Captain Jack Crawford: Buckskin Poet, Scout, and Showman

5. Post Trader at Fort Craig

5 POST TRADER AT FORT CRAIG resources of southern New Mexico, a region poised on ^e brink °f a dynamic minin 8 boom. His decision to relocate his family in New Mexico signaled his boundless faith in the territory's future. Like other frontier entrepreneurs, Captain Jack would engage in multiple enterprises. While serving aspost trader at Fort Craig, he also filled government contracts, developed mines, established a dairy ranch, and expanded his landholdings. He would later build a horse ranch in the foothills of the San Andres Mountains. During these same years, Jack continued to write poetry, but he appeared on the stage infrequently.Thefires of his dramatic ambition were not dampened for very long, however . About the time that Fort Craig closed as a military instalCrawford family, 1882, while Captain Jack waspost trader at Fort Craig, New Mexico. Posed in thephoto areJack, Maria, baby May Cody, Harry, and Eva (Courtesy Rio Grande Historical Collections, New Mexico State University Library.) When Crawford parted company with Colonel Buell in Mesilla, his life entered a new phase. For the next five years, he devoted his economic to exploiting the economic Chapter 5 lation, Crawford was planning another theatrical tour through the East. Crawford's first great mining venture in New Mexico was a harbinger of later financial disasters. Soon after resigning as Buell's chief of scouts, Jack became "Chief Scout and Prospector" for the Lode and Placer Prospecting and Mining Association headquartered in Denver, Colorado. James Cherry, a Chicago mining engineer, was the company's president, and several well-known Ohio and Colorado capitalists served as trustees. According to its prospectus, the company planned to raise sufficient funds to employ fifty men to prospect in New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado, and "to erect mills and smelters for the treatment of ores" to be taken from the newly discovered mines.l In mid-November 1880, Jack was in Denver outfitting a party of about twenty-five prospectors, each contributing one hundred dollars and receiving, in return, one thousand shares in the company. They also were to receive two dollars per day and board while in the field. Uponhis return to New Mexico, Crawford established a base camp near the military outpost at Ojo Caliente, about thirty-five miles directly west of Fort Craig. From there, the miners dispersed west into the Black Range and Mogollon Mountains.2 Hostile Apache bands posed a constant threat to the gold seekers. On January 31, 1881, Captain Jack narrowly escaped death when five Indians surprised him and two companions while prospecting in a canyon between Ojo Caliente and the village of Canada Alamosa. In the fierce gunfight that followed, a bullet struck the breech of Jack's rifle "and glancing down cut a gash along the palm of his hand." When Jack reached CanadaAlamosa, the Catholic priest dressed his wound and then discovered that bullets had pierced his coat in two places.3 Despite the Indian scare, Crawford'sparty continued prospecting and locating claims. ButJack soon learned that the white man's perfidy could be as deadly to his plans as an Apacheambush. 92 Post Trader at Fort Craig After spending two months in the field, the men had exhausted their supplies, and company officials failed to send additional funds. Jack concluded that the Denver capitalists were trying to sell stock in the company solely on the basis of his reputation, without investing a penny of their own money. He did everything within his power to alleviate the suffering of his stranded miners, even selling his gold watch and other possessions to buy food. On February 28, CaptainJack wrote a long letter to the editor of the Las Vegas Daily Optic, exposing the company. "It is all up," he began. "The cloud that has so long darkened my sky has burst at last. Lode and Placer is gone under."4 Despite this setback, Crawford found means to continue prospecting. On April 25, he penned a humorous letter to the Santa FeMilitary Review from his cabin in Chloride City, the center of the recently established Apache Mining District, located about twenty miles south of Ojo Caliente. "Houses are going up one after another in rapid succession," he reported, and "doctors, lawyers, and other 'tender-feet' are coming in by the dozens." A few weeks later, the Santa Fe Daily New Mexican reported that Jack had "pulled through" his rough times and "now owns a...