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The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life

by Francis Parkman · English · Gutenberg #1015 · 741,723 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life

Author: Francis Parkman


        
Release date: April 27, 2006 [eBook #1015]
                Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1015

Credits: Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OREGON TRAIL: SKETCHES OF PRAIRIE AND ROCKY-MOUNTAIN LIFE ***

THE OREGON TRAIL

by Francis Parkman, Jr.




CONTENTS


I     THE FRONTIER

II    BREAKING THE ICE

III   FORT LEAVENWORTH

IV    “JUMPING OFF”

V     “THE BIG BLUE”

VI    THE PLATTE AND THE DESERT

VII   THE BUFFALO

VIII  TAKING FRENCH LEAVE

IX    SCENES AT FORT LARAMIE

X     THE WAR PARTIES

XI    SCENES AT THE CAMP

XII   ILL LUCK

XIII  HUNTING INDIANS

XIV   THE OGALLALLA VILLAGR

XV    THE HUNTING CAMP

XVI   THE TRAPPERS

XVII  THE BLACK HILLS

XVIII A MOUNTAIN HUNT

XIX   PASSAGE OF THE MOUNTAINS

XX    THE LONELY JOURNEY

XXI   THE PUEBLO AND BENT’S FORT

XXII  TETE ROUGE, THE VOLUNTEER

XXIII INDIAN ALARMS

XXIV  THE CHASE

XXV   THE BUFFALO CAMP

XXVI  DOWN THE ARKANSAS

XXVII THE SETTLEMENTS




CHAPTER I

THE FRONTIER


Last spring, 1846, was a busy season in the City of St. Louis. Not only
were emigrants from every part of the country preparing for the journey
to Oregon and California, but an unusual number of traders were making
ready their wagons and outfits for Santa Fe. Many of the emigrants,
especially of those bound for California, were persons of wealth and
standing. The hotels were crowded, and the gunsmiths and saddlers
were kept constantly at work in providing arms and equipments for the
different parties of travelers. Almost every day steamboats were leaving
the levee and passing up the Missouri, crowded with passengers on their
way to the frontier.

In one of these, the Radnor, since snagged and lost, my friend and
relative, Quincy A. Shaw, and myself, left St. Louis on the 28th of
April, on a tour of curiosity and amusement to the Rocky Mountains. The
boat was loaded until the water broke alternately over her guards. Her
upper deck was covered with large weapons of a peculiar form, for
the Santa Fe trade, and her hold was crammed with goods for the same
destination. There were also the equipments and provisions of a party
of Oregon emigrants, a band of mules and horses, piles of saddles and
harness, and a multitude of nondescript articles, indispensable on
the prairies. Almost hidden in this medley one might have seen a small
French cart, of the sort very appropriately called a “mule-killer”
 beyond the frontiers, and not far distant a tent, together with a
miscellaneous assortment of boxes and barrels. The whole equipage was
far from prepossessing in its appearance; yet, such as it was, it was
destined to a long and arduous journey, on which the persevering reader
will accompany it.

The passengers on board the Radnor corresponded with her freight. In her
cabin were Santa Fe traders, gamblers, speculators, and adventurers
of various descriptions, and her steerage was crowded with Oregon
emigrants, “mountain men,” negroes, and a party of Kansas Indians, who
had been on a visit to St. Louis.

Thus laden, the boat struggled upward for seven or eight days against
the rapid current of the Missouri, grating upon snags, and hanging for
two or three hours at a time upon sand-bars. We entered the mouth of
the Missouri in a drizzling rain, but the weather soon became clear,
and showed distinctly the broad and turbid river, with its eddies, its
sand-bars, its ragged islands, and forest-covered shores. The Missouri
is constantly changing its course; wearing away its banks on one
side, while it forms new ones on the other. Its channel is shifting
continually. Islands are formed, and then washed away; and while the old
forests on one side are undermined and swept off, a young growth springs
up from the new soil upon the other. With all these changes, the water
is so charged with mud and sand that it is perfectly opaque, and in
a few minutes deposits a sediment an inch thick in the bottom of a
tumbler. The river was now high; but when we descended in the autumn
it was fallen very low, and all the secrets of its treacherous shallows
were exposed to view. It was frightful to see the dead and broken trees,
thick-set as a military abatis, firmly imbedded in the sand, and all
pointing down stream, ready to impale any unhappy steamboat that at high
water should pass over that dangerous ground.

In five or six days we began to see signs of the great western movement
that was then taking place. Parties of emigrants, with their tents and
wagons, would be encamped on open spots near the bank, on their way to
the common rendezvous at Independence. On a rainy day, near sunset, we
reached the landing of this place, which is situated some miles from
the river, on the extreme frontier of Missouri. The scene was
characteristic, for here were represented at one view the most
remarkable features of this wild and enterprising region. On the muddy
shore stood some thirty or forty dark slavish-looking Spaniards, gazing
stupidly out from beneath their broad hats. They were attached to one of
the Santa Fe companies, whose wagons were crowded together on the banks
above. In the midst of these, crouching over a smoldering fire, was a
group of Indians, belonging to a remote Mexican tribe. One or two French
hunters from the mountains with their long hair and buckskin dresses,
were looking at the boat; and seated on a log close at hand were three
men, with rifles lying across their knees. The foremost of these, a
tall, strong figure, with a clear blue eye and an open, intelligent
face, might very well represent that race of restless and intrepid
pioneers whose axes and rifles have opened a path from the Alleghenies
to the western prairies. He was on his way to Oregon, probably a more
congenial field to him than any that now remained on this side the great
plains.

Early on the next morning we reached Kansas, about five hundred
miles from the mouth of the Missouri. Here we landed and leaving our
equipments in charge of my good friend Colonel Chick, whose log-house
was the substitute for a tavern, we set out in a wagon for Westport,
where we hoped to procure mules and horses for the journey.

It was a remarkably fresh and beautiful May morning. The rich and
luxuriant woods through which the miserable road conducted us were
lighted by the bright sunshine and enlivened by a multitude of birds. We
overtook on the way our late fellow-travelers, the Kansas Indians, who,
adorned with all their finery, were proceeding homeward at a round pace;
and whatever they might have seemed on board the boat, they made a very
striking and picturesque feature in the forest landscape.

Westport was full of Indians, whose little shaggy ponies were tied by
dozens along the houses and fences. Sacs and Foxes, with shaved heads
and painted faces, Shawanoes and Delawares, fluttering in calico frocks,
and turbans, Wyandottes dressed like white men, and a few wretched
Kansas wrapped in old blankets, were strolling about the streets, or
lounging in and out of the shops and houses.

As I stood at the door of the tavern, I saw a remarkable looking person
coming up the street. He had a ruddy face, garnished with the stumps of
a bristly red beard and mustache; on one side of his head was a round
cap with a knob at the top, such as Scottish laborers sometimes wear;
his coat was of a nondescript form, and made of a gray Scotch plaid,
with the fringes hanging all about it; he wore pantaloons of coarse
homespun, and hob-nailed shoes; and to complete his equipment, a little
black pipe was stuck in one corner of his mouth. In this curious attire,
I recognized Captain C. of the British army, who, with his brother, and
Mr. R., an English gentleman, was bound on a hunting expedition across
the continent. I had seen the captain and his companions at St. Louis.
They had now been for some time at Westport, making preparations for
their departure, and waiting for a re-enforcement, since they were too
few in number to attempt it alone. They might, it is true, have joined
some of the parties of emigrants who were on the point of setting out
for Oregon and California; but they professed great disinclination to
have any connection with the “Kentucky fellows.”

The captain now urged it upon us, that we should join forces and proceed
to the mountains in company. Feeling no greater partiality for the
society of the emigrants than they did, we thought the arrangement an
advantageous one, and consented to it. Our future fellow-travelers had
installed themselves in a little log-house, where we found them all
surrounded by saddles, harness, guns, pistols, telescopes, knives, and
in short their complete appointments for the prairie. R., who professed
a taste for natural history, sat at a table stuffing a woodpecker; the
brother of the captain, who was an Irishman, was splicing a trail-rope
on the floor, as he had been an amateur sailor. The captain pointed
out, with much complacency, the different articles of their outfit. “You
see,” said he, “that we are all old travelers. I am convinced that no
party ever went upon the prairie better provided.” The hunter whom they
had employed, a surly looking Canadian, named Sorel, and their muleteer,
an American from St. Louis, were lounging about the building. In a
little log stable close at hand were their horses and mules, selected by
the captain, who was an excellent judge.

The alliance entered into, we left them to complete their arrangements,
while we pushed our own to all convenient speed. The emigrants for whom
our friends professed such contempt were encamped on the prairie about
eight or ten miles distant, to the number of a thousand or more, and new
parties were constantly passing out from Independence to join them.
They were in great confusion, holding meetings, passing resolutions, and
drawing up regulations, but unable to unite in the choice of leaders to
conduct them across the prairie. Being at leisure one day, I rode over
to Independence. The town was crowded. A multitude of shops had sprung
up to furnish the emigrants and Santa Fe traders with necessaries for
their journey; and there was an incessant hammering and banging from a
dozen blacksmiths’ sheds, where the heavy wagons were being repaired,
and the horses and oxen shod. The streets were thronged with men,
horses, and mules. While I was in the town, a train of emigrant wagons
from Illinois passed through, to join the camp on the prairie, and
stopped in the principal street. A multitude of healthy children’s faces
were peeping out from under the covers of the wagons. Here and there a
buxom damsel was seated on horseback, holding over her sunburnt face an
old umbrella or a parasol, once gaudy enough but now miserably faded.
The men, very sober-looking countrymen, stood about their oxen; and as I
passed I noticed three old fellows, who, with their long whips in their
hands, were zealously discussing the doctrine of regeneration. The
emigrants, however, are not all of this stamp. Among them are some of
the vilest outcasts in the country. I have often perplexed myself to
divine the various motives that give impulse to this strange migration;
but whatever they may be, whether an insane hope of a better condition
in life, or a desire of shaking off restraints of law and society, or
mere restlessness, certain it is that multitudes bitterly repent the
journey, and after they have reached the land of promise are happy
enough to escape from it.

In the course of seven or eight days we had brought our preparations
near to a close. Meanwhile our friends had completed theirs, and
becoming tired of Westport, they told us that they would set out in
advance and wait at the crossing of the Kansas till we should come up.
Accordingly R. and the muleteers went forward with the wagon and tent,
while the captain and his brother, together with Sorel, and a trapper
named Boisverd, who had joined them, followed with the band of horses.
The commencement of the journey was ominous, for the captain was
scarcely a mile from Westport, riding along in state at the head of his
party, leading his intended buffalo horse by a rope, when a tremendous
thunderstorm came on, and drenched them all to the skin. They hurried on
to reach the place, about seven miles off, where R. was to have had the
camp in readiness to receive them. But this prudent person, when he
saw the storm approaching, had selected a sheltered glade in the woods,
where he pitched his tent, and was sipping a comfortable cup of coffee,
while the captain galloped for miles beyond through the rain to look
for him. At length the storm cleared away, and the sharp-eyed trapper
succeeded in discovering his tent: R. had by this time finished his
coffee, and was seated on a buffalo robe smoking his pipe. The captain
was one of the most easy-tempered men in existence, so he bore his
ill-luck with great composure, shared the dregs of the coffee with his
brother, and lay down to sleep in his wet clothes.

We ourselves had our share of the deluge. We were leading a pair of
mules to Kansas when the storm broke. Such sharp and incessant flashes
of lightning, such stunning and continuous thunder, I have never known
before. The woods were completely obscured by the diagonal sheets of
rain that fell with a heavy roar, and rose in spray from the ground; and
the streams rose so rapidly that we could hardly ford them. At length,
looming through the rain, we saw the log-house of Colonel Chick, who
received us with his usual bland hospitality; while his wife, who,
though a little soured and stiffened by too frequent attendance on
camp-meetings, was not behind him in hospitable feeling, supplied us
with the means of repairing our drenched and bedraggled condition. The
storm, clearing away at about sunset, opened a noble prospect from the
porch of the colonel’s house, which stands upon a high hill. The sun
streamed from the breaking clouds upon the swift and angry Missouri, and
on the immense expanse of luxuriant forest that stretched from its banks
back to the distant bluffs.

Returning on the next day to Westport, we received a message from the
captain, who had ridden back to deliver it in person, but finding that
we were in Kansas, had intrusted it with an acquaintance of his named
Vogel, who kept a small grocery and liquor shop. Whisky by the way
circulates more freely in Westport than is altogether safe in a place
where every man carries a loaded pistol in his pocket. As we passed this
establishment, we saw Vogel’s broad German face and knavish-looking eyes
thrust from his door. He said he had something to tell us, and
invited us to take a dram. Neither his liquor nor his message was very
palatable. The captain had returned to give us notice that R., who
assumed the direction of his party, had determined upon another route
from that agreed upon between us; and instead of taking the course of
the traders, to pass northward by Fort Leavenworth, and follow the path
marked out by the dragoons in their expedition of last summer. To adopt
such a plan without consulting us, we looked upon as a very high-handed
proceeding; but suppressing our dissatisfaction as well as we could, we
made up our minds to join them at Fort Leavenworth, where they were to
wait for us.

Accordingly, our preparation being now complete, we attempted one fine
morning to commence our journey. The first step was an unfortunate one.
No sooner were our animals put in harness, than the shaft mule reared
and plunged, burst ropes and straps, and nearly flung the cart into
the Missouri. Finding her wholly uncontrollable, we exchanged her
for another, with which we were furnished by our friend Mr. Boone of
Westport, a grandson of Daniel Boone, the pioneer. This foretaste of
prairie experience was very soon followed by another. Westport was
scarcely out of sight, when we encountered a deep muddy gully, of a
species that afterward became but too familiar to us; and here for the
space of an hour or more the car stuck fast.



CHAPTER II

BREAKING THE ICE


Both Shaw and myself were tolerably inured to the vicissitudes of
traveling. We had experienced them under various forms, and a birch
canoe was as familiar to us as a steamboat. The restlessness, the love
of wilds and hatred of cities, natural perhaps in early years to every
unperverted son of Adam, was not our only motive for undertaking the
present journey. My companion hoped to shake off the effects of a
disorder that had impaired a constitution originally hardy and robust;
and I was anxious to pursue some inquiries relative to the character and
usages of the remote Indian nations, being already familiar with many of
the border tribes.

Emerging from the mud-hole where we last took leave of the reader, we
pursued our way for some time along the narrow track, in the checkered
sunshine and shadow of the woods, till at length, issuing forth into
the broad light, we left behind us the farthest outskirts of that great
forest, that once spread unbroken from the western plains to the shore
of the Atlantic. Looking over an intervening belt of shrubbery, we saw
the green, oceanlike expanse of prairie, stretching swell over swell to
the horizon.

It was a mild, calm spring day; a day when one is more disposed to
musing and reverie than to action, and the softest part of his nature is
apt to gain the ascendency. I rode in advance of the party, as we passed
through the shrubbery, and as a nook of green grass offered a strong
temptation, I dismounted and lay down there. All the trees and saplings
were in flower, or budding into fresh leaf; the red clusters of the
maple-blossoms and the rich flowers of the Indian apple were there in
profusion; and I was half inclined to regret leaving behind the land of
gardens for the rude and stern scenes of the prairie and the mountains.

Meanwhile the party came in sight from out of the bushes. Foremost rode
Henry Chatillon, our guide and hunter, a fine athletic figure, mounted
on a hardy gray Wyandotte pony. He wore a white blanket-coat, a broad
hat of felt, moccasins, and pantaloons of deerskin, ornamented along the
seams with rows of long fringes. His knife was stuck in his belt; his
bullet-pouch and powder-horn hung at his side, and his rifle lay before
him, resting against the high pommel of his saddle, which, like all his
equipments, had seen hard service, and was much the worse for wear. Shaw
followed close, mounted on a little sorrel horse, and leading a larger
animal by a rope. His outfit, which resembled mine, had been provided
with a view to use rather than ornament. It consisted of a plain, black
Spanish saddle, with holsters of heavy pistols, a blanket rolled up
behind it, and the trail-rope attached to his horse’s neck hanging
coiled in front. He carried a double-barreled smooth-bore, while I
boasted a rifle of some fifteen pounds’ weight. At that time our attire,
though far from elegant, bore some marks of civilization, and offered a
very favorable contrast to the inimitable shabbiness of our appearance
on the return journey. A red flannel shirt, belted around the waist like
a frock, then constituted our upper garment; moccasins had supplanted
our failing boots; and the remaining essential portion of our attire
consisted of an extraordinary article, manufactured by a squaw out of
smoked buckskin. Our muleteer, Delorier, brought up the rear with his
cart, waddling ankle-deep in the mud, alternately puffing at his pipe,
and ejaculating in his prairie patois: “Sacre enfant de garce!” as
one of the mules would seem to recoil before some abyss of unusual
profundity. The cart was of the kind that one may see by scores around
the market-place in Montreal, and had a white covering to protect the
articles within. These were our provisions and a tent, with ammunition,
blankets, and presents for the Indians.

We were in all four men with eight animals; for besides the spare horses
led by Shaw and myself, an additional mule was driven along with us as a
reserve in case of accident.

After this summing up of our forces, it may not be amiss to glance at
the characters of the two men who accompanied us.

Delorier was a Canadian, with all the characteristics of the true Jean
Baptiste. Neither fatigue, exposure, nor hard labor could ever impair
his cheerfulness and gayety, or his obsequious politeness to his
bourgeois; and when night came he would sit down by the fire, smoke his
pipe, and tell stories with the utmost contentment. In fact, the prairie
was his congenial element. Henry Chatillon was of a different stamp.
When we were at St. Louis, several gentlemen of the Fur Company had
kindly offered to procure for us a hunter and guide suited for our
purposes, and on coming one afternoon to the office, we found there a
tall and exceedingly well-dressed man with a face so open and frank that
it attracted our notice at once. We were surprised at being told that it
was he who wished to guide us to the mountains. He was born in a little
French town near St. Louis, and from the age of fifteen years had been
constantly in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, employed for the
most part by the Company to supply their forts with buffalo meat. As a
hunter he had but one rival in the whole region, a man named Cimoneau,
with whom, to the honor of both of them, he was on terms of the closest
friendship. He had arrived at St. Louis the day before, from the
mountains, where he had remained for four years; and he now only asked
to go and spend a day with his mother before setting out on another
expedition. His age was about thirty; he was six feet high, and very
powerfully and gracefully molded. The prairies had been his school;
he could neither read nor write, but he had a natural refinement and
delicacy of mind such as is rarely found, even in women. His manly face
was a perfect mirror of uprightness, simplicity, and kindness of heart;
he had, moreover, a keen perception of character and a tact that would
preserve him from flagrant error in any society. Henry had not the
restless energy of an Anglo-American. He was content to take things
as he found them; and his chief fault arose from an excess of easy
generosity, impelling him to give away too profusely ever to thrive in
the world. Yet it was commonly remarked of him, that whatever he might
choose to do with what belonged to himself, the property of others was
always safe in his hands. His bravery was as much celebrated in the
mountains as his skill in hunting; but it is characteristic of him that
in a country where the rifle is the chief arbiter between man and man,
Henry was very seldom involved in quarrels. Once or twice, indeed,
his quiet good-nature had been mistaken and presumed upon, but the
consequences of the error were so formidable that no one was ever known
to repeat it. No better evidence of the intrepidity of his temper could
be wished than the common report that he had killed more than thirty
grizzly bears. He was a proof of what unaided nature will sometimes do.
I have never, in the city or in the wilderness, met a better man than my
noble and true-hearted friend, Henry Chatillon.

We were soon free of the woods and bushes, and fairly upon the broad
prairie. Now and then a Shawanoe passed us, riding his little shaggy
pony at a “lope”; his calico shirt, his gaudy sash, and the gay
handkerchief bound around his snaky hair fluttering in the wind. At noon
we stopped to rest not far from a little creek replete with frogs and
young turtles. There had been an Indian encampment at the place, and
the framework of their lodges still remained, enabling us very easily
to gain a shelter from the sun, by merely spreading one or two blankets
over them. Thus shaded, we sat upon our saddles, and Shaw for the first
time lighted his favorite Indian pipe; while Delorier was squatted over
a hot bed of coals, shading his eyes with one hand, and holding a little
stick in the other, with which he regulated the hissing contents of the
frying-pan. The horses were turned to feed among the scattered bushes of
a low oozy meadow. A drowzy springlike sultriness pervaded the air, and
the voices of ten thousand young frogs and insects, just awakened into
life, rose in varied chorus from the creek and the meadows.

