12/22/03

Lost in the mountains. Packer, the Colorado cannibal; his capture, trial, and sentence.

With the coming of October I conceived the idea of returning to Lake City to “hole in” there for the winter. The distance was only about twenty-three miles by the Bear Creek trail, across the mountains and I felt that I could easily reach Rose’s cabin before dark, where I could either pass the night or complete my journey by the new wagon road.

To Theron Stevens, the blacksmith, I confided my intentions, and he collected all the mail available for me to post at Lake City. The mere detail of food I considered unimportant. I wore a light summer suit, and was well up Bear Creek when I discovered that I had neither matches nor a knife. I was only a tenderfoot, however, and did not attach much importance to this discrepancy.

As I turned up from the Uncompahgre River the trail became steeper, my progress slower, and soon I had to rest about every hundred yards. Night was coming on, clouds were gathering, and snow flurries began to tingle my cheeks. At last I reached the summit, and looking around I endeavored to recognize the peaks I had seen on my way from Silverton, but they all looked alike to me. The snow commenced falling so fast that I could not even see the trail behind me. Darkness came swiftly, and found me on the summit of the Continental Divide, hungry, without a match or knife, and shivering with the cold. I crept into some brush, and by beating my hands and kicking around with my feet I succeeded in keeping my blood in circulation until the grey of morning came sweeping over the mountaintops. It was still storming, and a foot of new snow covered the wind-swept flat where I found myself. I looked around, but saw nothing that offered a solution to my whereabouts. I was plainly lost.

In the absence of a trail I searched for water, and finding a small rivulet I followed it. The stream soon grew to a fair-sized creek, and began dropping in cascades as it cut through the rugged formation of a ravine. At times I was in the creek, then on the bank, and when it passed through a narrow canyon overlooking a fall of a hundred feet, I had to shinny along the side of a cliff where one slip from the ledge I was following meant certain death.

Down again in the creek I passed a deer sheltered from the storm by a shelving rock, and by reaching out I could touch its horns. I was hungry as a bear by this time, and bitterly regretted coming on such a journey without preparation. The storm was subsiding, and since I was on an unknown creek, I determined that afternoon to turn up from the bank in what I thought was the direction of Lake City. The range of mountains followed the water shed, but once over the top I could reach my destination. I climbed to the summit, looked over, and saw another range confronting me, but with the varicolored rock I had seen around Capital City on Henson Creek. When I reached the bottom of the valley I expected to find the Henson Creek road, but there was no trace of travel and no creek.

I had now been thirty-six hours without food and was getting weak. I searched the brush for berries and found a few dried ones, but they gave me no relief. When night came I gathered leaves, and filling my hat I stuffed them around my feet, but by morning they were solidly numbed by the cold. Realizing now that I was getting nowhere by crossing the ranges, I determined to retrace my course and get back to the top of the Divide, but I was too weak to make much progress. I now began to smell the order of food cooking, and the aroma of coffee and sizzling beefsteaks almost maddened me. In my rational moments I knew that these sensations were indications of delirium, and that the party of men with their guns pointed at me from the cliffs was only a mirage.

The third night I camped as usual in the brush on the slope over the river I had left two days before, and in the morning, almost too weak and cramped with the cold to stand upright. I continued my weary way down the long slope. Suddenly, when looking on the far side of the river, I saw the white outlines of a tent, but attributed it to another mirage like those I had been seeing, and pushed on towards the creek. Again in the distance I saw the tent, and getting closer, a wagon wheel burst into view. This apparition seemed to give me new strength, and I ran the remaining distance to the river. Although it was in flood, cold as ice, and running like a mill-race, I plunged into it, was swept off my feet, but regained my footing by embracing a boulder, and then, grasping an overhanging snag that hung from the bank, I clambered onto the floor of the valley.

From the river I staggered to the flap of the tent, and, flinging it open, I saw a man sitting up in the blankets with a rifle at full cock pointed at my head.

“Hold up your hands!”

In obeying the command I lurched forward and fell headlong into the tent. Throwing down the gun the man sprang up from the bed, and taking me in his arms he drew me over and laid me on the blankets. I must have been a pitiable sight. My face and hands were scratched and bleeding, my pants ripped into streamers, while my coat with the mail in its pockets had been lost in the river.

