The Young Alaskans on the Missouri
by Emerson Hough · English · Gutenberg #26367 · 447,917 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Young Alaskans on the Missouri
Author: Emerson Hough
Release date: August 20, 2008 [eBook #26367]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE MISSOURI ***
Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
THE
YOUNG ALASKANS
ON THE MISSOURI
By
EMERSON HOUGH
_Author of_
"YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE ROCKIES"
"YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE FAR NORTH"
ETC.
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE MISSOURI
Copyright, 1922
By Harper & Brothers
Printed in the U. S. A.
_First Edition_
BOOKS BY
EMERSON HOUGH
THE YOUNG ALASKANS
YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE TRAIL
YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE ROCKIES
YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE FAR NORTH
YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE MISSOURI
Harper & Brothers Publishers
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. FOLLOWING LEWIS AND CLARK 1
II. READY FOR THE RIVER 9
III. "ADVENTURER, OF AMERICA" 17
IV. THE EARLY ADVENTURERS 23
V. OFF UP THE RIVER 36
VI. THE LOG OF THE "ADVENTURER" 41
VII. THE GATE OF THE WEST 49
VIII. HO! FOR THE PLATTE! 59
IX. SHIPWRECK 67
X. AT THE PLATTE 73
XI. AMONG THE SIOUX 83
XII. THE LOST HUNTER 89
XIII. GETTING NORTH 100
XIV. IN DAYS OF OLD 115
XV. AMONG THE MANDANS 128
XVI. OLD DAYS ON THE RIVER 144
XVII. AT THE YELLOWSTONE 155
XVIII. WHERE THE ROAD FORKED 168
XIX. AT THE GREAT FALLS 187
XX. READY FOR THE RIVER HEAD 201
XXI. THE PACK TRAIN 210
XXII. AT THE THREE FORKS 226
XXIII. SUNSET ON THE OLD RANGE 235
XXIV. NEARING THE SOURCE 246
XXV. BEAVERHEAD CAMP 262
XXVI. THE JUMP-OFF CAMP 276
XXVII. THE UTMOST SOURCE 294
XXVIII. SPORT WITH ROD AND REEL 302
XXIX. THE HEAD OF THE GREAT RIVER 310
XXX. SPORTING PLANS 327
XXXI. AMONG THE GRAYLING 340
XXXII. AT BILLY'S RANCH 349
XXXIII. HOMEWARD BOUND 371
ILLUSTRATIONS
THEY TURNED AWAY FROM THE GREAT FALLS OF
THE ANCIENT RIVER WITH A FEELING OF
SADNESS _Frontispiece_
THEY SAW HIM SCRAMBLE UP THE BANK, LIE
FOR AN INSTANT HALF EXHAUSTED, AND
THEN COME RUNNING DOWN THE SHORE TO
THEM _Facing p._ 70
BEFORE ANYONE COULD HELP HIM HE WAS
FLUNG FULL LENGTH, AND LAY MOTIONLESS " 216
JESSE SUDDENLY STOOPED, THEN ROSE WITH AN
EXCLAMATION " 264
THE YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE MISSOURI
CHAPTER I
FOLLOWING LEWIS AND CLARK
"Well, sister," said Uncle Dick, addressing that lady as she sat busy
with her needlework at the window of a comfortable hotel in the city of
St. Louis, "I'm getting restless, now that the war is over. Time to be
starting out. Looks like I'd have to borrow those boys again and hit
the trail. Time to be on our way!"
"Richard!" The lady tapped her foot impatiently, a little frown
gathering on her forehead.
"Well, then?"
"Well, you're always just starting out! You've been hitting the trail
all your life. Wasn't the war enough?"
"Oh, well!" Uncle Dick smiled humorously as he glanced at his leg,
which extended before him rather stiffly as he sat.
"I should think it was enough!" said his sister, laying down her work.
"But it didn't last!" said Uncle Dick.
"How can you speak so!"
"Well, it didn't. Of course, Rob got in, even if he had to run away
and smouch a little about how old he was. But he wasn't through his
training. And as for the other boys, Frank was solemn as an owl
because the desk sergeant laughed at him and told him to go back to
the Boy Scouts; and Jesse was almost in tears over it."
"All our boys!"
"Yes! All our boys. The whole country'd have been in it if it had gone
on. America doesn't play any game to lose it."
"Yes, and look at you!"
Uncle Dick moved his leg. "Cheap!" said he. "Cheap! But we don't talk
of that. What I was talking about, or was going to talk about, was
something by way of teaching these boys what a country this America is
and always has been; how it never has played any game to lose it, and
never is going to."
"Well, Richard, what is it this time?" His sister began to fold up her
work, sighing, and to smooth it out over her knee. "We've just got
settled down here in our own country, and I was looking for a little
rest and peace."
"You need it, after your Red Cross work, and you shall have it. You
shall rest. While you do, I'll take the boys on the trail, the Peace
Trail--the greatest trail of progress and peace all the world ever
knew."
"Whatever can you mean?"
"And made by two young chaps, officers of our Army, not much more
than boys they were, neither over thirty. They found America for us,
or a big part of it. I call them the two absolutely splendidest and
perfectly bulliest boys in history."
"Oh, I know! You mean Lewis and Clark! You're always talking of them to
the boys. Ever since we came to St. Louis----"
"Yes, ever since we came to this old city, where those two boys started
out West, before anybody knew what the West was or even where it was.
I've been talking to our boys about those boys! Rather I should say,
those two young gentlemen of our Army, over a hundred years ago--Captain
Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark."
His sister nodded gravely, "I know."
"What water has run by here, since 1804, in these two rivers, the
Mississippi and the Missouri! How the country has grown! How the world
has changed! And how we have forgotten!
"That's why I want to take them, even now, my dear sister, these young
Americans, over that very same old trail--not so long and hard and full
of danger now. Why? Lest we forget! Lest our young Americans forget! And
we all are forgetting. Not right.
"You see? Because this old town of St. Louis was then only a village,
and we just had bought our unknown country of France, and this town was
on the eastern edge of it, the gate of it--the gate to the West, it used
to be, before steam came, while everything went by keel boat; oar or
paddle and pole and sail and cordelle. Ah, Sis, those were the days!"
"Think of the time it must have taken!"
"Think of the times they must have been!"
"But now one never hears of Lewis and Clark. We go by rail, so much
faster. As for going up-river by steamboat, I never heard of such a
thing!"
"But the boys have. I caught Jesse, even, pondering over my Catlin,
looking at the buffalo and Indian pictures."
"I never heard of Catlin."
"Of course not. Well, he came much later than my captains, and was an
artist. But my captains had found the way. Rob and Frank know. They've
read the worked-over _Journals_ of Lewis and Clark. Me, I've even seen
the originals. I swear those curious pages make my heart jump to this
very day, even after our travels on the soil of France just now--France,
the country that practically gave us our country, or almost all of it
west of the Missouri, more than a hundred years ago. She didn't know,
and we didn't know. Well, we helped pay the rest of the price, if there
was anything left back, at Chateau Thierry and in the Argonne."
His sister was looking at the stiffened leg, and Uncle Dick frowned at
that. "It's nothing," said he. "Think of the others."
"And all for what?" he mused, later. "All for what, if it wasn't for
America, and for what America was meant to be, and for what America was
and is? So, about my boys--what d'ye think, my dear, if they wandered
with me, hobbling back from the soil of old France, over the soil of the
New France that once lay up the Big Muddy, yon--that New France which
Napoleon gave to make New America? Any harm about that, what?... Lest
we forget! Lest all this America of ours to-day forget! Eh, what?"
By this time his sister had quite finished smoothing out the work on her
knee. "Of course, I knew all along you'd go somewhere," she said. "You'd
find a war, or anything like that, too tame! Will you never settle down,
Richard!"
"I hope not."
"But you'll take the boys out of school."
"Not at all. To the contrary, I'll put them in school, and a good one.
Besides, we'll not start till after school is anyhow almost out for the
spring term. We'll just be about as early as Lewis and Clark up the
Missouri in the spring."
"You'll be going by rail?"
"Certainly not! We'll be going by boat, small boat, little boat, maybe
not all boat."
"A year! Two years!"
Uncle Dick smiled. "Well, no. We've only got this summer to go up the
Missouri and back, so, maybe as Rob did when he enlisted for eighteen,
we'll have to smouch a little!"
"I'll warrant you've talked it all over with those boys already."
Uncle Dick smiled guiltily. "I shouldn't wonder!" he admitted.
"And, naturally, they're keen to go!"
"Naturally. What boy wouldn't be, if he were a real boy and a real
American? Our own old, strange, splendid America! What boy wouldn't?"
"Besides," he added, "I'd like to trace that old trail myself, some day.
I've always been crazy to."
"Yes, crazy! Always poring over old maps. Why do we need study the old
passes over the Rockies, Richard? There's not an earthly bit of use in
it. All we need know is when the train starts, and you can look on the
time card for all the rest. We don't need geography of that sort now.
What we need now is a geography of Europe, so we can see where the
battles were fought, and that sort of thing."
"Yes? Well, that's what I'm getting at. I've just a notion that we're
studying the map of Europe--and Asia--to-day and to-morrow, when we
study the old mountain passes of the Rockies, my dear.
"And," he added, firmly, "my boys shall know them! Because I know that
in that way they'll be studying not only the geography, but the history
of all the world! When they come back, maybe they--maybe you--will know
why so many boys now are asleep in the Argonne hills and woods in
France. Maybe they'll see the old Lewis and Clark trail extending on out
across the Pacific, even."
"You're so funny, Richard!"
"Oh, I reckon so, I reckon so! The old Crusaders were funny people,
too--marching all the way from England and France, just to take
Jerusalem. But look what a walk they had!"
CHAPTER II
READY FOR THE RIVER
Uncle Dick made his way to the library room, where he found his three
young companions on so many other trips of adventure.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, _The Young Alaskans_; Vol. II, _The Young
Alaskans on the Trail_; Vol. III, _The Young Alaskans in the Rockies_;
Vol. IV, _The Young Alaskans in the Far North_.]
"So there you are, eh?" he began. "Rob, I see you're poring over some
old book, as usual. What is it--same _Journal_ of Lewis and Clark?"
"Yes, sir," said Rob McIntyre looking up, his eyes shining. "It's
great!"
"And here's John Hardy with his maps!" exclaimed Jesse Wilcox. "Look it!
He's got a notion he can do a map as well as Captain William Clark."
"He's something of a born map maker, then!" responded Uncle Dick. "There
was one of the born geniuses of the world in map making. What a man he'd
have been in our work--running preliminary surveys! He just naturally
knew the way across country, and he just naturally knew how to set it
down. On hides, with a burnt stick--on the sand with a willow twig--in
the ashes with a pipe stem--that's how his maps grew. The Indians showed
him; and he showed us."
"I've often tried to tell," said Rob, "which was the greater of those
two men, Clark or Lewis."
"You never will," said his uncle. "They were the two greatest bunkies
and buddies of all the world. Clark was the redhead; Lewis the dark and
sober man. Clark was the engineer; Lewis the leader of men. Clark had
the business man in him; Lewis something more--the vision, the faith of
the soul as much as the self-reliance of the body. A great pair."
"I'll say they were!" assented John. "My! what times!"
"And what a country!" added Jesse, looking up from his map.
"Yes, son; and what a country!" His uncle spoke seriously.
"But now, fellows," he added, "about that little _pasear_ of ours--that
slide of a couple of thousand miles this summer, up the little old
Missouri to the Rockies and down the river again--thing we were talking
of--what do you say?"
"Oh, but we can't!" said Jesse.
"Oh, but I'll bet we can!" said John, who caught a twinkle in Uncle
Dick's eye.
"Yes, and we will!" said Rob, also noting his smile.
"Yes," said Uncle Dick. "I've just come from talking with the acting
commanding officer. She says that on the whole she gives consent,
provided I don't keep you out of school."
"It took Lewis and Clark two years," demurred John. "But they were out
of school--even though poor Will Clark hadn't learned much about
spelling. They didn't have to get back by the first week in September."
"And we don't want to scamp it," said thoroughgoing, sober Rob.
"But we don't want to motor it," countered John.
"I'll tell you," said Jesse Wilcox, the youngest and smallest of the
three. "We can go by power boat, most way, anyhow. That's not scamping
it, all things considered, is it?"
"By Jove!" said Uncle Dick, and again: "By Jove! An idea!"
"But about how big a boat do you think this particular family, just
after the war, can afford?"
"We could easy buy a riverman's fishing skiff," said Jesse, sagely;
"twenty feet long and narrow bottomed, but she floats light and runs
easy and can carry a load."
"But that's not a motor boat, son," said Uncle Dick. "Do you think we
can row to the head of the Missouri and get back by September?"
"Outboard motor," said Jesse, calmly.
"Hah! As though that could stem the June rise on the Muddy!"
"Two outboard motors, one on each side the stern, rigged on a cross
plank," said Jesse, never smiling. "Besides, a head sail when the wind
is right behind. And a rope if we got a head wind. And the oars and
paddles, too. We've paddled hours. Every little."
"We could get gas easy," said John. "Lots of towns all along, now."
"Easy as shooting fish," drawled Jesse. "I'm making a model of a new
flying ship now, though it isn't all done. I can run one of those
motors."
"What say, Rob?" Uncle Dick turned to the oldest of the three, and the
one of soberest judgment, usually.
"I shouldn't wonder if it's the answer, sir," said Rob. "How many miles
a day must we average?"
"As many as we can. Lewis and Clark and their big boat did eight or ten,
sometimes fifteen or twenty--the average was about nine miles a day. It
took them all summer and fall to get to the Mandans. That's above
Mandan, South Dakota--a thousand miles or so, eh?"
"Just sixteen hundred and ten miles, sir," said Rob, "according to their
figures. Just about nine miles a day, start to finish of that part of
the run, here to the Mandans--though the modern estimates only call it
fourteen hundred and fifty-two miles."
"If we can't beat that average I'll eat the boat," said Jesse, gravely.
"Well," said Uncle Dick, beginning to bite his fingers, as he often did
when studying some problem, "let's see. A good kicker might do two or
three miles an hour, by picking out the water. Two good kickers might
put her up to five, good conditions. Some days we might do forty miles."
"And some days, on long reaches and the wind O.K., we'd do forty-five or
fifty," said Rob. "Of course, we can't figure on top notch all the way.
We've got to include bad days, break-downs, accidents, delays we can't
figure on at home, but that always get in their work somehow. Look at
all our own other trips."
"Depends on how many hours you work," said Frank. "We don't belong to
the longshoremen's union, you know. Some days we might travel twelve
hours, if we'd nothing else to do. And I don't think there's much
fishing, and it would be off season for shooting, most of the time."
"I'll tell you," said Uncle Dick, after a time. "I doubt if we could do
it all the way by boat by September. But I'll see your teacher, here in
St. Louis, where we're all going to winter this year, and arrange with
him to let you study outside for the first few weeks of the fall term in
case we don't get back. You'll have to work while you travel, understand
that."
The boys all agreed to this and gave their promise to do their best, if
only they could be allowed to make this wonderful trip over the first
and greatest exploring trail of the West.
"It can perhaps be arranged," said Uncle Dick.
"You mean, it has been arranged!" said Rob. "You've spoken to our school
principal!"
"Well, yes, then! And you can cut off a little from the spring term,
too. But it's all on condition that you come back also with a knowledge
of that much history, additional to your regular studies."
"Oh, agreed to that!" said Rob; while John and Jesse began to drop their
books and eagerly come closer to their older guide and companion.
"What'll we need to take?" asked John. "We can't live on the country as
we did up North."
"Cut it light, young men. One week's grub at a time, say. The little
tent, with a wall, and the poles along--we can spread it on the boat if
we like."
"Not the mosquito tent?" asked Jesse.
"No, not after the seasoning you chaps have had in the North. Some
mosquitoes, but not so many for us old-timers. Take bars, no head nets.
We're not tenderfeet, you see."
"A blanket, a quilt, and an eiderdown quilt each?" suggested John.
"You'll not! Did Lewis and Clark have eiderdown?"
"No, but they had buffalo robes!"
"And so have we!" Uncle Dick laughed aloud in triumph. "I found three in
an old fur trader's loft here, and--well, I bought them. He'd forgotten
he had them--forty years and more. A blanket and a quilt and a robe
each, or Jesse and John to divide the biggest robe--and there we are!"
"A tarp to go over all," said Rob.
"Yes. And our regular mess kit. And the usual wool scout clothes and
good shoes and soft hat. That's about all. Two trout rods, for the
mountains. One shotgun for luck, and one .22 rifle--no more. It'll make
a load, but Jesse's river ship will carry it. Nasty and noisy, but nice,
eh?"
"It'll be fine!" said Jesse. "Of course, we take our maps and books and
papers, in a valise?"
"Yes. I'll have a copy of the original _Journal_."
"And we'll always know where we are?" said John. "That is," he added,
"where they were?"
"Yes," said Uncle Dick, reverently enough. "As near as we can figure on
the face of a country so changed. And we'll try to put in all the things
they saw, try to understand what the country must have been at that
time? Is that agreed?"
Each boy came up and stood at attention. Each gave the Boy Scout's
salute. Uncle Dick noted with a grim smile the full, snappy, military
salute of the American Army which Rob now gave him. He returned it
gravely and courteously, as an officer does.
CHAPTER III
"ADVENTURER, OF AMERICA"
It was on a morning in early spring that our four adventurers found
themselves at the side of their boat, which rested on the bank of the
great Missouri River, not far above its mouth. Their little tent stood,
ready for striking, and all their preparations for the start now were
made. Rob stood with a paint pot and brush in hand, at the bow of the
boat.
"She's dry, all right, by now, I think," said he. "If we put a name on
the stern board the paint could dry without being touched. What shall we
christen her?"
"Call her 'Liberty,'" suggested Jesse, "or, say, 'America.'"
"Fine, but too usual. Give us a name, John."
"Well, I say, 'Columbia,' because we are headed for the Columbia, the
same as Lewis and Clark."
"Too matter-of-fact! Give us a jollier name."
"Well, give us one yourself, Rob," said Uncle Dick, "since you're so
particular."
"All right! How'd 'Adventurer, of St. Louis,' do?"
"Not so bad--not so bad. But to Lewis and Clark, St. Louis was only one
point of their journey, important as it was."
"I'll tell you," broke in Jesse, the youngest. "Call her '_Adventurer,
of America_.' You can paint it all on, if you use small letters for
part, like the steamboats."
"That's the name!" said Rob. "Because that was a great adventure that
Lewis and Clark were taking on; and it was all for America--then and
now. Hard to live up to. But, you see, we're only following."
"What do you say, Uncle Dick?" asked John.
"I like it," replied the latter. "It will do, so paint it on, Rob; and
all of you be careful not to smudge it. It'll be dry by to-morrow
morning, for this fantail rides high above the motors.
"Finish drying and packing the dishes now, and let's be off when Rob
gets done. We're exactly one hundred and eighteen years to a day and an
hour after the boats of Lewis and Clark at this very place--only, Lewis
went across by land to St. Charles, and saved a little of his time by
meeting the boats there."
"And that was the real start, wasn't it, Uncle Dick?" demanded Frank.