Scarcely were we seated when a visitor approached. This was an old
Kansas Indian; a man of distinction, if one might judge from his dress.
His head was shaved and painted red, and from the tuft of hair remaining
on the crown dangled several eagles’ feathers, and the tails of two or
three rattlesnakes. His cheeks, too, were daubed with vermilion; his
ears were adorned with green glass pendants; a collar of grizzly bears’
claws surrounded his neck, and several large necklaces of wampum hung
on his breast. Having shaken us by the hand with a cordial grunt of
salutation, the old man, dropping his red blanket from his shoulders,
sat down cross-legged on the ground. In the absence of liquor we offered
him a cup of sweetened water, at which he ejaculated “Good!” and was
beginning to tell us how great a man he was, and how many Pawnees he
had killed, when suddenly a motley concourse appeared wading across the
creek toward us. They filed past in rapid succession, men, women, and
children; some were on horseback, some on foot, but all were alike
squalid and wretched. Old squaws, mounted astride of shaggy, meager
little ponies, with perhaps one or two snake-eyed children seated behind
them, clinging to their tattered blankets; tall lank young men on foot,
with bows and arrows in their hands; and girls whose native ugliness not
all the charms of glass beads and scarlet cloth could disguise, made up
the procession; although here and there was a man who, like our visitor,
seemed to hold some rank in this respectable community. They were the
dregs of the Kansas nation, who, while their betters were gone to hunt
buffalo, had left the village on a begging expedition to Westport.

When this ragamuffin horde had passed, we caught our horses, saddled,
harnessed, and resumed our journey. Fording the creek, the low roofs of
a number of rude buildings appeared, rising from a cluster of groves and
woods on the left; and riding up through a long lane, amid a profusion
of wild roses and early spring flowers, we found the log-church and
school-houses belonging to the Methodist Shawanoe Mission. The Indians
were on the point of gathering to a religious meeting. Some scores of
them, tall men in half-civilized dress, were seated on wooden benches
under the trees; while their horses were tied to the sheds and fences.
Their chief, Parks, a remarkably large and athletic man, was just
arrived from Westport, where he owns a trading establishment. Beside
this, he has a fine farm and a considerable number of slaves. Indeed the
Shawanoes have made greater progress in agriculture than any other tribe
on the Missouri frontier; and both in appearance and in character form a
marked contrast to our late acquaintance, the Kansas.

A few hours’ ride brought us to the banks of the river Kansas.
Traversing the woods that lined it, and plowing through the deep sand,
we encamped not far from the bank, at the Lower Delaware crossing. Our
tent was erected for the first time on a meadow close to the woods, and
the camp preparations being complete we began to think of supper. An old
Delaware woman, of some three hundred pounds’ weight, sat in the porch
of a little log-house close to the water, and a very pretty half-breed
girl was engaged, under her superintendence, in feeding a large flock of
turkeys that were fluttering and gobbling about the door. But no offers
of money, or even of tobacco, could induce her to part with one of her
favorites; so I took my rifle, to see if the woods or the river could
furnish us anything. A multitude of quails were plaintively whistling
in the woods and meadows; but nothing appropriate to the rifle was to be
seen, except three buzzards, seated on the spectral limbs of an old dead
sycamore, that thrust itself out over the river from the dense sunny
wall of fresh foliage. Their ugly heads were drawn down between their
shoulders, and they seemed to luxuriate in the soft sunshine that was
pouring from the west. As they offered no epicurean temptations, I
refrained from disturbing their enjoyment; but contented myself with
admiring the calm beauty of the sunset, for the river, eddying swiftly
in deep purple shadows between the impending woods, formed a wild but
tranquillizing scene.

When I returned to the camp I found Shaw and an old Indian seated on the
ground in close conference, passing the pipe between them. The old man
was explaining that he loved the whites, and had an especial partiality
for tobacco. Delorier was arranging upon the ground our service of tin
cups and plates; and as other viands were not to be had, he set before
us a repast of biscuit and bacon, and a large pot of coffee. Unsheathing
our knives, we attacked it, disposed of the greater part, and tossed the
residue to the Indian. Meanwhile our horses, now hobbled for the first
time, stood among the trees, with their fore-legs tied together, in
great disgust and astonishment. They seemed by no means to relish this
foretaste of what was before them. Mine, in particular, had conceived a
moral aversion to the prairie life. One of them, christened Hendrick,
an animal whose strength and hardihood were his only merits, and who
yielded to nothing but the cogent arguments of the whip, looked toward
us with an indignant countenance, as if he meditated avenging his
wrongs with a kick. The other, Pontiac, a good horse, though of plebeian
lineage, stood with his head drooping and his mane hanging about his
eyes, with the grieved and sulky air of a lubberly boy sent off to
school. Poor Pontiac! his forebodings were but too just; for when I last
heard from him, he was under the lash of an Ogallalla brave, on a war
party against the Crows.

As it grew dark, and the voices of the whip-poor-wills succeeded the
whistle of the quails, we removed our saddles to the tent, to serve as
pillows, spread our blankets upon the ground, and prepared to bivouac
for the first time that season. Each man selected the place in the
tent which he was to occupy for the journey. To Delorier, however, was
assigned the cart, into which he could creep in wet weather, and find a
much better shelter than his bourgeois enjoyed in the tent.

The river Kansas at this point forms the boundary line between the
country of the Shawanoes and that of the Delawares. We crossed it on
the following day, rafting over our horses and equipage with much
difficulty, and unloading our cart in order to make our way up the steep
ascent on the farther bank. It was a Sunday morning; warm, tranquil and
bright; and a perfect stillness reigned over the rough inclosures
and neglected fields of the Delawares, except the ceaseless hum and
chirruping of myriads of insects. Now and then, an Indian rode past on
his way to the meeting-house, or through the dilapidated entrance of
some shattered log-house an old woman might be discerned, enjoying all
the luxury of idleness. There was no village bell, for the Delawares
have none; and yet upon that forlorn and rude settlement was the same
spirit of Sabbath repose and tranquillity as in some little New England
village among the mountains of New Hampshire or the Vermont woods.

Having at present no leisure for such reflections, we pursued our
journey. A military road led from this point to Fort Leavenworth, and
for many miles the farms and cabins of the Delawares were scattered
at short intervals on either hand. The little rude structures of logs,
erected usually on the borders of a tract of woods, made a picturesque
feature in the landscape. But the scenery needed no foreign aid. Nature
had done enough for it; and the alteration of rich green prairies and
groves that stood in clusters or lined the banks of the numerous little
streams, had all the softened and polished beauty of a region that has
been for centuries under the hand of man. At that early season, too,
it was in the height of its freshness and luxuriance. The woods were
flushed with the red buds of the maple; there were frequent flowering
shrubs unknown in the east; and the green swells of the prairies were
thickly studded with blossoms.

Encamping near a spring by the side of a hill, we resumed our journey in
the morning, and early in the afternoon had arrived within a few miles
of Fort Leavenworth. The road crossed a stream densely bordered with
trees, and running in the bottom of a deep woody hollow. We were about
to descend into it, when a wild and confused procession appeared,
passing through the water below, and coming up the steep ascent toward
us. We stopped to let them pass. They were Delawares, just returned
from a hunting expedition. All, both men and women, were mounted on
horseback, and drove along with them a considerable number of pack
mules, laden with the furs they had taken, together with the buffalo
robes, kettles, and other articles of their traveling equipment, which
as well as their clothing and their weapons, had a worn and dingy
aspect, as if they had seen hard service of late. At the rear of the
party was an old man, who, as he came up, stopped his horse to speak to
us. He rode a little tough shaggy pony, with mane and tail well knotted
with burrs, and a rusty Spanish bit in its mouth, to which, by way of
reins, was attached a string of raw hide. His saddle, robbed probably
from a Mexican, had no covering, being merely a tree of the Spanish
form, with a piece of grizzly bear’s skin laid over it, a pair of rude
wooden stirrups attached, and in the absence of girth, a thong of hide
passing around the horse’s belly. The rider’s dark features and keen
snaky eyes were unequivocally Indian. He wore a buckskin frock, which,
like his fringed leggings, was well polished and blackened by grease and
long service; and an old handkerchief was tied around his head. Resting
on the saddle before him lay his rifle; a weapon in the use of which
the Delawares are skillful; though from its weight, the distant prairie
Indians are too lazy to carry it.

“Who’s your chief?” he immediately inquired.

Henry Chatillon pointed to us. The old Delaware fixed his eyes intently
upon us for a moment, and then sententiously remarked:

“No good! Too young!” With this flattering comment he left us, and rode
after his people.

This tribe, the Delawares, once the peaceful allies of William Penn, the
tributaries of the conquering Iroquois, are now the most adventurous and
dreaded warriors upon the prairies. They make war upon remote tribes the
very names of which were unknown to their fathers in their ancient
seats in Pennsylvania; and they push these new quarrels with true
Indian rancor, sending out their little war parties as far as the Rocky
Mountains, and into the Mexican territories. Their neighbors and
former confederates, the Shawanoes, who are tolerable farmers, are in
a prosperous condition; but the Delawares dwindle every year, from the
number of men lost in their warlike expeditions.

Soon after leaving this party, we saw, stretching on the right, the
forests that follow the course of the Missouri, and the deep woody
channel through which at this point it runs. At a distance in front were
the white barracks of Fort Leavenworth, just visible through the trees
upon an eminence above a bend of the river. A wide green meadow, as
level as a lake, lay between us and the Missouri, and upon this, close
to a line of trees that bordered a little brook, stood the tent of the
captain and his companions, with their horses feeding around it, but
they themselves were invisible. Wright, their muleteer, was there,
seated on the tongue of the wagon, repairing his harness. Boisverd
stood cleaning his rifle at the door of the tent, and Sorel lounged
idly about. On closer examination, however, we discovered the captain’s
brother, Jack, sitting in the tent, at his old occupation of splicing
trail-ropes. He welcomed us in his broad Irish brogue, and said that
his brother was fishing in the river, and R. gone to the garrison. They
returned before sunset. Meanwhile we erected our own tent not far off,
and after supper a council was held, in which it was resolved to remain
one day at Fort Leavenworth, and on the next to bid a final adieu to
the frontier: or in the phraseology of the region, to “jump off.” Our
deliberations were conducted by the ruddy light from a distant swell of
the prairie, where the long dry grass of last summer was on fire.



CHAPTER III

FORT LEAVENWORTH


On the next morning we rode to Fort Leavenworth. Colonel, now General,
Kearny, to whom I had had the honor of an introduction when at St.
Louis, was just arrived, and received us at his headquarters with the
high-bred courtesy habitual to him. Fort Leavenworth is in fact no fort,
being without defensive works, except two block-houses. No rumors of
war had as yet disturbed its tranquillity. In the square grassy area,
surrounded by barracks and the quarters of the officers, the men were
passing and repassing, or lounging among the trees; although not many
weeks afterward it presented a different scene; for here the very
off-scourings of the frontier were congregated, to be marshaled for the
expedition against Santa Fe.

Passing through the garrison, we rode toward the Kickapoo village, five
or six miles beyond. The path, a rather dubious and uncertain one, led
us along the ridge of high bluffs that bordered the Missouri; and by
looking to the right or to the left, we could enjoy a strange contrast
of opposite scenery. On the left stretched the prairie, rising into
swells and undulations, thickly sprinkled with groves, or gracefully
expanding into wide grassy basins of miles in extent; while its
curvatures, swelling against the horizon, were often surmounted by lines
of sunny woods; a scene to which the freshness of the season and the
peculiar mellowness of the atmosphere gave additional softness. Below
us, on the right, was a tract of ragged and broken woods. We could look
down on the summits of the trees, some living and some dead; some erect,
others leaning at every angle, and others still piled in masses together
by the passage of a hurricane. Beyond their extreme verge, the turbid
waters of the Missouri were discernible through the boughs, rolling
powerfully along at the foot of the woody declivities of its farther
bank.

The path soon after led inland; and as we crossed an open meadow we saw
a cluster of buildings on a rising ground before us, with a crowd of
people surrounding them. They were the storehouse, cottage, and stables
of the Kickapoo trader’s establishment. Just at that moment, as it
chanced, he was beset with half the Indians of the settlement. They had
tied their wretched, neglected little ponies by dozens along the fences
and outhouses, and were either lounging about the place, or crowding
into the trading house. Here were faces of various colors; red, green,
white, and black, curiously intermingled and disposed over the visage
in a variety of patterns. Calico shirts, red and blue blankets, brass
ear-rings, wampum necklaces, appeared in profusion. The trader was a
blue-eyed open-faced man who neither in his manners nor his appearance
betrayed any of the roughness of the frontier; though just at present he
was obliged to keep a lynx eye on his suspicious customers, who, men
and women, were climbing on his counter and seating themselves among his
boxes and bales.

The village itself was not far off, and sufficiently illustrated the
condition of its unfortunate and self-abandoned occupants. Fancy to
yourself a little swift stream, working its devious way down a woody
valley; sometimes wholly hidden under logs and fallen trees, sometimes
issuing forth and spreading into a broad, clear pool; and on its banks
in little nooks cleared away among the trees, miniature log-houses
in utter ruin and neglect. A labyrinth of narrow, obstructed paths
connected these habitations one with another. Sometimes we met a stray
calf, a pig or a pony, belonging to some of the villagers, who usually
lay in the sun in front of their dwellings, and looked on us with cold,
suspicious eyes as we approached. Farther on, in place of the log-huts
of the Kickapoos, we found the pukwi lodges of their neighbors, the
Pottawattamies, whose condition seemed no better than theirs.

Growing tired at last, and exhausted by the excessive heat and
sultriness of the day, we returned to our friend, the trader. By this
time the crowd around him had dispersed, and left him at leisure. He
invited us to his cottage, a little white-and-green building, in
the style of the old French settlements; and ushered us into a neat,
well-furnished room. The blinds were closed, and the heat and glare
of the sun excluded; the room was as cool as a cavern. It was neatly
carpeted too and furnished in a manner that we hardly expected on the
frontier. The sofas, chairs, tables, and a well-filled bookcase would
not have disgraced an Eastern city; though there were one or two little
tokens that indicated the rather questionable civilization of the
region. A pistol, loaded and capped, lay on the mantelpiece; and through
the glass of the bookcase, peeping above the works of John Milton
glittered the handle of a very mischievous-looking knife.

Our host went out, and returned with iced water, glasses, and a bottle
of excellent claret; a refreshment most welcome in the extreme heat of
the day; and soon after appeared a merry, laughing woman, who must have
been, a year of two before, a very rich and luxuriant specimen of Creole
beauty. She came to say that lunch was ready in the next room. Our
hostess evidently lived on the sunny side of life, and troubled herself
with none of its cares. She sat down and entertained us while we were
at table with anecdotes of fishing parties, frolics, and the officers
at the fort. Taking leave at length of the hospitable trader and his
friend, we rode back to the garrison.

Shaw passed on to the camp, while I remained to call upon Colonel
Kearny. I found him still at table. There sat our friend the captain,
in the same remarkable habiliments in which we saw him at Westport; the
black pipe, however, being for the present laid aside. He dangled
his little cap in his hand and talked of steeple-chases, touching
occasionally upon his anticipated exploits in buffalo-hunting. There,
too, was R., somewhat more elegantly attired. For the last time we
tasted the luxuries of civilization, and drank adieus to it in wine good
enough to make us almost regret the leave-taking. Then, mounting,
we rode together to the camp, where everything was in readiness for
departure on the morrow.



CHAPTER IV

“JUMPING OFF”


The reader need not be told that John Bull never leaves home without
encumbering himself with the greatest possible load of luggage. Our
companions were no exception to the rule. They had a wagon drawn by six
mules and crammed with provisions for six months, besides ammunition
enough for a regiment; spare rifles and fowling-pieces, ropes and
harness; personal baggage, and a miscellaneous assortment of articles,
which produced infinite embarrassment on the journey. They had also
decorated their persons with telescopes and portable compasses, and
carried English double-barreled rifles of sixteen to the pound caliber,
slung to their saddles in dragoon fashion.

By sunrise on the 23d of May we had breakfasted; the tents were leveled,
the animals saddled and harnessed, and all was prepared. “Avance donc!
get up!” cried Delorier from his seat in front of the cart. Wright,
our friend’s muleteer, after some swearing and lashing, got his
insubordinate train in motion, and then the whole party filed from the
ground. Thus we bade a long adieu to bed and board, and the principles
of Blackstone’s Commentaries. The day was a most auspicious one; and yet
Shaw and I felt certain misgivings, which in the sequel proved but too
well founded. We had just learned that though R. had taken it upon him
to adopt this course without consulting us, not a single man in
the party was acquainted with it; and the absurdity of our friend’s
high-handed measure very soon became manifest. His plan was to strike
the trail of several companies of dragoons, who last summer had made an
expedition under Colonel Kearny to Fort Laramie, and by this means to
reach the grand trail of the Oregon emigrants up the Platte.

We rode for an hour or two when a familiar cluster of buildings appeared
on a little hill. “Hallo!” shouted the Kickapoo trader from over his
fence. “Where are you going?” A few rather emphatic exclamations might
have been heard among us, when we found that we had gone miles out of
our way, and were not advanced an inch toward the Rocky Mountains. So
we turned in the direction the trader indicated, and with the sun for
a guide, began to trace a “bee line” across the prairies. We struggled
through copses and lines of wood; we waded brooks and pools of water; we
traversed prairies as green as an emerald, expanding before us for mile
after mile; wider and more wild than the wastes Mazeppa rode over:

     “Man nor brute,
     Nor dint of hoof, nor print of foot,
     Lay in the wild luxuriant soil;
     No sign of travel; none of toil;
     The very air was mute.”

Riding in advance, we passed over one of these great plains; we looked
back and saw the line of scattered horsemen stretching for a mile or
more; and far in the rear against the horizon, the white wagons creeping
slowly along. “Here we are at last!” shouted the captain. And in truth
we had struck upon the traces of a large body of horse. We turned
joyfully and followed this new course, with tempers somewhat improved;
and toward sunset encamped on a high swell of the prairie, at the foot
of which a lazy stream soaked along through clumps of rank grass. It
was getting dark. We turned the horses loose to feed. “Drive down the
tent-pickets hard,” said Henry Chatillon, “it is going to blow.” We did
so, and secured the tent as well as we could; for the sky had changed
totally, and a fresh damp smell in the wind warned us that a stormy
night was likely to succeed the hot clear day. The prairie also wore
a new aspect, and its vast swells had grown black and somber under the
shadow of the clouds. The thunder soon began to growl at a distance.
Picketing and hobbling the horses among the rich grass at the foot of
the slope, where we encamped, we gained a shelter just as the rain began
to fall; and sat at the opening of the tent, watching the proceedings of
the captain. In defiance of the rain he was stalking among the horses,
wrapped in an old Scotch plaid. An extreme solicitude tormented him,
lest some of his favorites should escape, or some accident should befall
them; and he cast an anxious eye toward three wolves who were sneaking
along over the dreary surface of the plain, as if he dreaded some
hostile demonstration on their part.

On the next morning we had gone but a mile or two, when we came to an
extensive belt of woods, through the midst of which ran a stream, wide,
deep, and of an appearance particularly muddy and treacherous. Delorier
was in advance with his cart; he jerked his pipe from his mouth, lashed
his mules, and poured forth a volley of Canadian ejaculations. In
plunged the cart, but midway it stuck fast. Delorier leaped out
knee-deep in water, and by dint of sacres and a vigorous application of
the whip, he urged the mules out of the slough. Then approached the long
team and heavy wagon of our friends; but it paused on the brink.

“Now my advice is--” began the captain, who had been anxiously
contemplating the muddy gulf.

“Drive on!” cried R.

But Wright, the muleteer, apparently had not as yet decided the point
in his own mind; and he sat still in his seat on one of the shaft-mules,
whistling in a low contemplative strain to himself.

“My advice is,” resumed the captain, “that we unload; for I’ll bet any
man five pounds that if we try to go through, we shall stick fast.”

“By the powers, we shall stick fast!” echoed Jack, the captain’s
brother, shaking his large head with an air of firm conviction.

“Drive on! drive on!” cried R. petulantly.

“Well,” observed the captain, turning to us as we sat looking on, much
edified by this by-play among our confederates, “I can only give my
advice and if people won’t be reasonable, why, they won’t; that’s all!”

Meanwhile Wright had apparently made up his mind; for he suddenly began
to shout forth a volley of oaths and curses, that, compared with the
French imprecations of Delorier, sounded like the roaring of heavy
cannon after the popping and sputtering of a bunch of Chinese crackers.
At the same time he discharged a shower of blows upon his mules, who
hastily dived into the mud and drew the wagon lumbering after them. For
a moment the issue was dubious. Wright writhed about in his saddle,
and swore and lashed like a madman; but who can count on a team of
half-broken mules? At the most critical point, when all should have been
harmony and combined effort, the perverse brutes fell into lamentable
disorder, and huddled together in confusion on the farther bank. There
was the wagon up to the hub in mud, and visibly settling every instant.
There was nothing for it but to unload; then to dig away the mud
from before the wheels with a spade, and lay a causeway of bushes and
branches. This agreeable labor accomplished, the wagon at last emerged;
but if I mention that some interruption of this sort occurred at least
four or five times a day for a fortnight, the reader will understand
that our progress toward the Platte was not without its obstacles.

