Quivira

Often the information is out there, finding it simply means asking the right questions and taking the time to look.

` The question James was asking was about pre-Indian settlement of his hometown of Quivira. Indeed, what he had previously found was this region appears to have been completely blank before 1850 when the Indians came from the west. Popular records available on the internet put American settlement at 1857 but they were wrong as James saw graves dating as early as 1840. All children, a James assumed these were the kids of early settlers who perished in the empty grassland. The Indians likewise were still miles west back then and didn’t show up in Quivira until 1855 alongside the first wave of American settlers who were cohabitating with the Indians under Chief Big Bear at the time.

James was happy enough to be left along with the museum records. If it could be called a museum, as this farm town’s historical society was entirely volunteer staffed and the museum was rarely open. This building was the original jail made from uncut stone and cheap cement with the sheriff’s residence upstairs, the jail in the basement, and the sheriff's office on the main floor. The local historian was upstairs showing a bunch of school children this region’s more recorded and memorable history, while James was in an old jail cell sorting through enormous tomes of court records looking for the answer to a question no one wanted asked.

There was a strange void in this region near the Copper River before 1850. A region that appears to have been intentionally avoided by both Indians and Americans as Big Bear’s men got into a war with Chief Red Kettle’s men who seemed intent on keeping everyone far away from this place. After the Civil War, a wave of settlers came claiming land almost indiscriminately who were universally unaware of Quivira’s past, with most being unaware of even which Indians settled here. Big Bear actively encouraged his people to sell all their claims and become farmers over a hundred miles south, and they appear to have left almost to a man.

James lugged a three-foot-tall court record off the shelf firmly as it was quite stuck but James was afraid of tearing the old book. It was the one he wanted, but these records predated the typewriter and there was no better sorting than date entries at the top of each page. James put the book on the table and sat down in no hurry as he started sorting through the many handwritten pages looking for the relevant entry. Brief looks at the many court entries revealed exactly what you would expect from a newly formed town in those days; Divorces, land ownership disputes, damaged property, public intoxication, and so forth.

What did all these conflicting dates mean? It meant that for an unknown period, perhaps the entire first half of the 19^th century, this region was inhabited by a handful of families who were all later reported to be godless men all involved in piracy, speculation, and fraud. As many as sixteen families, for this was the number of households present when the county was surveyed for the first time. Fur traders and Indian hunters all reported having no knowledge of the upper reaches of the Copper River, or the twin pair of steep hills in the middle of a long bend in the river.

James found the entry he was looking for. The civil case between John Mahan and a Priest who spoke for the Indians (most of Big Bear’s people were Catholic due to 18th-century French fur traders living among them). The record reflected that Mahan was as temperamental as people later said, insulting both the Indians and the Priest’s office. This pleased James, as the forgotten story was now all tying itself together. The case was about the ownership of the land where the town of Quivira now sat as the county court was taking place at a general store miles away at the time. The undisputed facts of the case were that Mahan lived in a cabin on the south side of the westernmost hill in town and that he and other old residents had formed the Quivira Town Company for the purpose of land speculating. They purchased the farm of a Elias Armstrong next to Mahan’s land where the town now stood, and the court called him as a witness but no one had seen or heard from him since the day a handwritten receipt with his signature apparently sold the land to the Quivira Town Company. They neither purchased a deed from the Indian Agency nor filed their claim with the state.

James stopped his work and reached for his coffee which had been getting cold in this intense work. He had started his work on local history thinking he could solve a mystery and add real value to the annals of American history. Now he believed he could guess what this record would say, and he did not want to hear it. Oh, how he dreaded that he had to come here, the original prison cell, to know for sure. For it was here or very near here that Armstrong was last seen, and it was here that the basement appeared to predate the rest of the structure which was among the few surviving structures of the Great Fire of 1882. James went to finish the court account, as it had to be done.

Mahan claimed that all the members of the Quivira Town Company came here directly from Scotland and owned claims that predated the Indians by an undefined long period. The court clerk used direct quotes for its sheer incredulity, but Mahan said when they arrived they witnessed the formation of the twin hills and the twin demons that made them and dared not leave them as the light of any lamp burns them, and this was his claim to ownership of the land and people could buy or rent the homes he and his friends built if they wished and many wished to, and testified there were twelve graves of family members of himself and his associates on the premises dated before the Indians. The Priest called the former county commissioner Fisher who testified that the Quivira Town Company was far from passively renting homes, but Mahan himself was enraged with curses when the county initially declined to rent from Mahan to save money by meeting at Mr. Sawyer’s store. Part of Fisher’s testimony was struck from the record as irrelevant to the case, but there were also allegations elsewhere that Mahan stole cattle from Fisher so it was probably that.