"In a way, yes. But over yonder, across the Mississippi, on the river Du
Bois, in the American Bottoms, Will Clark had built the cabins for the
men's winter quarters. And long before that, Meriwether Lewis had left
Washington after saying good-by to Mr. Jefferson. And then he stopped
awhile near where Pittsburgh is, to get his boats ready to go down the
Ohio, and get men. And then he picked up Clark where Louisville now
is. And then he left the Ohio River and crossed by horseback to
the Army post across from here, to get still more men for the
expedition--soldiers, you see, good hardy men they were, who knew the
backwoods life and feared nothing. So after they got all of the
expedition together, they made winter quarters over yonder, and in the
spring they came over here, and the great fleet of three boats and
forty-five men started off on their adventure.
"Of course, Rob, you know the incident of the Three Flags?"
Rob nodded.
"That was a great day, when the American army of the West, twenty-nine
men in buckskin, under this young captain of thirty years, marched into
St. Louis to take possession of the Great West for America. And St.
Louis in twenty-four hours was under the flags of three great countries,
Spain, France, and the United States.
"You see--and I want you to study these things hard some day--Napoleon,
the Emperor of France, was at war. This Western region belonged to
Spain, or she said it did, but she ceded it to Napoleon; and then when
he didn't think he could hold it against Great Britain, he sold it to
us.
"Now this had all been country largely settled by French people who had
come down long ago from the Great Lakes. They didn't think Spain had
exercised real sovereignty. Now we had bought up both claims, the
Spanish and the French; so we owned St. Louis all right, going or
coming.
"So, first the Spanish flag over the old fort was struck. Next came the
French. And the French loved the place so much, they begged they might
have their flag fly over it for at least one night. Captain Lewis said
they might, for he was a courteous gentleman, of course. But orders were
orders. So in the morning the flag of France came down and the Flag of
the United States of America was raised, where it has been ever since,
and I think will always remain. Those events happened on March 9 and 10,
1804.
"So there they were, with the Flag up over a country that nobody knew
anything at all about. Then they started out, on May 14 of that year,
1804. And since that time that unknown America has grown to be one of
the richest, if not the very richest, land in the world. And since that
time, so much has the world changed, I have seen three flags flying at
the same time over a city in France--those of France, of Great Britain,
and of America, and all at peace with one another, though all at war
together as allies in a cause they felt was just. May they float
together now! Aye, and may Spain have no fear of any of the three."
"Are you about done with the painting, Rob?" concluded Uncle Dick.
"Yes, sir, finished."
"Look it!" said John.
Jesse was coming down from the tent, unrolling something wrapped around
a stick. "Well now, well now," he drawled, "where shall I put this?"
"Company, 'tenshun!" barked Uncle Dick. "Colors pass!" And all snapped
again into the salute while Jesse fastened the Flag into the bow of the
_Adventurer, of America_.
"Now we're about all ready," said Jesse, gravely. And he also stood at
the salute which good Scouts give the Flag, as a little band of strong
men in buckskin had done, not far away, more than a hundred years ago.
CHAPTER IV
THE EARLY ADVENTURERS
"Well, are you all set, fellows?" demanded Uncle Dick, at last, turning
to his young companions and taking a look over the dismantled camp.
"Just about, sir," answered Rob, who always was accepted as the next
officer to Uncle Dick in command.
"Load her down by the head all you can," said the latter, as the boys
began storing the remaining duffle aboard.
"Why?" asked Jesse, who always wanted to know reasons.
"I'll tell you. This water is so roily you can't see into it very deep.
It has a lot of snags and sweepers and buried stuff. Now, if she rides
with bows high, she slips farther up, say, on a sunken log. If her bow
is down a little, she either doesn't slide on, or else she slips on
over."
"Oh! I hadn't thought of that."
Uncle Dick grinned. "Well, maybe I wouldn't, either, if I hadn't been
reading my Lewis and Clark _Journal_ all over again. They speak of that
very thing. Oh, this is a bad old river, all right. Those men had a hard
time."
"But, sir," answered Rob, "if we load too far down by the bow, our stern
motors won't take hold so well. We've got to bury them."
"That's true, their weight throws the bow very high. I doubt if we can
do much better than have an even keel, but if she'll kick all right,
keep her down all you can in front, for if we ever do ride a log, we'll
strip off the propellers, and maybe the end of the boat, too. Better be
safe than sorry, always."
"They didn't have as good a boat as ours, did they?" John spoke with a
good deal of pride as he cast an eye over the long, racy hull of the
_Adventurer_, whose model was one evolved for easy travel upstream under
oars.
"Well, no, but still they got along, in those days, after their own
fashion. You see, they started out with three boats. First was a big
keel boat, fifty-five feet long, with twenty-two oars and a big square
sail. She drew three feet of water, loaded, and had a ten-foot deck
forward, with lockers midship, which they could stack up for a
breastworks against Indian attacks, if they had to. Oh, she was quite a
ship, all right.
"Then they had a large red perogue--must have been something like ours,
a rangy river skiff, built of boards; certainly not like the little
cypress dugouts they call 'peewoogs' in Louisiana.
"Now they had a third boat, the 'white peroque,' they spell it. It was
smaller, carrying six oars. The red skiff carried the eight French
_voyageurs_----"
"We ought to have all their names, those fellows," said Frank.
"Well, write them down--I've got the _Journal_ handy. Here Captain Clark
gives them, as they were set into squads, May 26th, far up the river.
You see, they were a military party--there were twenty-nine on the
official rolls as volunteers, not mentioning Captains Lewis and Clark,
or York, Captain Clark's negro body servant, who all traveled on the big
boat:
"'Orderly Book: Lewis.
Detachment Orders
_May 26th, 1804._
The Commanding Officers Direct, that the three Squads under the
command of Sergt{s.} Floyd, Ordway and Pryor, heretofore forming
two messes each, shall untill further orders constitute three
messes only, the same being altered and organized as follows (viz:)
Serg{t.} Charles Floyd Serg{t.} Nathaniel Pryor
_Privates_ _Privates_
Hugh McNeal George Gibson
Patric Gass George Shannon
Reuben Fields John Shields
John B. Thompson John Collins
John Newman Joseph Whitehouse
Francis Rivet and Peter Wiser
(French) Peter Crusat and
Joseph Fields Francis Labuche
Serg{t.} John Ordway Patroon, Baptist
_Privates_ Deschamps
William Bratton _Engages_
John Collen Etienne Mabbauf
Moses B. Reed (Soldier) Paul Primant
Alexander Willard Charles Hebert
William Warner Baptist La Jeunesse
Silas Goodrich Peter Pinant
John Potts and Peter Roi and
Hugh Hall Joseph Collin
Corp{l.} Richard
Warvington
_Privates_
Robert Frazier
John Boleye
John Dame
Ebinezer Tuttle and
Isaac White
"'The Commanding Officers further direct that the messes of
Serg{ts.} Floyd, Ordway, and Pryor shall untill further orders
form the crew of the Batteaux; the Mess of the Patroon La Jeunesse
will form the permanent crew of the red Peroque; Corp{l.}
Warvington's men forming that of the white Peroque.'
"There it all is, just as Captain Lewis wrote it, capitals and all. How
many would it be, Rob--not forgetting the two captains and the negro
York, Clark's body servant, who is not mentioned in the list?"
"I make it forty-one names here in the messes," answered Rob, after
counting, "or forty-four with the others added. That does not include
Chaboneau or the Indian girl, Sacagawea, whom they took on at Mandan."
"No, that's another list. It usually is said there were forty-five in
the party at St. Louis. You see the name 'Francis Rivet and (French).'
That would make forty-five if French were a man French and not a
Frenchman. But they always spoke of the voyagers as 'the French.'
Anyhow, there's the list of May 26, 1804."
"Maybe they lost a man overboard somewhere," suggested John.
"Not yet. They had a deserter or two, but that was farther up the river,
and they caught one of these and gave him a good military trimming and
expulsion, as we'll see later. But this I suppose we may call the actual
party that found our Great West for us. They are the Company of
Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery."
The three boys looked half in awe as they read over the names of these
forgotten men.
"Yes. So there they were," resumed Uncle Dick, gravely. "And here in the
_Journal_ the very first sentence says the party was 'composed of
robust, healthy, hardy young men.' Well, that's the sort I've got along
with me, what?"
"But Uncle Dick--Uncle Dick--" broke in Jesse, excitedly, "your book is
all wrong! Just look at the way the spelling is! It's awful. It wasn't
that way in the copies we had."
"That's because this is a real and exact copy of what they really did
write down," said Uncle Dick. "Yours must have been one of the rewritten
and much-edited volumes. To my mind, that's a crime. Here's the real
thing.
"Listen!" he added, suddenly, holding the volume close to him. "Would
you like to know something about those two young chaps, Meriwether Lewis
and William Clark, and what became of their _Journals_ after they got
home? You'd hardly believe it."
"Tell us," said Rob.
Uncle Dick opened his book on his knee, as they all sat on the rail of
the _Adventurer_.
"They were soldiers, both of them, fighting men. Lewis had some
education, and his mind was very keen. He was the private secretary of
President Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson says he was not 'regularly
educated.' He studied some months in astronomy and other scientific
lines, under Mr. Andrew Ellicott, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with the
special purpose of fitting himself to lead this expedition. Mr. Ellicott
had experience in astronomical observation, and practice of it in the
woods, the record says.
"Lewis was better educated than Clark, who was four years the
older--thirty-three--while Lewis was twenty-nine. He spells better
than Clark, who is about as funny as Josh Billings, though he
certainly spelled his best. Of one thing you can be sure, whenever
you see anything of the _Journal_ spelled correctly, it is false and
spurious--that's not the original, for spelling was the one thing
those two fellows couldn't do.
"They used to make field notes, rough, just as you boys do. Clark had an
elk-skin cover to his book--and that little book disappeared for over
one hundred years. It was found in the possession of some distant
relatives, descendants, by name of Voorhis, only just about ten years
ago.
"At night, by the camp fire, the two officers would write out their
field notes, for they had to report very fully to President Jefferson.
Sometimes one wrote, sometimes the other, and often one would copy the
other's notes. Only the originals could make all that plain. And, alas!
not all the original work is known to exist.
"No one seems to have valued the written record of that wonderful trip.
When the young men got to St. Louis on their return, they did try to
make a connected book of it all, but no one valued that book, and they
couldn't get a publisher--think of that! But at last they did get an
editor, Mr. Nicholas Biddle, he was, of Philadelphia.
"That poor man waded through over one million words of copy in the
'notes' he got hold of at last! But by then President Jefferson was
getting anxious about it. By then, too, poor Lewis was dead, and Clark
was busy at St. Louis as Indian agent. And Will Clark never was a
writer. So, slip by slip, the material faded and scattered.
"Biddle saved the most of it, boiling it down quite a lot. Then he gave
it over to Paul Allen, a newspaper man, also of Philadelphia, who did
more things to it, getting it ready for the press. This book did not get
published until February, 1814, five years after Lewis died and eight
years after they got back. By that time a lot of people had had a hack
at it. A lot more have had a hack since then; but Biddle is the man who
really saved the day, and Allen helped him very much.
"Of late, inside of the last twenty or thirty years, many editions of
that great _Journal_ have been issued. The best is the one that holds
closest to Clark's spelling. That's the best. And I'll tell you it took
genius, sometimes, to tell what he meant, for that redhead spelled by
ear.
"Look here--and here. 'Catholic' he spells 'Carthlick'; 'Loups'--the
Indians--he calls 'Loos.' He spells 'gnat' 'knat,' or spells 'mosquito'
'musquitr,' and calls the 'tow rope' the 'toe rope'--as indeed Lewis did
also. He spells 'squaw' as 'squar' always; and 'Sioux' he wrote down as
'Cuouex'--which makes one guess a bit--and the 'Osages' are 'Osarges,'
the Iowas, 'Ayauways.' His men got 'deesantary' and 'tumers,' which were
'dificcelt to cure.' He gives a dog 'som meet,' and speaks of a storm
which 'seased Instancetaniously.' He does a lot of odd things with big
words and little ones, as spelling 'cedar' 'seeder'--at least the
simplest way! As to jerked meat, I suppose it was as good if spelled
'jurked,' or even 'jirked,' and a 'tirkey' is as good as turkey,
perhaps.
"Plain and matter-of-fact, he was, that Redhead Chief, as the Indians
called him; yet very little escaped him or his friend, and both could
note the beauty of nature. See here, where Clark writes on June 20th
(his capitals are odd as his spelling): 'at Sunset the atmesphier
presented every appearance of wind, Blue and White Streeks centiring at
the Sun as she disappeared and the Clouds Situated to the S. W. Guilded
in the most butiful manner.'
"Can't you see the sunset? And can't you see Will Clark, his tongue on
one side, frowning as he wrote by the firelight?
"And Lewis wasn't so much better. For instance, he spelled squirrel as
'squirril,' where Clark spells it 'squarl,' and he spells hawk 'halk,'
and hangs a 'Meadle' on a chief's neck. Oh, this old _Journal_ certainly
is a curious thing!"
Jesse threw himself down on the sand in a fit of laughter. "I could do
better'n that my own self," said he, at last. "Why, what sort of people
were they, couldn't spell any better than that?"
"Maybe you could," said Uncle Dick, "but you are not to laugh at William
Clark, who was a great man. He did all that writing after a hard day's
work, in a wild and strange country. I suppose it was hard for him to
write, but he did it, and here it is.
"Oddly enough, Clark wrote a very fine, clear hand--a gentleman's
handwriting. The _Journals_ are always done in pen and ink. Clark did
most of the work in the _Journal_, but Lewis at times took a hand.
Between them they kept what might be called the log of the voyage.
"They worked, all of that party. The oarsmen had to work under a
taskmaster all day. Some one had to hunt, for they only had about a ton
of cargo, all told, and they only had $2,500 to spend for the whole trip
out and back, and to feed forty people two years. And at night the
commanders made Gass and Ordway and Floyd and Whitehouse keep journals,
too; and Pryor and Frazier did a bit of the same, like enough. They had
to cover everything they saw.
"So that is how we got this wonderful _Journal_, boys--one of the
simplest and most manly books ever written. As I said, it was long
forgotten and came near being ruined.
"The book of Patrick Gass got out first, and it had many publishers on
both sides the ocean--though, of course, it had to be rewritten a great
deal. Up to 1851 there had been fifteen real and fake Lewis and Clark
books printed, in English, French, and German; and there are about a
dozen books with Sergeant Patrick Gass as the 'author.'
"They had no cameras in those days, but those men brought out exact word
pictures of that land and its creature inhabitants. The spelling we must
forget--that day was different and schools were rare. But good minds and
bodies they surely had. They were not traders or trappers--they were
explorers and adventurers in every sense of the word, and gentlemen as
well.
"But now," concluded Uncle Dick, "that'll do for the story of the
_Journal_. We've got it with us, and will use it right along. We're all
ready, now? Well, let's be off, for now I see the wind is with us, and
it's even more than William Clark started with when his three boats left
the Wood River and started up the Missouri. He said they had a 'jentle
brease.'
"Off we go--on the greatest waterway in all the world, and on the trail
of the greatest explorers the world has ever known."
"Now then," commanded Rob, laying hold of the rail. "Heave--o!"
The others also pushed. The good ship _Adventurer_ swung free of the
sand and lay afloat. They sprang in. Uncle Dick steadied her with the
oars. Jesse and John went ahead to trim ship. Rob gave a couple of
turns to the flywheels of the two outboard motors and adjusted his feet
to the special steering gear. The doubled motors began their busy
sput-sput-sput! Like a thing of life the long craft, _Adventurer, of
America_, turned into the current of the great Missouri, the echoes of
the energetic little engines echoing far and wide.
CHAPTER V
OFF UP THE RIVER
"She's riding fine, sir," called Rob to Uncle Dick, over the noise of
the two little propellers that kept the gunwales trembling. "I can head
her square into the mid current and buck her through!"
Uncle Dick smiled and nodded. "It's going to be all right! She rides
like a duck. Spread that foresail, Frank, you and Jesse. We'll do our
six miles an hour, sure as shooting! Haul that foresail squarer, Jesse,
so she won't spill the wind. Now, Rob, keep her dead ahead."
"How far did they go each day?" demanded Jesse, "and how often did they
eat?"
They all broke out in a roar of laughter over Jesse's appetite.
"They ate when they could," answered Uncle Dick, "for they had their
hands full, working that big scow upstream. She was loaded heavy, and
they often had to drag her on the line. When the line broke, as it did
several times, she'd swing into the current and there'd be trouble to
pay.
"How far did they go? Well, that's really hard to say. They usually set
down the courses and distances on the bends. For instance, here is the
first record of that sort, May 15th. 'S{t}' means starboard, right-hand
side going up, and 'L{bd}' means larboard, to the left.
"'Course and Distance assending the Missourie Tuesday May 15.
Course M{ls}
West 1-0--To p{t} on S{t} Side
N 80 deg.W 2-0--" " " " "
N 11 deg.W 2-1/2--" " " " "
N 20 deg.W 1-1/2--" " " L{bd} "
S 10 deg.W 1-1/2--" " " S{t} "
S 22 deg.W 1-0--" " " " "
-----
9-1/2'
"We'll not try to keep our own courses, and we'll have to guess at our
distances except as we can estimate it from average speed, which is what
they also did. I suppose it seemed a long way. Patrick Gass says it was
three thousand and ninety-six miles to the head of the river. Anyhow,
they didn't make it as soon as we shall."
They ran on steadily, both motors firing perfectly and the sun bright
overhead, while the fresh breeze back of them still held fair for most
of the bends. They made St. Charles by noon, as had been predicted, but
did not pause, eating their lunch aboard as they traveled.
"Our captains didn't do this," said Rob. "As near as I can learn, they
camped and cooked on shore. And they certainly got plenty of game."
"I know!" said Jesse, his mouth full of bread and marmalade. "Deer and
turkey all along in here, then."
"Sure!" added John. "Thirty deer, four bear, and two wolves in the first
six weeks."
Uncle Dick sighed. "Well, we'll have to live on rolls and marmalade, and
if Jesse's appetite holds we'll have to make a good many towns for
supplies. More's the pity, there's a good town now about every ten miles
or so--two dozen towns in the first two hundred and fifty miles."
"Aw now!" said Jesse. "Aw now! I guess a fellow can't help getting
hungry. Maybe we can catch some fish, anyhow."
"Gass said they did," nodded John. "They got a lot of fine catfish, and
I think Patrick Gass must have liked them, way he talks. He says, 'We
are generally well supplied with catfish, the best I have ever seen.'"
"What kind of a grub list did they have?" inquired Jesse; and John was
able to answer, for he found the page in the _Journal_, which was close
at hand on a box top, so it could be consulted at any time.
"They didn't have any marmalade or preserves, or fruit or acid of any
kind, and they must have relied on the hunt. They had four bags of
'parchmeal,' which I suppose was parched corn ground--the old frontier
ration, you know. That was about twenty-eight bushels in all, with some
eighteen bushels of 'common' and twenty-two bushels of hominy. Then they
had thirty half barrels of flour, and a dozen barrels of biscuit, a
barrel of meal, fifty bushels of meal, twenty-four bushels of Natchez
hulled corn, four barrels of other hulled corn, and one of meal. That
was their cereal list.
"They only had one bag of coffee, and one each of 'Beens & pees,' as
Clark spells them, and only two bags of sugar, though eight hundred and
seventy pounds of salt."