We traveled six or seven miles farther, and “nooned” near a brook. On
the point of resuming our journey, when the horses were all driven down
to water, my homesick charger, Pontiac, made a sudden leap across, and
set off at a round trot for the settlements. I mounted my remaining
horse, and started in pursuit. Making a circuit, I headed the runaway,
hoping to drive him back to camp; but he instantly broke into a gallop,
made a wide tour on the prairie, and got past me again. I tried this
plan repeatedly, with the same result; Pontiac was evidently disgusted
with the prairie; so I abandoned it, and tried another, trotting along
gently behind him, in hopes that I might quietly get near enough to
seize the trail-rope which was fastened to his neck, and dragged about a
dozen feet behind him. The chase grew interesting. For mile after mile
I followed the rascal, with the utmost care not to alarm him, and
gradually got nearer, until at length old Hendrick’s nose was fairly
brushed by the whisking tail of the unsuspecting Pontiac. Without
drawing rein, I slid softly to the ground; but my long heavy rifle
encumbered me, and the low sound it made in striking the horn of the
saddle startled him; he pricked up his ears, and sprang off at a run.
“My friend,” thought I, remounting, “do that again, and I will shoot
you!”

Fort Leavenworth was about forty miles distant, and thither I determined
to follow him. I made up my mind to spend a solitary and supperless
night, and then set out again in the morning. One hope, however,
remained. The creek where the wagon had stuck was just before us;
Pontiac might be thirsty with his run, and stop there to drink. I kept
as near to him as possible, taking every precaution not to alarm him
again; and the result proved as I had hoped: for he walked deliberately
among the trees, and stooped down to the water. I alighted, dragged old
Hendrick through the mud, and with a feeling of infinite satisfaction
picked up the slimy trail-rope and twisted it three times round my hand.
“Now let me see you get away again!” I thought, as I remounted. But
Pontiac was exceedingly reluctant to turn back; Hendrick, too, who
had evidently flattered himself with vain hopes, showed the utmost
repugnance, and grumbled in a manner peculiar to himself at being
compelled to face about. A smart cut of the whip restored his
cheerfulness; and dragging the recovered truant behind, I set out in
search of the camp. An hour or two elapsed, when, near sunset, I saw the
tents, standing on a rich swell of the prairie, beyond a line of woods,
while the bands of horses were feeding in a low meadow close at hand.
There sat Jack C., cross-legged, in the sun, splicing a trail-rope,
and the rest were lying on the grass, smoking and telling stories. That
night we enjoyed a serenade from the wolves, more lively than any with
which they had yet favored us; and in the morning one of the musicians
appeared, not many rods from the tents, quietly seated among the horses,
looking at us with a pair of large gray eyes; but perceiving a rifle
leveled at him, he leaped up and made off in hot haste.

I pass by the following day or two of our journey, for nothing occurred
worthy of record. Should any one of my readers ever be impelled to visit
the prairies, and should he choose the route of the Platte (the best,
perhaps, that can be adopted), I can assure him that he need not
think to enter at once upon the paradise of his imagination. A dreary
preliminary, protracted crossing of the threshold awaits him before
he finds himself fairly upon the verge of the “great American desert,”
 those barren wastes, the haunts of the buffalo and the Indian, where
the very shadow of civilization lies a hundred leagues behind him. The
intervening country, the wide and fertile belt that extends for
several hundred miles beyond the extreme frontier, will probably answer
tolerably well to his preconceived ideas of the prairie; for this it
is from which picturesque tourists, painters, poets, and novelists, who
have seldom penetrated farther, have derived their conceptions of the
whole region. If he has a painter’s eye, he may find his period of
probation not wholly void of interest. The scenery, though tame, is
graceful and pleasing. Here are level plains, too wide for the eye
to measure green undulations, like motionless swells of the ocean;
abundance of streams, followed through all their windings by lines of
woods and scattered groves. But let him be as enthusiastic as he may,
he will find enough to damp his ardor. His wagons will stick in the mud;
his horses will break loose; harness will give way, and axle-trees prove
unsound. His bed will be a soft one, consisting often of black mud,
of the richest consistency. As for food, he must content himself with
biscuit and salt provisions; for strange as it may seem, this tract of
country produces very little game. As he advances, indeed, he will see,
moldering in the grass by his path, the vast antlers of the elk, and
farther on, the whitened skulls of the buffalo, once swarming over this
now deserted region. Perhaps, like us, he may journey for a fortnight,
and see not so much as the hoof-print of a deer; in the spring, not even
a prairie hen is to be had.

Yet, to compensate him for this unlooked-for deficiency of game, he
will find himself beset with “varmints” innumerable. The wolves will
entertain him with a concerto at night, and skulk around him by day,
just beyond rifle shot; his horse will step into badger-holes; from
every marsh and mud puddle will arise the bellowing, croaking, and
trilling of legions of frogs, infinitely various in color, shape and
dimensions. A profusion of snakes will glide away from under his horse’s
feet, or quietly visit him in his tent at night; while the pertinacious
humming of unnumbered mosquitoes will banish sleep from his eyelids.
When thirsty with a long ride in the scorching sun over some boundless
reach of prairie, he comes at length to a pool of water, and alights to
drink, he discovers a troop of young tadpoles sporting in the bottom of
his cup. Add to this, that all the morning the hot sun beats upon him
with sultry, penetrating heat, and that, with provoking regularity, at
about four o’clock in the afternoon, a thunderstorm rises and drenches
him to the skin. Such being the charms of this favored region, the
reader will easily conceive the extent of our gratification at learning
that for a week we had been journeying on the wrong track! How this
agreeable discovery was made I will presently explain.

One day, after a protracted morning’s ride, we stopped to rest at noon
upon the open prairie. No trees were in sight; but close at hand, a
little dribbling brook was twisting from side to side through a hollow;
now forming holes of stagnant water, and now gliding over the mud in a
scarcely perceptible current, among a growth of sickly bushes, and great
clumps of tall rank grass. The day was excessively hot and oppressive.
The horses and mules were rolling on the prairie to refresh themselves,
or feeding among the bushes in the hollow. We had dined; and Delorier,
puffing at his pipe, knelt on the grass, scrubbing our service of tin
plate. Shaw lay in the shade, under the cart, to rest for a while,
before the word should be given to “catch up.” Henry Chatillon, before
lying down, was looking about for signs of snakes, the only living
things that he feared, and uttering various ejaculations of disgust,
at finding several suspicious-looking holes close to the cart. I sat
leaning against the wheel in a scanty strip of shade, making a pair of
hobbles to replace those which my contumacious steed Pontiac had
broken the night before. The camp of our friends, a rod or two distant,
presented the same scene of lazy tranquillity.

“Hallo!” cried Henry, looking up from his inspection of the snake-holes,
“here comes the old captain!”

The captain approached, and stood for a moment contemplating us in
silence.

“I say, Parkman,” he began, “look at Shaw there, asleep under the cart,
with the tar dripping off the hub of the wheel on his shoulder!”

At this Shaw got up, with his eyes half opened, and feeling the part
indicated, he found his hand glued fast to his red flannel shirt.

“He’ll look well when he gets among the squaws, won’t he?” observed the
captain, with a grin.

He then crawled under the cart, and began to tell stories of which his
stock was inexhaustible. Yet every moment he would glance nervously at
the horses. At last he jumped up in great excitement. “See that horse!
There--that fellow just walking over the hill! By Jove; he’s off. It’s
your big horse, Shaw; no it isn’t, it’s Jack’s! Jack! Jack! hallo,
Jack!” Jack thus invoked, jumped up and stared vacantly at us.

“Go and catch your horse, if you don’t want to lose him!” roared the
captain.

Jack instantly set off at a run through the grass, his broad pantaloons
flapping about his feet. The captain gazed anxiously till he saw
that the horse was caught; then he sat down, with a countenance of
thoughtfulness and care.

“I tell you what it is,” he said, “this will never do at all. We shall
lose every horse in the band someday or other, and then a pretty plight
we should be in! Now I am convinced that the only way for us is to have
every man in the camp stand horse-guard in rotation whenever we stop.
Supposing a hundred Pawnees should jump up out of that ravine, all
yelling and flapping their buffalo robes, in the way they do? Why, in
two minutes not a hoof would be in sight.” We reminded the captain that
a hundred Pawnees would probably demolish the horse-guard, if he were to
resist their depredations.

“At any rate,” pursued the captain, evading the point, “our whole system
is wrong; I’m convinced of it; it is totally unmilitary. Why, the way
we travel, strung out over the prairie for a mile, an enemy might attack
the foremost men, and cut them off before the rest could come up.”

“We are not in an enemy’s country, yet,” said Shaw; “when we are, we’ll
travel together.”

“Then,” said the captain, “we might be attacked in camp. We’ve no
sentinels; we camp in disorder; no precautions at all to guard against
surprise. My own convictions are that we ought to camp in a hollow
square, with the fires in the center; and have sentinels, and a regular
password appointed for every night. Besides, there should be vedettes,
riding in advance, to find a place for the camp and give warning of an
enemy. These are my convictions. I don’t want to dictate to any man. I
give advice to the best of my judgment, that’s all; and then let people
do as they please.”

We intimated that perhaps it would be as well to postpone such
burdensome precautions until there should be some actual need of
them; but he shook his head dubiously. The captain’s sense of military
propriety had been severely shocked by what he considered the irregular
proceedings of the party; and this was not the first time he had
expressed himself upon the subject. But his convictions seldom produced
any practical results. In the present case, he contented himself,
as usual, with enlarging on the importance of his suggestions, and
wondering that they were not adopted. But his plan of sending out
vedettes seemed particularly dear to him; and as no one else was
disposed to second his views on this point, he took it into his head to
ride forward that afternoon, himself.

“Come, Parkman,” said he, “will you go with me?”

We set out together, and rode a mile or two in advance. The captain,
in the course of twenty years’ service in the British army, had seen
something of life; one extensive side of it, at least, he had enjoyed
the best opportunities for studying; and being naturally a pleasant
fellow, he was a very entertaining companion. He cracked jokes and told
stories for an hour or two; until, looking back, we saw the prairie
behind us stretching away to the horizon, without a horseman or a wagon
in sight.

“Now,” said the captain, “I think the vedettes had better stop till the
main body comes up.”

I was of the same opinion. There was a thick growth of woods just before
us, with a stream running through them. Having crossed this, we found
on the other side a fine level meadow, half encircled by the trees; and
fastening our horses to some bushes, we sat down on the grass; while,
with an old stump of a tree for a target, I began to display the
superiority of the renowned rifle of the back woods over the foreign
innovation borne by the captain. At length voices could be heard in the
distance behind the trees.

“There they come!” said the captain: “let’s go and see how they get
through the creek.”

We mounted and rode to the bank of the stream, where the trail crossed
it. It ran in a deep hollow, full of trees; as we looked down, we saw a
confused crowd of horsemen riding through the water; and among the dingy
habiliment of our party glittered the uniforms of four dragoons.

Shaw came whipping his horse up the back, in advance of the rest, with
a somewhat indignant countenance. The first word he spoke was a blessing
fervently invoked on the head of R., who was riding, with a crest-fallen
air, in the rear. Thanks to the ingenious devices of the gentleman, we
had missed the track entirely, and wandered, not toward the Platte, but
to the village of the Iowa Indians. This we learned from the dragoons,
who had lately deserted from Fort Leavenworth. They told us that our
best plan now was to keep to the northward until we should strike the
trail formed by several parties of Oregon emigrants, who had that season
set out from St. Joseph’s in Missouri.

In extremely bad temper, we encamped on this ill-starred spot; while the
deserters, whose case admitted of no delay rode rapidly forward. On the
day following, striking the St. Joseph’s trail, we turned our horses’
heads toward Fort Laramie, then about seven hundred miles to the
westward.



CHAPTER V

“THE BIG BLUE”


The great medley of Oregon and California emigrants, at their camps
around Independence, had heard reports that several additional parties
were on the point of setting out from St. Joseph’s farther to the
northward. The prevailing impression was that these were Mormons,
twenty-three hundred in number; and a great alarm was excited in
consequence. The people of Illinois and Missouri, who composed by far
the greater part of the emigrants, have never been on the best terms
with the “Latter Day Saints”; and it is notorious throughout the country
how much blood has been spilt in their feuds, even far within the limits
of the settlements. No one could predict what would be the result, when
large armed bodies of these fanatics should encounter the most impetuous
and reckless of their old enemies on the broad prairie, far beyond the
reach of law or military force. The women and children at Independence
raised a great outcry; the men themselves were seriously alarmed; and,
as I learned, they sent to Colonel Kearny, requesting an escort of
dragoons as far as the Platte. This was refused; and as the sequel
proved, there was no occasion for it. The St. Joseph’s emigrants were as
good Christians and as zealous Mormon-haters as the rest; and the very
few families of the “Saints” who passed out this season by the route of
the Platte remained behind until the great tide of emigration had gone
by; standing in quite as much awe of the “gentiles” as the latter did of
them.

We were now, as I before mentioned, upon this St. Joseph’s trail. It was
evident, by the traces, that large parties were a few days in advance of
us; and as we too supposed them to be Mormons, we had some apprehension
of interruption.

The journey was somewhat monotonous. One day we rode on for hours,
without seeing a tree or a bush; before, behind, and on either side,
stretched the vast expanse, rolling in a succession of graceful swells,
covered with the unbroken carpet of fresh green grass. Here and there a
crow, or a raven, or a turkey-buzzard, relieved the uniformity.

“What shall we do to-night for wood and water?” we began to ask of each
other; for the sun was within an hour of setting. At length a dark green
speck appeared, far off on the right; it was the top of a tree, peering
over a swell of the prairie; and leaving the trail, we made all haste
toward it. It proved to be the vanguard of a cluster of bushes and low
trees, that surrounded some pools of water in an extensive hollow; so we
encamped on the rising ground near it.

Shaw and I were sitting in the tent, when Delorier thrust his brown face
and old felt hat into the opening, and dilating his eyes to their utmost
extent, announced supper. There were the tin cups and the iron spoons,
arranged in military order on the grass, and the coffee-pot predominant
in the midst. The meal was soon dispatched; but Henry Chatillon still
sat cross-legged, dallying with the remnant of his coffee, the beverage
in universal use upon the prairie, and an especial favorite with him. He
preferred it in its virgin flavor, unimpaired by sugar or cream; and
on the present occasion it met his entire approval, being exceedingly
strong, or, as he expressed it, “right black.”

It was a rich and gorgeous sunset--an American sunset; and the ruddy
glow of the sky was reflected from some extensive pools of water among
the shadowy copses in the meadow below.

“I must have a bath to-night,” said Shaw. “How is it, Delorier? Any
chance for a swim down here?”

“Ah! I cannot tell; just as you please, monsieur,” replied Delorier,
shrugging his shoulders, perplexed by his ignorance of English, and
extremely anxious to conform in all respects to the opinion and wishes
of his bourgeois.

“Look at his moccasion,” said I. “It has evidently been lately immersed
in a profound abyss of black mud.”

“Come,” said Shaw; “at any rate we can see for ourselves.”

We set out together; and as we approached the bushes, which were at some
distance, we found the ground becoming rather treacherous. We could
only get along by stepping upon large clumps of tall rank grass, with
fathomless gulfs between, like innumerable little quaking islands in
an ocean of mud, where a false step would have involved our boots in a
catastrophe like that which had befallen Delorier’s moccasins. The thing
looked desperate; we separated, so as to search in different directions,
Shaw going off to the right, while I kept straight forward. At last I
came to the edge of the bushes: they were young waterwillows, covered
with their caterpillar-like blossoms, but intervening between them
and the last grass clump was a black and deep slough, over which, by a
vigorous exertion, I contrived to jump. Then I shouldered my way through
the willows, tramping them down by main force, till I came to a wide
stream of water, three inches deep, languidly creeping along over a
bottom of sleek mud. My arrival produced a great commotion. A huge green
bull-frog uttered an indignant croak, and jumped off the bank with a
loud splash: his webbed feet twinkled above the surface, as he jerked
them energetically upward, and I could see him ensconcing himself in
the unresisting slime at the bottom, whence several large air bubbles
struggled lazily to the top. Some little spotted frogs instantly
followed the patriarch’s example; and then three turtles, not larger
than a dollar, tumbled themselves off a broad “lily pad,” where they had
been reposing. At the same time a snake, gayly striped with black and
yellow, glided out from the bank, and writhed across to the other side;
and a small stagnant pool into which my foot had inadvertently pushed a
stone was instantly alive with a congregation of black tadpoles.

“Any chance for a bath, where you are?” called out Shaw, from a
distance.

The answer was not encouraging. I retreated through the willows, and
rejoining my companion, we proceeded to push our researches in company.
Not far on the right, a rising ground, covered with trees and bushes,
seemed to sink down abruptly to the water, and give hope of better
success; so toward this we directed our steps. When we reached the place
we found it no easy matter to get along between the hill and the water,
impeded as we were by a growth of stiff, obstinate young birch-trees,
laced together by grapevines. In the twilight, we now and then, to
support ourselves, snatched at the touch-me-not stem of some ancient
sweet-brier. Shaw, who was in advance, suddenly uttered a somewhat
emphatic monosyllable; and looking up I saw him with one hand grasping a
sapling, and one foot immersed in the water, from which he had forgotten
to withdraw it, his whole attention being engaged in contemplating the
movements of a water-snake, about five feet long, curiously checkered
with black and green, who was deliberately swimming across the pool.
There being no stick or stone at hand to pelt him with, we looked at him
for a time in silent disgust; and then pushed forward. Our perseverence
was at last rewarded; for several rods farther on, we emerged upon a
little level grassy nook among the brushwood, and by an extraordinary
dispensation of fortune, the weeds and floating sticks, which elsewhere
covered the pool, seemed to have drawn apart, and left a few yards of
clear water just in front of this favored spot. We sounded it with a
stick; it was four feet deep; we lifted a specimen in our cupped hands;
it seemed reasonably transparent, so we decided that the time for action
was arrived. But our ablutions were suddenly interrupted by ten
thousand punctures, like poisoned needles, and the humming of myriads
of over-grown mosquitoes, rising in all directions from their native mud
and slime and swarming to the feast. We were fain to beat a retreat with
all possible speed.

We made toward the tents, much refreshed by the bath which the heat of
the weather, joined to our prejudices, had rendered very desirable.

“What’s the matter with the captain? look at him!” said Shaw. The
captain stood alone on the prairie, swinging his hat violently around
his head, and lifting first one foot and then the other, without moving
from the spot. First he looked down to the ground with an air of
supreme abhorrence; then he gazed upward with a perplexed and indignant
countenance, as if trying to trace the flight of an unseen enemy. We
called to know what was the matter; but he replied only by execrations
directed against some unknown object. We approached, when our ears were
saluted by a droning sound, as if twenty bee-hives had been overturned
at once. The air above was full of large black insects, in a state of
great commotion, and multitudes were flying about just above the tops of
the grass blades.

“Don’t be afraid,” called the captain, observing us recoil. “The brutes
won’t sting.”

At this I knocked one down with my hat, and discovered him to be no
other than a “dorbug”; and looking closer, we found the ground thickly
perforated with their holes.

We took a hasty leave of this flourishing colony, and walking up
the rising ground to the tents, found Delorier’s fire still glowing
brightly. We sat down around it, and Shaw began to expatiate on the
admirable facilities for bathing that we had discovered, and recommended
the captain by all means to go down there before breakfast in the
morning. The captain was in the act of remarking that he couldn’t have
believed it possible, when he suddenly interrupted himself, and clapped
his hand to his cheek, exclaiming that “those infernal humbugs were at
him again.” In fact, we began to hear sounds as if bullets were humming
over our heads. In a moment something rapped me sharply on the forehead,
then upon the neck, and immediately I felt an indefinite number of sharp
wiry claws in active motion, as if their owner were bent on pushing his
explorations farther. I seized him, and dropped him into the fire.
Our party speedily broke up, and we adjourned to our respective tents,
where, closing the opening fast, we hoped to be exempt from invasion.
But all precaution was fruitless. The dorbugs hummed through the tent,
and marched over our faces until day-light; when, opening our blankets,
we found several dozen clinging there with the utmost tenacity. The
first object that met our eyes in the morning was Delorier, who seemed
to be apostrophizing his frying-pan, which he held by the handle at
arm’s length. It appeared that he had left it at night by the fire; and
the bottom was now covered with dorbugs, firmly imbedded. Multitudes
beside, curiously parched and shriveled, lay scattered among the ashes.

