioned in Greenhow's Hist. Ogn, 366; and Capron's Hist. Cal., 37. Warner, who knew personally most of Pattie's companions, gives a valuable account in his Reminiscences, MS., 33-7. The archive records are much less satisfactory than in the case of Jedediah Smith; but I shall have occasion to refer to them on special points.