"Not much sweets," grumbled Jesse. "How about the grease list?" Jesse
was rather wise about making up a good, well-balanced grub list for a
camping trip.
"Well," answered John, "they had forty-five hundred pounds of pork, a
keg of lard, and six hundred pounds of 'grees,' as he calls it. Not so
much; and they ran out of salt in a year, and out of flour, too, so they
didn't have any bread for months. They had some stuff spoiled by getting
wet.
"They had some trade stuff for the Indians, and tools of all sorts, and
other weapons and ammunition. They had sun glasses and an air gun and
instruments for latitude and longitude. They were travelers, all right."
"Lay her a half north, fifty-seven degrees west, and full steam ahead!"
sang out Uncle Dick. "Cut this big bend and take the wind on the
larboard quarter, Jesse. I'll promise you, if our gas holds out, we'll
get somewhere before dark. The _Adventurer, of America_ is a mile eater,
believe me!"
CHAPTER VI
THE LOG OF THE "ADVENTURER"
"One thing sure," said Rob, after a long silence, toward the close of
the afternoon, "this isn't any wilderness now. Look at the fields and
settlements we've passed. There's a town every ten miles."
"Well, I don't think it was all wild, even when Lewis and Clark went
through," John replied to him. "People had been all through here. The
_Journal_ keeps on mentioning this creek and that--all the names were
already on the country."
"Shall we get as far as Charette to-day, Uncle Dick?" asked Jesse.
"Hardly, this country has changed a lot in a hundred years and I don't
know just where we are. I'm only guessing, doing dead reckoning on our
motor speed. But we ought to see the place I've got in mind, before
plumb dark."
"See what, Uncle Dick? What is it?"
"Never mind. I'll tell you if we make it."
However, Uncle Dick was shrewd in his map work and his guessing. Toward
dark the boys began to get anxious as the shadows fell along the deep,
powerful river, but they had no sign to land until it was well after
sunset. Then Uncle Dick began to whistle cheerfully.
"All right, Rob," he called. "Hard a-lee! Get across. That creek on the
right is the Femme Osage. There were forty families settled there, six
miles up the river, and one of those farmers was--who do you think?"
"I know!" exclaimed John. "It was Daniel Boone! I've read about his
moving in here from Kentucky."
"Right you are, son! He had a Spanish land grant in here and lived here
till 1804. He died in 1820, at the town called Femme Osage, as you know.
"Well now, here we are! In under the rocks, Rob--so! Now quick, Jesse,
make fast at the bow!"
"Well, what do you know!" exclaimed Jesse. "Regular cave, and
everything!"
"Yes," smiled his uncle, "a regular cave and all. Lucky to hit it so
well and to find it still doing business--at least part way--after a
hundred years!"
They scrambled up the bank to the opening of the cavern which made back
into the bold rocky shore, finding the interior about twelve feet wide
and running back for forty feet, with a height of some twenty feet. It
was blackened with smoke in places, and many names were cut in the rock.
"Hard run up the swift chutes to get here," said Uncle Dick, "but I'm
glad we made it. This old cave was called the 'Tavern,' even before
Lewis and Clark, and all the river men used to stop here. Quite homey,
eh?
"We are lucky to have done in a day what it took Lewis and Clark nine
hard days to do. They made only nine miles the last day, and found the
water 'excessively swift.' Well, so did we; but here we are."
With the swiftness born of many nights in camp together, the four now
unpacked the needful articles, not putting up any tent, but spreading it
down on the floor of the cave. Their fire lit up the rocks in a wild and
picturesque manner as they sat near, cooking and eating their first meal
of the actual voyage up the great Missouri.
"They got a deer that day," said Rob, poring over the _Journal_, "I
expect about their first deer."
Rob was turning over the pages on ahead. "Hah!" said he. "The men didn't
always take care of the grub; here it says, 'Lyed corn and Grece will
be issued, the next day Poark and flour, and the following, Indian meal
and Poark, according to this Rotiene till further orders. No Poark will
be issued when we have fresh meat on hand!'"
"You listen, now, Jesse. With breakfast bacon at sixty cents a pound,
and your appetite, we'll have to go after meat. Get out that throw line
of yours and see if we can't hang a catfish by morning. Here's a piece
of beef for bait."
Jesse scrambled down the shore and threw out his line, with a rock for
sinker, while the others finished making ready the beds.
"Jolly old place," ventured John, "though a little hard for a bed. What
you looking at, Rob?"
"I was trying to find if the old Indian images were left, that used to
be scratched or painted on the walls. Clark says the _voyageurs_ and
Indians were superstitious about this place. I think caves are always
spooky places."
Soon they all felt tired and began to unroll the beds. A screech owl
made a tremulous, eerie note, but even Jesse only laughed at that.
They had breakfast before the mist was off the water, and before the
cooking was begun Jesse called out from below:
"Hey, there! Wait for me! I've got the breakfast right here! Call in the
lyed corn and pork. Here's a catfish, four pounds, anyhow!"
"Clean him, Jess," called Rob, "and cut him up small enough to fry."
Jesse did so, and soon the slices were sizzling in the pan.
"Well, anyhow," commented their leader, "though not as good as venison,
it's wild game, eh? And our way has always been to live off the country
all we could without breaking laws."
"What changes, from then till now!" said Rob. "It was spring and summer
when they went up this river, but they killed deer, turkeys, elk,
buffalo, antelope, and wild fowl--hundreds--all the time. Now, all
that's unlawful."
"And impossible. Yes, they lived as the Indians lived, and they killed
game the year round. Now, about all we can do for a while will be to eat
the trusty catfish.
"One thing has not changed," their leader added, a little later, "and
that is the current along the rock faces. Just above is what Clark
called 'The Deavels race ground'--a half mile that will try your motors,
Rob. The big keel boat got in all sorts of trouble that day, whirling
around, getting on bars, breaking her line and all that. The expedition
came near getting into grief--men had to go overboard and steady her,
and they were swimming, poling, rowing, and tracking all that day."
Indeed, the great river seemed disposed to show the young travelers that
her prowess had not diminished. They had a hard fight that day in more
than one fast chute, and twice dragged the propellers on bars which they
did not see at all. Uncle Dick used the oars three or four hours that
day, and Jesse, the boatman, spread his foresail to gain such added
power as was possible. In this way they made very good time, so that by
late evening they reached the mouth of the Gasconade, which comes in
from the left from the hill country. They got a good camp near the
mouth, with abundance of wood. Jesse was so lucky as to take two fine
wall-eyed pike, here called jack salmon, on his set line, as well as two
catfish. They let the latter go, as they had enough for the day, the
wall-eyes proving excellent.
"Now we're beginning to get into deer!" said Rob. "Here George Shannon
killed a deer, and Reuben Fields got one the next day. And all the time,
as you no doubt remember, we've been meeting canoes coming down from
the Omahas and Osages and Pawnees and Kansas, loaded down with furs!"
"I remember perfectly," asserted John, solemnly. "I can see them going
by right now! Pretty soon we pick up old man Dorion, coming down from
the Sioux, and hire him to go back as an interpreter for us."
"Could catch a lot of catfish and 'jurk' the meat, the way Captain Clark
did venison," said Jesse, at length.
According to their usual custom when on the trail, they were off by
sunup, the exhaust of the double motors making the wooded shore echo
again. They made their third encampment at the mouth of a stream which
they took to be that called Good Woman River in the _Journal_--a name no
longer known on their map.
"Whew!" complained Uncle Dick, as he got out and stretched his legs.
"This is cramping me as bad as the trenches in the Argonne. You
fellows'll 'do me in,' as the British used to say, if I don't look out!
How far do you think we've come in the three days, Rob?"
"Let's see. I figure about one hundred and ninety to two hundred miles,
that's all! What Lewis and Clark needed was our boat and a few outboard
kickers. It took them till June 7th, twenty-three days, to get to this
point. We've gained, you might say, three weeks on their time."
"Yes, but they got three bears at this camp, and we've got nothing! We
don't dare kill even a squirrel, though I'm sure we could get some sort
of game in this rough country not far back." John spoke ruefully.
"Don't kick, John," advised Jesse, sagely. "I'll take care of you.
Besides, look at the big help the wind was to-day. Clark says he had
only a 'jentle breese' in here."
"Or words to that effect," smiled Rob. "The main thing is, we travel
many times faster than they possibly could. Even so, she's a long trail
ahead."
"All we know is that we'll get through!" said John. "We always have."
"We're discovering romance," said Uncle Dick. "We're discovering
America, too. Jesse, take down your Flag from the bow staff--don't you
know the Flag must never be allowed to fly after sunset?"
They were now lying in their blankets in their tent, on a wind-swept
point. "I wonder if Captain Clark took down the flag. Now, I wonder----"
But what Jesse wondered was lost, for soon he was asleep.
CHAPTER VII
THE GATE OF THE WEST
Nearly a week had passed since the last recorded camp of the crew of the
_Adventurer_--spent in steady progress across the great and beautiful
state of Missouri and its rich bottom lands, its many towns, its farms
and timber lands and prairies. Many an exclamation at the wild beauty of
some passing scene had been theirs in the constant succession of
changing river landscapes.
Their own adventures they had had, too, with snags and sweepers and the
dreaded "rolling sands" over which the current boiled and hissed
ominously; but the handlers of the boat were well used to bad water on
their earlier trips together, in the upper wildernesses of the
continent, so they made light of these matters.
"I don't believe that Patrick Gass put down all the bears they got,"
said Jesse. "Clark says they got a lot, sometimes two a day, and they
'jurked' the meat, the same as vension. Gee! I wish I'd been along!"
Rob smiled. "I expect the hunters had a hard time enough. They had to
work through heavy weeds and vines in these bottoms, and if they got
back in very far they had to guess where the boat would be. And even
Lewis complains of ticks and mosquitoes and heavy going ashore."
"I believe things poisoned Clark worse than they did Lewis, he was so
fair skinned," said John. "One of his regular entries all along was,
'Mosquitrs (or musketos or muskeeters) very troublesome.'"
"Poor Clark!" smiled Rob. "What with rubbing 'musquitr' bites and
spelling in his daily report, he must have had a hard time. He had
another regular entry, too, as you said, Jesse, that about the 'jentle
brease.' I don't know how many ways he spelled it, but he seems to have
had no confidence at all in his own spelling. Look here: on June 1st he
has a 'jentle brease,' and on June 20th a 'jentle breese'; but not
content when he got it right, he calls it a 'gentle Breeze' the next
time, then drops back to 'gentle breeze' on July 21st. He repeats that
on August 12th, the next raising it to 'gentle Breeze'; and then it's a
'gentle breeze,' a 'jentle Breeze,' 'gentle breeze,' and 'gentle
Brease'--till he gets perfectly irresponsible, up the river!"
"What a funny man!" snickered Jesse, once more.
"He didn't do it to be funny," said Rob. "Once I asked a kid cow puncher
to make a horse pitch some more for me, so I could make a photo of it;
and he said, 'Why, I didn't make him pitch--he just done that hisself.'
Well, I guess that's how to account for Clark's spelling--he 'just done
that hisself.'"
Uncle Dick had not been paying much attention to the boys just then, but
was watching the smoke clouds ahead. Passing trains whistled loudly and
frequently. The shores became more populated.
"Two miles more and we'll round to full view of Kansas City, young men,"
said he. "We've crossed the whole and entire state of Missouri, three
hundred and ninety miles--from one great city to another great one.
"St. Louis--Kansas City! Each in her day has been the Gate to the West.
In 1847, Independence, over to the left, was going back, and even the
new boat landing of Westport was within the year to be called Kansas
City. Then she was the Gate indeed, and so she has remained through
various later sorts of transportation.
"When St. Louis laid down the oar and paddle, Kansas City took up the
ox whip. When the railroads came, she was sitting on the job.
"You've seen one old town site of New Franklin, opposite Boonville,
halfway across the state; and now I want you to study this great city
here, hardly more than threescore years and ten of age--just a man's
lifetime. Picture this place as it then was--full of the ox teams going
west----"
"Oh, can't we go over the Oregon Trail, too--next year, Uncle Dick?"
broke in John.
"Maybe. Don't ask me too many questions too far ahead. Now, think back
to the time of Lewis and Clark--not a settlement or a house of a white
man above La Charette, and not one here. To them this was just the mouth
of the Kansas, or 'Kansau,' River, and little enough could they learn
about that river. Look at the big bluffs and the trees. And yonder were
the Prairies; and back of them the Plains. No one knew them then.
"As you know, they had been getting more and more game as they
approached this place. Now the deer and bears and turkeys fairly
thronged. Patrick Gass says, 'I never saw so much sign of game in my
life,' and the _Journals_ tell of the abundance of game killed--Clark
speaks of the deer killed the day they got here, June 26th, and says,
'I observed a great number of Parrot quetts this evening.' That Carolina
parrakeet is mentioned almost all the way across Kansas by the Oregon
Trail men, and it used to be thick in middle Illinois. All gone
now--gone with many another species of American wild life--gone with the
bears and turkeys and deer we didn't see. You couldn't find a parrakeet
at the mouth of the 'Kanzas' River to-day, unless you bought it in a
bird store, that's sure.
"But think of the giant trees in here, those days--sycamores,
cottonwoods, as well as oaks and ash and hickories and elms and
mulberries and maples. And the grass tall as a man's waist, and
'leavel,' as they called it. Is it any wonder that Will Clark got worked
up over some of the views he saw from high points on the river bends?
Those, my boys, were the happy days--oh, I confess, Jesse, many a time
I've wished I'd been there my own self!"
"How do you check up on the distances with Clark? How long did it take
them to get this far?"
"Just forty-three days, sir," replied Jesse, the youngest of them all,
who also had been keeping count.
"Yes--around seven miles a day! We've done seven miles an hour, many a
time. Where they took a week we'll take a day, let us say. From here to
Mandan, North Dakota, where they wintered, is more than fourteen hundred
miles by river, and they took about one hundred and twenty days to
it--averaging only nine and a half or ten miles a day of actual travel
in that part of the river. Clark fails once or twice to log the day's
distance. Gass calls it sixteen hundred and ten miles from the start to
Mandan--I make it about fifteen hundred and fifty, with such figures as
I find set down. The River Commission call it fourteen hundred and
fifty-two. Give us fifty miles a day for thirty days, and that would be
fifteen hundred miles--why, we're a couple of hundred miles beyond
Mandan right now--on paper!
"But I never saw anything that ran by gas that didn't get its back up
sometimes. Suppose we allow a month to get up to Mandan--bringing us
there by June 22d--call it June 30th. How'd that do? Do you think we can
make it--say forty-odd miles a day--or even thirty?"
"Sure we can!" said Jesse, stoutly.
"Yes--on paper!" repeated Uncle Dick. "Well, there's many a sand bar
between here and Mandan, and many a long mile. Lewis and Clark did not
get there until October 26th--four months from here. If we allow
ourselves one month, we'll only have to go four or five times as fast as
they did. I've known a flat bottom 'John boat' do forty miles a day on
the Current River of Missouri with only one outboard motor; and that's a
six-mile current, good and stiff. Let us not count our chickens just
yet, but keep on plugging. I must say Rob is a wizard with the engines,
this far, at least.
"And now, if we're done with the arithmetic----"
"We're not," interrupted Jesse. "I've set down the fish I've caught this
far, and it's three wall-eyes and twelve catfish. That's fifteen head of
game against their thirty, about!"
"Oh! And you want to know, if a boy of your size could catch fifteen
head of fish in eight days, how many could we all catch in thirty days?
That's getting out of my depth, Jesse! I don't know, but I hope that the
gasoline and the catfish both hold out, for they are our main staffs of
life just now."
They ran up the left bluff of the river, mile after mile, under the edge
of the great town whose chimneys belched black smoke, noting railway
train after train, their own impudent little motors making as much
noise as the next along the water front. Many a head was turned to catch
sight of their curious twin-screw craft, with the flag at its bow, and
on the stern the name _Adventurer, of America_, but Rob paid no
attention to this, holding her stiff into the current and heading in
answer to Uncle Dick's signals.
At last they lay alongside a little landing to which a houseboat was
moored, occupied by a riverman whom Uncle Dick seemed to know.
"How do you do, Johnson," said he, as the man poked his head out of the
companionway. "You see we're here."
"And more'n I'd of bet on, at that!" rejoined the other. "I never
expected ye could make it up at all. How long ye been--a month or so?"
"A week or so," replied Uncle Dick, carelessly, and not showing his
pride in the performance of the party. "You see, we've got double
engines and we travel under forced draught, with the stokers stripped to
the waist and doing eight shifts a day."
"Like enough, like enough!" laughed Johnson, not crediting their run.
"Well, what kin I do fer ye here?"
"Get our tanks filled. Unpack our boat and store the stuff on your boat
so it can't be stolen. Overrun our engines and oil her up. Clean out
the bilge and make her a sweet ship."
"When?"
"To-day. But we'll not start until to-morrow morning. I've got a few
friends to see here, and my Company of Volunteers for Northwestern
Discovery will like to look around a little. We'll stop at a hotel
to-night. I'm trusting you to have everything ready for us by nine
to-morrow morning."
"That's all right," replied Johnson. "I'll not fail ye, and I'll not let
anything git losted, neither."
"I know that," said Uncle Dick. "By the way, Johnson, which is the best
outfitting store in Westport?"
"As which, sir?"
"In Westport, or say Independence. We could walk down there if we had
to. Not so far."
Old Johnson scratched his head. "Go on, Colonel, you're always havin'
yer joke. I'm sure I don't know what ye mean by Indypendence, or
Westport. But if you want to get uptown, the street cars is four blocks
yan. Er maybe ye'd like a taxi?"
"No, nothing that goes by gas, for one day, anyhow, Johnson. Well, see
to the things--the crew have got the batteau about unloaded, and it's
about time for our mess to go ashore to the cook fire. Sergeant
McIntyre, issue the lyed corn with the bear and venison stew to-night,
and see that my ink horn and traveling desk are at hand!"
"Yes, sir, very good sir!" returned Rob, gravely. And without a smile
the four stalked off up the stair, leaving Johnson to wonder what in the
world they meant.
CHAPTER VIII
HO! FOR THE PLATTE!
Uncle Dick excused himself from the party for a time in the evening,
having some business to attend to. He left the three boys in their room
at a hotel, declaring they all would rather sleep on the houseboat with
Johnson.
"It's mighty quiet on this trip," said Jesse.
"Nothing happens?" said Rob, looking up from his maps and the _Journal_
which he had spread on the table. "That's what the explorers thought
when they got here! They wanted to start in killing buffalo, but there
were no buffalo so close to the river even then. All our hunters got was
deer; they lay here a couple of days and got plenty of deer, and did
some tanning and 'jurking.' Clark says they took this chance to compare
their 'instrimunts,' and also they 'suned their powder and wollen
articles.'
"Clark killed a deer below here. Drewyer, one of the best hunters, had a
fat bear and a deer, too. And Lewis killed a deer next day, so the party
was in 'fine Sperrits.'"
"Oh, so would I be in fine 'sperrits' if I could kill a deer or so,"
grumbled Jesse. "Now look at us!"
"Well," went on Rob, "look at us, then. See here, what Clark says about
it:
"'The Countrey on each Side the river is fine, interspursed with
Praries, on which immence herds of Deer is seen. On the banks of
the river we observe number of Deer watering and feeding on the
young willow, Several killed to-day.... The Praries come within a
Short distance of the river on each Side, which contains in
addition to Plumbs Raspberries &c, and quantities of wild apples,
great numb{rs} of Deer are seen feeding in the young willows and
Earbarge on the Banks and on the Sand bars in the river.'"