The horses and mules were turned loose to feed. We had just taken our
seats at breakfast, or rather reclined in the classic mode, when an
exclamation from Henry Chatillon, and a shout of alarm from the captain,
gave warning of some casualty, and looking up, we saw the whole band
of animals, twenty-three in number, filing off for the settlements, the
incorrigible Pontiac at their head, jumping along with hobbled feet,
at a gait much more rapid than graceful. Three or four of us ran to cut
them off, dashing as best we might through the tall grass, which was
glittering with myriads of dewdrops. After a race of a mile or more,
Shaw caught a horse. Tying the trail-rope by way of bridle round the
animal’s jaw, and leaping upon his back, he got in advance of the
remaining fugitives, while we, soon bringing them together, drove them
in a crowd up to the tents, where each man caught and saddled his own.
Then we heard lamentations and curses; for half the horses had broke
their hobbles, and many were seriously galled by attempting to run in
fetters.

It was late that morning before we were on the march; and early in the
afternoon we were compelled to encamp, for a thunder-gust came up and
suddenly enveloped us in whirling sheets of rain. With much ado, we
pitched our tents amid the tempest, and all night long the thunder
bellowed and growled over our heads. In the morning, light peaceful
showers succeeded the cataracts of rain, that had been drenching us
through the canvas of our tents. About noon, when there were some
treacherous indications of fair weather, we got in motion again.

Not a breath of air stirred over the free and open prairie; the clouds
were like light piles of cotton; and where the blue sky was visible, it
wore a hazy and languid aspect. The sun beat down upon us with a sultry
penetrating heat almost insupportable, and as our party crept slowly
along over the interminable level, the horses hung their heads as
they waded fetlock deep through the mud, and the men slouched into
the easiest position upon the saddle. At last, toward evening, the old
familiar black heads of thunderclouds rose fast above the horizon, and
the same deep muttering of distant thunder that had become the ordinary
accompaniment of our afternoon’s journey began to roll hoarsely over
the prairie. Only a few minutes elapsed before the whole sky was densely
shrouded, and the prairie and some clusters of woods in front assumed a
purple hue beneath the inky shadows. Suddenly from the densest fold of
the cloud the flash leaped out, quivering again and again down to the
edge of the prairie; and at the same instant came the sharp burst and
the long rolling peal of the thunder. A cool wind, filled with the smell
of rain, just then overtook us, leveling the tall grass by the side of
the path.

“Come on; we must ride for it!” shouted Shaw, rushing past at full
speed, his led horse snorting at his side. The whole party broke into
full gallop, and made for the trees in front. Passing these, we found
beyond them a meadow which they half inclosed. We rode pell-mell upon
the ground, leaped from horseback, tore off our saddles; and in a moment
each man was kneeling at his horse’s feet. The hobbles were adjusted,
and the animals turned loose; then, as the wagons came wheeling rapidly
to the spot, we seized upon the tent-poles, and just as the storm broke,
we were prepared to receive it. It came upon us almost with the darkness
of night; the trees, which were close at hand, were completely shrouded
by the roaring torrents of rain.

We were sitting in the tent, when Delorier, with his broad felt hat
hanging about his ears, and his shoulders glistening with rain, thrust
in his head.

“Voulez-vous du souper, tout de suite? I can make a fire, sous la
charette--I b’lieve so--I try.”

“Never mind supper, man; come in out of the rain.”

Delorier accordingly crouched in the entrance, for modesty would not
permit him to intrude farther.

Our tent was none of the best defense against such a cataract. The
rain could not enter bodily, but it beat through the canvas in a fine
drizzle, that wetted us just as effectively. We sat upon our saddles
with faces of the utmost surliness, while the water dropped from the
vizors of our caps, and trickled down our cheeks. My india-rubber cloak
conducted twenty little rapid streamlets to the ground; and Shaw’s
blanket-coat was saturated like a sponge. But what most concerned us
was the sight of several puddles of water rapidly accumulating; one
in particular, that was gathering around the tent-pole, threatened
to overspread the whole area within the tent, holding forth but an
indifferent promise of a comfortable night’s rest. Toward sunset,
however, the storm ceased as suddenly as it began. A bright streak
of clear red sky appeared above the western verge of the prairie, the
horizontal rays of the sinking sun streamed through it and glittered in
a thousand prismatic colors upon the dripping groves and the prostrate
grass. The pools in the tent dwindled and sunk into the saturated soil.

But all our hopes were delusive. Scarcely had night set in, when the
tumult broke forth anew. The thunder here is not like the tame thunder
of the Atlantic coast. Bursting with a terrific crash directly above our
heads, it roared over the boundless waste of prairie, seeming to roll
around the whole circle of the firmament with a peculiar and awful
reverberation. The lightning flashed all night, playing with its livid
glare upon the neighboring trees, revealing the vast expanse of the
plain, and then leaving us shut in as by a palpable wall of darkness.

It did not disturb us much. Now and then a peal awakened us, and made us
conscious of the electric battle that was raging, and of the floods that
dashed upon the stanch canvas over our heads. We lay upon india-rubber
cloths, placed between our blankets and the soil. For a while they
excluded the water to admiration; but when at length it accumulated and
began to run over the edges, they served equally well to retain it, so
that toward the end of the night we were unconsciously reposing in small
pools of rain.

On finally awaking in the morning the prospect was not a cheerful one.
The rain no longer poured in torrents; but it pattered with a quiet
pertinacity upon the strained and saturated canvas. We disengaged
ourselves from our blankets, every fiber of which glistened with little
beadlike drops of water, and looked out in vain hope of discovering some
token of fair weather. The clouds, in lead-colored volumes, rested upon
the dismal verge of the prairie, or hung sluggishly overhead, while the
earth wore an aspect no more attractive than the heavens, exhibiting
nothing but pools of water, grass beaten down, and mud well trampled by
our mules and horses. Our companions’ tent, with an air of forlorn
and passive misery, and their wagons in like manner, drenched and
woe-begone, stood not far off. The captain was just returning from his
morning’s inspection of the horses. He stalked through the mist and
rain, with his plaid around his shoulders; his little pipe, dingy as an
antiquarian relic, projecting from beneath his mustache, and his brother
Jack at his heels.

“Good-morning, captain.”

“Good-morning to your honors,” said the captain, affecting the Hibernian
accent; but at that instant, as he stooped to enter the tent, he tripped
upon the cords at the entrance, and pitched forward against the guns
which were strapped around the pole in the center.

“You are nice men, you are!” said he, after an ejaculation not necessary
to be recorded, “to set a man-trap before your door every morning to
catch your visitors.”

Then he sat down upon Henry Chatillon’s saddle. We tossed a piece of
buffalo robe to Jack, who was looking about in some embarrassment. He
spread it on the ground, and took his seat, with a stolid countenance,
at his brother’s side.

“Exhilarating weather, captain!”

“Oh, delightful, delightful!” replied the captain. “I knew it would be
so; so much for starting yesterday at noon! I knew how it would turn
out; and I said so at the time.”

“You said just the contrary to us. We were in no hurry, and only moved
because you insisted on it.”

“Gentlemen,” said the captain, taking his pipe from his mouth with an
air of extreme gravity, “it was no plan of mine. There is a man among us
who is determined to have everything his own way. You may express your
opinion; but don’t expect him to listen. You may be as reasonable as
you like: oh, it all goes for nothing! That man is resolved to rule the
roost and he’ll set his face against any plan that he didn’t think of
himself.”

The captain puffed for a while at his pipe, as if meditating upon his
grievances; then he began again:

“For twenty years I have been in the British army; and in all that time
I never had half so much dissension, and quarreling, and nonsense, as
since I have been on this cursed prairie. He’s the most uncomfortable
man I ever met.”

“Yes,” said Jack; “and don’t you know, Bill, how he drank up all the
coffee last night, and put the rest by for himself till the morning!”

“He pretends to know everything,” resumed the captain; “nobody must give
orders but he! It’s, oh! we must do this; and, oh! we must do that; and
the tent must be pitched here, and the horses must be picketed there;
for nobody knows as well as he does.”

We were a little surprised at this disclosure of domestic dissensions
among our allies, for though we knew of their existence, we were not
aware of their extent. The persecuted captain seeming wholly at a loss
as to the course of conduct that he should pursue, we recommended him to
adopt prompt and energetic measures; but all his military experience
had failed to teach him the indispensable lesson to be “hard,” when the
emergency requires it.

“For twenty years,” he repeated, “I have been in the British army, and
in that time I have been intimately acquainted with some two hundred
officers, young and old, and I never yet quarreled with any man. Oh,
‘anything for a quiet life!’ that’s my maxim.”

We intimated that the prairie was hardly the place to enjoy a quiet
life, but that, in the present circumstances, the best thing he could
do toward securing his wished-for tranquillity, was immediately to put
a period to the nuisance that disturbed it. But again the captain’s
easy good-nature recoiled from the task. The somewhat vigorous measures
necessary to gain the desired result were utterly repugnant to him; he
preferred to pocket his grievances, still retaining the privilege of
grumbling about them. “Oh, anything for a quiet life!” he said again,
circling back to his favorite maxim.

But to glance at the previous history of our transatlantic confederates.
The captain had sold his commission, and was living in bachelor ease
and dignity in his paternal halls, near Dublin. He hunted, fished, rode
steeple-chases, ran races, and talked of his former exploits. He
was surrounded with the trophies of his rod and gun; the walls were
plentifully garnished, he told us, with moose-horns and deer-horns,
bear-skins, and fox-tails; for the captain’s double-barreled rifle had
seen service in Canada and Jamaica; he had killed salmon in Nova Scotia,
and trout, by his own account, in all the streams of the three kingdoms.
But in an evil hour a seductive stranger came from London; no less a
person than R., who, among other multitudinous wanderings, had once been
upon the western prairies, and naturally enough was anxious to visit
them again. The captain’s imagination was inflamed by the pictures of a
hunter’s paradise that his guest held forth; he conceived an ambition
to add to his other trophies the horns of a buffalo, and the claws of
a grizzly bear; so he and R. struck a league to travel in company. Jack
followed his brother, as a matter of course. Two weeks on board the
Atlantic steamer brought them to Boston; in two weeks more of hard
traveling they reached St. Louis, from which a ride of six days
carried them to the frontier; and here we found them, in full tide of
preparation for their journey.

We had been throughout on terms of intimacy with the captain, but
R., the motive power of our companions’ branch of the expedition, was
scarcely known to us. His voice, indeed, might be heard incessantly; but
at camp he remained chiefly within the tent, and on the road he either
rode by himself, or else remained in close conversation with his friend
Wright, the muleteer. As the captain left the tent that morning, I
observed R. standing by the fire, and having nothing else to do, I
determined to ascertain, if possible, what manner of man he was. He had
a book under his arm, but just at present he was engrossed in actively
superintending the operations of Sorel, the hunter, who was cooking some
corn-bread over the coals for breakfast. R. was a well-formed and rather
good-looking man, some thirty years old; considerably younger than the
captain. He wore a beard and mustache of the oakum complexion, and
his attire was altogether more elegant than one ordinarily sees on the
prairie. He wore his cap on one side of his head; his checked shirt,
open in front, was in very neat order, considering the circumstances,
and his blue pantaloons, of the John Bull cut, might once have figured
in Bond Street.

“Turn over that cake, man! turn it over, quick! Don’t you see it
burning?”

“It ain’t half done,” growled Sorel, in the amiable tone of a whipped
bull-dog.

“It is. Turn it over, I tell you!”

Sorel, a strong, sullen-looking Canadian, who from having spent his life
among the wildest and most remote of the Indian tribes, had imbibed much
of their dark, vindictive spirit, looked ferociously up, as if he longed
to leap upon his bourgeois and throttle him; but he obeyed the order,
coming from so experienced an artist.

“It was a good idea of yours,” said I, seating myself on the tongue of a
wagon, “to bring Indian meal with you.”

“Yes, yes” said R. “It’s good bread for the prairie--good bread for the
prairie. I tell you that’s burning again.”

Here he stooped down, and unsheathing the silver-mounted hunting-knife
in his belt, began to perform the part of cook himself; at the same
time requesting me to hold for a moment the book under his arm, which
interfered with the exercise of these important functions. I opened
it; it was “Macaulay’s Lays”; and I made some remark, expressing my
admiration of the work.

“Yes, yes; a pretty good thing. Macaulay can do better than that though.
I know him very well. I have traveled with him. Where was it we first
met--at Damascus? No, no; it was in Italy.”

“So,” said I, “you have been over the same ground with your countryman,
the author of ‘Eothen’? There has been some discussion in America as to
who he is. I have heard Milne’s name mentioned.”

“Milne’s? Oh, no, no, no; not at all. It was Kinglake; Kinglake’s the
man. I know him very well; that is, I have seen him.”

Here Jack C., who stood by, interposed a remark (a thing not common with
him), observing that he thought the weather would become fair before
twelve o’clock.

“It’s going to rain all day,” said R., “and clear up in the middle of
the night.”

Just then the clouds began to dissipate in a very unequivocal manner;
but Jack, not caring to defend his point against so authoritative a
declaration, walked away whistling, and we resumed our conversation.

“Borrow, the author of ‘The Bible in Spain,’ I presume you know him
too?”

“Oh, certainly; I know all those men. By the way, they told me that one
of your American writers, Judge Story, had died lately. I edited some of
his works in London; not without faults, though.”

Here followed an erudite commentary on certain points of law, in which
he particularly animadverted on the errors into which he considered that
the judge had been betrayed. At length, having touched successively
on an infinite variety of topics, I found that I had the happiness
of discovering a man equally competent to enlighten me upon them all,
equally an authority on matters of science or literature, philosophy or
fashion. The part I bore in the conversation was by no means a prominent
one; it was only necessary to set him going, and when he had run long
enough upon one topic, to divert him to another and lead him on to pour
out his heaps of treasure in succession.

“What has that fellow been saying to you?” said Shaw, as I returned to
the tent. “I have heard nothing but his talking for the last half-hour.”

R. had none of the peculiar traits of the ordinary “British snob”;
his absurdities were all his own, belonging to no particular nation or
clime. He was possessed with an active devil that had driven him over
land and sea, to no great purpose, as it seemed; for although he had the
usual complement of eyes and ears, the avenues between these organs and
his brain appeared remarkably narrow and untrodden. His energy was much
more conspicuous than his wisdom; but his predominant characteristic was
a magnanimous ambition to exercise on all occasions an awful rule and
supremacy, and this propensity equally displayed itself, as the reader
will have observed, whether the matter in question was the baking of a
hoe-cake or a point of international law. When such diverse elements
as he and the easy-tempered captain came in contact, no wonder some
commotion ensued; R. rode roughshod, from morning till night, over his
military ally.

At noon the sky was clear and we set out, trailing through mud and slime
six inches deep. That night we were spared the customary infliction of
the shower bath.

On the next afternoon we were moving slowly along, not far from a patch
of woods which lay on the right. Jack C. rode a little in advance;


The livelong day he had not spoke;


when suddenly he faced about, pointed to the woods, and roared out to
his brother:

“O Bill! here’s a cow!”

The captain instantly galloped forward, and he and Jack made a vain
attempt to capture the prize; but the cow, with a well-grounded distrust
of their intentions, took refuge among the trees. R. joined them, and
they soon drove her out. We watched their evolutions as they galloped
around here, trying in vain to noose her with their trail-ropes, which
they had converted into lariettes for the occasion. At length they
resorted to milder measures, and the cow was driven along with the
party. Soon after the usual thunderstorm came up, the wind blowing with
such fury that the streams of rain flew almost horizontally along the
prairie, roaring like a cataract. The horses turned tail to the storm,
and stood hanging their heads, bearing the infliction with an air of
meekness and resignation; while we drew our heads between our shoulders,
and crouched forward, so as to make our backs serve as a pent-house
for the rest of our persons. Meanwhile the cow, taking advantage of the
tumult, ran off, to the great discomfiture of the captain, who seemed to
consider her as his own especial prize, since she had been discovered by
Jack. In defiance of the storm, he pulled his cap tight over his brows,
jerked a huge buffalo pistol from his holster, and set out at full speed
after her. This was the last we saw of them for some time, the mist and
rain making an impenetrable veil; but at length we heard the captain’s
shout, and saw him looming through the tempest, the picture of a
Hibernian cavalier, with his cocked pistol held aloft for safety’s sake,
and a countenance of anxiety and excitement. The cow trotted before him,
but exhibited evident signs of an intention to run off again, and the
captain was roaring to us to head her. But the rain had got in behind
our coat collars, and was traveling over our necks in numerous little
streamlets, and being afraid to move our heads, for fear of admitting
more, we sat stiff and immovable, looking at the captain askance, and
laughing at his frantic movements. At last the cow made a sudden plunge
and ran off; the captain grasped his pistol firmly, spurred his horse,
and galloped after, with evident designs of mischief. In a moment we
heard the faint report, deadened by the rain, and then the conqueror
and his victim reappeared, the latter shot through the body, and quite
helpless. Not long after the storm moderated and we advanced again. The
cow walked painfully along under the charge of Jack, to whom the captain
had committed her, while he himself rode forward in his old capacity
of vedette. We were approaching a long line of trees, that followed
a stream stretching across our path, far in front, when we beheld the
vedette galloping toward us, apparently much excited, but with a broad
grin on his face.

“Let that cow drop behind!” he shouted to us; “here’s her owners!” And
in fact, as we approached the line of trees, a large white object, like
a tent, was visible behind them. On approaching, however, we found,
instead of the expected Mormon camp, nothing but the lonely prairie, and
a large white rock standing by the path. The cow therefore resumed her
place in our procession. She walked on until we encamped, when R. firmly
approaching with his enormous English double-barreled rifle, calmly and
deliberately took aim at her heart, and discharged into it first one
bullet and then the other. She was then butchered on the most approved
principles of woodcraft, and furnished a very welcome item to our
somewhat limited bill of fare.

In a day or two more we reached the river called the “Big Blue.” By
titles equally elegant, almost all the streams of this region are
designated. We had struggled through ditches and little brooks all that
morning; but on traversing the dense woods that lined the banks of the
Blue, we found more formidable difficulties awaited us, for the stream,
swollen by the rains, was wide, deep, and rapid.

No sooner were we on the spot than R. had flung off his clothes, and was
swimming across, or splashing through the shallows, with the end of a
rope between his teeth. We all looked on in admiration, wondering what
might be the design of this energetic preparation; but soon we heard him
shouting: “Give that rope a turn round that stump! You, Sorel: do you
hear? Look sharp now, Boisverd! Come over to this side, some of you, and
help me!” The men to whom these orders were directed paid not the
least attention to them, though they were poured out without pause
or intermission. Henry Chatillon directed the work, and it proceeded
quietly and rapidly. R.’s sharp brattling voice might have been
heard incessantly; and he was leaping about with the utmost activity,
multiplying himself, after the manner of great commanders, as if his
universal presence and supervision were of the last necessity. His
commands were rather amusingly inconsistent; for when he saw that the
men would not do as he told them, he wisely accommodated himself
to circumstances, and with the utmost vehemence ordered them to do
precisely that which they were at the time engaged upon, no doubt
recollecting the story of Mahomet and the refractory mountain.
Shaw smiled significantly; R. observed it, and, approaching with a
countenance of lofty indignation, began to vapor a little, but was
instantly reduced to silence.

The raft was at length complete. We piled our goods upon it, with
the exception of our guns, which each man chose to retain in his own
keeping. Sorel, Boisverd, Wright and Delorier took their stations at
the four corners, to hold it together, and swim across with it; and in
a moment more, all our earthly possessions were floating on the turbid
waters of the Big Blue. We sat on the bank, anxiously watching the
result, until we saw the raft safe landed in a little cove far down on
the opposite bank. The empty wagons were easily passed across; and then
each man mounting a horse, we rode through the stream, the stray animals
following of their own accord.



CHAPTER VI

THE PLATTE AND THE DESERT


We were now arrived at the close of our solitary journeyings along the
St. Joseph’s trail. On the evening of the 23d of May we encamped near
its junction with the old legitimate trail of the Oregon emigrants. We
had ridden long that afternoon, trying in vain to find wood and water,
until at length we saw the sunset sky reflected from a pool encircled by
bushes and a rock or two. The water lay in the bottom of a hollow, the
smooth prairie gracefully rising in oceanlike swells on every side.
We pitched our tents by it; not however before the keen eye of Henry
Chatillon had discerned some unusual object upon the faintly-defined
outline of the distant swell. But in the moist, hazy atmosphere of the
evening, nothing could be clearly distinguished. As we lay around the
fire after supper, a low and distant sound, strange enough amid the
loneliness of the prairie, reached our ears--peals of laughter, and the
faint voices of men and women. For eight days we had not encountered a
human being, and this singular warning of their vicinity had an effect
extremely wild and impressive.

