Note II-45 — Chapter II · ITINERARY, CONTINUED: FROM THE PAWNEE VILLAGE THROUGH KANSAS AND COLORADO TO PIKE'S PEAK, OCT. 1ST-NOV. 30TH, 1806.

This was a slight structure, occupied only for a few days, and soon disappeared. But it is notable as the first wooden building of an American in present Colorado, and very probably our flag first flew in that State over these logs. There was no trace of it to be found in 1819, according to Long. It was built on the S. side of the Arkansaw, a little above the then confluence of Fountain r., within the present city of Pueblo (South Pueblo). The precise spot has never been recovered, and probably never will be. Changes in the river may have soon washed it away, or left it at some unrecognizable point on the prairie. The Arkansaw here has suffered great changes in details of its course, and is liable to inundation: witness the disastrous flood this year (1894), which almost drowned the city itself. In this connection I may cite part of an interesting letter with which I am favored by Mr. C. H. Small of the Board of Trade of Pueblo, whose knowledge of real estate in that city is probably unsurpassed. It refers to the discovery by excavation of an old fort which cannot by any possibility be Pike's, yet in the course of human nature is liable to become so considered by some, and in due time to enter history as such. Mr. Small says: "A fort was once built on the south side of the Arkansas just north of the Farris Hotel—between this hotel and the Santa Fé R. R. tracks at Union Avenue. The channel of the river changed in the seventies to a more southerly and straighter course. The occupants of the fort were all massacred by Indians on one occasion. In laying a pipe on Union Avenue two years ago [1892], one or more skeletons were exhumed, doubtless the remains of those massacred. This was at the depth of ten feet below the present level of the street, and directly in front of the Farris Hotel; the logs of the old fort were come upon at the same time. The grade of the street had been raised five feet, about 1885." Mr. Small's letter is dated Feb. 23d, 1894. In further correspondence on this subject I am given to understand that this fort was an adobe structure built by the American Fur Co., on what is now Union Avenue. On Christmas Day, 1854, a drunken spree ended in a free fight, in which all the whites were killed by the Indians but one, who fled to a smaller post on the Arkansaw at the mouth of the St. Charles, 7 or 8 m. off, whence a burying-party came next day. For a long time there was also an adobe tower or lookout on top of the hill, about present intersection of Second and Summit streets; but it has entirely disappeared.