"I didn't know that deer liked willow leaves," said John.
"I didn't, either, but here it is. And that was June 26th, when the
grass was up. I've even known some naturalists to say that deer don't
eat grass. We know they do.
"But what we want to get here is the idea that now the expedition was
just coming out of the hills and woods into the edge of the Prairies.
Across these Prairies and the Plains came big river valleys that led out
West toward the Rockies. If all that had been hills and timber, no road
ever would have got through. It was the big waterways that made the
roads into all the wilderness; we certainly learned that up in the Far
North, didn't we?
"So here was their crossroads of the waters, at old Independence, which
now is Kansas City. Not much here, but a natural place for the Gate to
the West.
"Clark had a good real-estate eye. He says:
"'The Countrey about the mouth of this river is verry fine on each
Side as well as north of the Missourie. A high Clift on the upper
Side of the Kanses 1/2 a mile up, below the Kanses the hills is
about 1-1/2 Miles from the point on the North Side of the Missourie
the Hills or high lands is Several Miles back.... The high lands
come to the river Kansas on the upper Side at about 1/2 a mile, in
full view, & a butifull place for a fort, good landing place.'
"He couldn't spell much, or put in his punctuation marks, but he
certainly had a practical eye. And I reckon the first beginnings of the
city were right then, for the _Journal_ says, 'Completed a strong
redoubt or brestwork from one side to the other, of logs and Bushes Six
feet high.' Yes, I suppose that was the first white building here at the
Gate.
"It's pretty hard to find any new part of the world to-day. Yonder runs
the Kaw, leading to the Santa Fe Trail--and I'll bet there's a thousand
motor cars going west right now, a hundred times as many cars each day
as there used to be wagons in a year!"
He closed his book for the time. "Maybe that's what Uncle Dick wanted us
to get in our heads!" said he.
"Some country!" said Jesse; and both John and Rob agreed.
When their leader returned a little later in the evening, the boys told
him what they had been doing.
"Fine!" he said. "Fine! Well, I've just telegraphed home that we're all
right and that we're off for the Platte to-morrow, early."
"That's another old road to the Rockies," said Rob.
"One of the greatest--the very greatest, when you leave out boat travel.
The Platte Valley led out the men with plows on their wagons, the home
makers who stayed West. You see, our young leaders were only
pathfinders, not home makers."
"And a jolly good job they had!" said Jesse.
"Yes, and jolly well they did the job, son, as you'll see more and
more."
John was running a finger over the crude map which he and Jesse had been
making from day to day. "Hah!" said he. "Here's the big Platte Valley
coming in, but no big city at the mouth."
"Oh yes, there is," corrected Uncle Dick. "Omaha and Council Bluffs you
can call the same as at the mouth of the Platte, for they serve that
valley with a new kind of transportation, that of steam, which did not
have to stick to the watercourse, but took shorter cuts.
"It's odd, but our explorers seem even then to have heard of a road to
Santa Fe. They also say the Kansas River is described as heading 'with
the river Del Noird in the black Mountain or ridge which Divides the
Waters of the Kansas, Del Nord, & Collarado.' No doubt the early French
or the Indians confused the Kaw with the Arkansas.
"Enough! Taps, Sergeant! To bed, all of you," he concluded; and they
were willing to turn in.
In the morning early they were at the dock, and were greeted by Johnson,
who, sure enough, had the gasoline cans filled and most of the heavy
supplies aboard. By eight-thirty they were chugging away again up the
water front of the city, their Flag flying, so that many thought it was
a government boat of some sort.
Jesse tried to write in his notebook, but did not make much of a
success, owing to the trembling of the boat under the double power.
"He always says 'we set out and proceeded on,'" Jesse explained. "I was
trying to write how the expedition left the mouth of the Kansas River."
"Look out for 'emence numbers of Deer on the banks,' now," sung out
John, who had the _Journal_ on a box top near by. "'They are Skipping in
every derection. The party killed 9 Bucks to-day!'"
"But no buffalo yet," said Rob.
"No, not till we get up around Council Bluffs--then we'll begin to get
among them."
"And by to-morrow afternoon we'll be where they celebrated their first
Fourth of July. It was along in here. They celebrated the day by doing
fifteen miles--closing the day by another 'Descharge from our Bow piece'
and an extra 'Gill of Whiskey.' I don't call that much of a Fourth!"
John seemed disgusted.
"Well, maybe the soldiers didn't, for they had 'Tumers & Felons & the
Musquiters were verry bad,'" he went on. "I don't think their grub list
was right--too much meat and salt stuff. But from now on they certainly
did get plenty of game--all kinds of it, bears, deer, elk, beaver,
venison, buffalo, turkeys, geese, grouse, and fish. You see, Jesse, they
got some of those 'white catfish' like the last one you caught--a
'channel cat,' I suppose we'd call it. And they ate wild fruit along
shore. I think the hunters had better chance than the oarsmen.
"They saw elk sign not far above the Kansas River, but I don't think
they got any elk till August 1st. Above there they got into the
antelope, which they called 'goat,' and described very carefully. They
sent President Jefferson the first antelope ever seen east of the
Alleghanies. Then they got into the bighorn sheep, which also were
altogether new, and the grizzly bear, which they called the 'white
bear.' Oh, they had fun enough from here on north!"
"Yes, and did their work besides, and a lot of it," affirmed Uncle Dick.
"But while we are comparing notes we might just as well remember they
had some bad storms. I don't like the look of that bank of clouds."
They all noted the heavy ridges of black clouds to the west. The wind
changed, coming down the river in squalls which tore up the surface of
the water and threw the bow of the boat off its course.
"Steady, Rob! Slow down!" called out Uncle Dick, who had begun to pull
the tarpaulin over the cargo. "I can't judge the water in this wind.
_Look out, all!_"
Suddenly there came a jolt and a jar which drove them from their seats.
The propellers had struck a sand bar and plowed into it. Caught by the
wind, the bow of the boat swung around into the current. Careening, the
lower rail went under and the water came pouring in.
CHAPTER IX
SHIPWRECK
"Hold her, boys!" called out Uncle Dick. "Overboard! Hold her up!"
Even as he spoke he had plunged overboard on the upstream side, throwing
his weight on the rail. The water caught him nearly waist deep, for the
treacherous bar shelved rapidly.
It was not so deep where Rob went in, but Jesse and John, thoughtlessly
plunging in on the lower side, were swept under the boat, which all the
strength of the other two could not hold back against the combined power
of the current and the wind.
Without warning they were cast into an accident which in nine cases out
of ten would have meant death to some or all of them.
The boat was filling fast, and the great weight of the outboard motors
buried her stern, so she was about to swamp in midstream. Uncle Dick in
horror saw the set faces of two of his young friends at the rail beyond
him, their legs under the boat, which was swinging on them, their terror
showing in their eyes. He made one grasp across the boat, and luckily
caught Jesse's hand. Their combined weight held the boat down by the
bow, and she swung downstream, half full but not sinking.
"Swim for it, John, as soon as we reach the island!"
The voice of Uncle Dick rose high and clear. A willow-clad island lay
below, toward which the boat now was setting. He knew the boys all could
swim, and they were all lightly dressed, with canvas sneakers and no
coat.
"All right!" replied John, confidently, now getting his legs free. "I
can make it." Indeed, it did not seem the boat could carry another
pound. Rob was swimming on the upstream side, one hand on the stern.
Keeping low in the water, they floated on down in the black squall of
wind and rain which now came on them. Their course downstream was very
rapid.
"Now, John!" Uncle Dick gave the word, and John, without one instant's
hesitation, struck out for the island, now not over forty yards away
over the choppy, rain-whipped water. His head was seen bobbing over the
waves, but gaining distance. Uncle Dick hardly breathed as he watched.
The boat was lightened a little. Rob took a chance, climbed in over the
stern, and, catching up a setting pole, began to reach for bottom on the
upstream side. He caught it and, putting in all his strength, swung the
bow across stream, repeating again and again, until the boat was not far
back of John's bobbing head. Then all at once Uncle Dick gave a shout.
His feet had struck bottom on the shelving sand once more. Between them
they now could guide and drag the boat till they made a landing, with
Jesse on top the cargo, only about fifty yards below where John was
headed. They saw him scramble up the bank, lie for an instant half
exhausted, and then come running down the shore to them. They all
dragged at the water-logged boat until they had her ashore so she would
hold.
"And that's that!" panted John, coolly and slangily enough.
Till then no one had spoken. Uncle Dick couldn't speak at first. He only
drew Jesse and John to him, one to each arm, wet as they all were, and
in the rain now pouring down. "Fine, boys!" said he.
"The closest squeak we've ever had," said Rob, at last. "Right here in
the settlements! There's the city of Leavenworth just around the bend."
"Close enough!" said Uncle Dick. "And my compliments to you all, every
one. If it had been a lot of chaps less cool and ready, we'd none of us
have been saved. Rob, who taught you to paddle on the up side when
crossing a current?"
"I learned it of Moise Richard, on the Peace River, sir," replied Rob.
"Right! Most people try to hold her nose against the current by working
on the lower side. Upstream is right--and I must say the setting pole
saved the day. But, John, you'll never know how I dreaded to tell you to
cast free and swim for it. I thought it was safest for you."
"Oh, that's nothing," said John. But at the same time he was very proud
of his feat.
They were wet to the skin and the rain was cold, their boat was full of
water and their stores wet. At last, surely, they had an adventure on
their hands. But they were not downhearted over it at all.
"All hands lay to for camp!" called Uncle Dick.
[Illustration: THEY SAW HIM SCRAMBLE UP THE BANK, LIE FOR AN INSTANT
HALF EXHAUSTED, AND THEN COME RUNNING DOWN THE SHORE TO THEM]
They began to unload the heavier stuff, so they could cant the boat and
spill the bilge water out of her. The tarpaulin was thrown over some
willow bushes for a shelter, and under this they piled their grub
boxes and dunnage rolls. The beds were all in watertight canvas bags,
and so were their spare clothes, so matters might have been worse. The
guns could be dried, and the tarpaulin had kept the lighter articles
from washing away. In a little while they got the tent up, and then they
folded the wet tarpaulin for a floor and hurried their outfit inside,
damp but yet not ruined.
"Get some boughs to put inside," suggested their leader. "Get out that
little forced-draught oil stove and let's see if we can dry out. It's
going to be hard to get a fire on this island in this rain, for there's
nothing but willows. They're wet. Get the little stove going and pull
shut the flaps. When it gets a little warmer we'll open the bags and
change our clothes. And as John would say, that'll be that! But it's
only by mercy that we're here. You are right, Rob, this is the most
serious accident we have ever had together."
"Let's open a can of soup, and issue an extra gill of tea," said Rob.
They broke into a roar of laughter. Inside of half an hour the little
hut was steaming and they all were sitting on boxes eating their evening
meal. The storm, which had culminated in a fierce thunder gust, now was
muttering itself away.
Jesse went out and brought in the Flag from its staff on the boat.
"We'll have to dry her," he said. "She's silk, and fast colors."
"And I think my expeditionary force is all true blue!" added Uncle Dick,
quietly.
In the night Jesse waked them all by suddenly crying out in a nightmare.
Rob shook him awake.
"What's wrong, old top?" he asked.
"I guess I was scared," admitted Jesse, frankly, and pulled the covers
over his head.
CHAPTER X
AT THE PLATTE
On the morning following the storm the sun broke through the clouds with
promise of a clear, warm day. Our _voyageurs_ were astir early.
"Take it easy, fellows," counseled the leader. "We've got to 'sun our
powder,' as our _Journal_ would say. John, when you set down the day's
doings in your own journal, make it simple as William Clark would. It's
more manly. Well, here we are."
Rob looked ruefully at the wet willow thicket in which their camp was
pitched. "We can get a few dead limbs," he said, "but, wet as things are
now, we'd only smoke the stuff and not dry it much."
"Wait for the sun," advised John. And this they found it wise to do, not
leaving the island until nearly noon.
"Morale pretty good!" said Uncle Dick. "John, set down, 'Men in verry
high sperrits.' And off we go!"
They chugged up directly to the point, as nearly as they could
determine, where they had met the disaster of the previous day. "Keep
leading a horse up to a newspaper and he'll quit shying at it," said
Uncle Dick. "Find the very spot where we struck."
"There she is!" exclaimed Rob, presently. The boat stuck again and began
to swing. But this time the setting pole held her bow firm, and, since
there was no wind, a strong shove pushed her free without anyone getting
overboard. They went on after that with greater confidence than ever,
and Jesse began to sing the old canoe song of the voyagers, "_En roulant
ma boule, roulant!_"
They paused at none of the cities and towns now, and only set down the
rivers and main features, as they continued their steady journey day
after day for all of a week. At the end of that time the increasing
shallowness of the river, the many sand bars and the nature of the
discolored, rolling waters, made them sure they were approaching the
mouth of the great Platte River, which, as they knew, rose far to the
west in the Rocky Mountains.
Here they went into a camp and rested for almost a day, bringing up
their field notes and maps and getting a good idea of the country by
comparing their records with the old journals of the great expedition.
"Bear in mind that, after all, they were not the first," said Uncle
Dick. "They had picked up old Dorion, their interpreter, from a canoe
away down in Missouri, and brought him back up to help them with the
Sioux, where he had lived. Their bowman Cruzatte and several other
Frenchmen had spent two years up in here, at the mouth of the Loup.
There were a lot of cabins, Indian trading camps, one of them fifty
years old, along this part of the river.
"But when they got up this far, they were coming into the Plains. New
animals now, before so very long. They really were explorers, for there
were no records to help them."
"You say they found new animals now," Rob began. "You mean elk,
buffalo?"
"Yes. No antelope yet."
"They made the Loup by July 9th, above the Nodaway," said John, his
finger in the _Journal_. "Two days later they got into game all right,
for Drewyer killed six deer that day himself, and another killed one, so
they had meat in camp.
"They made the Nemaha by July 14th, and I think that was almost the
first time they got sight of elk. Clark fired at one that day, but
didn't get him. That was where he first wrote his name and date on a
rock--he says the rock 'jucted out over the water.' I think that was
near the mouth, on the banks of the Nishnabotna River, but I don't
suppose a fellow could find it now, do you?"
"No. It never has been reported, like the two Boone signatures in
Kentucky," replied Uncle Dick. "He only wrote his name twice--once up in
Montana. But now, think how this new sort of country struck them.
Patrick Gass says, 'This is the most open country I ever saw, almost one
continued prairie.' What are you writing down, Jesse?"
"'Musquitors verry troublesome,'" grinned Jesse, watching a big one on
his wrist. "I'll bet they were awful."
"And the men all had 'tumers and boils,' in spite of their 'verry high
sperrits,'" broke in John, from the _Journal_. "And they gave Alexander
Willard a hundred lashes and expelled him from the enlisted roll, for
sleeping on sentinel post--which he had coming to him. But all the same,
the _Journal_ says that this party was healthier than any party of like
size 'in any other Situation.' His main worry was these pesky
'musquitors.' He killed a deer, but they were so bad he found it
'Painfull to continue a Moment Still'!
"Here's something for you, Jesse!" he added, laughing. "One day in a
'fiew minits Cought 3 verry large Cat fish, one nearly white, a quort of
Oile came out of the Surpolous fat of one of those fish.' And all the
time they are mentioning turkeys and geese and beaver--isn't it funny
that all those creatures then lived in the same place? On August 2d,
Drewyer and Colter, two of the hunters, brought in the horses loaded
with elk meat. But that was just above the Platte, nearer Council
Bluffs."
"One thing don't forget," said Uncle Dick at this time. "All that
hunting was incidental to those men. About the biggest part of their
business was to get in touch with the Indian tribes and make friends
with them. You'll see, they stuck around the mouth of the Platte quite a
while, sending out word, to get the Indians in. The same day Drewyer and
Colter got the elk the men brought in a 'Mr. Fairfong,' an interpreter,
who had some Otoes and Missouri Indians. Then there were presents and
speeches, and they hung some D.S.O. medals on a half dozen of the chiefs
and told them to be good, or the Great Father at Washington would get
them.
"Well, that's all right. But what I want you to notice is the camp at
Council Bluffs. That wasn't where the city of Council Bluffs, Iowa, is,
but on the opposite side of the river, about twenty-five miles above
Omaha--not far from Fort Calhoun. There was no Omaha then. I can
remember my own self when Omaha was young. I used to shoot quail on the
Elkhorn and the Papilion Creek, just above Omaha, and grand sport there
was for quail and grouse and ducks all through that country then.
"But Lewis and Clark had a wide eye. They knew natural points of
advantage, and they must have foreseen what the Platte Valley was going
to mean before long. They say that Council Bluffs was 'a verry proper
place for a Tradeing Establishment and fortification.' Trust them to
know the 'verry proper places'! Only, what I can't understand is the
note that it is 'twenty-five days from this to Santafee.' That's a
puzzler. The natural place of departure for Santa Fe was where Kansas
City is, not Omaha. But, surely, they had heard of it, somehow."
"Well," said Rob, "we're doing pretty well, pretty well. In spite of
delays, we're at the mouth of the Platte, sixteen days out, and they
didn't get there till July 21st. I figure three hundred and sixty-six
miles to Kansas City, and two hundred and sixty-six miles to here, say
six hundred and thirty-two miles for sixteen days--the river chart says
six hundred and thirty-five miles. That keeps us pretty close to our
average we set--over forty miles a day. We've got to boost that, though.
"Are we going to stop at Omaha, sir?" he added, rather anxiously.
"Not on anybody's life!" rejoined Uncle Dick. "Nice place, but we're a
day late. No, sir, we'll skip through without even a salute to the
tribes from our bow piece. We've got to get up among the Sioux. Dorion
has been talking all the time about the Sioux. So good-by for the
present to the Platte tribes, the Pawnees, Missouris, and Otoes."
"Gee! I'd like to shoot something," said Jesse, wistfully. "Just reading
about things, now!"
"Forget it for a while, Jess," smiled his uncle. "Just remember that
we're under the eaves of two great cities, here at Plattsmouth. Take
comfort in the elk and beaver sign you can imagine in the sand, here at
the mouth of this river. It still is six hundred yards wide, with its
current 'verry rapid roleing over Sands.'
"Two voyagers of the Lewis and Clark expedition had wintered here before
that time, trapping--the beaver were so thick. Imagine yourself not far
up the river and shooting at an elk four times, as Will Clark did--then
not getting him. Imagine yourself along with that summer fishing party
along this little old river, and getting upward of eight hundred fish,
seventy-nine pike, and four hundred and ninety cats; and again three
hundred and eighteen 'silver fish'--I wonder, now, if that really could
have been the croppy? Lord! boy--what a time they had, strolling,
hunting, fishing, exploring new lands, visiting Indians, having the time
of their lives!"
"Let's be off," suggested Rob. And soon they were plugging along up the
great river, threading their way among the countless bars and shoals.
"I can see the full boats coming down the Platte!" said Jesse, shading
his eyes, "hide canoes, full of beaver bales, that float light! And
there are the _voyageurs_, all with whiskers and long rifles and
knives."
