CAPTAIN GUNNISON IN THE LAND OF THE TABEGUACHE, 1853 (Part 3) – or “The Identity of the Old Chief and His Son Unveiled”

An arduous two day trek across a “1400 foot high ridge” west of Cebolla Creek brought the Gunnison Expedition to the Uncompahgre Valley on September 15. Fording the Uncompahgre River to find “the necessary pasture for our exhausted animals”, the Gunnison party soon encountered “some Indian huts” abandoned but for two old women who “must have been a hundred years old”.

Their anxieties allayed by the…