NEVADA'S DESERT AND ITS VICTIM

by

JACKSON H. RALSTON

__________

            Cold, bleak and desolate was the Nevada desert one day of early May, 1864, and yet it was not altogether without human life, for at the turn of a mountain of the Smoky Range was a man older in appearance than his years would seem to justify. He was tall, but bowed more by recent suffering than by time, his furrowed countenance bearing evidences of fatigue, hunger and thirst. His footsteps tottered as he rounded into a canyon new to him, while there approached an Indian squaw, the wife of Oneweda, chief of a band of Shoshones, bred to the desert. A glance told the woman of the plight of the elderly white man. With the compassion of her sex she advanced to him and tendered pine nuts. Too feeble even to understand his own needs he refused and when by gesture she sought to guide him to the camp of her band he shook his head and murmured, "My house, my ranch," words that she treasured up without knowledge of their meaning. So they parted.

            With wavering steps the man wandered on his road toward a bourne he, perhaps, not even dimly apprehended. For five miles farther his feeble will and yet feeble body carried him forward. Night came on with all the chill of the desert and the snow began to fall as he sank to the ground never to rise again. Before he paid the debt of nature and time ceased for him and eternity began, may we assume that there passed in review in his uncertain mind the more striking events of a life in a way typical of his country and of his time? If so, he would have recalled

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himself as a boy grouped with his parents, seven sisters and three brothers around the open fireplace of a Kentucky farm house.

            There might have been brought to his mind an elder brother, who, assisted by his parents in a modest way, was able to become a physician of local distinction in Illinois at a later period ; another, whose eloquence as a preacher became well known in Kentucky, and whose work on divinity was widely accepted by the Methodist Church and translated into several European languages ; a younger brother afterward a well known and respected citizen of Leavenworth, Kansas ; sisters, one among the rest, married to the most prominent Kentucky educator of his time, and another to become the mother of a governor of Tennessee and of a dozen other sons—judges and physicians—of only lesser prominence and usefulness in that and other states.

            He might have pictured his own firelight studies for the bar, and his admission thereto at the age of twenty-three in Quincy, Illinois, where his older physician brother had preceded him. Memory would have dwelt upon his early struggles for a livelihood, his political ambitions sending him to the lower and later to the upper house of the state legislature, in one or the other of which he was the associate of Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, Shields, (afterward senator of the United States from three states), Baker, (later senator from Oregon and killed at the battle of Ball's Bluff), McClernand, (Union general), Browning (senator, attorney-general and secretary of the interior) and others of only less distinction, and that such men as these, his colleagues, selected and elected him at the age of twenty-nine as a circuit judge of Illinois, in which capacity he served for two years.

            Recollection could have revived the incidents

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of a contest for congress in which he was defeated by John T. Stuart, law preceptor of Abraham Lincoln. His mind, could it have risen above his numbing weakness, might have gone back to his service in, the Black Hawk war with Lincoln, and his own captaincy in the Mexican War, when for three years he commanded at San Antonio, where to this day the spot upon which he organized the Alamo Masonic Lodge is pointed out.

            Then he might have reviewed ten years of his life in Sacramento, in which period, having been widowed for several years, he married a second time, and, after serving as state senator, was a candidate for chief justice of the state, defeated by Justice Stephen J. Field, and but for ill-health would have been elected to the United States senate. He might have recalled the last four years of his life in Nevada, where he took part in the first attempt to form a constitution, representing Storey county, and at the moment was serving as probate judge of Lander county. But the snow which fell that night was his winding sheet.

            When the Indian squaw of Oneweda returned to join her husband she related her encounter and in the morning they, believing the man could not have survived the rigors of the night, sought him and found the realization of their fears. He had died not far from where he might have received aid from those of his own race, for the Indians went only a few miles to a place then (and, perhaps, now) known as Sink Barnes' ranch, and tried to tell those there what had happened, but could not make themselves understood. About eight miles off was the little camp of San Antonio, but there the Indians feared to go. Then it was that in accordance with their customs they burned the body, first preserving his money, but committing to the flames his watch, which they did not understand, and his spectacles,

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the burned remains of both of which are now in the custody of the Nevada State Historical Society at Reno.