"Yes," said Uncle Dick, gravely. "And here are our men, tall, in uniform
coats and buckskin leggings. See now"--and he reached for John's
volume--"they let off the deserter, Moses Reed, very light. He only had
to run the gantlet of the entire party four times--each man with nine
switches--and get dropped from the rolls of the Volunteers!
"And here is where Captain Lewis, experimenting with some strange water
he had found--with some cobalt and 'isonglass' in it--got very ill from
it. His friend Clark says 'Copperas and Alum is verry pisen.'"
"But when did they first find the buffalo?" demanded Jesse, fingering
once more the little rifle which always lay near him in the boat. "Gee!
now, I'd like to kill a buffalo!"
"All in due time, all in due time, Jess!" his leader replied. "My, but
you are bloodthirsty! Wait now till August 23d, above Sioux City. You
are Captain William Clark, with your elk-hide notebook inside your shirt
front, and you have gone ashore and have killed a fat buck. And when you
get back to the boat J. Fields comes in and says he has killed a
buffalo, in the plain ahead; and Lewis takes twelve men and has the
buffalo brought to the boat at the next bend; so you just make no fuss
over that first buffalo, and set it down in your elk-hide book. And that
same day two elk swam across the river ahead of the boat. And that same
evening R. Field brought in two deer on a horse, and another deer was
shot from the boat; and they all saw elk standing on a sand bar, and
several prairie wolves. And the very next day, don't you remember, you
saw great herds of buffalo? Oh, now you're in the Plains! Everybody now
is 'jurking meat.' What more do you want, son?"
"Aw, now!" said Jesse. "Well, anyway, we're about in town."
CHAPTER XI
AMONG THE SIOUX
"Now we are leaving the Pawnees and passing into the Sioux country!"
said Rob.
They were passing under the great railroad bridge which connected
Council Bluffs, Iowa, with Omaha, Nebraska. The older member of the
party nodded gravely. "And can't you see the long lines of the
white-topped covered wagons going west--a lifetime later than Lewis and
Clark, when still there was no bridge here at all? Can't you see the
Mormons going west, with their little hand carts, and their cows hitched
up to wagons with the oxen? Look at the ghosts, Rob! Hit her up. Let's
get out of here!"
"She's running fine," Rob went on. "Somehow I think this must be better
water, above the Platte. You know, Lewis and Clark only averaged nine
miles a day, but along in here for over two hundred miles they were
beating that, doing seventeen and one-quarter, twenty and one-quarter,
seventeen, twenty-two and one-half, seventeen and one-half, sixteen,
seventeen, twenty and one-half, twenty and one-half, fifteen, ten and
three-quarters, fifteen, ten--not counting two or three broken days.
They seem to have got the hang of the river, somehow."
"So have we," nodded the other. "I'll give you five days to make Sioux
City."
As a matter of fact, the stout little ship _Adventurer_ now began to
pick up on her own when they had passed that Iowa city, going into camp
on the evening of June 4th well above the town. They purchased bread,
poultry, eggs, and butter of a near-by farmer, and opened a jar of
marmalade for Jesse, to console him for the lack of buffalo.
"It's my birthday, too, to-day," said Jesse. "I was born on the fourth
day of June, fourteen years ago. My! it seems an awful long time."
"Well, Captain Meriwether Lewis was not born on this day," said his
uncle, "but his birthday was celebrated on this spot by his party, on
August 18, 1805, and they celebrated it with a dance, and an 'extra gill
of whiskey.'"
"We'll issue an extra gill of marmalade to the men to-night, and
conclude our day of hard travel with a 'Descharge of the Bow piece,'
just because it's the Fourth of June. We're hitting things off in great
style now, and I'm beginning to have more confidence in gasoline."
"What made you want to get to this place, Uncle Dick?" asked John, his
own mouth rather full of fried chicken.
"Because of the location--the mouth of the Sioux River, and at the lower
edge of the great Sioux nation.
"Lewis and Clark tried to get peace among all these river tribes. They
held a big council here, decorating a few more Otoes and Missouris, and
telling them to make peace with the Omahas and the Pawnee Loups. The
Sioux had not yet been found, though their hunting fires were seen all
through here, and Lewis was very anxious to have his interpreter,
Dorion, find some Sioux and bring them into council.
"It was at Captain Lewis's birthday party that the first and only
casualty of the trip ensued. You remember Sergeant Floyd--he spelled
worse than Clark, and Ordway worse than either--and his journal of some
twenty thousand words, which he had kept till now? Well, he danced hard
at the birthday party or at the Indian council, and got overheated,
after which he lay down on the damp sand and got chilled. It gave him
what the _Journal_ calls a 'Biliose Chorlick,' and on the second day he
died. He was buried on the bluffs below the town, at what still is
called Floyd's Bluff, on the river they named after him, with military
honors, and his grave long was known. His river still is known by his
name, and it runs right into the town of Sioux City. The river washed
the bank away under his grave, and in 1857 the remains were reburied,
back from the river. That spot was marked by a slab in 1895, and a
monument was put over it in May, 1901. I was a guest at the dedication
of that obelisk. It was erected under the supervision of General Hiram
Chittenden, the great engineer and great historian. It has a city park
all of its own, and a marvelous landscape it commands.
"Well, poor Floyd had no memorial in those rude days, beyond a 'seeder
post.' They did what they could and then they 'set out under a gentle
Breeze and proceeded on.'"
"Well, but Dorion knew this country, then?" John began again, after a
time.
"Yes," Rob was first to answer, "and that's what puzzles me--how they
got such exact knowledge of a wild region. I suppose it was because they
had no railroads and so had to know geography. _The Journal_ says that
the Sioux River heads with the St. Peter's (Minnesota) River, passing
the head of the Des Moines; all of which is true. And it tells of the
Red Pipestone quarry, on a creek coming into the Sioux. Clark puts down
all those things and does not forget the local stuff. He says the
'Countrey above the Platte has a great Similarity'--which means the
Plains as they saw them. And look, in John's book--here he says 'I found
a verry excellent froot resembling the read Current,' What was it--the
Sarvice berry? He says it is 'about the Common hight of a wild Plumb.'
Nothing escaped these chaps--geography, natural history, game, Indians,
or anything else! They must have worked every minute of the day."
"I think his new berry was what we used to call the buffalo berry, in
our railway surveys out West," said Uncle Dick. "It was bigger than a
currant and made very fair pies.
"But now we've just begun to catch up with our story, for we were
talking some time back where they first got a buffalo. That was about
thirty or forty miles above here. By to-morrow night we'll camp in our
fifth state since we left home--Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South
Dakota."
"On our way!" sung out Rob. "We haven't got any antelope yet, nor found
a prairie dog, nor seen a single Sioux."
"Softly, softly!" smiled the older companion. "At least we're in the
Sioux and antelope range."
Their little tent was pitched within a short distance of the river, and
their fire made shadows along the wall of willows. At times they all
fell silent, bringing to mind the wild scenes of this same country in a
time which now began to seem not so long ago.
"My!" said Jesse, after a time, as he sat on his bed roll, his hands
clasped before his knees. "Think of it! The Plains, the buffalo, the
Indians! Weren't they the lucky guys!"
"Well, yes," replied his uncle, "though I'd rather call them fortunate
gentlemen than lucky guys. One thing sure, they were accurate when they
said the 'musquitors were verry troublesom' in all this Missouri Valley.
They had to issue nets and bars to the men, so it says, and the
misquitr, or mosquiter, or musquitor, was about the only 'anamal' they
feared. If we don't turn in, they'll carry us off to-night."
CHAPTER XII
THE LOST HUNTER
"It's a long, long way up to the Mandans!" sang John at the second camp
above the Council Bluffs. "Wonder if we ever will get there before
winter! Here we are, just below the Vermilion, over nine hundred and
fifty miles up the river, and over three weeks out, but we're only
halfway to the Yellowstone, and still a good deal more than six hundred
miles below the Mandan Villages, though I've counted fifty-three towns
and cities we've passed in the river, coming this far. It certainly does
look as though we'll have to winter up there, sure enough."
"Oh, I don't know," demurred Rob, consulting the pages of his own
notebook. "No fellow can ask an outboard motor to do better than ours
have. I'll admit we're just inside our forty-mile-a-day stunt, but
that's five miles an hour and only eight hours a day. I'll bet they
would have been mighty glad to do half that."
"I've been wondering how they were able to spurt so much, north of the
Platte," said John.
"I'll bet I know!" broke in Jesse. "It's because the shores were more
open, so they could use the cordelle! They'd been doing it, too, for on
August 26th they made a new 'Toe line' out of braided elk-hide. Clark
killed an elk on August 25th, and Reuben Fields killed five deer that
day, and George Shannon killed an elk that day, too. So they 'jurked the
meet,' and made the hides into a tracking line. That beats rowing or
paddling to get up a river. We saw that on the Peace River and the
Mackenzie, didn't we?"
"I believe you're right, son!" said Rob. "These long sandy reaches,
where the men could trot on the line--that was where they got their
mileage, I'll warrant."
"George Shannon?" said Uncle Dick, who was listening as he sat on his
bed roll near the fire. "George Shannon, eh? Well, he didn't bring in
any more elk meat after that for many a day, that's sure."
"I know!" Rob nodded. "That's the man that got lost!"
"Yes, and trouble enough it gave the party and the leaders. They sent
out two men, Shields and J. Fields, to find him and the horses. That was
the second day. But they didn't find him. He didn't show up for sixteen
days. Luckily, he kept on ahead of the boat all the time, but, as we
all know, the most confusing way on earth to get lost from a party is
while you are on foot and the party is in a boat. Even Sir Alexander
Mackenzie got lost that way, on the Findlay River; and so have we all of
us."
"Well, poor Shannon nearly starved to death. I don't think he was a
first-class hunter, either, or he'd not have gone out without his
ammunition. In a country swarming with game he went for twelve days with
only grapes to eat, except one rabbit that he shot with a piece of stick
instead of a bullet. He held on to one horse, and lucky he did. Here's
what the _Journal_ says about Shannon--whom Lewis himself found:
"'He became weak and feable deturmined to lay by and wait for a
tradeing boat, which is expected. Keeping one horse as a last
resorse, yet a man had like to have starved to death in a land of
Plenty for the want of Bullits or something to kill his meat.'"
"Where was he when they found him?" John had his map ready.
"Well, let's see. They found him on September 11th, and they had
traveled thirteen days, not counting stops, and made one hundred and
sixty miles by the river. They must by then have been at least thirty
miles above what is now Fort Randall, South Dakota--I should say,
somewhere near Wheeler, South Dakota. Well, something of a walk for
George, eh?"
"Rather!" was Jesse's comment. "Oh, I suppose it's easy to call him a
dub, but the commanding officers didn't."
"But now," went on their leader, "a lot of things have been happening
since Shannon left, and here are a lot of interesting things to keep in
mind. One thing is, they expected a trading boat up. That must have been
from St. Louis, for Trudeau's post. That was long before the days of the
regular fur forts, and that accounts for all this country having its
French names on it.
"Another thing or two: By this time, in lower South Dakota, everybody
was killing buffalo and elk, great quantities of splendid meat. By now,
also, in early September, they had got on the antelope range for the
first time, and their first 'goat,' as they called it, was skinned and
described. They got another new animal, which they called a 'barkeing
squirel,' or 'ground rat'--on September 7th. That was the first prairie
dog, a great curiosity to them--the same day they saw their first
'goat.' They managed to drown out one prairie dog, which I never heard
of anyone else being able to do. They dug down six feet, and did not get
halfway to the 'lodge,' as they called the den.
"Also, they saw the western magpie, which seemed a 'verry butifull' bird
to them. Also again, on September 5th, they had seen their first
blacktail deer, which now, until they got into the Mandan and
Yellowstone country, was to outnumber the whitetail, which they called
the 'common deer,' because they never had seen any other sort. On one
day, September 17th, Lewis and his men killed two blacktail, eight
'fallow' deer, and five 'common' deer. Gass--who by now has been elected
sergeant to take poor Floyd's place--in his _Journal_ says they killed
thirteen common deer, two blacktailed, three buffalo, and a 'goat' that
day--not a half bad day, that, eh? Don't you wish we'd been along?
"But Gass in his book also says something I want you to remember, for it
may help explain the 'fallow' deer which Clark mentions, and which I
don't understand at all. Gass says: 'There is another species of deer in
this country, with small horns and long tails. The tail of one we killed
was 18 inches long.' Now that precisely coincides with the 'fantail'
deer which some old-time hunters of my acquaintance say they have
killed in the Black Hills country, though scientists say there never was
any fantail deer. Our men were now right east of the Black Hills. For
myself, I am convinced there was a fantail deer, and that it has far
more rights as a species than the dozen or more 'species' of bears which
our Washington scientists keep on finding.
"But even this is not all I am trying to get into your minds about this
country where our lost hunter Shannon was wandering alone. They were
getting all sorts of elk, catfish, and beaver, from the last of August
on, but better here--on September 5th they saw both 'goats' and wild
turkeys on the same day. Did you know that wild turkeys ranged so far
north? Well, they at that time overlapped the range of the buffalo, the
elk, the blacktailed deer, the badger, the antelope, the prairie dog,
and the magpie.
"And in this hunting paradise, they killed on one day, September 8th,
two buffalo, one large elk, one small elk, four deer, three turkeys, and
a squirrel. All gone now, even almost all the prairie dogs and maybe the
magpies; and we haven't seen any young wild geese on our trip, either.
But now, following out the record of these men, we can see what a
wonderful hunting country they had been in, almost every day from St.
Louis, especially here, where the lower country began to blend with the
high Plains and their game animals. Great days, boys--great days! Alas!
that they are gone for you and me forever."
"You're getting off the track, Uncle Dick," said John, critically, just
now, as the former concluded his long talk on the game animals.
"Why, what do you mean?"
"While Shannon was lost, and while they were all having such good luck
hunting, they at last had found their Sioux and got them in for a
council. That was under an oak tree, at the mouth of the Jacque, or
James, River, on August 29th. Old man Dorion had found his son Pierre,
who was trading among the Sioux, it says. Well, they got five chiefs and
about seventy others, and they all went into council."
"Oak tree, did you say, John? Oak tree this far north?" Jesse was
particular.
"Yes, sir, oak tree--lots of them all through here then. Clark tells how
the deer and elk ate the acorns, and how fond they were of them. Didn't
you notice that?"
"Well, let's push off and run up to the old council ground," said Rob,
who was always for getting forward. "It can't be more than a few hours'
run, for we don't stop at any towns, you know."
They did this, and spent some time studying the spot, so that they could
believe they were on the very council ground where Lewis and Clark first
met the Sioux, below the Calumet Bluff, on the "Butifull Plain near the
foot of the high land which rises with a gradual assent near this
Bluff." At least a trace of the old abundance of the timber could be
seen. They consulted their _Journal_ and argued for a long time.
"This is where they sent out the two men to hunt for the lost man
Shannon," said Rob. "And here is where our captains made their big
treaty speeches with the Sioux and gave them medals and the D.S.O., and
the Congressional Medal and things. They had a lot of government 'Good
Indian' certificates all ready to fill in, and it peeved them when one
of the chiefs handed back his certificate and said he didn't care for
it, but would rather have some whiskey.
"Those Sioux must have been a surly bunch," said Rob. "But Captain Lewis
impressed them very much, and Captain Clark let down his long red hair
and astonished them, and everybody fed them and gave them presents; and
they appointed young Mr. Dorion a commissioner, and gave him a flag, and
told him to bring about a peace between all these tribes--the Sioux,
Omahas, Pawnees, Poncas, Otoes, and Missouris--and to try to get chiefs
of each tribe to go down the river and to Washington, to see the Great
Father. And the _Journal_ kept them good and busy, setting down the
names of the different bands of the Sioux and telling how they looked."
John grinned, and pointed to the page. "'The Warriers are Verry much
deckerated with Paint Porcupine quils and feathers, large leagins and
mockersons, all with buffalow robes of Different Colors, the Squars wore
Peticoats and a White Buffalow roabe with the black hare turned back
over their necks and Sholders.' I'll say they had plenty to do, writing
and hunting and making speeches. It wasn't any pleasure party, when you
come right down to it, now!"
"We haven't found George Shannon yet," interrupted Jesse, dryly.
"Give us time!" answered Rob. "I vote to stay here all night. I can see
the blue smokes of their council fires, and see the men dancing, and the
painted Indians sitting around, and the great council pipe passing--red
pipestone, with eagle feathers on the stem; and meat hanging in camp,
and the squaws cooking, dogs yelping, drums going. Oh, by Jove! Oh, by
Jove! Those were the things to make you sit up late at night! I wish
we'd been along."
"We _are_ along!" said Uncle Dick, soberly. "If you can see those
stirring scenes, we are along. So, Rob, as you say, we'll pitch our camp
and dream, for at least a day, of our own wonderful America when it was
young."
John and Jesse were busy clearing a place for the tent. "I want the fire
right close up to the tent," said John, "and we don't want to burn off
either a tent pole or an overhead guy rope."
"Oh," rejoined Jesse, the youngest of them all, "I'll show you how to do
that!"
He dug into his war bag and brought out a roll of stout wire. "Run this
from the top of the front pole on out, ten or twelve feet, and stretch
it over a couple of shear poles. See? That'll stiffen the tent, and yet
you can build a fire right under the wire, and it won't hurt it any."
"A good idea, Jesse," approved their leader as he saw this. "A mighty
good idea for cold weather--about as good as your open fireplace of
sheet steel with a stovepipe--open wider in front than behind, and
reflecting the heat into the tent. I've tried that last invention of
yours, Jess, and it works fine in coolish weather. We'll try it again,
maybe."
"I'm making me a new kind of airplane now," said Jesse, modestly. "It's
different in some ways. I like to sort of figure things out, that way."
"That's good. And to-night, son, I want you to see whether you can't
figure out a nice fat catfish on your set line. We need meat in camp;
and that's about what it'll have to be, I suppose."
Thus, talking together of this thing and that, they made their own
comfortable camp, spreading down their own buffalo robes on the ground
for their beds, on the old council ground of the Sioux. They had a
hearty supper and soon were ready to turn in, for the mosquitoes were
bad enough, as they found. Rob sat late at night alone by the little
fire.
"Come on to bed, Rob," called Jesse. "What do you see out there,
anyway?"
"Indians," replied Rob. "Sioux in robes and feathers. Two men in uniform
coats, one tall and dark, the other tall and with red hair. Don't you
see them, too?"
CHAPTER XIII
GETTING NORTH
"But we haven't found George Shannon yet," again insisted Jesse, at
their breakfast.
"And you haven't run your set line yet, Mr. Jess," reminded Rob; which
was enough to cause Jesse to run down to the bank with his mouth full of
bacon. He had forgotten all about his fishing at the time. At once they
heard him shout in excitement, and joined him on the bank.
"Geewhillikens!" called Jesse. "I got a whale on here now!"
He was playing a fish on his hand line, taking in and giving line as he
could, for the fish was strong. It was some time before they could get
to see it, and when Jesse at last landed it on the bank he called for
his .22 rifle and shot it through the head.
"There!" he said. "I knew I'd find some big game to shoot. Isn't he a
whale? I'll bet he'll go twelve pounds. He's a whiter cat, and a racier,
than the big yellows, down below. He looks gamier and better to eat."
"He goes in the gunny sack for supper," said Rob. "Do you suppose he'll
keep for three days, a hundred and fifty miles? I shouldn't wonder if
Shannon would enjoy a bite, for he'll be hungry by that time."
