The Young Alaskans on the Missouri, Emerson Hough [books to read as a couple .txt] 📗

“They were not very far from the Mandan villages. Quite a settlement this was, in these parts—not mentioning nine deserted villages inside of sixty miles below—two Mandan villages, built with the Mandan dirt-covered lodges, like those of the Rees; and besides that, villages of Sioux and Gros Ventres, and of a band they called the Watasoons, and seventy lodges of Crees and Assiniboines who came in later and the fierce Minnetarees—plenty of savages to warrant the expedition in taking no chances.”

“I’ve read that the Indians at first were not so friendly,” said Rob. “There were British traders among them, weren’t there?”

“Oh yes, the Northwest Fur Company was in there, and an Irishman by the name of McCracken was on the ground at the time. Alexander Henry got there in 1806, you know. Now, Lewis sent out a note by McCracken to the agent at Fort Assiniboine. Those traders were none too friendly, and tried to stir up trouble. Two more of the Nor’westers, Larocque and McKenzie, came in, with an interpreter and four men, and the interpreter, LaFrance, took it on him to speak sneeringly of the Americans. It did not take Captain Lewis long to call him to account.”

“Well, our fellows were up in there all alone, weren’t they?” exclaimed Jesse.

“They certainly were, but they held their fort; and they held all the Northwestern country for us. As soon as the Northwest Fur Company found out that Lewis and Clark intended to cross the Rockies to the Columbia, they sent word East, and that company sent one of their best men, Simon Fraser, to ascend the Saskatchewan and beat the Americans in on the Columbia. But he himself was beaten in that great race by about a couple of years! So we forged the chain that was to hold the Oregon country to the United States afterward. Oh yes, our young captains had a big game to play, and they played it beautifully.

“They always talked peace among these Mandans and others, because they wanted the Missouri River opened to the American fur trade. They waited around, and held talks, and swapped tobacco for corn, and the American blacksmiths made for them any number of axes and hatchets and other things. By and by the Indians began to figure that they were more apt to get plenty of goods up the Missouri from the Americans than overland from the British traders. Do you see how that began to work out? Oh, our boys knew what they were about, all right. And the result was that our fur trade swept up that river like an army with banners as soon as Lewis and Clark got back home. In a few years we had a hundred and forty fur trading posts on the Missouri and its upper tributaries, and from these our bold traders pushed out by pack train into every corner of the Rocky Mountains.”

“Gee!” said Jesse, in his frequent and not elegant slang. “Gee! Those were the days!”

“Right you are—those were the days! Those were the great days of adventure and romance and exploration. It was through the fur trade that we explored the Rocky Mountains. Can’t you see our men of the fur posts, paddling, rowing, sailing, tracking—getting up the Missouri? Great days, yes, Jesse—great days indeed.”

“I wish we had a picture of that old stockade!” sighed John.

“None exists. Not a splinter of it remains; it was burned down in 1805, and the ruins later engulfed by the river. But I fancy we can see it, from the description. So there our party spent that first winter, and long and cold enough it was.

“They had to hunt or starve, but soon their buffalo and elk and deer and antelope got very thin, mere skin and bones. It was bitter cold, and the hunters came in frozen time and again—a hard, bare, bitter fight it was. From all accounts, it was an old-fashioned winter, for the mercury—they spelled it ‘merkery’—froze solid in a few minutes one day when they set the thermometer out of doors!”

“And it must have been cool inside the houses, too,” ventured John. “But of course they had to do their writing and fix up their things.”

“Quite so—they had to get their specimens ready to ship down the river in the spring. Then they had to make six canoes for use the next year, and as they found the timber unsuitable near the river, the men had to camp out where they found the trees, and then they carried the canoes by hand over to the river, a mile and a half.

“They sent the big flatboat, or bateau, down the river, and thirteen men went with it. The two perogues and the six new cottonwood dugouts they took on west, up the river, when they started, on March 7, 1805, to finish their journey across the continent. Of these men, the party who went through, there were thirty-one; and there was one woman.”

“I know!” said Jesse. “Sacágawea!”

“Right! Sacágawea. Make it two words. ‘Wea’ means ‘woman.’ ‘Bird Woman’ was her name—Sacága Wea. And of the entire party, that Indian girl—she was only a girl, though lately married and though she started west with a very young baby—was worth more than any man. If it had not been for her they never would have got across.

“You see, up to this place, the Mandan towns, they had some idea of the country, and so also they had beyond here as far as the mouth of the Yellowstone—that’s two hundred and eighty-eight miles above here. But beyond the mouth of the Ro’ Jaune—it even then was called Roche Jaune, or Yellow Stone, by the early French voyageurs—it was said the foot of white man never then had passed. There was no map, no report or rumor to help them. If they had a guide, it couldn’t be a white man.