About dark a sallow-faced fellow descended the hill on horseback, and
splashing through the pool rode up to the tents. He was enveloped in a
huge cloak, and his broad felt hat was weeping about his ears with
the drizzling moisture of the evening. Another followed, a stout,
square-built, intelligent-looking man, who announced himself as leader
of an emigrant party encamped a mile in advance of us. About twenty
wagons, he said, were with him; the rest of his party were on the
other side of the Big Blue, waiting for a woman who was in the pains of
child-birth, and quarreling meanwhile among themselves.

These were the first emigrants that we had overtaken, although we had
found abundant and melancholy traces of their progress throughout the
whole course of the journey. Sometimes we passed the grave of one who
had sickened and died on the way. The earth was usually torn up, and
covered thickly with wolf-tracks. Some had escaped this violation. One
morning a piece of plank, standing upright on the summit of a grassy
hill, attracted our notice, and riding up to it we found the following
words very roughly traced upon it, apparently by a red-hot piece of
iron:


MARY ELLIS

DIED MAY 7TH, 1845.

Aged two months.


Such tokens were of common occurrence, nothing could speak more for the
hardihood, or rather infatuation, of the adventurers, or the sufferings
that await them upon the journey.

We were late in breaking up our camp on the following morning, and
scarcely had we ridden a mile when we saw, far in advance of us, drawn
against the horizon, a line of objects stretching at regular intervals
along the level edge of the prairie. An intervening swell soon hid them
from sight, until, ascending it a quarter of an hour after, we saw close
before us the emigrant caravan, with its heavy white wagons creeping on
in their slow procession, and a large drove of cattle following behind.
Half a dozen yellow-visaged Missourians, mounted on horseback, were
cursing and shouting among them; their lank angular proportions
enveloped in brown homespun, evidently cut and adjusted by the hands
of a domestic female tailor. As we approached, they greeted us with
the polished salutation: “How are ye, boys? Are ye for Oregon or
California?”

As we pushed rapidly past the wagons, children’s faces were thrust
out from the white coverings to look at us; while the care-worn,
thin-featured matron, or the buxom girl, seated in front, suspended
the knitting on which most of them were engaged to stare at us with
wondering curiosity. By the side of each wagon stalked the proprietor,
urging on his patient oxen, who shouldered heavily along, inch by
inch, on their interminable journey. It was easy to see that fear and
dissension prevailed among them; some of the men--but these, with one
exception, were bachelors--looked wistfully upon us as we rode lightly
and swiftly past, and then impatiently at their own lumbering wagons
and heavy-gaited oxen. Others were unwilling to advance at all until
the party they had left behind should have rejoined them. Many were
murmuring against the leader they had chosen, and wished to depose him;
and this discontent was fermented by some ambitious spirits, who had
hopes of succeeding in his place. The women were divided between regrets
for the homes they had left and apprehension of the deserts and the
savages before them.

We soon left them far behind, and fondly hoped that we had taken a final
leave; but unluckily our companions’ wagon stuck so long in a deep muddy
ditch that, before it was extricated, the van of the emigrant caravan
appeared again, descending a ridge close at hand. Wagon after wagon
plunged through the mud; and as it was nearly noon, and the place
promised shade and water, we saw with much gratification that they were
resolved to encamp. Soon the wagons were wheeled into a circle; the
cattle were grazing over the meadow, and the men with sour, sullen
faces, were looking about for wood and water. They seemed to meet with
but indifferent success. As we left the ground, I saw a tall slouching
fellow with the nasal accent of “down east,” contemplating the contents
of his tin cup, which he had just filled with water.

“Look here, you,” he said; “it’s chock full of animals!”

The cup, as he held it out, exhibited in fact an extraordinary variety
and profusion of animal and vegetable life.

Riding up the little hill and looking back on the meadow, we could
easily see that all was not right in the camp of the emigrants. The
men were crowded together, and an angry discussion seemed to be going
forward. R. was missing from his wonted place in the line, and the
captain told us that he had remained behind to get his horse shod by a
blacksmith who was attached to the emigrant party. Something whispered
in our ears that mischief was on foot; we kept on, however, and coming
soon to a stream of tolerable water, we stopped to rest and dine. Still
the absentee lingered behind. At last, at the distance of a mile, he
and his horse suddenly appeared, sharply defined against the sky on the
summit of a hill; and close behind, a huge white object rose slowly into
view.

“What is that blockhead bringing with him now?”

A moment dispelled the mystery. Slowly and solemnly one behind the
other, four long trains of oxen and four emigrant wagons rolled over the
crest of the declivity and gravely descended, while R. rode in state
in the van. It seems that, during the process of shoeing the horse,
the smothered dissensions among the emigrants suddenly broke into open
rupture. Some insisted on pushing forward, some on remaining where they
were, and some on going back. Kearsley, their captain, threw up his
command in disgust. “And now, boys,” said he, “if any of you are for
going ahead, just you come along with me.”

Four wagons, with ten men, one woman, and one small child, made up
the force of the “go-ahead” faction, and R., with his usual proclivity
toward mischief, invited them to join our party. Fear of the
Indians--for I can conceive of no other motive--must have induced him
to court so burdensome an alliance. As may well be conceived, these
repeated instances of high-handed dealing sufficiently exasperated
us. In this case, indeed, the men who joined us were all that could be
desired; rude indeed in manner, but frank, manly, and intelligent.
To tell them we could not travel with them was of course out of the
question. I merely reminded Kearsley that if his oxen could not keep up
with our mules he must expect to be left behind, as we could not consent
to be further delayed on the journey; but he immediately replied, that
his oxen “SHOULD keep up; and if they couldn’t, why he allowed that he’d
find out how to make ‘em!” Having availed myself of what satisfaction
could be derived from giving R. to understand my opinion of his conduct,
I returned to our side of the camp.

On the next day, as it chanced, our English companions broke the
axle-tree of their wagon, and down came the whole cumbrous machine
lumbering into the bed of a brook! Here was a day’s work cut out for us.
Meanwhile, our emigrant associates kept on their way, and so vigorously
did they urge forward their powerful oxen that, with the broken
axle-tree and other calamities, it was full a week before we overtook
them; when at length we discovered them, one afternoon, crawling quietly
along the sandy brink of the Platte. But meanwhile various incidents
occurred to ourselves.

It was probable that at this stage of our journey the Pawnees would
attempt to rob us. We began therefore to stand guard in turn, dividing
the night into three watches, and appointing two men for each. Delorier
and I held guard together. We did not march with military precision to
and fro before the tents; our discipline was by no means so stringent
and rigid. We wrapped ourselves in our blankets, and sat down by the
fire; and Delorier, combining his culinary functions with his duties as
sentinel, employed himself in boiling the head of an antelope for our
morning’s repast. Yet we were models of vigilance in comparison with
some of the party; for the ordinary practice of the guard was to
establish himself in the most comfortable posture he could; lay his
rifle on the ground, and enveloping his nose in the blanket, meditate
on his mistress, or whatever subject best pleased him. This is all well
enough when among Indians who do not habitually proceed further in their
hostility than robbing travelers of their horses and mules, though,
indeed, a Pawnee’s forebearance is not always to be trusted; but in
certain regions farther to the west, the guard must beware how he
exposes his person to the light of the fire, lest perchance some
keen-eyed skulking marksman should let fly a bullet or an arrow from
amid the darkness.

Among various tales that circulated around our camp fire was a rather
curious one, told by Boisverd, and not inappropriate here. Boisverd was
trapping with several companions on the skirts of the Blackfoot country.
The man on guard, well knowing that it behooved him to put forth his
utmost precaution, kept aloof from the firelight, and sat watching
intently on all sides. At length he was aware of a dark, crouching
figure, stealing noiselessly into the circle of the light. He hastily
cocked his rifle, but the sharp click of the lock caught the ear of
Blackfoot, whose senses were all on the alert. Raising his arrow,
already fitted to the string, he shot in the direction of the sound. So
sure was his aim that he drove it through the throat of the unfortunate
guard, and then, with a loud yell, bounded from the camp.

As I looked at the partner of my watch, puffing and blowing over his
fire, it occurred to me that he might not prove the most efficient
auxiliary in time of trouble.

“Delorier,” said I, “would you run away if the Pawnees should fire at
us?”

“Ah! oui, oui, monsieur!” he replied very decisively.

I did not doubt the fact, but was a little surprised at the frankness of
the confession.

At this instant a most whimsical variety of voices--barks, howls, yelps,
and whines--all mingled as it were together, sounded from the prairie,
not far off, as if a whole conclave of wolves of every age and sex were
assembled there. Delorier looked up from his work with a laugh, and
began to imitate this curious medley of sounds with a most ludicrous
accuracy. At this they were repeated with redoubled emphasis, the
musician being apparently indignant at the successful efforts of a
rival. They all proceeded from the throat of one little wolf, not
larger than a spaniel, seated by himself at some distance. He was of
the species called the prairie wolf; a grim-visaged, but harmless little
brute, whose worst propensity is creeping among horses and gnawing the
ropes of raw hide by which they are picketed around the camp. But
other beasts roam the prairies, far more formidable in aspect and in
character. These are the large white and gray wolves, whose deep howl we
heard at intervals from far and near.

At last I fell into a doze, and, awakening from it, found Delorier
fast asleep. Scandalized by this breach of discipline, I was about to
stimulate his vigilance by stirring him with the stock of my rifle; but
compassion prevailing, I determined to let him sleep awhile, and then to
arouse him, and administer a suitable reproof for such a forgetfulness
of duty. Now and then I walked the rounds among the silent horses, to
see that all was right. The night was chill, damp, and dark, the dank
grass bending under the icy dewdrops. At the distance of a rod or two
the tents were invisible, and nothing could be seen but the obscure
figures of the horses, deeply breathing, and restlessly starting as they
slept, or still slowly champing the grass. Far off, beyond the black
outline of the prairie, there was a ruddy light, gradually increasing,
like the glow of a conflagration; until at length the broad disk of the
moon, blood-red, and vastly magnified by the vapors, rose slowly upon
the darkness, flecked by one or two little clouds, and as the light
poured over the gloomy plain, a fierce and stern howl, close at hand,
seemed to greet it as an unwelcome intruder. There was something
impressive and awful in the place and the hour; for I and the beasts
were all that had consciousness for many a league around.

Some days elapsed, and brought us near the Platte. Two men on horseback
approached us one morning, and we watched them with the curiosity and
interest that, upon the solitude of the plains, such an encounter always
excites. They were evidently whites, from their mode of riding, though,
contrary to the usage of that region, neither of them carried a rifle.

“Fools!” remarked Henry Chatillon, “to ride that way on the prairie;
Pawnee find them--then they catch it!”

Pawnee HAD found them, and they had come very near “catching it”;
indeed, nothing saved them from trouble but the approach of our party.
Shaw and I knew one of them; a man named Turner, whom we had seen at
Westport. He and his companion belonged to an emigrant party encamped
a few miles in advance, and had returned to look for some stray oxen,
leaving their rifles, with characteristic rashness or ignorance behind
them. Their neglect had nearly cost them dear; for just before we
came up, half a dozen Indians approached, and seeing them apparently
defenseless, one of the rascals seized the bridle of Turner’s fine
horse, and ordered him to dismount. Turner was wholly unarmed; but the
other jerked a little revolving pistol out of his pocket, at which
the Pawnee recoiled; and just then some of our men appearing in the
distance, the whole party whipped their rugged little horses, and made
off. In no way daunted, Turner foolishly persisted in going forward.

Long after leaving him, and late this afternoon, in the midst of a
gloomy and barren prairie, we came suddenly upon the great Pawnee trail,
leading from their villages on the Platte to their war and hunting
grounds to the southward. Here every summer pass the motley concourse;
thousands of savages, men, women, and children, horses and mules, laden
with their weapons and implements, and an innumerable multitude of
unruly wolfish dogs, who have not acquired the civilized accomplishment
of barking, but howl like their wild cousins of the prairie.

The permanent winter villages of the Pawnees stand on the lower Platte,
but throughout the summer the greater part of the inhabitants are
wandering over the plains, a treacherous cowardly banditti, who by a
thousand acts of pillage and murder have deserved summary chastisement
at the hands of government. Last year a Dakota warrior performed a
signal exploit at one of these villages. He approached it alone in the
middle of a dark night, and clambering up the outside of one of the
lodges which are in the form of a half-sphere, he looked in at the round
hole made at the top for the escape of smoke. The dusky light from the
smoldering embers showed him the forms of the sleeping inmates; and
dropping lightly through the opening, he unsheathed his knife, and
stirring the fire coolly selected his victims. One by one he stabbed and
scalped them, when a child suddenly awoke and screamed. He rushed from
the lodge, yelled a Sioux war-cry, shouted his name in triumph and
defiance, and in a moment had darted out upon the dark prairie, leaving
the whole village behind him in a tumult, with the howling and baying of
dogs, the screams of women and the yells of the enraged warriors.

Our friend Kearsley, as we learned on rejoining him, signalized himself
by a less bloody achievement. He and his men were good woodsmen, and
well skilled in the use of the rifle, but found themselves wholly out of
their element on the prairie. None of them had ever seen a buffalo and
they had very vague conceptions of his nature and appearance. On the
day after they reached the Platte, looking toward a distant swell, they
beheld a multitude of little black specks in motion upon its surface.

“Take your rifles, boys,” said Kearslcy, “and we’ll have fresh meat for
supper.” This inducement was quite sufficient. The ten men left their
wagons and set out in hot haste, some on horseback and some on foot, in
pursuit of the supposed buffalo. Meanwhile a high grassy ridge shut the
game from view; but mounting it after half an hour’s running and riding,
they found themselves suddenly confronted by about thirty mounted
Pawnees! The amazement and consternation were mutual. Having nothing but
their bows and arrows, the Indians thought their hour was come, and
the fate that they were no doubt conscious of richly deserving about
to overtake them. So they began, one and all, to shout forth the most
cordial salutations of friendship, running up with extreme earnestness
to shake hands with the Missourians, who were as much rejoiced as they
were to escape the expected conflict.

A low undulating line of sand-hills bounded the horizon before us. That
day we rode ten consecutive hours, and it was dusk before we entered the
hollows and gorges of these gloomy little hills. At length we gained the
summit, and the long expected valley of the Platte lay before us. We
all drew rein, and, gathering in a knot on the crest of the hill, sat
joyfully looking down upon the prospect. It was right welcome; strange
too, and striking to the imagination, and yet it had not one picturesque
or beautiful feature; nor had it any of the features of grandeur, other
than its vast extent, its solitude, and its wilderness. For league after
league a plain as level as a frozen lake was outspread beneath us;
here and there the Platte, divided into a dozen threadlike sluices, was
traversing it, and an occasional clump of wood, rising in the midst like
a shadowy island, relieved the monotony of the waste. No living thing
was moving throughout the vast landscape, except the lizards that darted
over the sand and through the rank grass and prickly-pear just at our
feet. And yet stern and wild associations gave a singular interest to
the view; for here each man lives by the strength of his arm and the
valor of his heart. Here society is reduced to its original elements,
the whole fabric of art and conventionality is struck rudely to pieces,
and men find themselves suddenly brought back to the wants and resources
of their original natures.

We had passed the more toilsome and monotonous part of the journey; but
four hundred miles still intervened between us and Fort Laramie; and to
reach that point cost us the travel of three additional weeks. During
the whole of this time we were passing up the center of a long narrow
sandy plain, reaching like an outstretched belt nearly to the Rocky
Mountains. Two lines of sand-hills, broken often into the wildest and
most fantastic forms, flanked the valley at the distance of a mile or
two on the right and left; while beyond them lay a barren, trackless
waste--The Great American Desert--extending for hundreds of miles to the
Arkansas on the one side, and the Missouri on the other. Before us and
behind us, the level monotony of the plain was unbroken as far as the
eye could reach. Sometimes it glared in the sun, an expanse of hot,
bare sand; sometimes it was veiled by long coarse grass. Huge skulls
and whitening bones of buffalo were scattered everywhere; the ground
was tracked by myriads of them, and often covered with the circular
indentations where the bulls had wallowed in the hot weather. From every
gorge and ravine, opening from the hills, descended deep, well-worn
paths, where the buffalo issue twice a day in regular procession down
to drink in the Platte. The river itself runs through the midst, a thin
sheet of rapid, turbid water, half a mile wide, and scarce two feet
deep. Its low banks for the most part without a bush or a tree, are of
loose sand, with which the stream is so charged that it grates on
the teeth in drinking. The naked landscape is, of itself, dreary and
monotonous enough, and yet the wild beasts and wild men that frequent
the valley of the Platte make it a scene of interest and excitement to
the traveler. Of those who have journeyed there, scarce one, perhaps,
fails to look back with fond regret to his horse and his rifle.

Early in the morning after we reached the Platte, a long procession of
squalid savages approached our camp. Each was on foot, leading his horse
by a rope of bull-hide. His attire consisted merely of a scanty cincture
and an old buffalo robe, tattered and begrimed by use, which hung
over his shoulders. His head was close shaven, except a ridge of hair
reaching over the crown from the center of the forehead, very much like
the long bristles on the back of a hyena, and he carried his bow and
arrows in his hand, while his meager little horse was laden with dried
buffalo meat, the produce of his hunting. Such were the first specimens
that we met--and very indifferent ones they were--of the genuine savages
of the prairie.

They were the Pawnees whom Kearsley had encountered the day before, and
belonged to a large hunting party known to be ranging the prairie in the
vicinity. They strode rapidly past, within a furlong of our tents,
not pausing or looking toward us, after the manner of Indians when
meditating mischief or conscious of ill-desert. I went out and met them;
and had an amicable conference with the chief, presenting him with
half a pound of tobacco, at which unmerited bounty he expressed much
gratification. These fellows, or some of their companions had committed
a dastardly outrage upon an emigrant party in advance of us. Two men,
out on horseback at a distance, were seized by them, but lashing their
horses, they broke loose and fled. At this the Pawnees raised the yell
and shot at them, transfixing the hindermost through the back with
several arrows, while his companion galloped away and brought in the
news to his party. The panic-stricken emigrants remained for several
days in camp, not daring even to send out in quest of the dead body.

The reader will recollect Turner, the man whose narrow escape was
mentioned not long since. We heard that the men, whom the entreaties
of his wife induced to go in search of him, found him leisurely driving
along his recovered oxen, and whistling in utter contempt of the Pawnee
nation. His party was encamped within two miles of us; but we passed
them that morning, while the men were driving in the oxen, and the women
packing their domestic utensils and their numerous offspring in the
spacious patriarchal wagons. As we looked back we saw their caravan
dragging its slow length along the plain; wearily toiling on its way, to
found new empires in the West.

Our New England climate is mild and equable compared with that of the
Platte. This very morning, for instance, was close and sultry, the sun
rising with a faint oppressive heat; when suddenly darkness gathered in
the west, and a furious blast of sleet and hail drove full in our faces,
icy cold, and urged with such demoniac vehemence that it felt like a
storm of needles. It was curious to see the horses; they faced about
in extreme displeasure, holding their tails like whipped dogs, and
shivering as the angry gusts, howling louder than a concert of wolves,
swept over us. Wright’s long train of mules came sweeping round before
the storm like a flight of brown snowbirds driven by a winter tempest.
Thus we all remained stationary for some minutes, crouching close to our
horses’ necks, much too surly to speak, though once the captain looked
up from between the collars of his coat, his face blood-red, and the
muscles of his mouth contracted by the cold into a most ludicrous grin
of agony. He grumbled something that sounded like a curse, directed
as we believed, against the unhappy hour when he had first thought of
leaving home. The thing was too good to last long; and the instant the
puffs of wind subsided we erected our tents, and remained in camp for
the rest of a gloomy and lowering day. The emigrants also encamped near
at hand. We, being first on the ground, had appropriated all the wood
within reach; so that our fire alone blazed cheerfully. Around it soon
gathered a group of uncouth figures, shivering in the drizzling rain.
Conspicuous among them were two or three of the half-savage men who
spend their reckless lives in trapping among the Rocky Mountains, or
in trading for the Fur Company in the Indian villages. They were all
of Canadian extraction; their hard, weather-beaten faces and bushy
mustaches looked out from beneath the hoods of their white capotes with
a bad and brutish expression, as if their owner might be the willing
agent of any villainy. And such in fact is the character of many of
these men.