"It's a long, long way, up to the Mandans!" John began to sing again.
"Six hundred miles. And we'll have to have gas pretty soon."
They finished their breakfast, and, with the skill they had gained in
many camps together, soon were packed and on their way above the old
council camp of the Sioux.
"Buffalo and elk, every way you can look!" exclaimed John. "Elk swimming
across the river. Herds of game feeding on the bluff sides! Grouse,
foxes, prairie dogs, jack rabbits, pelicans, squirrels, deer,
wolves--the boats full of meat all the time, and two or three beaver
every night! Now there's cottonwoods. By and by the river'll begin to
take a straighter shoot north. It's a long, long way up to the Mandans!"
"And right through the country of those roaming, murdering Sioux!" added
Rob.
"Right you are, Rob," said Uncle Dick. "The Sioux used to hunt and rob
as far as Fort Laramie, six hundred miles up the Platte, and on the head
of the Jim River in Dakota, and all between. Their homes were where
their hats were--and they hadn't any hats."
For some days now they threaded their way among the countless islands
and sand bars of the great river, until at last they made camp early on
the evening of June 9th, near the point which, as closely as they could
figure it, was about where the Lewis and Clark bateau lay at the time
George Shannon was found wandering on the Plains, alone and ready to
despair. This was about thirty miles below the mouth of the White River.
"Well, we've got him," said Jesse, solemnly, "and told him never to
leave camp without matches and ammunition and an ax. And that's that!"
"Time for another catfish, Jesse," said their leader. "John, you take
the .22 and wander along the edge of the bluff. You might see a young
jack rabbit. I don't believe I'd bother the ducks, for that's against
the law and we don't break laws even when we are not watched. Rob, you
and I will make camp--we'll not need anything but the mosquito bars."
Inside the hour a shout from Jesse informed them that he had another
catfish on his throw line, and soon he had it flopping on the sand. He
killed it stone dead by thrusting a stiff straw back into the brain
through the "little hole in its face," as he called the sinus which
leads into the head cavity.
"I throw out my line," said he, "with a piece of meat or minnow on the
hook. Then I stick a stick down in the bank, two or three feet long, and
take a half hitch around the top. It acts as a sort of rod and gives
when the fish bites. He pulls down and swallows the bait, and the spring
of the stick holds him safer than a straight pull would. To skin him, I
cut around back of his front side fins and take hold of the skin with my
pliers--just slit the hide a little down the sides, and it comes off.
These channel cats aren't bad to eat."
John joined them before dark, with two half-grown jack rabbits which he
had found on the bluffs below. He spoke of the fine view and of the
splendid sunset he had seen. Rob was examining the rabbits, each of
which had been shot squarely through the eye. "Dead-shot John, the old
trapper!" said he. "That's the way!"
"You didn't think I'd shoot 'em anywhere but through the head, did you?"
John inquired. "No sir, not yet!"
So, with meat in camp, they sat down, still in "verry good sperits," as
John quoted from the _Journal_.
Now day after day, hurrying hard as they could, they still drove on
northward, along the great bends of what began to seem an interminable
waterway. One bend, they fancied, they surely identified with the one
mentioned in the _Journal_, which then was thirty miles around and not
much over a half a mile across the neck. They reflected that in more
than a hundred years the great river in all likelihood had cut through
what Clark called the "Narost part," the necks of dozens of such bends.
On the map they identified the Rosebud Indian Reservation to the west.
The great Plains country into which they now were advancing seemed wild,
lonely, and at times forbidding, and the settlements farther and farther
apart. They were in cattle country rather than farming country much of
the time.
The _Journal_ brought up the second great Sioux council of Lewis and
Clark, on the "Teton river"--near Pierre, South Dakota--on the date of
September 25th; but so faithful had the motive power of the good ship
_Adventurer_ proved, that our party pulled into the most suitable
camping spot they could find not too near by, around noon of June 13th.
"Can't complain," said Rob, taking off his grease-spattered overalls and
wiping his hands on a bit of waste. "We've slipped a day on our
schedule, but from what we now know of this little old river, we are
mighty lucky to be here and not down by Council Bluffs, or maybe Kansas
City! It's only a little over three hundred miles now to the Mandans.
That's as far ahead as I can think."
"And as to rowing and paddling and poling and tracking her this
far," added John, "say, twelve hundred miles from the mouth of the
Missouri--whew! It makes my back ache. Seems to me we've skipped
along."
"Well, why shouldn't we?" demanded Jesse. "Those fellows had the finest
kind of hunting in the world; over a thousand of miles of it, to
here--over four thousand miles of it altogether--not a single day that
didn't have some sport in it, and they killed tons and tons of game.
But all that is left for us is water and sand and willows. Ducks and
grouse, yes, but we can't shoot 'em. And I've got so I don't crave to
look a catfish in the face."
Uncle Dick looked at the boys gravely and saw that the monotony of the
long voyage was beginning to wear on them.
"Stick her through to the Mandans, fellows," said he. "We'll see what
we'll see. But Jesse, how can you complain of being bored when right
now you are standing where Will Clark come pretty near being killed by
the Teton Sioux?
"Yes, sir, it was right here that they tried to stop him from going back
to the big boat. Then, for the first time, the Redhead Chief drew his
sword--they always went into uniform when they had a council on--and
Lewis and the men on the boat trained the swivel gun on the band of
Sioux who were detaining Clark.
"You see, they had the council awning stretched on a sand bar in the
mouth of the river, and the bateau was seventy yards off, anchored. They
had sent out for the Sioux to come in, had smoked with them, given them
provisions, made speeches to them, given them whisky and tobacco. The
Sioux were arrogant, wanted more whisky and tobacco, and when Clark came
ashore with only five men they tried to hold him up, grabbing the boat
painter and pulling their bows. The second chief, says Clark, was bad,
'his justures were of such a personal nature I felt Myself Compeled to
Draw my Sword.... I felt Myself Warm and Spoke in verry positive terms.'
Which is all he says of a very dangerous scrape."
"Whyn't they bust into 'em with the swivel gun?" demanded Jesse. "At
seventy yards they'd 'a' got plenty of 'em."
"Sure they would. And then maybe the Sioux would never have let them
through at all and would have shot into every boat of white men that
later came up the river. No, those young men showed courage and good
judgment both. They did not know fear, but they did not forget duty, and
they were there to make peace among all the tribes along the Missouri.
"President Jefferson knew that country would soon be visited by many of
our fur traders, and he didn't want the boats stopped. Lewis and Clark
both knew this."
"But the Sioux didn't bluff them," said Rob, "because Lewis went ashore
with only five men, in his turn, and then they all pulled off a dance,
and a big talk in a big council tent--it must have been big, for there
were seventy Sioux in it, and just those two young American officers.
The big pipe was on forked sticks in front of the chief, and under it
they had sprinkled swan's-down, and they all were dressed up to their
limit. And though they could have been killed any minute, these two
white men had that lot of Indians feeding from the hand, as the slang
goes, Uncle Dick!"
Uncle Dick nodded, and Rob went on, referring to his _Journal_. "And
then the big chief said what they had done was O.K., and asked the
white men to 'take pity on them'--which I think is an old Indian term
of asking for some more gifts. Anyhow, the upshot was they smoked the
peace pipe and ate 'some of the most Delicate parts of the Dog which
was prepared for the fiest and made a Sacrefise to the flag.' Then
they cleared away the floor, built up a fire in the lodge, and 'about
10 Musitions began playing on Tambereens'--which made a 'gingling
noise.' The women came in and danced, with staffs decorated with
scalps, and everybody sang and everybody promised to be good."
"Some party!" said Jesse, slangily; but Rob, now excited, went on with
the story:
"Poor Clark nearly got sick from lack of sleep. But the next day the
Sioux held on to the cable again and wanted to stop the boat till they
had more tobacco. Then Lewis told the chiefs they couldn't bluff him
into giving them anything. Clark did give them a little tobacco and told
the men not to fire the swivel. Then they ran up a red flag under the
white, and the next Sioux that came aboard they told that those two
flags meant peace or war, either way they wanted it, and if they wanted
peace, they'd all better go back home and stay there, and not monkey
with the buzz saw too long--well, you know, Uncle Dick, they didn't
really say that, but that was what they meant.
"The Sioux followed alongshore and begged tobacco for fifty miles, clean
up to the Ree villages, near the mouth of the Cheyenne River. Oh, they
found the Sioux, all right; and glad enough they were to get through
them, even paying tribute as they had done."
"That's a fair statement of the Teton affair," nodded the leader of the
party. "Many a white life that tribe took, in the seventy-five years
that were to follow. For the next hundred miles there were either Sioux
or Rees pestering and begging and keeping the party uneasy all the
time."
"And I'll bet they were glad to get to the Rees, too," commented John.
"Those half-Pawnees raised squashes, corn, and beans. But by now, if
they had had a good shotgun or so along, they could have killed all
sorts of swans, brant and other geese, and ducks, for they were running
into the fall migration of the wild fowl. Grouse, too, were mentioned
as very numerous. They stuck to big game--it was easy to get meat when
you could see a 'gang of goats'--antelope--swimming the river, and the
hills covered with game."
"Uncle Dick," resumed Rob, as they again gathered around the map and
_Journal_ spread down on the tent floor, "those men must have had some
notion of the country, even had some map of it."
"Yes, they had a map--made by one Evans, the best then to be had, and I
suppose made up from the fur traders' stories. But it was incomplete.
Even to-day few maps are anywhere near exactly accurate. For instance,
when they came to the Cheyenne River--which, of course, the traders
called the Chien, or Dog, River--Clark said that nothing was known of it
till a certain Jean Valle told them that it headed in the Black Hills.
"Of course, it's all easy now. We know the Black Hills are in the
southwest corner of South Dakota, and that the Belle Fourche River of
the old cow country runs into the Cheyenne, which flows almost east,
into the Missouri. But if Mr. Valle had not been out to the Black Hills,
Lewis and Clark would not have been able to give this information. Then,
again, while they were at the Ree village, on October 10th, two more
Frenchmen came to breakfast, 'Mr. Tabo and Mr. Gravolin,' who were
already in this country.
"To me, one of the most interesting things is to see the overlapping and
blending of all these things--how the turkey once overlapped the
antelope and prairie dog; how the Rees, who were only scattered branches
of the Pawnees, properly at home away down in Kansas--overlapped the
Sioux, who sometimes raided the Pawnees below the Platte.
"And these French traders said the Spaniards sometimes came to the mouth
of the Kaw River, and even on the Platte. So there we were, overlapping
Spain to the west. And up above, Great Britain was overlapping our
claims to the valley of the Columbia and even part of this Missouri
Valley. You can see how important this journey was.
"You'll remember the lower Brule Sioux Reservation, below us and west
of the river. The Cheyenne Reservation is in above here, below the
mouth of the Cheyenne River. From there the river takes a pretty
straight shoot up into North Dakota. A great game country, a wild cow
country, and now a quiet farming country. A bleak, snow-covered,
wind-swept waste it then was. And it was winter that first stopped
that long, slow, steady, tireless advance of the 'Corps of
Vollenteers.'"
"I see they broke one more private before they got to the Mandans,"
said John, running ahead in the pages of the book.
"Yes, that was Newman, who had been found guilty of mutinous
expressions. Seventy-five lashes and expulsion from the Volunteers was
what the court of nine men gave him. They always were dignified, and
they enforced respect from whites and Indians alike."
"Well," grumbled Jesse, "it looks to me like there had been a whole lot
of people wandering around across this country long before Lewis and
Clark got here."
"Right you are, my boy. The truth is that right across these Plains
there went west the first American exploring expedition that ever saw
the Rockies. The French nobleman Verendrye, his three sons, and a
nephew, not to mention quite a band of Indians, started west across from
the Mandan country in 1742. On January 1, 1743, he records his first
sight of the Rocky Mountains, which he calls the Shining Mountains--a
fine name it is for them, too.
"The Verendrye expedition was the first to cross Wyoming or the Dakotas
so far in the west. They came back through the Bad Lands, above here,
and Verendrye records in his journal that near a fort of the Arikara
Indians he buried a plate of lead, with the arms and inscription of the
king. He did this in March, 1743. It always was supposed that this was
at or near Fort Pierre, South Dakota. That suspicion was absolutely
correct.
"In a little railway pamphlet put out by the Northern Pacific Railway it
is stated that on Sunday, February 16, 1913--one hundred and seventy
years after Verendrye got back that far east--a school girl playing with
some others at the top of a hill scraped the dirt from the end of a
plate, which then was exposed about an inch above the ground. She pulled
it out. The story said it looked like a range-stove lining. It was eight
and a half inches long by six and a half inches wide and an eighth of an
inch in thickness. Well, it was discovered to be the old Verendrye lead
plate--that's all!"
"That's a most extraordinary thing!" said Rob. "Well, anyhow, it shows
the value of leaving exploring records. So you couldn't blame William
Clark for writing his name at least twice on the rocks."
"No, the story of the Verendrye plate is, I think, one of the most
curious things I have ever read in regard to early Western history. You
never can tell about such things. Well, in any case Verendrye, the first
white man who ever saw the Shining Mountains, died in 1749. That was
fifty-five years before Lewis and Clark started up the river.
"There is not a hundred miles, or ten miles, or one mile, along all
these shores which has not historical value if you and I only knew the
story."
"But it's a long, long way up to the Mandans still," began John once
more.
His Uncle Dick gayly chided him.
"It'll not be so long--only a little over three hundred miles from
here."
"If only there were the buffalo!" said Jesse.
"Yes, if only there were the buffalo, and the antelope and the Indians!
I'd give a good deal to have lived in those days, my own self. Good
night, Jess. Good night, Rob and Frank."
CHAPTER XIV
IN DAYS OF OLD
The young travelers each night made their beds carefully, for they long
since had learned that unless a man sleeps well he cannot enjoy the next
day's work. It has been noted that they had three buffalo robes for part
of their bedding, one each for Uncle Dick and Rob, while John and Jesse
shared one between them. In the morning Uncle Dick noted that the latter
two boys had their robe spread down with the hair side up.
"I suppose you did that to get more of a mattress?" he said. "But
suppose you wanted to keep warm in really cold weather, in a snowstorm,
say. Which side of the robe would you wear outside?"
"Why, the smooth side, of course!" replied Jesse, who was rolling the
robe. "That'd have the warm fur next to you, so you'd be warmer that
way."
"No, there's where you are wrong," said his uncle. "The old-timers
always slept with the hair outside, and the Indians wore their robes
that way. 'Buffalo know how to wear his hide!' is the way an Indian put
it. And, you see, a buffalo always did wear his hair outside! Next to
the musk ox, he was the hardiest animal on this continent and could
stand the most cold. No blizzards on these plains ever troubled him. He
could get feed when other animals starved."
"He'd paw down through the snow to the grass," said Jesse.
"Again you are wrong. A horse paws snow. The buffalo threw the snow
aside with his hairy jaws or his whole head--he rooted for the grass!"
"Well, I didn't know that."
"A good many things are now forgotten," said his friend. "Writers and
artists and even scientists quite often are wrong. For instance, in
pictures you almost always see the herd led by the biggest buffalo bull.
In actual fact it was always an old cow that led the herd. The bulls
usually were at the rear, to defend against wolves. And when a buffalo
ran, he ran into the wind, not downwind, like the deer. Few remember
that now.
"Take the antelope, too. The old hunters always knew that the antelope
shed his horns, same as a deer, but scientists denied that for years,
because they didn't happen to see any shed horns. I have had an antelope
buck's horn pull off in my hand, in the month of May, and it left the
soft core exposed, covered with coarse black filaments like black hairs.
Naturally, in the fall, at the time Lewis and Clark got their 'goat,' as
they called the antelope, the horns were on tight, so they supposed they
didn't shed.
"They sent President Jefferson specimens of the new animals they
found--the antelope, prairie dog, prairie badger, magpie, bighorn,
and a grizzly-hide or so. They got their four bighorn heads at the
Mandans, none very large, though 'two feet long and four inches
diameter' seemed big to them. And I shouldn't wonder if those horns
could have been pulled off the pith after they got good and dry. The
horns of the bighorn will dry out and lose at least ten per cent of
their measurement, in a few years' hanging on a wall. I have had a
bighorn's curly horn come off the pith in rough handling three or four
years after it was killed; but of course the horns never were shed in
life."
"Did they get them along the Missouri?" asked Jesse, now.
"Not until they got above the mouth of the Yellowstone. There they
killed a lot of them."
"They saw one big grizzly track before they got to the Mandans," said
Rob, who was listening.
"Oh yes--that might have been. Alexander Henry the younger tells us of
grizzlies in northern Minnesota in early days. In all the range country
along the Missouri from lower South Dakota the grizzly used to range,
and he was on the Plains all the way to the Rockies, and from Alaska to
New Mexico and Utah, as I can personally testify. Just how far south he
ran in here I don't know--some think as far south as upper Iowa, but we
can't tell. He couldn't do much with deer and antelope, and worked more
on elk and buffalo, when it came to big meat. He'd dig out mice and eat
crickets, though, as well.
"Yes, he'd been all along this country, I'm sure.
"But Lewis and Clark didn't really kill any grizzlies until they got
above the Yellowstone--and then they certainly got among them. Gass
records sixteen grizzlies met with between the Yellowstone and the Great
Falls of the Missouri. He usually calls them 'brown bears,' which shows
the great color range of the grizzly. Lewis and the others call them
'white bears.' The typical grizzly had a light-yellowish coat, often
dark underneath.
"Of course, color has nothing to do with it. I've seen them almost
black. The silvertip is a grizzly. The giant California bear was a
grizzly. The great Kadiak bears which you boys saw were grizzlies of a
different habitat. I've seen a grizzly with a hide almost red. But of
course you know that the 'cinnamon bear' is practically always a black
bear; and a black bear mother may have two cubs, one red and one quite
black.
"Scientists try to establish a dozen or two 'species' of bears--even
making different 'species' of the black bears of the southern
Mississippi bottoms--Arkansas, Louisiana, etc.--and I don't know how
many sorts of 'blue bears' and 'straw bears,' 'glacier bears,' etc.,
among the grizzlies. Of course, bears differ, just as men do. But the
one thing which remains constant is the length of the claws, or front
toe nails--what the _Journal_ calls their 'talons.' In a black bear
these are always short. In a grizzly they are always long--they get them
up to four and one-half inches, and I believe some of your Kadiaks have
even longer claws. Colors grade, but claws don't. I even think the polar
bear is a grizzly of the North--white because he lives on snow and ice,
and with a snaky head because he has to swim. But his claws he needed
and kept.
"The long-clawed bears were all predatory; the short-clawed ones never
were. Not long ago I read a magazine story about a black bear which
killed a moose with seven-foot horns. There never was a black bear ever
killed any moose, and there never was any moose with horns that wide.
Such things are nonsense--like a great part of the magazine animal
fiction."
Rob was interested. "Too bad they've trapped off about all the
grizzlies," he said now. "I've tried a lot of kinds of sport, and of
them all, I like grizzly hunting, quail shooting, and fly fishing for
trout."
"Not a bad selection! Well, the first is hard to get now. The grizzly is
closer to extinction than the elk or the buffalo, for the buffalo breed
in domestic life, and the grizzly--well, he hasn't domesticated yet.