“Now among the Mandans they found a man called Chaboneau, or Charboneau, a Frenchman, married to two Indian women, one of whom was Sacágawea. He had bought her from the Minnetarees, where she was a captive.

“Just think how the natives traveled in those days! You know the Sioux hunted on the upper Platte, as far as the Rockies. Well, this Minnetaree war party had been west of the Rockies, or in the big bend of the Rockies, at the very head of the Missouri River, among the Shoshonis. They took Sacágawea prisoner when she was a little girl, and brought her east, all the way over to Dakota, here. But she was Indian—she did not forget what she saw. She knew about the Yellowstone, and the Three Forks of the Missouri.

“Well now, whether it was because Chaboneau, the new interpreter, wanted her along, or whether Lewis and Clark figured she might be useful, Sacágawea went along, all the way to the Pacific—and all the way back to the Mandans again. Be sure, her husband did not beat her any more, while they were with the white captains. In fact, I rather think they made a pet of her. They found they could rely on her memory and her judgment.

“So the real guide they had in the nameless and unknown country was a Shoshoni Indian girl. It looked almost like something providential, the way they found her here, ready and waiting for them—the only possible guide in all that country. And to-day, such was the chivalry and justice of those two captains of our Army—and such the chivalry and justice of the men of Oregon and the enthusiasm of the women of Oregon—you may see in Portland, near the sea to which she helped lead our flag, the bronze statue of Sacágawea, the Indian girl. That, at least, is one fine thing we have done in memory of the Indian.

“And within the last two or three years a bronze statue of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark has been erected at Charlotteville, Virginia, near the home of Meriwether Lewis—that was at Ivy station, to-day only a scattered settlement. And away down in Tennessee, in the forest of Lewis County, named after him, I have stood by the monument that state erected over the little-known and tragic grave of Captain Meriwether Lewis—far enough from the grave of the poor Indian girl who worshiped him more than she could her worthless husband.

“No one knows where Sacágawea was buried, though her history was traced a little way after the return to this country. She was buried perhaps in the air, on a scaffold, and left forgotten, as Indian women were, and we no more can stand by her grave than we can be sure we stand on the exact spot where Will Clark built his winter quarters among the Mandans.

“Great days, boys—yes, great days, and good people in them, too. So now I want you to study a little here.

“Look back down the river, which has seemed so long for you. To-morrow will be the Fourth of July. It was Christmas that Lewis and Clark celebrated with their men in their stockade.”

Their new friend had for the most part been silent as he listened to this counselor of the party. He now spoke.

“Then I take it that you are going on up the river soon, sir?” said he. “I wish you good journey through the cow country. You’ll find the river narrower, with fewer islands, so I hear; and I should think it became swifter, but—I don’t know.”

“I was going to come to that,” said Uncle Dick, turning to Rob, John, and Jesse. “What do you think? I’d like you to get an idea of the river and all it meant, but we have only the summer and early fall to use. I don’t doubt we could plug on up with the motors, and get a long way above Great Falls, but about the time we got to where we could have some fun fishing or maybe shooting, we’d have to start east by rail. So I’d planned that we might make a big jump here.”

“How do you mean, sir?” Rob asked.

“Change our transportation.”

“Oh—because Lewis and Clark changed here?”

“Natural place for us to change, if we do at all,” said Uncle Dick. “We ought to stick as close to the river as we can, and as a matter of fact we have covered the most monotonous part of it. But we had to do that, for there was no other way to get here and still hang anywhere near to the river. And until we got here we struck no westbound railroad that would advance us on our journey.

“Here we could get up the Yellowstone by rail, but we are working on the Missouri. If we run on by motor car up to Buford, there we can get by rail over to the Great Falls, and still hang closer to the river; although, of course, we’ll not be following it.”

“But what’ll we do with our boat?” began Jesse, ruefully. “Hate to leave the little old Adventurer.”

“Well, now,” answered his uncle. “We couldn’t so well take her along, could we?”

“I’d like mighty well to buy her,” interrupted the editor. “That is, if you care to sell her.”

“I never knew my boys to sell any of their sporting equipment,” said the other. “But I expect they’d give it to you, right enough. Eh, boys?”

They looked from one to another. “If the gentleman wanted her,” began Rob, at last, “and if we’ve done with her, I don’t see why we couldn’t. But I think we ought to take the motors along as far as we can, because we might need them.”

“Good idea,” Uncle Dick nodded. “We can get a trailer here, can’t we?” he asked of their friend.

“Sure; and a good car; too. I’ll drive you up to Buford, myself, for the fun of