Note 124 — MEMORANDOM OF THE VOIGE BY LAND FROM FORT SMITH TO THE ROCKEY MOUNTAINS. (continued 2)

The party start for home by a different route from that on which they came to Taos. Crossing the mountains eastward by the Taos Pass, they leave the watershed of the Rio Grande for that of the Arkansaw, and fetch out of the mountains on certain headwaters of the Canadian, as noted beyond.

In Gregg’s Comm. of the Pra., i, 1844, p. 19 and p. 67 (quoted in Pike, ed. of 1895, p. 437), it is stated that a party of about a dozen men, including two named Beard and Chambers, reached Santa Fé in 1812, and returned to the U. S. in 1822. In Inman’s Santa Fé Trail, p. 41, it is made eight years after James Pursley’s trip that “Messrs. McKnight, Beard, and Chambers, with about a dozen comrades, started with a supply of goods across the unknown plains, and by good luck arrived safely at Santa Fé,” where their troubles began; their wares were confiscated, and most of them were incarcerated at Chihuahua “for almost a decade.” Inman agrees with Gregg that Beard and Chambers reached St. Louis in 1822, and notes that “McKnight was murdered south of the Arkansas by the Comanches in the winter of 1822,” meaning of 1822-23. This McKnight is obviously the man whom Fowler names.