He's the one savage--he and the gray wolf--that would never civilize.
And he's gone."
"But, Uncle Dick, those bears must have been a different species from
grizzlies nowadays. Look how they fought? Even Lewis came near being
killed by them more than once."
"Yes, they'd fight, in those days, for they were bigger and bolder, and
they had not yet learned fear of the rifle. You must remember that
while, in this country up to the Mandans, the early traders had been
ahead of Lewis and Clark, above the Yellowstone no white man ever had
gone. Those bears thought a white man was something good to eat, and
they offered to eat him.
"Their rifles were muzzle loaders--I've often and often tried to find
just the size ball they used, but I can't find such exact mention of
their weapons--but they were light and inefficient single-shot rifles,
as we now look at it, even in the hands of exact riflemen, as all those
men were. So the grizzlies jumped them. They shot one sixteen times.
Lewis had to jump in the river to escape from one. Oh, they had merry
times in those days, when grizzlies were regular fellows!"
John nearly always had precise facts at hand. He now found his copy of
the little journal of Patrick Gass. "Here's how big one was," he said.
"Gass calls it a 'very large brown bear,' and it measured three feet
five inches around the head, three feet eleven inches around the neck,
five feet ten and one-half inches around the breast. His foreleg was
twenty-three inches around, and his talons were four and three-eighths
inches. He was eight feet seven and one-half inches long."
"That was a big grizzly," Uncle Dick nodded, "a very big one, for this
latitude. The biggest silvertip grizzly I ever knew in Montana weighed
nine hundred pounds. But they were bigger in California and all up the
Pacific coast--trees and bears grew bigger there, for some reason. You
boys have killed Kadiaks as big as this Gass grizzly. But you didn't do
it with a flintlock, small-bore, muzzle loader, fair stand-up fight. And
your Kadiak bear would run when it saw you--so would a Lewis and Clark
grizzly; only it would run toward you! Six men of them went out after
one of them and wounded it, and it almost got the lot of them. Another
time a grizzly chased a man down a bank into the river--bad actors,
those grizzlies, in those times."
John looked at his watch. "Getting late, folks," said he. "On our way?"
"On our way!" And in a few moments the _Adventurer_ had her load aboard.
"You will now notice the Sioux running along the bank," said John,
"trailing the boat, shooting ahead of it, threatening to stop it,
begging tobacco, asking for a ride--all sorts of a nuisance. But we
spread the square sail, set out, and proceeded on!"
In fact, so well had they cast out ahead, as usual, the nature of the
country into which they were coming, and so well had they studied its
history, that it needs not tell their daily journey among the great
bluffs, the wide bars, and the willow-lined shores of the great river.
Gradually, the course of the river being now more nearly to the north,
they noted the higher and bleaker aspect of the Plains, which the
_Journal_ described as land not so good as that below the Platte. Of the
really arid country farther west, and of the uses of irrigation, the
_Journal_ knew little, and spoke of it as a desert, though now, on the
edge of the river, the clinging towns and the great ranch country back
of them, with the green fields of farms and the smokes of not infrequent
homes, warned them that the past was gone and that now another day and
land lay before them.
After many misadventures among the countless deceiving channels and bars
of the river, and after locating the several Indian villages of the past
and of to-day--the Rees, the Sioux bands, the Cheyennes--they did at
last cross the North Dakota line at the Standing Rock agency, did pass
the mouths of the Cannon Ball and Heart Rivers, and raise the smokes of
Bismarck on the right, and Mandan on the left bank, with the great
connecting railway bridge. They drove on, and at length chose their
stopping place below Mandan, on the west shore.
Now, as always at the river towns they had passed, they met many curious
and inquisitive persons, eager to know who they were, where they were
going, whence they had come, and how long they had been on the way.
"Well, sir," said Rob to one newspaperman who drove up to their little
encampment the next morning, in pursuit of a rumor he had heard that the
boat had ascended the river from its mouth, "since you ask us, we are
the perogue _Adventurer_, Company of Volunteers for Northwestern
Discovery, under Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. We are in
search of winter quarters, and we hope the natives are peaceful. We have
been, to this landing, just forty-nine days, five hours and thirty-five
minutes, this second day of July."
"But that's impossible! Why, it's over a thousand miles from here to St.
Louis by water!" remarked the editor, himself a middle-aged man.
"Would you say so, sir?"
"Well, how far is it?"
"You should know, sir; you live here."
"But I never had any occasion to know or to care," smiled the visitor.
Rob smiled also. "Well, sir, according to Patrick Gass----"
"I never heard of him----"
"----who kept track of it a hundred and seventeen years ago, it's about
sixteen hundred and ten miles, though we don't figure it quite sixteen
hundred. Call it fourteen hundred and fifty-two, as the river chart
does."
"Jerusalem! And you say you made it in forty-nine days? Why, that's--how
many miles a day?"
"Well, we set out to do over forty miles a day, but we couldn't quite
make it. We ran against a good many things."
"And broke all known and existing records at that, I'll bet a hat! How
on earth!"
"Well, you see, sir," Rob went on, politely, "we've rigged a double
outboard, with an extension bed on the stern. They're specially made for
us and they're powerful kickers. In fair water and all going good,
they'll do six and eight an hour, with auxiliary sail; and we traveled
ten hours nearly every day. But then, it wasn't always what you'd call
fair water."
"At least, we got here for the Fourth," he added. "We began to think,
down by the Cannon Ball, that we wouldn't. We planned to spend the
Fourth among the Mandans."
"If there's ice cream," interrupted Jesse.
"Ice cream?" The visitor turned to Uncle Dick, who sat smiling. "All you
want, and won't cost you a cent! Come on up to my house, won't you, and
spend the night? Have you got all the eggs and butter and bread and
fruit you want--oranges, lemons, melons?"
"Of melons we got quite a lot at the upper Arikaree village," said Rob,
solemnly. "But oranges--and ice cream--they didn't have those!"
Uncle Dick joined their visitor in a hearty laugh. "These chaps are
great for making believe," said he. "We're crossing on the old Lewis and
Clark trail, as nearly as we can. We're going to the head of the
Missouri River, and my young friends are trying to restore the life of
the old days as they go along."
"Fine! I wish more would do so. I'm ignorant, myself, but I'm going to
be less so. An idea, sir!
"Well," he continued, "you'll have to come up to town and stop with me.
I'll get a man to watch your boat--not that I think it would need much
watching. You'll be here over the Fourth, at least?"
"Oh, yes," replied Uncle Dick, now introducing himself, "we're ready to
take a little rest and look around a little among the Mandans! Can you
show us where the old Lewis and Clark winter quarters were?"
"Sure! To-morrow we can steam on up to that place, and also the site of
old Fort Clark. Then I'll show you around among the painted savages of
our city!"
They all laughed, and after pulling up the boat, drawing tight the tent
flaps, and spreading the tarpaulin over the cargo, they joined their new
friend in his motor car and sped off for the town, where they were made
welcome and obliged to tell in detail the story of their long journey.
CHAPTER XV
AMONG THE MANDANS
"Well," said Jesse, late the next afternoon, when, in accordance with
his promise, this new friend had pointed out the place where, the expert
investigators usually agreed, the explorers built their winter quarters
in the year 1804--near the plot called Elm Point, even now heavily
timbered. "I don't see much of a fort left here now. What's become of
it?"
"What becomes of any house built of cottonwood logs in ten or twenty
years?" smiled his uncle. "But the _Journal_ and other books tell us
that here or about here is where the old stockade once stood. It was
opposite to where Fort Clark later was built in 1831. You see, Fort
Clark was on the west side, on a high bluff, and in its time quite a
post, for it was one hundred and thirty-two by one hundred and
forty-seven feet in size, and well built. Fort Clark was about
fifty-five miles above the Northern Pacific Railroad bridge at Bismarck,
North Dakota. We've had a good day's run of it.
"All Clark tells us about Fort Mandan is that it was on the north bank,
that the ground was sandy, and that they cleared the timber to make
room. He says they had cottonwood and elm and some small ash, but
complains that the logs were large and heavy and they had to carry them
in on hand spikes, by man power. They used no horses in rolling up the
logs.
"But Patrick Gass tells more about the way they did. They had two rows
of cabins, in two wings, at right angles, and each cabin had four rooms
in it. I think the men slept upstairs, for when the walls were up seven
feet they laid a puncheon floor, covered with grass and clay, which Gass
says made 'a warm loft.' This projected about a foot, and a puncheon
roof was put over that.
"The outer wall was about eighteen feet high. They had several
fireplaces. They made a couple of storerooms in the angle of the two
wings, and then put up their stockade in front, to complete their
square. This stockade was made of upright logs, and had a gate, like
most of the frontier posts, so that, what with their swivel gun and all
their rifles, they could have made quite a fight against any sort of an
attack, although they had no trouble of any kind.
"They were not very far from the Mandan villages. Quite a settlement
this was, in these parts--not mentioning nine deserted villages inside
of sixty miles below--two Mandan villages, built with the Mandan
dirt-covered lodges, like those of the Rees; and besides that, villages
of Sioux and Gros Ventres, and of a band they called the Watasoons, and
seventy lodges of Crees and Assiniboines who came in later and the
fierce Minnetarees--plenty of savages to warrant the expedition in
taking no chances."
"I've read that the Indians at first were not so friendly," said Rob.
"There were British traders among them, weren't there?"
"Oh yes, the Northwest Fur Company was in there, and an Irishman by
the name of McCracken was on the ground at the time. Alexander Henry
got there in 1806, you know. Now, Lewis sent out a note by McCracken
to the agent at Fort Assiniboine. Those traders were none too friendly,
and tried to stir up trouble. Two more of the Nor'westers, Larocque
and McKenzie, came in, with an interpreter and four men, and the
interpreter, LaFrance, took it on him to speak sneeringly of the
Americans. It did not take Captain Lewis long to call him to account."
"Well, our fellows were up in there all alone, weren't they?" exclaimed
Jesse.
"They certainly were, but they held their fort; and they held all the
Northwestern country for us. As soon as the Northwest Fur Company found
out that Lewis and Clark intended to cross the Rockies to the Columbia,
they sent word East, and that company sent one of their best men, Simon
Fraser, to ascend the Saskatchewan and beat the Americans in on the
Columbia. But he himself was beaten in that great race by about a couple
of years! So we forged the chain that was to hold the Oregon country to
the United States afterward. Oh yes, our young captains had a big game
to play, and they played it beautifully.
"They always talked peace among these Mandans and others, because they
wanted the Missouri River opened to the American fur trade. They waited
around, and held talks, and swapped tobacco for corn, and the American
blacksmiths made for them any number of axes and hatchets and other
things. By and by the Indians began to figure that they were more apt to
get plenty of goods up the Missouri from the Americans than overland
from the British traders. Do you see how that began to work out? Oh, our
boys knew what they were about, all right. And the result was that our
fur trade swept up that river like an army with banners as soon as Lewis
and Clark got back home. In a few years we had a hundred and forty fur
trading posts on the Missouri and its upper tributaries, and from these
our bold traders pushed out by pack train into every corner of the Rocky
Mountains."
"Gee!" said Jesse, in his frequent and not elegant slang. "Gee! Those
were the days!"
"Right you are--those were the days! Those were the great days of
adventure and romance and exploration. It was through the fur trade that
we explored the Rocky Mountains. Can't you see our men of the fur posts,
paddling, rowing, sailing, tracking--getting up the Missouri? Great
days, yes, Jesse--great days indeed."
"I wish we had a picture of that old stockade!" sighed John.
"None exists. Not a splinter of it remains; it was burned down in 1805,
and the ruins later engulfed by the river. But I fancy we can see it,
from the description. So there our party spent that first winter, and
long and cold enough it was.
"They had to hunt or starve, but soon their buffalo and elk and deer
and antelope got very thin, mere skin and bones. It was bitter cold, and
the hunters came in frozen time and again--a hard, bare, bitter fight it
was. From all accounts, it was an old-fashioned winter, for the
mercury--they spelled it 'merkery'--froze solid in a few minutes one day
when they set the thermometer out of doors!"
"And it must have been cool inside the houses, too," ventured John. "But
of course they had to do their writing and fix up their things."
"Quite so--they had to get their specimens ready to ship down the river
in the spring. Then they had to make six canoes for use the next year,
and as they found the timber unsuitable near the river, the men had to
camp out where they found the trees, and then they carried the canoes by
hand over to the river, a mile and a half.
"They sent the big flatboat, or bateau, down the river, and thirteen men
went with it. The two perogues and the six new cottonwood dugouts they
took on west, up the river, when they started, on March 7, 1805, to
finish their journey across the continent. Of these men, the party who
went through, there were thirty-one; and there was one woman."
"I know!" said Jesse. "Sacagawea!"
"Right! Sacagawea. Make it two words. 'Wea' means 'woman.' 'Bird Woman'
was her name--Sacaga Wea. And of the entire party, that Indian girl--she
was only a girl, though lately married and though she started west with
a very young baby--was worth more than any man. If it had not been for
her they never would have got across.
"You see, up to this place, the Mandan towns, they had some idea of the
country, and so also they had beyond here as far as the mouth of the
Yellowstone--that's two hundred and eighty-eight miles above here. But
beyond the mouth of the Ro' Jaune--it even then was called Roche Jaune,
or Yellow Stone, by the early French _voyageurs_--it was said the foot
of white man never then had passed. There was no map, no report or rumor
to help them. If they had a guide, it couldn't be a white man.
"Now among the Mandans they found a man called Chaboneau, or Charboneau,
a Frenchman, married to two Indian women, one of whom was Sacagawea. He
had bought her from the Minnetarees, where she was a captive.
"Just think how the natives traveled in those days! You know the
Sioux hunted on the upper Platte, as far as the Rockies. Well, this
Minnetaree war party had been west of the Rockies, or in the big bend
of the Rockies, at the very head of the Missouri River, among the
Shoshonis. They took Sacagawea prisoner when she was a little girl,
and brought her east, all the way over to Dakota, here. But she was
Indian--she did not forget what she saw. She knew about the
Yellowstone, and the Three Forks of the Missouri.
"Well now, whether it was because Chaboneau, the new interpreter, wanted
her along, or whether Lewis and Clark figured she might be useful,
Sacagawea went along, all the way to the Pacific--and all the way back
to the Mandans again. Be sure, her husband did not beat her any more,
while they were with the white captains. In fact, I rather think they
made a pet of her. They found they could rely on her memory and her
judgment.
"So the real guide they had in the nameless and unknown country was a
Shoshoni Indian girl. It looked almost like something providential, the
way they found her here, ready and waiting for them--the only possible
guide in all that country. And to-day, such was the chivalry and justice
of those two captains of our Army--and such the chivalry and justice of
the men of Oregon and the enthusiasm of the women of Oregon--you may see
in Portland, near the sea to which she helped lead our flag, the bronze
statue of Sacagawea, the Indian girl. That, at least, is one fine thing
we have done in memory of the Indian.
"And within the last two or three years a bronze statue of Meriwether
Lewis and William Clark has been erected at Charlotteville, Virginia,
near the home of Meriwether Lewis--that was at Ivy station, to-day only
a scattered settlement. And away down in Tennessee, in the forest of
Lewis County, named after him, I have stood by the monument that state
erected over the little-known and tragic grave of Captain Meriwether
Lewis--far enough from the grave of the poor Indian girl who worshiped
him more than she could her worthless husband.
"No one knows where Sacagawea was buried, though her history was traced
a little way after the return to this country. She was buried perhaps in
the air, on a scaffold, and left forgotten, as Indian women were, and we
no more can stand by her grave than we can be sure we stand on the exact
spot where Will Clark built his winter quarters among the Mandans.
"Great days, boys--yes, great days, and good people in them, too. So now
I want you to study a little here.
"Look back down the river, which has seemed so long for you. To-morrow
will be the Fourth of July. It was Christmas that Lewis and Clark
celebrated with their men in their stockade."
Their new friend had for the most part been silent as he listened to
this counselor of the party. He now spoke.
"Then I take it that you are going on up the river soon, sir?" said he.
"I wish you good journey through the cow country. You'll find the river
narrower, with fewer islands, so I hear; and I should think it became
swifter, but--I don't know."
"I was going to come to that," said Uncle Dick, turning to Rob, John,
and Jesse. "What do you think? I'd like you to get an idea of the river
and all it meant, but we have only the summer and early fall to use. I
don't doubt we could plug on up with the motors, and get a long way
above Great Falls, but about the time we got to where we could have some
fun fishing or maybe shooting, we'd have to start east by rail. So I'd
planned that we might make a big jump here."
"How do you mean, sir?" Rob asked.
"Change our transportation."
"Oh--because Lewis and Clark changed here?"
"Natural place for us to change, if we do at all," said Uncle Dick. "We
ought to stick as close to the river as we can, and as a matter of fact
we have covered the most monotonous part of it. But we had to do that,
for there was no other way to get here and still hang anywhere near to
the river. And until we got here we struck no westbound railroad that
would advance us on our journey.
"Here we could get up the Yellowstone by rail, but we are working on
the Missouri. If we run on by motor car up to Buford, there we can get
by rail over to the Great Falls, and still hang closer to the river;
although, of course, we'll not be following it."
"But what'll we do with our boat?" began Jesse, ruefully. "Hate to leave
the little old _Adventurer_."
"Well, now," answered his uncle. "We couldn't so well take her along,
could we?"
"I'd like mighty well to buy her," interrupted the editor. "That is, if
you care to sell her."
"I never knew my boys to sell any of their sporting equipment," said the
other. "But I expect they'd give it to you, right enough. Eh, boys?"
They looked from one to another. "If the gentleman wanted her," began
Rob, at last, "and if we've done with her, I don't see why we couldn't.
But I think we ought to take the motors along as far as we can, because
we might need them."
"Good idea," Uncle Dick nodded. "We can get a trailer here, can't we?"
he asked of their friend.
"Sure; and a good car; too. I'll drive you up to Buford, myself, for the
fun of it--and the value of it to me. I'll get a car at Bismarck. We can
pack your outfit in the trailer and the motors, too, easily. You can
check and express stuff through to Great Falls from Buford--and there
you are. How'll you go from there--boat?"
"I don't believe so," replied Uncle Dick. "I believe we'd have more
freedom if we took a pack train above Great Falls, and cut across lots
now and then, checking up in our _Journal_ all the way."
"That's the stuff!" exclaimed John. "Horses!"
"Lewis and Clark used horses for some distance, at the crossing," said
Uncle Dick, "so I think we may dare do so. We want all the variety we
can get, and all the fun we can get, too. What do you say, young
gentlemen?"
"It sounds good to me," said Rob. "I'd like to see the mountains pretty
well. You see, a great part of our lives has been spent in Alaska and
the northern country, and we're just getting acquainted with our own
country, you might say. The Rockies this far south must be fine in the
early fall."
"It suits me," assented John. "I'd like to take the _Adventurer_ along,
but Lewis and Clark didn't take their boats through all the way,
either."
"And if we had time," added Jesse, "we could run some river late in the
fall, say from Great Falls down to here."
"All good," nodded Uncle Dick. Then turning to their new friend,
"Suppose we cross our camp to Bismarck the morning of July 5th, tie up
our boat there for you, and then go on in the way you suggest--motor and
trailer?"
"Agreed," said the other. "I'll be there early that day."
"Which way shall we go?" asked Rob. "If we took the road along the
Northern Pacific west, we could see the Bad Lands, and go through
Medora, Theodore Roosevelt's old town."