On the day following we overtook Kearsley’s wagons, and thenceforward,
for a week or two, we were fellow-travelers. One good effect, at least,
resulted from the alliance; it materially diminished the serious fatigue
of standing guard; for the party being now more numerous, there were
longer intervals between each man’s turns of duty.



CHAPTER VII

THE BUFFALO


Four days on the Platte, and yet no buffalo! Last year’s signs of them
were provokingly abundant; and wood being extremely scarce, we found an
admirable substitute in bois de vache, which burns exactly like peat,
producing no unpleasant effects. The wagons one morning had left the
camp; Shaw and I were already on horseback, but Henry Chatillon still
sat cross-legged by the dead embers of the fire, playing pensively with
the lock of his rifle, while his sturdy Wyandotte pony stood quietly
behind him, looking over his head. At last he got up, patted the neck of
the pony (whom, from an exaggerated appreciation of his merits, he had
christened “Five Hundred Dollar”), and then mounted with a melancholy
air.

“What is it, Henry?”

“Ah, I feel lonesome; I never been here before; but I see away yonder
over the buttes, and down there on the prairie, black--all black with
buffalo!”

In the afternoon he and I left the party in search of an antelope; until
at the distance of a mile or two on the right, the tall white wagons
and the little black specks of horsemen were just visible, so slowly
advancing that they seemed motionless; and far on the left rose the
broken line of scorched, desolate sand-hills. The vast plain waved with
tall rank grass that swept our horses’ bellies; it swayed to and fro in
billows with the light breeze, and far and near antelope and wolves were
moving through it, the hairy backs of the latter alternately appearing
and disappearing as they bounded awkwardly along; while the antelope,
with the simple curiosity peculiar to them, would often approach as
closely, their little horns and white throats just visible above the
grass tops, as they gazed eagerly at us with their round black eyes.

I dismounted, and amused myself with firing at the wolves. Henry
attentively scrutinized the surrounding landscape; at length he gave a
shout, and called on me to mount again, pointing in the direction of the
sand-hills. A mile and a half from us, two minute black specks
slowly traversed the face of one of the bare glaring declivities, and
disappeared behind the summit. “Let us go!” cried Henry, belaboring the
sides of Five Hundred Dollar; and I following in his wake, we galloped
rapidly through the rank grass toward the base of the hills.

From one of their openings descended a deep ravine, widening as it
issued on the prairie. We entered it, and galloping up, in a moment were
surrounded by the bleak sand-hills. Half of their steep sides were bare;
the rest were scantily clothed with clumps of grass, and various uncouth
plants, conspicuous among which appeared the reptile-like prickly-pear.
They were gashed with numberless ravines; and as the sky had suddenly
darkened, and a cold gusty wind arisen, the strange shrubs and the
dreary hills looked doubly wild and desolate. But Henry’s face was all
eagerness. He tore off a little hair from the piece of buffalo robe
under his saddle, and threw it up, to show the course of the wind. It
blew directly before us. The game were therefore to windward, and it was
necessary to make our best speed to get around them.

We scrambled from this ravine, and galloping away through the hollows,
soon found another, winding like a snake among the hills, and so deep
that it completely concealed us. We rode up the bottom of it, glancing
through the shrubbery at its edge, till Henry abruptly jerked his rein,
and slid out of his saddle. Full a quarter of a mile distant, on the
outline of the farthest hill, a long procession of buffalo were walking,
in Indian file, with the utmost gravity and deliberation; then more
appeared, clambering from a hollow not far off, and ascending, one
behind the other, the grassy slope of another hill; then a shaggy head
and a pair of short broken horns appeared issuing out of a ravine close
at hand, and with a slow, stately step, one by one, the enormous brutes
came into view, taking their way across the valley, wholly unconscious
of an enemy. In a moment Henry was worming his way, lying flat on
the ground, through grass and prickly-pears, toward his unsuspecting
victims. He had with him both my rifle and his own. He was soon out of
sight, and still the buffalo kept issuing into the valley. For a long
time all was silent. I sat holding his horse, and wondering what he was
about, when suddenly, in rapid succession, came the sharp reports of the
two rifles, and the whole line of buffalo, quickening their pace into
a clumsy trot, gradually disappeared over the ridge of the hill. Henry
rose to his feet, and stood looking after them.

“You have missed them,” said I.

“Yes,” said Henry; “let us go.” He descended into the ravine, loaded the
rifles, and mounted his horse.

We rode up the hill after the buffalo. The herd was out of sight when
we reached the top, but lying on the grass not far off, was one quite
lifeless, and another violently struggling in the death agony.

“You see I miss him!” remarked Henry. He had fired from a distance of
more than a hundred and fifty yards, and both balls had passed through
the lungs--the true mark in shooting buffalo.

The darkness increased, and a driving storm came on. Tying our horses
to the horns of the victims, Henry began the bloody work of dissection,
slashing away with the science of a connoisseur, while I vainly
endeavored to imitate him. Old Hendrick recoiled with horror and
indignation when I endeavored to tie the meat to the strings of raw
hide, always carried for this purpose, dangling at the back of the
saddle. After some difficulty we overcame his scruples; and heavily
burdened with the more eligible portions of the buffalo, we set out on
our return. Scarcely had we emerged from the labyrinth of gorges and
ravines, and issued upon the open prairie, when the pricking sleet came
driving, gust upon gust, directly in our faces. It was strangely
dark, though wanting still an hour of sunset. The freezing storm soon
penetrated to the skin, but the uneasy trot of our heavy-gaited horses
kept us warm enough, as we forced them unwillingly in the teeth of the
sleet and rain, by the powerful suasion of our Indian whips. The prairie
in this place was hard and level. A flourishing colony of prairie dogs
had burrowed into it in every direction, and the little mounds of
fresh earth around their holes were about as numerous as the hills in
a cornfield; but not a yelp was to be heard; not the nose of a single
citizen was visible; all had retired to the depths of their burrows,
and we envied them their dry and comfortable habitations. An hour’s
hard riding showed us our tent dimly looming through the storm, one
side puffed out by the force of the wind, and the other collapsed in
proportion, while the disconsolate horses stood shivering close around,
and the wind kept up a dismal whistling in the boughs of three old
half-dead trees above. Shaw, like a patriarch, sat on his saddle in the
entrance, with a pipe in his mouth, and his arms folded, contemplating,
with cool satisfaction, the piles of meat that we flung on the ground
before him. A dark and dreary night succeeded; but the sun rose with
heat so sultry and languid that the captain excused himself on that
account from waylaying an old buffalo bull, who with stupid gravity was
walking over the prairie to drink at the river. So much for the climate
of the Platte!

But it was not the weather alone that had produced this sudden abatement
of the sportsmanlike zeal which the captain had always professed. He had
been out on the afternoon before, together with several members of his
party; but their hunting was attended with no other result than the
loss of one of their best horses, severely injured by Sorel, in vainly
chasing a wounded bull. The captain, whose ideas of hard riding were all
derived from transatlantic sources, expressed the utmost amazement at
the feats of Sorel, who went leaping ravines, and dashing at full speed
up and down the sides of precipitous hills, lashing his horse with
the recklessness of a Rocky Mountain rider. Unfortunately for the poor
animal he was the property of R., against whom Sorel entertained an
unbounded aversion. The captain himself, it seemed, had also attempted
to “run” a buffalo, but though a good and practiced horseman, he had
soon given over the attempt, being astonished and utterly disgusted at
the nature of the ground he was required to ride over.

Nothing unusual occurred on that day; but on the following morning Henry
Chatillon, looking over the oceanlike expanse, saw near the foot of the
distant hills something that looked like a band of buffalo. He was not
sure, he said, but at all events, if they were buffalo, there was a fine
chance for a race. Shaw and I at once determined to try the speed of our
horses.

“Come, captain; we’ll see which can ride hardest, a Yankee or an
Irishman.”

But the captain maintained a grave and austere countenance. He mounted
his led horse, however, though very slowly; and we set out at a trot.
The game appeared about three miles distant. As we proceeded the captain
made various remarks of doubt and indecision; and at length declared he
would have nothing to do with such a breakneck business; protesting that
he had ridden plenty of steeple-chases in his day, but he never knew
what riding was till he found himself behind a band of buffalo day
before yesterday. “I am convinced,” said the captain, “that, ‘running’
is out of the question.* Take my advice now and don’t attempt it. It’s
dangerous, and of no use at all.”

     *The method of hunting called “running” consists in
     attacking the buffalo on horseback and shooting him with
     bullets or arrows when at full-speed.  In “approaching,” the
     hunter conceals himself and crawls on the ground toward the
     game, or lies in wait to kill them.

“Then why did you come out with us? What do you mean to do?”

“I shall ‘approach,’” replied the captain.

“You don’t mean to ‘approach’ with your pistols, do you? We have all of
us left our rifles in the wagons.”

The captain seemed staggered at the suggestion. In his characteristic
indecision, at setting out, pistols, rifles, “running” and “approaching”
 were mingled in an inextricable medley in his brain. He trotted on in
silence between us for a while; but at length he dropped behind and
slowly walked his horse back to rejoin the party. Shaw and I kept on;
when lo! as we advanced, the band of buffalo were transformed into
certain clumps of tall bushes, dotting the prairie for a considerable
distance. At this ludicrous termination of our chase, we followed the
example of our late ally, and turned back toward the party. We
were skirting the brink of a deep ravine, when we saw Henry and the
broad-chested pony coming toward us at a gallop.

“Here’s old Papin and Frederic, down from Fort Laramie!” shouted Henry,
long before he came up. We had for some days expected this encounter.
Papin was the bourgeois of Fort Laramie. He had come down the river
with the buffalo robes and the beaver, the produce of the last winter’s
trading. I had among our baggage a letter which I wished to commit to
their hands; so requesting Henry to detain the boats if he could until
my return, I set out after the wagons. They were about four miles in
advance. In half an hour I overtook them, got the letter, trotted back
upon the trail, and looking carefully, as I rode, saw a patch of broken,
storm-blasted trees, and moving near them some little black specks like
men and horses. Arriving at the place, I found a strange assembly. The
boats, eleven in number, deep-laden with the skins, hugged close to
the shore, to escape being borne down by the swift current. The rowers,
swarthy ignoble Mexicans, turned their brutish faces upward to look, as
I reached the bank. Papin sat in the middle of one of the boats upon the
canvas covering that protected the robes. He was a stout, robust fellow,
with a little gray eye, that had a peculiarly sly twinkle. “Frederic”
 also stretched his tall rawboned proportions close by the bourgeois,
and “mountain-men” completed the group; some lounging in the boats, some
strolling on shore; some attired in gayly painted buffalo robes, like
Indian dandies; some with hair saturated with red paint, and beplastered
with glue to their temples; and one bedaubed with vermilion upon his
forehead and each cheek. They were a mongrel race; yet the French blood
seemed to predominate; in a few, indeed, might be seen the black snaky
eye of the Indian half-breed, and one and all, they seemed to aim at
assimilating themselves to their savage associates.

I shook hands with the bourgeois, and delivered the letter; then the
boats swung round into the stream and floated away. They had reason
for haste, for already the voyage from Fort Laramie had occupied a full
month, and the river was growing daily more shallow. Fifty times a
day the boats had been aground, indeed; those who navigate the Platte
invariably spend half their time upon sand-bars. Two of these boats,
the property of private traders, afterward separating from the rest,
got hopelessly involved in the shallows, not very far from the Pawnee
villages, and were soon surrounded by a swarm of the inhabitants. They
carried off everything that they considered valuable, including most of
the robes; and amused themselves by tying up the men left on guard and
soundly whipping them with sticks.

We encamped that night upon the bank of the river. Among the emigrants
there was an overgrown boy, some eighteen years old, with a head as
round and about as large as a pumpkin, and fever-and-ague fits had dyed
his face of a corresponding color. He wore an old white hat, tied under
his chin with a handkerchief; his body was short and stout, but his
legs of disproportioned and appalling length. I observed him at sunset,
breasting the hill with gigantic strides, and standing against the sky
on the summit, like a colossal pair of tongs. In a moment after we heard
him screaming frantically behind the ridge, and nothing doubting that
he was in the clutches of Indians or grizzly bears, some of the party
caught up their rifles and ran to the rescue. His outcries, however,
proved but an ebullition of joyous excitement; he had chased two little
wolf pups to their burrow, and he was on his knees, grubbing away like a
dog at the mouth of the hole, to get at them.

Before morning he caused more serious disquiet in the camp. It was his
turn to hold the middle guard; but no sooner was he called up, than he
coolly arranged a pair of saddle-bags under a wagon, laid his head upon
them, closed his eyes, opened his mouth and fell asleep. The guard on
our side of the camp, thinking it no part of his duty to look after the
cattle of the emigrants, contented himself with watching our own horses
and mules; the wolves, he said, were unusually noisy; but still no
mischief was anticipated until the sun rose, and not a hoof or horn was
in sight! The cattle were gone! While Tom was quietly slumbering, the
wolves had driven them away.

Then we reaped the fruits of R.’s precious plan of traveling in company
with emigrants. To leave them in their distress was not to be thought
of, and we felt bound to wait until the cattle could be searched for,
and, if possible, recovered. But the reader may be curious to know
what punishment awaited the faithless Tom. By the wholesome law of
the prairie, he who falls asleep on guard is condemned to walk all
day leading his horse by the bridle, and we found much fault with
our companions for not enforcing such a sentence on the offender.
Nevertheless had he been of our party, I have no doubt he would in like
manner have escaped scot-free. But the emigrants went farther than mere
forebearance; they decreed that since Tom couldn’t stand guard without
falling asleep, he shouldn’t stand guard at all, and henceforward his
slumbers were unbroken. Establishing such a premium on drowsiness could
have no very beneficial effect upon the vigilance of our sentinels; for
it is far from agreeable, after riding from sunrise to sunset, to feel
your slumbers interrupted by the butt of a rifle nudging your side, and
a sleepy voice growling in your ear that you must get up, to shiver and
freeze for three weary hours at midnight.

“Buffalo! buffalo!” It was but a grim old bull, roaming the prairie by
himself in misanthropic seclusion; but there might be more behind the
hills. Dreading the monotony and languor of the camp, Shaw and I saddled
our horses, buckled our holsters in their places, and set out with Henry
Chatillon in search of the game. Henry, not intending to take part in
the chase, but merely conducting us, carried his rifle with him, while
we left ours behind as incumbrances. We rode for some five or six miles,
and saw no living thing but wolves, snakes, and prairie dogs.

“This won’t do at all,” said Shaw.

“What won’t do?”

“There’s no wood about here to make a litter for the wounded man; I have
an idea that one of us will need something of the sort before the day is
over.”

There was some foundation for such an apprehension, for the ground was
none of the best for a race, and grew worse continually as we proceeded;
indeed it soon became desperately bad, consisting of abrupt hills and
deep hollows, cut by frequent ravines not easy to pass. At length, a
mile in advance, we saw a band of bulls. Some were scattered grazing
over a green declivity, while the rest were crowded more densely
together in the wide hollow below. Making a circuit to keep out of
sight, we rode toward them until we ascended a hill within a furlong of
them, beyond which nothing intervened that could possibly screen us from
their view. We dismounted behind the ridge just out of sight, drew our
saddle-girths, examined our pistols, and mounting again rode over
the hill, and descended at a canter toward them, bending close to
our horses’ necks. Instantly they took the alarm; those on the hill
descended; those below gathered into a mass, and the whole got in
motion, shouldering each other along at a clumsy gallop. We followed,
spurring our horses to full speed; and as the herd rushed, crowding and
trampling in terror through an opening in the hills, we were close at
their heels, half suffocated by the clouds of dust. But as we drew near,
their alarm and speed increased; our horses showed signs of the utmost
fear, bounding violently aside as we approached, and refusing to
enter among the herd. The buffalo now broke into several small bodies,
scampering over the hills in different directions, and I lost sight of
Shaw; neither of us knew where the other had gone. Old Pontiac ran like
a frantic elephant up hill and down hill, his ponderous hoofs striking
the prairie like sledge-hammers. He showed a curious mixture of
eagerness and terror, straining to overtake the panic-stricken herd, but
constantly recoiling in dismay as we drew near. The fugitives, indeed,
offered no very attractive spectacle, with their enormous size and
weight, their shaggy manes and the tattered remnants of their last
winter’s hair covering their backs in irregular shreds and patches, and
flying off in the wind as they ran. At length I urged my horse close
behind a bull, and after trying in vain, by blows and spurring, to
bring him alongside, I shot a bullet into the buffalo from this
disadvantageous position. At the report, Pontiac swerved so much that I
was again thrown a little behind the game. The bullet, entering too much
in the rear, failed to disable the bull, for a buffalo requires to be
shot at particular points, or he will certainly escape. The herd ran up
a hill, and I followed in pursuit. As Pontiac rushed headlong down on
the other side, I saw Shaw and Henry descending the hollow on the right,
at a leisurely gallop; and in front, the buffalo were just disappearing
behind the crest of the next hill, their short tails erect, and their
hoofs twinkling through a cloud of dust.

At that moment, I heard Shaw and Henry shouting to me; but the muscles
of a stronger arm than mine could not have checked at once the furious
course of Pontiac, whose mouth was as insensible as leather. Added to
this, I rode him that morning with a common snaffle, having the day
before, for the benefit of my other horse, unbuckled from my bridle the
curb which I ordinarily used. A stronger and hardier brute never trod
the prairie; but the novel sight of the buffalo filled him with terror,
and when at full speed he was almost incontrollable. Gaining the top of
the ridge, I saw nothing of the buffalo; they had all vanished amid the
intricacies of the hills and hollows. Reloading my pistols, in the best
way I could, I galloped on until I saw them again scuttling along at
the base of the hill, their panic somewhat abated. Down went old Pontiac
among them, scattering them to the right and left, and then we had
another long chase. About a dozen bulls were before us, scouring over
the hills, rushing down the declivities with tremendous weight and
impetuosity, and then laboring with a weary gallop upward. Still
Pontiac, in spite of spurring and beating, would not close with them.
One bull at length fell a little behind the rest, and by dint of much
effort I urged my horse within six or eight yards of his side. His back
was darkened with sweat; he was panting heavily, while his tongue lolled
out a foot from his jaws. Gradually I came up abreast of him, urging
Pontiac with leg and rein nearer to his side, then suddenly he did what
buffalo in such circumstances will always do; he slackened his gallop,
and turning toward us, with an aspect of mingled rage and distress,
lowered his huge shaggy head for a charge. Pontiac with a snort, leaped
aside in terror, nearly throwing me to the ground, as I was wholly
unprepared for such an evolution. I raised my pistol in a passion to
strike him on the head, but thinking better of it fired the bullet after
the bull, who had resumed his flight, then drew rein and determined
to rejoin my companions. It was high time. The breath blew hard from
Pontiac’s nostrils, and the sweat rolled in big drops down his sides;
I myself felt as if drenched in warm water. Pledging myself (and I
redeemed the pledge) to take my revenge at a future opportunity, I
looked round for some indications to show me where I was, and what
course I ought to pursue; I might as well have looked for landmarks in
the midst of the ocean. How many miles I had run or in what direction,
I had no idea; and around me the prairie was rolling in steep swells
and pitches, without a single distinctive feature to guide me. I had
a little compass hung at my neck; and ignorant that the Platte at this
point diverged considerably from its easterly course, I thought that by
keeping to the northward I should certainly reach it. So I turned
and rode about two hours in that direction. The prairie changed as I
advanced, softening away into easier undulations, but nothing like the
Platte appeared, nor any sign of a human being; the same wild endless
expanse lay around me still; and to all appearance I was as far from my
object as ever. I began now to consider myself in danger of being
lost; and therefore, reining in my horse, summoned the scanty share of
woodcraft that I possessed (if that term he applicable upon the prairie)
to extricate me. Looking round, it occurred to me that the buffalo might
prove my best guides. I soon found one of the paths made by them in
their passage to the river; it ran nearly at right angles to my course;
but turning my horse’s head in the direction it indicated, his freer
gait and erected ears assured me that I was right.