            Judge James Harvey Ralston had a little ranch on what was known as Birch Creek, while acting as probate judge at Austin. He started from Austin to go to this ranch and at the same time look up lost oxen. He left Austin on this trip of forty miles, and passed the first night in the open, a few miles from his destination, and about the same time lost his horse, which was found by an Indian and afterward recovered, though the ownership was for a time unknown. Then began wanderings for eight days, the general history of which is known because of the searchings of, parties sent out by the citizens of Austin. The simple direct English of the first searching party's journal deserves extracts :

            On the morning of the twentieth they "started about ten o'clock and traveled in a southeasterly direction about twenty-one miles. On the twenty-first crossed the plain southeast of Smoky Valley and traveled twenty-eight miles, to where the Indian showed footprints of a man wearing boots. These were the first signs we had seen of him. We followed the track two and one-half miles to a beautiful stream which we named Ralston Creek. Here were evidences where the judge, having no doubt that it was he, had dug with a knife for roots of the thistle. Here we camped for the night. Gilson followed the track up the creek for a mile and a half, where it turned back again to camp. On the twenty-second traveled up the creek and crossed a rugged mountain, going in a southerly direction. After a rest on the summit started down the opposite side, still following the track of the judge. At the foot of the mountain, we found where he had been sitting down and where were also pieces of cactus partly eaten.

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Following his tracks into the valley for about three miles we found four Indians setting traps for catching sagehens. Our Indian guide talked with them and they said they had seen footprints of a white man a great distance off in the course we were pursuing.

            We accompanied the Indians to their camp and got the son of our guide, who said he had also seen the tracks. With our two guides we now continued our course southeast about three miles. The track then turned off the trail, and the judge had evidently seated himself in the shade of a cedar tree. From this the track continued in a southwesterly course. About a quarter of a mile farther on he had evidently sat down again. The staggering track and short step indicated that the lost man was severely suffering with fatigue. For several miles this continued, when we found a place where he camped for the night.

            At daylight of the twenty-third we resumed our search, still going southwest. At this resting place we found a stick that the judge had carried for a long distance as a cane. It was standing in the sand as he had placed it. In this direction we continued for about ten miles to a ravine coming from the east, into which the tracks turned, evidently seeking water and food. The tracks led up a few miles and then turned down again. Our guide told us that the lost man had found pine nuts or other food, as he exhibited greater strength upon entering the ravine. Our guide was an expert in the business, never failing, and speaking as confidently of all the actions of the judge, his condition and the object of the search, as if he had been in his company at the time. After leaving the ravine the track turned directly south for about ten miles, and went up another range of mountains. He then changed his course toward the west. The Indian said it was a long

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way to water in that direction. It was the course, however, that would have taken him to where he could have found assistance, if he had continued on it; but after pursuing it for eight miles he again turned to the southeast.

            He had evidently sought water in many places and had found some in a ravine ; also he had found a small cave in the rocks where he had lain down and probably passed a night. Here were more pieces of cactus of which he had evidently eaten. Here too, we camped and spent another night. The judge had evidently been attempting to find a manner of escape from his perilous situation. He had wandered around and clambered upon high rocks, as if to take observations, but at last the trail struck off in a southwesterly direction.

            On the twenty-fourth, at daylight, we again started upon the search, following the tracks down the ravine, from which it turned north for about three miles, when they turned again and went southwest and into the valley. We were now in sight of the San Antonio mountains, when the track again turned to the southeast. We followed it in that direction for eight miles. Our Indian guide then told us there was no water for a long distance, and as we were now nearly sixteen miles from known water and nearly out of provisions, we decided that after a short search we would return for supplies. So, building a monument that we could easily find, we returned to Austin after an absence of eight days. We followed the track for upward of one hundred miles, very tortuous and wandering.

            When the first exploring party made its report, the citizens of Austin solemnly directed the sending out a second expedition to determine the fate of the late Judge Ralston. Retracing the steps of the first searching party and proceeding

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farther, its members finally encountered Oneweda, who described to them the interview between the lost man and the Indian squaw. The place of death was determined as eight miles east-northeast from San Antonio and five miles from Barnes' ranch. The money the Indians had taken from the body they gave over at once to the searchers, explained the efforts they had made to communicate with the men at the ranch, their dread of San Antonio and their somewhat naive fear of the watch which to them was a great mystery.

            Sadly such remains as could be found were gathered up and the party returned to Austin, where as the Reese River Reveille said there was "the most imposing funeral that has ever occurred in Austin. The worth, position and high esteem, with the melancholy circumstances attending the death of Judge Ralston, gave a solemn and universal interest to the occasion."

            Meetings of Masonic bodies and of the bar testified to his worth as a man, a lawyer and a citizen, and as the father of a family, but with them the public now has little concern. We may, however, remember that this tragedy gave name to the Ralston Desert and the Ralston Valley, and that with such incidents the history of Nevada, that "Titan land of wonder," as his widow, a poet of distinction, has termed it, is replete.