James stopped reading to look up as he heard footsteps and voices. He had to work quickly because anyone who walked in what he was reading would be curious to learn what he had found and the more he learned the more James thought the matter should have been left alone. He drank coffee, knowing that being nervous would not make him read faster.

The Priest then called Chief Big Bear who said the Quivira Town Company had ceased construction when he initially told them they needed to obtain a deed but then soon resumed without a deed anyway. He said his people were initially unfamiliar with these men as no one they had met had ever spoken of such a place and actually were not aware of anyone living there until they saw the town being constructed. He doubted their claim to have lived here the whole time as Mahan’s cabin was hidden in an isolated woodland and he knew not where the houses of any of the others lived to this day. He knew other men had existed as he met them in his argument with the Quivira Town Company and several were present in the courtroom and he felt it was best for the community if they were all far away. He further claimed that his people knew of tunnels between the buildings but did not wish to disclose who trespassed on the disputed land, but Judge Dudna said that testimony would be struck from the record unless the actual witness was produced. The Priest called Irene Big Bear, the Chief’s daughter.

James reflected on the allegation of tunnels. The rock around these parts was almost all sedimentary marine limestone mixed with an unidentified brown rock that gave the Copper River its name and patches of metamorphic shale which was the result of the natural compression of the clay-rich soil here. People associate caves with igneous rock, but in truth caves form easily form from slightly acidic groundwater eroding pathways through stone. The groundwater here was more than slightly acidic due to the many natural gas deposits, but there was a suspicious lack of reported caves except for one called “Robber’s Cave” more than 50 miles away that appeared guarded by locals with barbed wire fences, no trespassing signs, and suspicious looks from locals. That did not stop James from visiting a month previously but found the cave unremarkable as it was waist-high and 20 feet deep into a cliff wall. Apparently, the cave had collapsed sometime in the last century with the room inside where gangsters hid from the law long filled in with rock leaving only a fissure the size of a fist leading to indeterminate depth. Nonetheless, travel there was actively discouraged, and the historical society of a nearby town that the robbers were from made no mention of its existence. James did not want there to be a connection between all these deliberately forgotten depths but continued reading.

Irene said that she and he husband George Lewis had been on a hunting trip but she had to head home early because she was ill. Her pre-dawn path took her through Quivira and she stopped by hoping to trade some rawhide for a kitchen knife. She arrived at what amounted to an abandoned farm, the construction of the town was in its earliest stages and what had once been Armstrong’s farm had several empty half-finished structures that she saw in the moonlight. She approached the tallest building, a two-story house of unhewn stone, hoping to find the residents. There was no door on the building, and she entered calling out, and went downstairs and found what appeared to be a jail cell and a tunnel leading back to Mahan’s house. She refused to testify further.

James did not finish the court entry as he knew the court case recognized Mahan’s legal ownership. James rose, downed the last of his coffee, moved both book and coffee cup to the bookshelf, and approached the shelf at the west end of the room. The exact position of the alleged tunnel. With a sudden move of his large frame, James grabbed the shelf and yanked it to the wall to reveal that set into the stone floor was a cottonwood trapdoor. The wood and steel bolts were heavy and ancient, but the stainless steel lock showed no signs of rust as if it replaced an older lock.

James wondered what the museum volunteer would say when they found this, but given the state of affairs James thought he would be the one asking her questions. He walked to the hall to the ancient closet and immediately found the crowbar and new padlock with key he was looking for. The ancient bolt did not last long under James’ prying which was separated from the door. James pried at the door itself to get leverage, then dragged the weighty trapdoor across the floor.

The hole smelled of clearwater and earth and the light from the room revealed that it was not a manmade tunnel in the slightest but a cave opening with a six-foot sheer drop down that turned west heading towards the hill of Mahan. The bottom of the cave appeared dry and littered with human bones. Bones of various sizes and some appeared older than others and all were scattered in no particular order. Even at this distance, James saw the bones appeared scratched and broken and at least one long bone was cut in two. A noise emanated from the cave like the sound of leather dragged on stone.

James left the light on and exited the basement. He closed the heavy old door removing the padlock that once secured it and placed the new one, locking it and taking the key with them. The museum lady was apparently still upstairs and did not see James leave. James intended to expose the full secrets of the old jail and be the first to accurately map the caves, but he would have to return by night with many lights, poisonous bait, an arsonist’s kit, and a gun.

The information was out there the whole time, right under the feet of this sleepy town.