But in the meantime my ride had been by no means a solitary one.
The whole face of the country was dotted far and wide with countless
hundreds of buffalo. They trooped along in files and columns, bulls
cows, and calves, on the green faces of the declivities in front. They
scrambled away over the hills to the right and left; and far off, the
pale blue swells in the extreme distance were dotted with innumerable
specks. Sometimes I surprised shaggy old bulls grazing alone, or
sleeping behind the ridges I ascended. They would leap up at my
approach, stare stupidly at me through their tangled manes, and then
gallop heavily away. The antelope were very numerous; and as they are
always bold when in the neighborhood of buffalo, they would approach
quite near to look at me, gazing intently with their great round eyes,
then suddenly leap aside, and stretch lightly away over the prairie, as
swiftly as a racehorse. Squalid, ruffianlike wolves sneaked through the
hollows and sandy ravines. Several times I passed through villages of
prairie dogs, who sat, each at the mouth of his burrow, holding his paws
before him in a supplicating attitude, and yelping away most vehemently,
energetically whisking his little tail with every squeaking cry he
uttered. Prairie dogs are not fastidious in their choice of companions;
various long, checkered snakes were sunning themselves in the midst of
the village, and demure little gray owls, with a large white ring around
each eye, were perched side by side with the rightful inhabitants. The
prairie teemed with life. Again and again I looked toward the crowded
hillsides, and was sure I saw horsemen; and riding near, with a mixture
of hope and dread, for Indians were abroad, I found them transformed
into a group of buffalo. There was nothing in human shape amid all this
vast congregation of brute forms.

When I turned down the buffalo path, the prairie seemed changed; only
a wolf or two glided past at intervals, like conscious felons, never
looking to the right or left. Being now free from anxiety, I was at
leisure to observe minutely the objects around me; and here, for the
first time, I noticed insects wholly different from any of the varieties
found farther to the eastward. Gaudy butterflies fluttered about my
horse’s head; strangely formed beetles, glittering with metallic luster,
were crawling upon plants that I had never seen before; multitudes of
lizards, too, were darting like lightning over the sand.

I had run to a great distance from the river. It cost me a long ride
on the buffalo path before I saw from the ridge of a sand-hill the pale
surface of the Platte glistening in the midst of its desert valleys, and
the faint outline of the hills beyond waving along the sky. From where
I stood, not a tree nor a bush nor a living thing was visible throughout
the whole extent of the sun-scorched landscape. In half an hour I came
upon the trail, not far from the river; and seeing that the party had
not yet passed, I turned eastward to meet them, old Pontiac’s long
swinging trot again assuring me that I was right in doing so. Having
been slightly ill on leaving camp in the morning six or seven hours of
rough riding had fatigued me extremely. I soon stopped, therefore; flung
my saddle on the ground, and with my head resting on it, and my horse’s
trail-rope tied loosely to my arm, lay waiting the arrival of the
party, speculating meanwhile on the extent of the injuries Pontiac had
received. At length the white wagon coverings rose from the verge of the
plain. By a singular coincidence, almost at the same moment two horsemen
appeared coming down from the hills. They were Shaw and Henry, who had
searched for me a while in the morning, but well knowing the futility of
the attempt in such a broken country, had placed themselves on the top
of the highest hill they could find, and picketing their horses near
them, as a signal to me, had laid down and fallen asleep. The stray
cattle had been recovered, as the emigrants told us, about noon. Before
sunset, we pushed forward eight miles farther.


JUNE 7, 1846.--Four men are missing; R., Sorel and two emigrants.
They set out this morning after buffalo, and have not yet made their
appearance; whether killed or lost, we cannot tell.


I find the above in my notebook, and well remember the council held on
the occasion. Our fire was the scene of it; or the palpable superiority
of Henry Chatillon’s experience and skill made him the resort of the
whole camp upon every question of difficulty. He was molding bullets
at the fire, when the captain drew near, with a perturbed and care-worn
expression of countenance, faithfully reflected on the heavy features
of Jack, who followed close behind. Then emigrants came straggling from
their wagons toward the common center; various suggestions were made to
account for the absence of the four men, and one or two of the emigrants
declared that when out after the cattle they had seen Indians dogging
them, and crawling like wolves along the ridges of the hills. At this
time the captain slowly shook his head with double gravity, and solemnly
remarked:

“It’s a serious thing to be traveling through this cursed wilderness”;
an opinion in which Jack immediately expressed a thorough coincidence.
Henry would not commit himself by declaring any positive opinion.

“Maybe he only follow the buffalo too far; maybe Indian kill him; maybe
he got lost; I cannot tell!”

With this the auditors were obliged to rest content; the emigrants, not
in the least alarmed, though curious to know what had become of their
comrades, walked back to their wagons and the captain betook himself
pensively to his tent. Shaw and I followed his example.

“It will be a bad thing for our plans,” said he as we entered, “if these
fellows don’t get back safe. The captain is as helpless on the prairie
as a child. We shall have to take him and his brother in tow; they will
hang on us like lead.”

“The prairie is a strange place,” said I. “A month ago I should have
thought it rather a startling affair to have an acquaintance ride out in
the morning and lose his scalp before night, but here it seems the most
natural thing in the world; not that I believe that R. has lost his
yet.”

If a man is constitutionally liable to nervous apprehensions, a tour on
the distant prairies would prove the best prescription; for though when
in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains he may at times find himself
placed in circumstances of some danger, I believe that few ever breathe
that reckless atmosphere without becoming almost indifferent to any evil
chance that may befall themselves or their friends.

Shaw had a propensity for luxurious indulgence. He spread his blanket
with the utmost accuracy on the ground, picked up the sticks and stones
that he thought might interfere with his comfort, adjusted his saddle to
serve as a pillow, and composed himself for his night’s rest. I had the
first guard that evening; so, taking my rifle, I went out of the tent.
It was perfectly dark. A brisk wind blew down from the hills, and
the sparks from the fire were streaming over the prairie. One of the
emigrants, named Morton, was my companion; and laying our rifles on the
grass, we sat down together by the fire. Morton was a Kentuckian, an
athletic fellow, with a fine intelligent face, and in his manners and
conversation he showed the essential characteristics of a gentleman.
Our conversation turned on the pioneers of his gallant native State. The
three hours of our watch dragged away at last, and we went to call up
the relief.

R.’s guard succeeded mine. He was absent; but the captain, anxious lest
the camp should be left defenseless, had volunteered to stand in his
place; so I went to wake him up. There was no occasion for it, for the
captain had been awake since nightfall. A fire was blazing outside of
the tent, and by the light which struck through the canvas, I saw him
and Jack lying on their backs, with their eyes wide open. The captain
responded instantly to my call; he jumped up, seized the double-barreled
rifle, and came out of the tent with an air of solemn determination, as
if about to devote himself to the safety of the party. I went and lay
down, not doubting that for the next three hours our slumbers would be
guarded with sufficient vigilance.



CHAPTER VIII

TAKING FRENCH LEAVE


On the 8th of June, at eleven o’clock, we reached the South Fork of the
Platte, at the usual fording place. For league upon league the desert
uniformity of the prospect was almost unbroken; the hills were dotted
with little tufts of shriveled grass, but betwixt these the white sand
was glaring in the sun; and the channel of the river, almost on a level
with the plain, was but one great sand-bed, about half a mile wide. It
was covered with water, but so scantily that the bottom was scarcely
hidden; for, wide as it is, the average depth of the Platte does not at
this point exceed a foot and a half. Stopping near its bank, we gathered
bois de vache, and made a meal of buffalo meat. Far off, on the other
side, was a green meadow, where we could see the white tents and wagons
of an emigrant camp; and just opposite to us we could discern a group of
men and animals at the water’s edge. Four or five horsemen soon entered
the river, and in ten minutes had waded across and clambered up the
loose sand-bank. They were ill-looking fellows, thin and swarthy, with
care-worn, anxious faces and lips rigidly compressed. They had good
cause for anxiety; it was three days since they first encamped here, and
on the night of their arrival they had lost 123 of their best cattle,
driven off by the wolves, through the neglect of the man on guard. This
discouraging and alarming calamity was not the first that had overtaken
them. Since leaving the settlements, they had met with nothing but
misfortune. Some of their party had died; one man had been killed by the
Pawnees; and about a week before, they had been plundered by the Dakotas
of all their best horses, the wretched animals on which our visitors
were mounted being the only ones that were left. They had encamped, they
told us, near sunset, by the side of the Platte, and their oxen were
scattered over the meadow, while the band of horses were feeding a
little farther off. Suddenly the ridges of the hills were alive with a
swarm of mounted Indians, at least six hundred in number, who, with a
tremendous yell, came pouring down toward the camp, rushing up within a
few rods, to the great terror of the emigrants; but suddenly wheeling,
they swept around the band of horses, and in five minutes had
disappeared with their prey through the openings of the hills.

As these emigrants were telling their story, we saw four other
men approaching. They proved to be R. and his companions, who had
encountered no mischance of any kind, but had only wandered too far
in pursuit of the game. They said they had seen no Indians, but only
“millions of buffalo”; and both R. and Sorel had meat dangling behind
their saddles.

The emigrants re-crossed the river, and we prepared to follow. First
the heavy ox-wagons plunged down the bank, and dragged slowly over the
sand-beds; sometimes the hoofs of the oxen were scarcely wetted by the
thin sheet of water; and the next moment the river would be boiling
against their sides, and eddying fiercely around the wheels. Inch by
inch they receded from the shore, dwindling every moment, until at
length they seemed to be floating far in the very middle of the river.
A more critical experiment awaited us; for our little mule-cart was
but ill-fitted for the passage of so swift a stream. We watched it with
anxiety till it seemed to be a little motionless white speck in the
midst of the waters; and it WAS motionless, for it had stuck fast in a
quicksand. The little mules were losing their footing, the wheels were
sinking deeper and deeper, and the water began to rise through the
bottom and drench the goods within. All of us who had remained on the
hither bank galloped to the rescue; the men jumped into the water,
adding their strength to that of the mules, until by much effort the
cart was extricated, and conveyed in safety across.

As we gained the other bank, a rough group of men surrounded us. They
were not robust, nor large of frame, yet they had an aspect of hardy
endurance. Finding at home no scope for their fiery energies, they had
betaken themselves to the prairie; and in them seemed to be revived,
with redoubled force, that fierce spirit which impelled their ancestors,
scarce more lawless than themselves, from the German forests, to
inundate Europe and break to pieces the Roman empire. A fortnight
afterward this unfortunate party passed Fort Laramie, while we were
there. Not one of their missing oxen had been recovered, though they had
remained encamped a week in search of them; and they had been compelled
to abandon a great part of their baggage and provisions, and yoke cows
and heifers to their wagons to carry them forward upon their journey,
the most toilsome and hazardous part of which lay still before them.

It is worth noticing that on the Platte one may sometimes see the
shattered wrecks of ancient claw-footed tables, well waxed and rubbed,
or massive bureaus of carved oak. These, many of them no doubt
the relics of ancestral prosperity in the colonial time, must have
encountered strange vicissitudes. Imported, perhaps, originally from
England; then, with the declining fortunes of their owners, borne across
the Alleghenies to the remote wilderness of Ohio or Kentucky; then to
Illinois or Missouri; and now at last fondly stowed away in the family
wagon for the interminable journey to Oregon. But the stern privations
of the way are little anticipated. The cherished relic is soon flung out
to scorch and crack upon the hot prairie.

We resumed our journey; but we had gone scarcely a mile, when R. called
out from the rear:

“We’ll camp here.”

“Why do you want to camp? Look at the sun. It is not three o’clock yet.”

“We’ll camp here!”

This was the only reply vouchsafed. Delorier was in advance with his
cart. Seeing the mule-wagon wheeling from the track, he began to turn
his own team in the same direction.

“Go on, Delorier,” and the little cart advanced again. As we rode on, we
soon heard the wagon of our confederates creaking and jolting on behind
us, and the driver, Wright, discharging a furious volley of oaths
against his mules; no doubt venting upon them the wrath which he dared
not direct against a more appropriate object.

Something of this sort had frequently occurred. Our English friend was
by no means partial to us, and we thought we discovered in his conduct a
deliberate intention to thwart and annoy us, especially by retarding
the movements of the party, which he knew that we, being Yankees, were
anxious to quicken. Therefore, he would insist on encamping at all
unseasonable hours, saying that fifteen miles was a sufficient day’s
journey. Finding our wishes systematically disregarded, we took the
direction of affairs into our own hands. Keeping always in advance, to
the inexpressible indignation of R., we encamped at what time and place
we thought proper, not much caring whether the rest chose to follow or
not. They always did so, however, pitching their tents near ours, with
sullen and wrathful countenances.

Traveling together on these agreeable terms did not suit our tastes; for
some time we had meditated a separation. The connection with this party
had cost us various delays and inconveniences; and the glaring want
of courtesy and good sense displayed by their virtual leader did not
dispose us to bear these annoyances with much patience. We resolved to
leave camp early in the morning, and push forward as rapidly as possible
for Fort Laramie, which we hoped to reach, by hard traveling, in four or
five days. The captain soon trotted up between us, and we explained our
intentions.

“A very extraordinary proceeding, upon my word!” he remarked. Then he
began to enlarge upon the enormity of the design. The most prominent
impression in his mind evidently was that we were acting a base and
treacherous part in deserting his party, in what he considered a very
dangerous stage of the journey. To palliate the atrocity of our conduct,
we ventured to suggest that we were only four in number while his party
still included sixteen men; and as, moreover, we were to go forward
and they were to follow, at least a full proportion of the perils he
apprehended would fall upon us. But the austerity of the captain’s
features would not relax. “A very extraordinary proceeding, gentlemen!”
 and repeating this, he rode off to confer with his principal.

By good luck, we found a meadow of fresh grass, and a large pool of
rain-water in the midst of it. We encamped here at sunset. Plenty of
buffalo skulls were lying around, bleaching in the sun; and sprinkled
thickly among the grass was a great variety of strange flowers. I had
nothing else to do, and so gathering a handful, I sat down on a buffalo
skull to study them. Although the offspring of a wilderness, their
texture was frail and delicate, and their colors extremely rich; pure
white, dark blue, and a transparent crimson. One traveling in this
country seldom has leisure to think of anything but the stern features
of the scenery and its accompaniments, or the practical details of each
day’s journey. Like them, he and his thoughts grow hard and rough. But
now these flowers suddenly awakened a train of associations as alien to
the rude scene around me as they were themselves; and for the moment my
thoughts went back to New England. A throng of fair and well-remembered
faces rose, vividly as life, before me. “There are good things,” thought
I, “in the savage life, but what can it offer to replace those powerful
and ennobling influences that can reach unimpaired over more than three
thousand miles of mountains, forests and deserts?”

Before sunrise on the next morning our tent was down; we harnessed our
best horses to the cart and left the camp. But first we shook hands
with our friends the emigrants, who sincerely wished us a safe journey,
though some others of the party might easily have been consoled had we
encountered an Indian war party on the way. The captain and his brother
were standing on the top of a hill, wrapped in their plaids, like
spirits of the mist, keeping an anxious eye on the band of horses below.
We waved adieu to them as we rode off the ground. The captain replied
with a salutation of the utmost dignity, which Jack tried to imitate;
but being little practiced in the gestures of polite society, his effort
was not a very successful one.

In five minutes we had gained the foot of the hills, but here we came to
a stop. Old Hendrick was in the shafts, and being the very incarnation
of perverse and brutish obstinacy, he utterly refused to move. Delorier
lashed and swore till he was tired, but Hendrick stood like a rock,
grumbling to himself and looking askance at his enemy, until he saw a
favorable opportunity to take his revenge, when he struck out under the
shaft with such cool malignity of intention that Delorier only escaped
the blow by a sudden skip into the air, such as no one but a Frenchman
could achieve. Shaw and he then joined forces, and lashed on both sides
at once. The brute stood still for a while till he could bear it no
longer, when all at once he began to kick and plunge till he threatened
the utter demolition of the cart and harness. We glanced back at the
camp, which was in full sight. Our companions, inspired by emulation,
were leveling their tents and driving in their cattle and horses.

“Take the horse out,” said I.

I took the saddle from Pontiac and put it upon Hendrick; the former
was harnessed to the cart in an instant. “Avance donc!” cried Delorier.
Pontiac strode up the hill, twitching the little cart after him as if
it were a feather’s weight; and though, as we gained the top, we saw the
wagons of our deserted comrades just getting into motion, we had little
fear that they could overtake us. Leaving the trail, we struck directly
across the country, and took the shortest cut to reach the main stream
of the Platte. A deep ravine suddenly intercepted us. We skirted its
sides until we found them less abrupt, and then plunged through the best
way we could. Passing behind the sandy ravines called “Ash Hollow,” we
stopped for a short nooning at the side of a pool of rain-water; but
soon resumed our journey, and some hours before sunset were descending
the ravines and gorges opening downward upon the Platte to the west of
Ash Hollow. Our horses waded to the fetlock in sand; the sun scorched
like fire, and the air swarmed with sand-flies and mosquitoes.

At last we gained the Platte. Following it for about five miles, we saw,
just as the sun was sinking, a great meadow, dotted with hundreds of
cattle, and beyond them an emigrant encampment. A party of about a dozen
came out to meet us, looking upon us at first with cold and suspicious
faces. Seeing four men, different in appearance and equipment from
themselves, emerging from the hills, they had taken us for the van
of the much-dreaded Mormons, whom they were very apprehensive of
encountering. We made known our true character, and then they greeted
us cordially. They expressed much surprise that so small a party should
venture to traverse that region, though in fact such attempts are not
unfrequently made by trappers and Indian traders. We rode with them to
their camp. The wagons, some fifty in number, with here and there a tent
intervening, were arranged as usual in a circle; in the area within the
best horses were picketed, and the whole circumference was glowing with
the dusky light of the fires, displaying the forms of the women and
children who were crowded around them. This patriarchal scene was
curious and striking enough; but we made our escape from the place with
all possible dispatch, being tormented by the intrusive curiosity of the
men who crowded around us. Yankee curiosity was nothing to theirs. They
demanded our names, where we came from, where we were going, and what
was our business. The last query was particularly embarrassing; since
traveling in that country, or indeed anywhere, from any other motive
than gain, was an idea of which they took no cognizance. Yet they were
fine-looking fellows, with an air of frankness, generosity, and even
courtesy, having come from one of the least barbarous of the frontier
counties.

We passed about a mile beyond them, and encamped. Being too few in
number to stand guard without excessive fatigue, we extinguished our
fire, lest it should attract the notice of wandering Indians; and
picketing our horses close around us, slept undisturbed till morning.
For three days we traveled without interruption, and on the evening of
the third encamped by the well-known spring on Scott’s Bluff.

Henry Chatillon and I rode out in the morning, and descending the
western side of the Bluff, were crossing the plain beyond. Something
that seemed to me a file of buffalo came into view, descending the
hills several miles before us. But Henry reined in his horse, and keenly
peering across the prairie with a better and more practiced eye, soon
discovered its real nature. “Indians!” he said. “Old Smoke’s lodges, I
b’lieve. Come! let us go! Wah! get up, now, Five Hundred Dollar!” And
laying on the lash with good will, he galloped forward, and I rode by
his side. Not long after, a black speck became visible on the prairie,
full two miles off. It grew larger and larger; it assumed the form of
a man and horse; and soon we could discern a naked Indian, careering at
full gallop toward us. When within a furlong he wheeled his horse in
a wide circle, and made him describe various mystic figures upon the
prairie; and Henry immediately compelled Five Hundred Dollar to execute
similar evolutions. “It IS Old Smoke’s village,” said he, interpreting
these signals; “didn’t I say so?”

As the Indian approached we stopped to wait for him, when suddenly he
vanished, sinking, as it were, into the earth. He had come upon one of
the deep ravines that everywhere intersect these prairies. In an instant
the rough head of his horse stretched upward from the edge and the rider
and steed came scrambling out, and bounded up to us; a sudden jerk of
the rein brought the wild panting horse to a full stop. Then followed
the needful formality of shaking hands. I forget our visitor’s name.
He was a young fellow, of no note in his nation; yet in his person and
equipments he was a good specimen of a Dakota warrior in his ordinary
traveling dress. Like most of his people, he was nearly six feet high;
lithely and gracefully, yet strongly proportioned; and with a skin
singularly clear and delicate. He wore no paint; his head was bare; and
his long hair was gathered in a clump behind, to the top of which was
attached transversely, both by way of ornament and of talisman, the
mystic whistle, made of the wingbone of the war eagle, and endowed with
various magic virtues. From the back of his head descended a line of
glittering brass plates, tapering from the size of a doubloon to that of
a half-dime, a cumbrous ornament, in high vogue among the Dakotas, and
for which they pay the traders a most extravagant price; his chest and
arms were naked, the buffalo robe, worn over them when at rest, had
fallen about his waist, and was confined there by a belt. This, with the
gay moccasins on his feet, completed his attire. For arms he carried a
quiver of dogskin at his back, and a rude but powerful bow in his hand.
His horse had no bridle; a cord of hair, lashed around his jaw, served
in place of one. The saddle was of most singular construction; it was
made of wood covered with raw hide, and both pommel and cantle rose
perpendicularly full eighteen inches, so that the warrior was wedged
firmly in his seat, whence nothing could dislodge him but the bursting
of the girths.