The man, without speaking a word, left the tent and returned in a few minutes with a pan full of meat and bread, which he put into my lap. I fell upon it like a ravenous wolf, but after a few mouthfuls he took it away from me. Then I told him my story, to which he listened as if enormously interested, after which he advised me to go to sleep.

It was towards evening when I awoke. My host was outside the tent making a fire, and I smelled hot coffee. He gave me more of the meat and bread and plenty of the coffee. He then said he was one of a party of five who were on a prospecting trip and had been out for many moons. His partners were off in the woods and had already shot seven bears, but had failed to kill any of them. The trail I had seen coming into camp was the Horsethief Trail, and we were on Cow Creek. He had never been in Ouray, and his name was Alfred Packer.

Packer impressed upon me the fact that I could not stay there that night, as he had no extra blankets, but said he would show me how to reach the Uncompahgre Indian Agency, which was only nine miles below Ouray. I thought it singular that none of his partners put in an appearance while I was there; neither did I see any preparations on Packer’s part for their arrival.

It was a bright moonlight night when I got ready to leave. I thanked him for his hospitality, and he showed me in the distance the gap in the mountains through which I should go, and said: “It is only ten miles to the Agency. You can make it in four hours easily from this creek.”

It was after midnight when I roused the Indian agent from his bed. After he got over his astonishment at seeing the apparition at the door and I had a chance to explain, he went back into the house and brought out a buffalo robe, which he handed to me, and told me to go in an adjoining tent. The tent was empty, so I spread the robe on the ground, rolled into it, and was soon dead to the world.

When I awoke it was afternoon, and after a hasty meal I resumed my hike back to Ouray, where I was thankful to arrive after nightfall. I had been absent five days, during which I had circumnavigated the town, never more then twenty miles distant, traveled over a hundred miles, and eaten three meals. The Sentinel in its following issue, said it was only by a miracle that I had escaped from attack by one of the wounded bears, but as events turned out my escape from the camp of Alfred Packer was considered far more wonderful, when it became known that Packer had murdered and eaten his five partners!

Sometime previous to this event, Packer had been employed to act as guide to a party of twenty-one men starting from Bingham Canon, Utah, to the San Juan country, Colorado. At that time he was known to be entirely broke. The party separated at Ouray, and five men, with Packer still acting as guide, left camp, going in the direction of the Los Pinos agency. The next spring Packer turned up alone in Saguache with a great deal of money, which he displayed in a saloon, and told so many conflicting stories that he aroused suspicion. He said that his party had almost starved and frozen to death during the winter, and yet he looked to be in very good condition. He was arrested for murder and a search made to discover the missing men, but no trace of them could be found, so he was released. He disappeared soon after, and during the following summer a hunter discovered the five bodies lying side by side, as though they had gone to bed and been murdered in their sleep. No money or valuables were found on or near them. Wild animals had partly devoured them. Nine years passed before he was discovered and arrested at Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, and it was during the time that he was at large that I enjoyed his hospitality.

He was brought to Lake City, Colorado, for trail before Judge M. B. Gerry. He claimed that he did not kill the five men, but had eaten them to keep from starving to death. Witnesses testified that wild game had been abundant in that region during that winter, which was not severe. Packer was a tall man with long, dark, curling hair, dark mustache and goatee, and deep-set dark gray eyes. He looked more like some professor than a murderer.

One of the principal witnesses at the trial was James (Larry) Dolan, an Irish wag of rare and sometimes profane or vulgar wit, who had met and associated with the prisoner at Saguache. It was said that Dolan had developed a grudge against Packer and had threatened to kill him should he be acquitted of the charge of murder. The Silver World said that Larry was the first man up town from the courthouse after the verdict was in and sentenced passed.

“Well, boys, ut’s all over; Packer’s t’ hang!” Pressed for particulars by the habitués of the Saloon (for of course this was a saloon), Larry took an appropriate attitude before his motley audience and delivered himself thus: “The judge says, says he, ‘Stan’ up y’ man-atin’ ---iv a---! STAND UP!’ Thin, p’intin’ his tremblin’ finger at Packer, so ragin’ mad, he was: ‘They wus siven Dimmycrats in Hinsdale County an’ ye ate five iv them, G—d---ye! I sintins ye t’ be hanged be th’ neck ontil ye’re dead, dead, DEAD! As a warnin’ agin’ reducin’ th’ Dimmycratic popyalashun iv th’ state!”

Judge Gerry was, it may be readily understood, an ardent Democrat. Therein lies the refined, subtle humor of this story.