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     Big Mike Chisholm was born at a whistle stop called Monument - north of Colorado Springs on the road to Denver - during the First World War, and Pancho Villa’s Mexican revolution, in that turbulent year of 1916.

     His grandfather, David Chisholm, had arrived in the area as a homesteader in 1865, when Monument was referred to as “Henry’s Station,” for Henry “Dutch” Limbach who ran a saloon on a homestead.  Later, when the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad arrived in 1872, the town was renamed “Monument” after the prominent rock formation to the west.

     This area lay at the foot of the continental divide, otherwise known as the Colorado Rocky Mountains, where the Great Plains begin their rush eastward through Kansas and Nebraska.  The tall, sweet grass and plentiful water supported huge herds of buffalo prior to the 1860’s, which regularly visited the Monument area and drank at the lake.

     The US Government had advertised to homesteaders that the land here was up for grabs, so families began to move in with the idea of farming and ranching; filing their claims at Denver.  Nonetheless, in reality the land wasn’t “up for grabs.”  It had already been laid claim to by an ancient people, who previously designated this land as a sacred hunting ground, long before the first European set foot on this continent.  These people called themselves the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Kiowa and Ute.  Each year in late summer they’d quietly visit the Monument area, to hunt buffalo and restock their food supplies for the coming winter.

     Imagine their surprise and horror, to find families of European descent suddenly living on their hunting grounds without permission - farming and ranching cattle, horses and sheep that ultimately chased away the buffalo. 

     The only alternative for them, to survive the harsh winter, was to make these invaders of their hunting grounds pay compensation.  Thus in late summer and early fall, when the crops were in and the horses, cattle and sheep were fat, these Native Americans commenced to raid the White settlers.

      This was the situation that David Chisholm - my great grandfather - faced when he arrived at Henry’s Station to homestead.  Even so, David was a mixture of two very stubborn European nationalities (Scots-Irish) and not afraid of a fight; in spite of the fact he hadn’t a clue as to what motivated these Indian raids.  To him it was just another force of nature a rancher had to put up with on the frontier; like too much rain, snow, draught and twisters.

     There was an additional feature uniquely different about David Chisholm though, one that set him apart, for he possessed a skill that none of the other homesteaders were familiar with.  David knew how to tunnel.

     He had learned this skill mining for coal on his family’s farm in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, as a boy.  This knowledge would save, not only the lives of himself and his family, but also his neighbors.

     While David was away buying cattle, his wife, Catherine, held off 23 braves with her rifle, during an Arapaho and Cheyenne raid.  Although they lost all their horses; Catherine managed to save herself and the kids from being scalped.

       Catherine Chisholm

     Upon his return, David Chisholm finally grasped the danger they were in and commenced digging a circular pit, twelve feet in diameter.  He then built a sort of bunker, with stone walls two feet thick, and a roof of logs covered by thick cuts of sod to make it fireproof.  For defense he set four portholes in the stone walls, spaced evenly around his circular bunker, where firearms could be discharged.  Since they were single shot, and took time to reload, he designed sliding blocks of stone to close the portholes.  The fifth porthole was used as a window, the only source of light, and would face the stone-built ranch house. 

      The actual Chisholm Fort revealing the fifth porthole.

     David also dug three tunnels running from the bunker to the ranch house, the barn and the creek.  Giving anyone holed up in the bunker access to food, water and the livestock kept inside the barn, without exposing themselves.  In short he had built a safe haven, for his family and their neighbors, to weather out the periodic Indian raids.

     This bunker became known among the locals as the “Chisholm Fort.”

     From 1865 to 1868, one of the Chisholm children was usually stationed in the cottonwoods on top of “Lookout Hill,” behind the ranch, in late summer and early autumn.  The child’s job was to look for smoke; indicating a homesteader was being attacked. 

     Then the kid would run down the hill, screaming “Indians!” at the top of its little lungs.  This alerted David Chisholm to expect a lot of visitors; both friendly and hostile.  For shortly thereafter his neighbors, all 16 families, from miles around would be flocking to the Chisholm Fort - followed by the raiding Indians. 

      David and Catherine Chisholm preparing for “visitors.”

     Their battles were long and bloody, but despite burning down the ranch house and barn, and taking the livestock, the Indians were never able to burn the Chisholms out.  Stubbornly they’d always climb out of their bunker after the dust and smoke settled, then rebuild and restock – as did their neighbors. 

     This was how the Monument homesteaders kept their scalps, raised their families and hung onto their plots of land, thanks to the “Chisholm Fort.”

     As a kid growing up in Monument, these were the type of tough, honest, hardworking ranchers and farmers Big Mike Chisholm rubbed shoulders with in the 1920s. 

     In particular there was one old-timer my dad loved listening to - sitting round the cracker barrel of the general store - who spun stories regarding the “wild old days.”  This elderly gentleman also walked stooped over with the aid of a cane, and one day, in 1926, Pop summoned up the courage to ask him what was wrong with his back.  My father was ten at the time.

     In contrast the old-timer was 74 that year, and reflected on the day he had turned 14, in 1866, when he and his older brother were plowing the back forty of his father’s homestead.  Somberly, without any rancor, the old gentleman quietly told my father of a small war party of Arapaho that had come out of the foothills that day at some distance.  Luckily he and his brother spotted the Indians right off, prompting them to un-hitch the plow horse, swing aboard it in tandem, and ride bareback for the ranch house as though the very Devil were after them.

     Unfortunately the big mare had kicked up a lot of dust, which the Arapaho detected and proceeded to give chase.  In time, as the boys on the mare drew near to the ranch house, one of the Indians on a fast mustang closed on the boys and released an arrow.  It was an amazing shot from the back of a galloping horse.  For this solitary arrow’s chokecherry shaft skewered the big brother’s body - then buried itself into the old-timer’s back - pinning both teenagers together.  Fighting the incredible pain and shock, both boys hung onto that mare and each other.  To fall off meant certain death.

     Hearing the boy’s screams of warning, the men at the ranch house tumbled out of the building with weapons and skirmished with the Arapaho – in the end driving them off.

     Three days later the big brother died from infection.  The old-timer on the other hand recovered.  Only to end up with a deformity, from the calcification of the broken obsidian arrowhead buried in his fractured spine, which they were never able to remove.

     The people who survived the settling of Monument, Colorado, were made of pretty stern stuff, and they lived by an unwritten frontier code: To break one’s word, to strike a woman, and to not protect one’s family were all signs of cowardice.  The frontier held little tolerance for cowards.

     This unwritten code of conduct, dear reader, was pounded into Big Mike, who in turn pounded it into me...thank God.  For it has kept me out of a lot of trouble.

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