Advancing with our new companion, we found more of his people seated in
a circle on the top of a hill; while a rude procession came straggling
down the neighboring hollow, men, women, and children, with horses
dragging the lodge-poles behind them. All that morning, as we moved
forward, tall savages were stalking silently about us. At noon we
reached Horse Creek; and as we waded through the shallow water, we saw a
wild and striking scene. The main body of the Indians had arrived before
us. On the farther bank stood a large and strong man, nearly naked,
holding a white horse by a long cord, and eyeing us as we approached.
This was the chief, whom Henry called “Old Smoke.” Just behind him his
youngest and favorite squaw sat astride of a fine mule; it was covered
with caparisons of whitened skins, garnished with blue and white beads,
and fringed with little ornaments of metal that tinkled with every
movement of the animal. The girl had a light clear complexion, enlivened
by a spot of vermilion on each cheek; she smiled, not to say grinned,
upon us, showing two gleaming rows of white teeth. In her hand, she
carried the tall lance of her unchivalrous lord, fluttering with
feathers; his round white shield hung at the side of her mule; and his
pipe was slung at her back. Her dress was a tunic of deerskin, made
beautifully white by means of a species of clay found on the prairie,
and ornamented with beads, arrayed in figures more gay than tasteful,
and with long fringes at all the seams. Not far from the chief stood a
group of stately figures, their white buffalo robes thrown over their
shoulders, gazing coldly upon us; and in the rear, for several acres,
the ground was covered with a temporary encampment; men, women, and
children swarmed like bees; hundreds of dogs, of all sizes and colors,
ran restlessly about; and, close at hand, the wide shallow stream was
alive with boys, girls, and young squaws, splashing, screaming, and
laughing in the water. At the same time a long train of emigrant
wagons were crossing the creek, and dragging on in their slow, heavy
procession, passed the encampment of the people whom they and their
descendants, in the space of a century, are to sweep from the face of
the earth.

The encampment itself was merely a temporary one during the heat of the
day. None of the lodges were erected; but their heavy leather coverings,
and the long poles used to support them, were scattered everywhere
around, among weapons, domestic utensils, and the rude harness of mules
and horses. The squaws of each lazy warrior had made him a shelter
from the sun, by stretching a few buffalo robes, or the corner of a
lodge-covering upon poles; and here he sat in the shade, with a favorite
young squaw, perhaps, at his side, glittering with all imaginable
trinkets. Before him stood the insignia of his rank as a warrior, his
white shield of bull-hide, his medicine bag, his bow and quiver, his
lance and his pipe, raised aloft on a tripod of three poles. Except the
dogs, the most active and noisy tenants of the camp were the old women,
ugly as Macbeth’s witches, with their hair streaming loose in the wind,
and nothing but the tattered fragment of an old buffalo robe to hide
their shriveled wiry limbs. The day of their favoritism passed two
generations ago; now the heaviest labors of the camp devolved upon them;
they were to harness the horses, pitch the lodges, dress the buffalo
robes, and bring in meat for the hunters. With the cracked voices of
these hags, the clamor of dogs, the shouting and laughing of children
and girls, and the listless tranquillity of the warriors, the whole
scene had an effect too lively and picturesque ever to be forgotten.

We stopped not far from the Indian camp, and having invited some of the
chiefs and warriors to dinner, placed before them a sumptuous repast of
biscuit and coffee. Squatted in a half circle on the ground, they soon
disposed of it. As we rode forward on the afternoon journey, several of
our late guests accompanied us. Among the rest was a huge bloated savage
of more than three hundred pounds’ weight, christened La Cochon, in
consideration of his preposterous dimensions and certain corresponding
traits of his character. “The Hog” bestrode a little white pony, scarce
able to bear up under the enormous burden, though, by way of keeping
up the necessary stimulus, the rider kept both feet in constant motion,
playing alternately against his ribs. The old man was not a chief; he
never had ambition enough to become one; he was not a warrior nor a
hunter, for he was too fat and lazy: but he was the richest man in the
whole village. Riches among the Dakotas consist in horses, and of these
The Hog had accumulated more than thirty. He had already ten times as
many as he wanted, yet still his appetite for horses was insatiable.
Trotting up to me he shook me by the hand, and gave me to understand
that he was a very devoted friend; and then he began a series of most
earnest signs and gesticulations, his oily countenance radiant with
smiles, and his little eyes peeping out with a cunning twinkle from
between the masses of flesh that almost obscured them. Knowing nothing
at that time of the sign language of the Indians, I could only guess at
his meaning. So I called on Henry to explain it.

The Hog, it seems, was anxious to conclude a matrimonial bargain. He
said he had a very pretty daughter in his lodge, whom he would give
me, if I would give him my horse. These flattering overtures I chose to
reject; at which The Hog, still laughing with undiminished good humor,
gathered his robe about his shoulders, and rode away.

Where we encamped that night, an arm of the Platte ran between high
bluffs; it was turbid and swift as heretofore, but trees were growing on
its crumbling banks, and there was a nook of grass between the water
and the hill. Just before entering this place, we saw the emigrants
encamping at two or three miles’ distance on the right; while the whole
Indian rabble were pouring down the neighboring hill in hope of the same
sort of entertainment which they had experienced from us. In the savage
landscape before our camp, nothing but the rushing of the Platte broke
the silence. Through the ragged boughs of the trees, dilapidated and
half dead, we saw the sun setting in crimson behind the peaks of the
Black Hills; the restless bosom of the river was suffused with red; our
white tent was tinged with it, and the sterile bluffs, up to the rocks
that crowned them, partook of the same fiery hue. It soon passed away;
no light remained, but that from our fire, blazing high among the dusky
trees and bushes. We lay around it wrapped in our blankets, smoking and
conversing until a late hour, and then withdrew to our tent.

We crossed a sun-scorched plain on the next morning; the line of old
cotton-wood trees that fringed the bank of the Platte forming its
extreme verge. Nestled apparently close beneath them, we could discern
in the distance something like a building. As we came nearer, it assumed
form and dimensions, and proved to be a rough structure of logs. It was
a little trading fort, belonging to two private traders; and originally
intended, like all the forts of the country, to form a hollow square,
with rooms for lodging and storage opening upon the area within. Only
two sides of it had been completed; the place was now as ill-fitted for
the purposes of defense as any of those little log-houses, which
upon our constantly shifting frontier have been so often successfully
maintained against overwhelming odds of Indians. Two lodges were pitched
close to the fort; the sun beat scorching upon the logs; no living thing
was stirring except one old squaw, who thrust her round head from the
opening of the nearest lodge, and three or four stout young pups, who
were peeping with looks of eager inquiry from under the covering. In a
moment a door opened, and a little, swarthy black-eyed Frenchman came
out. His dress was rather singular; his black curling hair was parted
in the middle of his head, and fell below his shoulders; he wore a tight
frock of smoked deerskin, very gayly ornamented with figures worked
in dyed porcupine quills. His moccasins and leggings were also gaudily
adorned in the same manner; and the latter had in addition a line of
long fringes, reaching down the seams. The small frame of Richard,
for by this name Henry made him known to us, was in the highest degree
athletic and vigorous. There was no superfluity, and indeed there
seldom is among the active white men of this country, but every limb was
compact and hard; every sinew had its full tone and elasticity, and the
whole man wore an air of mingled hardihood and buoyancy.

Richard committed our horses to a Navahoe slave, a mean looking fellow
taken prisoner on the Mexican frontier; and, relieving us of our rifles
with ready politeness, led the way into the principal apartment of his
establishment. This was a room ten feet square. The walls and floor were
of black mud, and the roof of rough timber; there was a huge fireplace
made of four flat rocks, picked up on the prairie. An Indian bow and
otter-skin quiver, several gaudy articles of Rocky Mountain finery, an
Indian medicine bag, and a pipe and tobacco pouch, garnished the walls,
and rifles rested in a corner. There was no furniture except a sort
of rough settle covered with buffalo robes, upon which lolled a
tall half-breed, with his hair glued in masses upon each temple,
and saturated with vermilion. Two or three more “mountain men” sat
cross-legged on the floor. Their attire was not unlike that of Richard
himself; but the most striking figure of the group was a naked Indian
boy of sixteen, with a handsome face, and light, active proportions, who
sat in an easy posture in the corner near the door. Not one of his limbs
moved the breadth of a hair; his eye was fixed immovably, not on any
person present, but, as it appeared, on the projecting corner of the
fireplace opposite to him.

On these prairies the custom of smoking with friends is seldom omitted,
whether among Indians or whites. The pipe, therefore, was taken from the
wall, and its great red bowl crammed with the tobacco and shongsasha,
mixed in suitable proportions. Then it passed round the circle, each man
inhaling a few whiffs and handing it to his neighbor. Having spent half
an hour here, we took our leave; first inviting our new friends to drink
a cup of coffee with us at our camp, a mile farther up the river. By
this time, as the reader may conceive, we had grown rather shabby; our
clothes had burst into rags and tatters; and what was worse, we had very
little means of renovation. Fort Laramie was but seven miles before us.
Being totally averse to appearing in such plight among any society that
could boast an approximation to the civilized, we soon stopped by the
river to make our toilet in the best way we could. We hung up small
looking-glasses against the trees and shaved, an operation neglected for
six weeks; we performed our ablutions in the Platte, though the utility
of such a proceeding was questionable, the water looking exactly like
a cup of chocolate, and the banks consisting of the softest and richest
yellow mud, so that we were obliged, as a preliminary, to build a
cause-way of stout branches and twigs. Having also put on radiant
moccasins, procured from a squaw of Richard’s establishment, and made
what other improvements our narrow circumstances allowed, we took our
seats on the grass with a feeling of greatly increased respectability,
to wait the arrival of our guests. They came; the banquet was concluded,
and the pipe smoked. Bidding them adieu, we turned our horses’ heads
toward the fort.

An hour elapsed. The barren hills closed across our front, and we could
see no farther; until having surmounted them, a rapid stream appeared
at the foot of the descent, running into the Platte; beyond was a green
meadow, dotted with bushes, and in the midst of these, at the point
where the two rivers joined, were the low clay walls of a fort. This
was not Fort Laramie, but another post of less recent date, which having
sunk before its successful competitor was now deserted and ruinous. A
moment after the hills, seeming to draw apart as we advanced, disclosed
Fort Laramie itself, its high bastions and perpendicular walls of
clay crowning an eminence on the left beyond the stream, while behind
stretched a line of arid and desolate ridges, and behind these again,
towering aloft seven thousand feet, arose the grim Black Hills.

We tried to ford Laramie Creek at a point nearly opposite the fort, but
the stream, swollen with the rains in the mountains, was too rapid. We
passed up along its bank to find a better crossing place. Men gathered
on the wall to look at us. “There’s Bordeaux!” called Henry, his face
brightening as he recognized his acquaintance; “him there with the
spyglass; and there’s old Vaskiss, and Tucker, and May; and, by George!
there’s Cimoneau!” This Cimoneau was Henry’s fast friend, and the only
man in the country who could rival him in hunting.

We soon found a ford. Henry led the way, the pony approaching the bank
with a countenance of cool indifference, bracing his feet and sliding
into the stream with the most unmoved composure.

     At the first plunge the horse sunk low,
     And the water broke o’er the saddle-bow

We followed; the water boiled against our saddles, but our horses bore
us easily through. The unfortunate little mules came near going down
with the current, cart and all; and we watched them with some solicitude
scrambling over the loose round stones at the bottom, and bracing
stoutly against the stream. All landed safely at last; we crossed a
little plain, descended a hollow, and riding up a steep bank found
ourselves before the gateway of Fort Laramie, under the impending
blockhouse erected above it to defend the entrance.



CHAPTER IX

SCENES AT FORT LARAMIE


Looking back, after the expiration of a year, upon Fort Laramie and its
inmates, they seem less like a reality than like some fanciful picture
of the olden time; so different was the scene from any which this tamer
side of the world can present. Tall Indians, enveloped in their white
buffalo robes, were striding across the area or reclining at full length
on the low roofs of the buildings which inclosed it. Numerous squaws,
gayly bedizened, sat grouped in front of the apartments they occupied;
their mongrel offspring, restless and vociferous, rambled in every
direction through the fort; and the trappers, traders, and ENGAGES of
the establishment were busy at their labor or their amusements.

We were met at the gate, but by no means cordially welcomed. Indeed,
we seemed objects of some distrust and suspicion until Henry Chatillon
explained that we were not traders, and we, in confirmation, handed to
the bourgeois a letter of introduction from his principals. He took
it, turned it upside down, and tried hard to read it; but his literary
attainments not being adequate to the task, he applied for relief to
the clerk, a sleek, smiling Frenchman, named Montalon. The letter read,
Bordeaux (the bourgeois) seemed gradually to awaken to a sense of what
was expected of him. Though not deficient in hospitable intentions, he
was wholly unaccustomed to act as master of ceremonies. Discarding all
formalities of reception, he did not honor us with a single word, but
walked swiftly across the area, while we followed in some admiration to
a railing and a flight of steps opposite the entrance. He signed to us
that we had better fasten our horses to the railing; then he walked
up the steps, tramped along a rude balcony, and kicking open a door
displayed a large room, rather more elaborately finished than a barn.
For furniture it had a rough bedstead, but no bed; two chairs, a chest
of drawers, a tin pail to hold water, and a board to cut tobacco upon. A
brass crucifix hung on the wall, and close at hand a recent scalp, with
hair full a yard long, was suspended from a nail. I shall again have
occasion to mention this dismal trophy, its history being connected with
that of our subsequent proceedings.

This apartment, the best in Fort Laramie, was that usually occupied by
the legitimate bourgeois, Papin; in whose absence the command devolved
upon Bordeaux. The latter, a stout, bluff little fellow, much inflated
by a sense of his new authority, began to roar for buffalo robes. These
being brought and spread upon the floor formed our beds; much better
ones than we had of late been accustomed to. Our arrangements made, we
stepped out to the balcony to take a more leisurely survey of the long
looked-for haven at which we had arrived at last. Beneath us was the
square area surrounded by little rooms, or rather cells, which opened
upon it. These were devoted to various purposes, but served chiefly for
the accommodation of the men employed at the fort, or of the equally
numerous squaws, whom they were allowed to maintain in it. Opposite to
us rose the blockhouse above the gateway; it was adorned with a figure
which even now haunts my memory; a horse at full speed, daubed upon
the boards with red paint, and exhibiting a degree of skill which might
rival that displayed by the Indians in executing similar designs upon
their robes and lodges. A busy scene was enacting in the area. The
wagons of Vaskiss, an old trader, were about to set out for a remote
post in the mountains, and the Canadians were going through their
preparations with all possible bustle, while here and there an Indian
stood looking on with imperturbable gravity.

Fort Laramie is one of the posts established by the American Fur
Company, who well-nigh monopolize the Indian trade of this whole region.
Here their officials rule with an absolute sway; the arm of the United
States has little force; for when we were there, the extreme outposts
of her troops were about seven hundred miles to the eastward. The little
fort is built of bricks dried in the sun, and externally is of an oblong
form, with bastions of clay, in the form of ordinary blockhouses, at two
of the corners. The walls are about fifteen feet high, and surmounted by
a slender palisade. The roofs of the apartments within, which are built
close against the walls, serve the purpose of a banquette. Within,
the fort is divided by a partition; on one side is the square area
surrounded by the storerooms, offices, and apartments of the inmates;
on the other is the corral, a narrow place, encompassed by the high clay
walls, where at night, or in presence of dangerous Indians, the horses
and mules of the fort are crowded for safe-keeping. The main entrance
has two gates, with an arched passage intervening. A little square
window, quite high above the ground, opens laterally from an adjoining
chamber into this passage; so that when the inner gate is closed and
barred, a person without may still hold communication with those within
through this narrow aperture. This obviates the necessity of admitting
suspicious Indians, for purposes of trading, into the body of the fort;
for when danger is apprehended, the inner gate is shut fast, and all
traffic is carried on by means of the little window. This precaution,
though highly necessary at some of the company’s posts, is now seldom
resorted to at Fort Laramie; where, though men are frequently killed in
its neighborhood, no apprehensions are now entertained of any general
designs of hostility from the Indians.

We did not long enjoy our new quarters undisturbed. The door was
silently pushed open, and two eyeballs and a visage as black as night
looked in upon us; then a red arm and shoulder intruded themselves, and
a tall Indian, gliding in, shook us by the hand, grunted his salutation,
and sat down on the floor. Others followed, with faces of the natural
hue; and letting fall their heavy robes from their shoulders, they took
their seats, quite at ease, in a semicircle before us. The pipe was now
to be lighted and passed round from one to another; and this was the
only entertainment that at present they expected from us. These visitors
were fathers, brothers, or other relatives of the squaws in the
fort, where they were permitted to remain, loitering about in perfect
idleness. All those who smoked with us were men of standing and repute.
Two or three others dropped in also; young fellows who neither by their
years nor their exploits were entitled to rank with the old men and
warriors, and who, abashed in the presence of their superiors, stood
aloof, never withdrawing their eyes from us. Their cheeks were adorned
with vermilion, their ears with pendants of shell, and their necks with
beads. Never yet having signalized themselves as hunters, or performed
the honorable exploit of killing a man, they were held in slight
esteem, and were diffident and bashful in proportion. Certain formidable
inconveniences attended this influx of visitors. They were bent on
inspecting everything in the room; our equipments and our dress alike
underwent their scrutiny; for though the contrary has been carelessly
asserted, few beings have more curiosity than Indians in regard to
subjects within their ordinary range of thought. As to other matters,
indeed, they seemed utterly indifferent. They will not trouble
themselves to inquire into what they cannot comprehend, but are quite
contented to place their hands over their mouths in token of wonder, and
exclaim that it is “great medicine.” With this comprehensive solution,
an Indian never is at a loss. He never launches forth into speculation
and conjecture; his reason moves in its beaten track. His soul is
dormant; and no exertions of the missionaries, Jesuit or Puritan, of the
Old World or of the New, have as yet availed to rouse it.

As we were looking, at sunset, from the wall, upon the wild and desolate
plains that surround the fort, we observed a cluster of strange objects
like scaffolds rising in the distance against the red western sky. They
bore aloft some singular looking burdens; and at their foot glimmered
something white like bones. This was the place of sepulture of some
Dakota chiefs, whose remains their people are fond of placing in the
vicinity of the fort, in the hope that they may thus be protected from
violation at the hands of their enemies. Yet it has happened more than
once, and quite recently, that war parties of the Crow Indians, ranging
through the country, have thrown the bodies from the scaffolds, and
broken them to pieces amid the yells of the Dakotas, who remained pent
up in the fort, too few to defend the honored relics from insult. The
white objects upon the ground were buffalo skulls, arranged in the
mystic circle commonly seen at Indian places of sepulture upon the
prairie.

We soon discovered, in the twilight, a band of fifty or sixty
horses approaching the fort. These were the animals belonging to the
establishment; who having been sent out to feed, under the care of armed
guards, in the meadows below, were now being driven into the corral for
the night. A little gate opened into this inclosure; by the side of it
stood one of the guards, an old Canadian, with gray bushy eyebrows,
and a dragoon pistol stuck into his belt; while his comrade, mounted
on horseback, his rifle laid across the saddle in front of him, and
his long hair blowing before his swarthy face, rode at the rear of the
disorderly troop, urging them up the ascent. In a moment the narrow
corral was thronged with the half-wild horses, kicking, biting, and
crowding restlessly together.

The discordant jingling of a bell, rung by a Canadian in the area,
summoned us to supper. This sumptuous repast was served on a rough table
in one of the lower apartments of the fort, and consisted of cakes of
bread and dried buffalo meat--an excellent thing for strengthening the
teeth. At this meal were seated the bourgeois and superior dignitaries
of the establishment, among whom Henry Chatillon was worthily included.
No sooner was it finished, than the table was spread a second time (the
luxury of bread being now, however, omitted), for the benefit of
certain hunters and trappers of an inferior standing; while the ordinary
Canadian ENGAGES were regaled on dried meat in one of their lodging
rooms. By way of illustrating the domestic economy of Fort Laramie, it
may not be amiss to introduce in this place a story current among the
men when we were there.

There was an old man named Pierre, whose duty it was to bring the meat
from the storeroom for the men. Old Pierre, in the kindness of
his heart, used to select the fattest and the best pieces for his
companions. This did not long escape the keen-eyed bourgeois, who was
greatly disturbed at such improvidence, and cast about for some means to
stop it. At last he hit on a plan that exactly suited him. At the side
of the meat-room, and separated from it by a clay partition, was another
compartment, used for the storage of furs. It had no other communication
with the fort, except through a square hole in the partition; and of
course it was perfectly dark. One evening the bourgeois, watching for
a moment when no one observed him, dodged into the meat-room, clambered
through the hole, and ensconced himself among the furs and buffalo
robes. Soon afte

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