The editor shook his head. "Bad, if there's rain," he said. "Besides,
that takes you below the Missouri. I think we'd best go on the east side
the river, north of Bismarck. We could swing out toward the Turtle
Lakes, and then make more west, toward the Fort Berthold Reservation.
From there we could maybe get through till we struck the Great Northern
Railroad; and then we could get west to Buford, on the line, and on the
river again. If we got lost we could find ourselves again some time."
"How long would it take?" inquired Rob.
"If it's two hundred and eighty-eight miles by the river, it would be
maybe two hundred and fifty by trail. We could do it in a day, on a
straightaway good road like one of the motor highways, but we'll have
nothing of the sort. I'll say two days, three, maybe four--we'd know
better when we got there."
"That sounds more adventurish," said Jesse. And what the youngest of
them thought appealed to the others also.
"Very well. All set for the morning after the Fourth," said Uncle Dick.
"And when we go back to Mandan be sure not to eat too much ice cream,
for we're not apt to run across very many doctors on the way. And now
we'd better get ready to camp here to-night. We can make Mandan by noon
to-morrow--it's faster, downstream."
"On the way," said their friend, "I want you to go around to the coulee
below town, where there's three or four tepees of Sioux in camp. What do
they do? Oh, make little things to sell in town--and not above begging a
little. There's one squaw we call Mary, who has been coming here a good
many years. She makes about the finest moccasins we ever get. She made
my wife a pair, out of buckskin white as snow. I don't know where she
got it."
"The Sioux had parfleche soles to all their moccasins," said John,
wisely. "All the buffalo and Plains Indians did. The forest Indians had
soft soles."
"You're right, son," said the editor. "For modern bedroom moccasins, to
sell to white women, Mary makes them all soft, with a shallow ankle
flap. Most of the Indian men wear shoes now, but when she makes a pair
of men's moccasins she always puts on the raw-hide soles. You can see
the hair on the bottoms, sometimes."
"Buffalo hair?" smiled Jesse.
"Well, no. The Indians use beef-hide now. But they don't like it."
"Neither do I," said Jesse.
CHAPTER XVI
OLD DAYS ON THE RIVER
"Not so bad, not so bad at all," was John's comment as they all sat
around the camp fire on the evening of July 5th. They had spent two
pleasant days in town and now were forty miles out into the Plains
country above the railroad; they had pitched camp at the edge of a
willow-lined stream which ran between steep bluffs whose tops rose level
with the plain. The smoke of their camp fire drifted down the troughlike
valley from their encampment. The boys had found enough clean wood for a
broiling fire, and John just now had taken off the thick beefsteak which
they had brought along with them.
"You will observe that this is from the tenderloin of the three-year-old
fat buffalo cow that I killed this morning," said he. "I always did like
buffalo. We will break open some marrow bones about midnight, and I'll
grill some boss ribs for breakfast."
"And for luncheon," added Jesse, joining readily in the make-believe,
"we'll try some of the cold roast of the last bighorn I killed, over in
the breaks of the Missouri. Not so bad!"
Their friend from Mandan looked at them, smiling. "I hope you haven't
shot any tame sheep," said he. "No, not a bad camp, except that the
mosquitoes are eating me alive. How do these boys stand it the way they
do?"
"Oh, they're tough," laughed Uncle Dick. "We've had so many trips up
North together, where the mosquitoes really are bad, we've got immune,
so we don't mind a little thing like this. It takes two or three years
to get over fighting them. For the first year they almost drive a man
crazy, up there in Alaska."
"I expect, sir, you'd better go inside the tent with our uncle
to-night," said Rob. "We have our buffalo robes and bed rolls and don't
need any tent, but if you drop the bar to the tent door, and take a wet
sock to the mosquitoes that get in, I think you'll not be bothered."
"But how will you sleep, outside?"
"Oh, we pull a corner of the blanket over our faces if they get too bad.
By nine or ten o'clock they'll be gone--until sunup; then they're the
worst. If we had camped up on the rim it would have been better."
"I'm going up on the rim after supper," said Jesse, "to see if I can't
find an antelope--I suppose you'd call it a jack rabbit. I saw three
coveys of prairie chickens cross the road to-day. If it was legal, now!"
Indeed, an hour later the youngest of the party came in at dark,
carrying a pair of long-legged jacks, one of them young and fat. "I
always was good on antelopes," said he. "These were in at the edge of a
farmer's clover field. I'm glad we're getting into good game country!"
"Yes," Uncle Dick said, "between the Mandans and the mouth of the
Yellowstone, Lewis and Clark began to find the bighorn, which was new to
them. And as we've said, they now were meeting the first 'white bears'
or grizzlies. All along, from here to Great Falls, was the best grizzly
country they found in all the way across."
"If only they were in there now!" said John.
"Why, would you dare tackle a grizzly?" smiled their friend. John did
not say much.
"These boys have done it," replied their uncle for them. "I'd hate to be
the bear. They shoot straight, and the rifles they have are far more
powerful than the ones the first explorers had."
"We'll call this exploring," said Jesse, with sarcasm. "I'll have to
get help to hang up my antelopes so they'll cool out.
"But, anyhow," he added, "this is as much fun as plugging along among
the sand bars in the motor boat. We beat the oars, and now this gas
wagon beats our boat motors!"
"Uncle Dick," suddenly interrupted Rob, "we've been talking about the
fur trade on the river a hundred years ago. I understand the fur posts
were supplied by steamboats, at the height of the fur trade, anyhow.
Now, how long did it take a steamer in those days to make the run, say,
from St. Louis to the mouth of the Yellowstone?"
"That's easy to answer," his uncle replied. "The records and logs of
some of the old boats still exist in St. Louis, and while I was there I
looked up some of them.
"Now as nearly as I can learn there was no exact way of estimating
distances by any of those travelers--the speedometer was not invented,
nor the odometer, nor the ship's log. Now I don't know how the steamboat
captains got at it, but they kept a daily log of distance, and they had
the different stopping places all logged for distance. We make it a
little less than sixteen hundred miles to Mandan. The _Journal_ makes it
sixteen hundred and ten--close enough. The river chart calls it
fourteen hundred and fifty-two to the bridge; over fifty miles below the
Mandan villages.
"But the _Journal_ makes it eighteen hundred and eighty-eight miles to
the mouth of the Yellowstone. My steamboat records call it seventeen
hundred and sixty miles--more than a hundred miles shorter. At least,
that was what the traders called it to Fort Union, which was just above
the mouth of the Yellowstone, as nearly as now is known; you must bear
in mind that practically every one of the old fur posts was long ago
wiped out. How? Well, largely by the steamboats themselves! The captains
were always short of wood. They tore down and burned up first one and
then another of the early posts. Settlers did the rest.
"At first, as early as 1841, it took eighty days to do that seventeen
hundred and sixty miles upstream, and twenty-one days to run back
downstream. In 1845 they did it in forty-two days up, and fifteen down.
In 1847 it was done in forty days up, and fourteen days down; and they
didn't beat that much, if any."
"That's an average of about forty-four miles a day," said Rob, who was
doing some figuring on his notebook. "Going down, about one hundred and
twenty-three miles."
"Why, they beat our average!" complained John. "We didn't climb her in
much over forty, if that."
"Well, we could pick the way easier, but she had more power," said Rob.
"Everybody knows a big boat beats a little one. But she didn't beat us
much, at that."
"The _Adventurer's_ a good boat," nodded Uncle Dick, "and I think on the
whole we've got a pretty good idea of the travel of 1804 and 1805, or
will have before we're done.
"But now, one thing or two I want you also to bear in mind. Life isn't
all adventure. Commerce follows on the trail of adventure. The fur
traders forgot the romance, and hurried in up the Missouri, as soon as
they could. And what fur they did get! No wonder Great Britain was sorry
to meet Lewis and Clark up here!
"There were a lot of important fur posts that fed into the Missouri. The
mouth of the James River was a good post. Fort Pierre--on the Teton,
down below--was the best post on the river except Union, at the
Yellowstone. Pierre covered two and a half acres of ground, but Union
was better built--she had twenty-foot palisades a foot square, and she
stood two hundred and forty by two hundred and twenty feet, with stone
bastions at two corners, pierced for cannon, and a riflemen's banquette
clear around inside.
"They were right in the middle of the Sioux and near the Blackfeet, and
after the smallpox came on the river, the Indians got bitter and hated
the thought of a white man. But they had only fur to trade for rifles
and traps and blankets, and the white traders made the only market.
"I was speaking of Fort Pierre, because of a journal kept in 1832 by the
trader at that place. It is largely a record of weather and water, but
has a touch or so of interest now and then--I made some notes from it.
Thus, I find that on June 24th the steamer _Yellowstone_ arrived, down
bound, and they put six hundred packs of buffalo robes on her. That boat
on the next day had on board one thousand three hundred packs of robes
and beaver. In the old trade a pack was ninety to one hundred pounds.
"On July 9th three bateaux got in from Fort Union with a lot of robes.
They loaded on one bateau one hundred and twenty packs of beaver and
other fur, and on another thirty packs of robes, and she was to take on
one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty packs more at Yankton
post.
"On July 11th four bateaux left Fort Pierre for St. Louis, and they
carried three hundred and fifty-five packs of robes and ten thousand two
hundred and thirty pounds of beaver. And on July 30th another bateau
came down from Union with six thousand beaver skins on board.
"From this you can see something of the size of the big bateaux--or
Mackinaws--of that time, and something of the size of the fur trade as
well. And all the time the big river was outfitting the hardy pack-train
men who brought out fortunes in beaver from the rivers of the Rockies.
Great times, boys--great times! And all of that trade rested on the
Lewis and Clark expedition.
"You now have seen how important the mouth of the Yellowstone was--where
Fort Union was located in 1828. That was for a time pretty near the end
of the road, just as it was for Lewis and Clark a quarter century
earlier. Above there were the Blackfeet, and they were bad Indians.
About the first man up in there was James Kipp.
"Now I want to tell you something very curious--one of those things now
rapidly getting out of record and remembrance. James Kipp lived among
the Mandans and married there. He had a son, Joe Kipp, whom he once took
home to Illinois to educate, after he had left the trade and married a
white woman. He loved Joe, but told him he must never let it be known
that he was the Indian son of James Kipp, the respected white man.
"Well, the boy Joe couldn't stand that. He ran away up the river, and
never came back. He went back to his mother, a Mandan woman. In later
days, since the fur trade passed and the Indians all were put on
reservations, Joe Kipp was the post trader for years. He was a bold
trader and went into Canada at one time. He founded old Fort Whoop-up.
He got to be worth some money in his stores, though always liberal with
the Indians. He was the man who showed the engineers of the Great
Northern Railroad the pass which they built through. It is the lowest
railroad pass of them all, though the one farthest north of all our
railroads over the Rockies.
"Now, I knew Joe Kipp very well and often met him on the Blackfeet
Reservation. He lived in a big frame house there, had a bathtub and a
Chinaman cook, and showed his Indians how to 'follow the path of the
white man.'
"But what I want you to remember is this: Joe Kipp had his Mandan mother
with him until she died. I have seen her, too, a very tall, old woman,
and wild as a hawk. Joe built her a little cabin all her own, where no
one else ever went. In her little cabin she spent her last years as she
had lived in her earlier days among the Mandans, making moccasins for
Joe, decorating tobacco pouches and fire bags with beads and porcupine
quills. I have a fire bag of hers that Joe gave me, and I prize it very
much. She no longer had the buffalo, but on the rafters of her lodge she
had her dried meat hanging, and the interior was something no man living
will see again.
"Joe Kipp's Mandan mother was the last living soul of the pure-blood
Mandan tribe, one of the most curious and puzzling ones of the
West--they were a light-colored people, the children with light eyes; no
one knows how they came on the Missouri. But the smallpox got them
almost all. They went crazy, jumped in the river--died--passed.
"Well, Joe's mother, so he said, was the last, a very old woman, I
presume nearly a hundred then. Often she would take her blanket and go
out on a hilltop and sit there motionless hours at a time, with her
blanket over her face--thinking, thinking, I presume, over the days
that you and I are studying together now.
"And just a little while ago I heard of Joe Kipp's death, too. His
mother died some years earlier. So that is some Mandan history which I
presume even our Mandan friend here never has heard before--about the
last of the Mandans, who came down, broken and helpless, even into our
own time."
"Don't!" suddenly said Rob. "Please don't! It makes me sad."
They fell silent as presently each found his way to his blankets.
CHAPTER XVII
AT THE YELLOWSTONE
The motor-car journey of the party had not much of eventfulness, being
practically, most of the way, through a farm or range country where
roads of least passable sort led them in the general northwesterly
direction which they desired to take. All three of the young explorers
could drive, so they took turns occasionally, while the editor sat in
the back seat and conversed with Uncle Dick.
Beyond a few grouse and rabbits, with a half dozen coyotes, they saw no
game except wild fowl on the sloughs. The cabins and tepees on the Fort
Berthold Indian Reservation afforded them a change of scene, and they
were delighted to find three of the native Mandan earth lodges, one
nearly fifty feet in diameter. They learned that the remnants of the
Mandan tribe, few in number and comprising few, if any, pure blood, were
located with reservation here, and were clinging to their tribal customs
the best they could.
"Well, here's what Patrick Gass says about the old Mandan huts and how
they were built--and he was a carpenter and so ought to know." John was
always ready with his quotations:
"'A Mandane's circular hut is spacious. I measured the one I lodged
in, and found it 90 feet from the door to the opposite side. The
whole space is first dug out about 1-1/2 feet below the surface of
the earth. In the center is the square fireplace, about five feet
on each side, dug out about two feet below the surface of the
ground flat. The lower part of the hut is constructed by erecting
strong posts about six feet out of the ground, at equal distances
from each other, according to the proposed size of the hut, as they
are not all of the same dimensions. Upon these are laid logs as
large as the posts, reaching from post to post to form the circle.
On the outer side are placed pieces of split wood seven feet long,
in a slanting direction, one end resting on the ground, the other
leaning against the cross-logs or beams. Upon these beams rest
rafters about the thickness of a man's leg, and 12 to 15 feet long,
slanting enough to drain off the rain, and laid so close to each
other as to touch. The upper ends of the rafters are supported upon
stout pieces of squared timber, which last are supported by four
thick posts about five feet in circumference, 15 feet out of the
ground and 15 feet asunder, forming a square. Over these squared
timbers others of equal size are laid, crossing them at right
angles, leaving an opening about four feet square. This serves for
chimney and windows, as there are no other openings to admit light,
and when it rains even this hole is covered over with a canoe (bull
boat) to prevent the rain from injuring their gammine (sic) and
earthen pots. The whole roof is well thatched with the small
willows in which the Missourie abounds, laid on to the thickness of
six inches or more, fastened together in a very compact manner and
well secured to the rafters. Over the whole is spread about one
foot of earth, and around the wall, to the height of three or four
feet, is commonly laid up earth to the thickness of three feet, for
security in case of an attack and to keep out the cold. The door is
five feet broad and six high, with a covered way or porch on the
outside of the same height as the door, seven feet broad and ten in
length. The doors are made of raw buffalo-hide stretched upon a
frame and suspended by cords from one of the beams which form the
circle. Every night the door is barricaded with a long piece of
timber supported by two stout posts set in the ground in the inside
of the hut, one on each side of the door.'"
"Well," remarked Jesse, "that sort of a house was big enough, so it is
no wonder they could keep their horses in there with them, too, in the
wintertime. And they fed them cottonwood limbs when there wasn't any
grass to eat."
"Yes," remarked Uncle Dick, "that's what we call adjusting to an
environment. I will say these Mandans were rather efficient on the
whole, and not bad engineers and architects."
They did not tarry long, although they made their second encampment
within the lines of the old Fort Berthold Reservation, for they found
all the Indians wearing white men's clothing, and using wagons and farm
implements, and Jesse said they had more Indianish Indians in Alaska.
Now they bore rather sharply to the north, feeling for the line of the
railway, which they struck at a village about midway between the Little
Knife and the White Earth Rivers. The early afternoon of their fourth
day brought them back once more to the sight of the Missouri, at the
town of Buford, near the Montana line and opposite the mouth of the
Yellowstone.
Following their usual custom, they made camp outside the vicinity of the
town, after purchasing the supplies they needed for the day and for the
return trip of their obliging friend from Mandan, who now reluctantly
decided that he could accompany them no farther.
"I'd rather go on with you than do anything I know," said he, "but it's
going to be quite a trip, and I won't have time, even if we could get
through with a car."
Uncle Dick nodded. "Really the best way to do this would be to take ship
again here and follow the river up the Great Falls," he said; "but by
the time we got a boat rigged and had made the run up--best part of six
hundred miles--we'd be almost a month further into the summer--because
the river is swifter above here. They made good time, but it was mostly
cordelle work. And, using gas motors, the boys wouldn't have much chance
of any real sport and exercise, which, of course, I want them to have
every summer when possible.
"Get your map, John--the big government map--and let's have a look at
this country in west of here."
John complied. They all bent over the map, which they spread down on the
floor of the tent. Their gasoline camp lantern shed its brilliant light
over them all as they bent down in study of the map.
"You'll see now that we're almost at the farthest north point on the
Missouri River. From here it runs almost west to the Great Falls, and
then almost south. Now our new railroad (the Great Northern Railroad)
will take us to the Great Falls of the Missouri, but it by no means
follows the Missouri. On the contrary, a little over two hundred miles
from here, I'd guess, it strikes the Milk River--as Lewis and Clark
called it--and follows that river half across the state of Montana. It
would carry us out to the Blackfeet Reservation, and what is now Glacier
Park--my own hunting ground among the Blackfeet, where I knew Joe
Kipp--but that is entirely off the map for us."
"Why, sure it is!" said Jesse, following the line of the river with his
finger. "Look it! It runs away south, hundreds of miles, into the
southwest corner of the state; and the railroad goes almost to Canada.
And there's a lot of river between here and Great Falls, too--bad water,
you say?"
"And see here where the Yellowstone goes!" added Rob. "It's away below
the Missouri, a hundred, a hundred and fifty miles in places--no
railroads and no towns."
"No," remarked their leader, "but one of the real wild places of the
West in its day--as cow range or hunting range, that wild and broken
country in there had no superior, and not many men know all of it even
now. Part of it is wonderfully beautiful.
"At no part of the journey did Lewis and Clark have more exciting
adventures than in precisely this country that we've got to skip, too.
The buffalo fairly swarmed, and elk and antelope and bighorn sheep and
blacktail deer were all around them all the time. It was a wonderful new
world for them. How many of the great fighting grizzlies they met in
that strip of the river, I wouldn't like to say, but in almost every
instance it meant a fight, until half the crew would no longer go after
a grizzly, they were so scared of them. One they shot through eight
times, and it chased the whole party even then. I tell you, those bears
were bad!
"But we'd not see one now--they're all gone, every one. Nor would we see
a bighorn--besides, they are protected by a continuous closed season in
Montana. Pretty country, yes, wild and bold and risky; but better coming
down than going up. We miss some grand scenery, but save a month's time,
maybe.
"But now see here--about halfway out to the Blackfeet is Havre Junction.
There we can take a train southwest to the town of Great Falls; and
above there we can stop at the mouth of the Marias River. Between there
and the Falls is Fort Benton, and that is one of the most important
points, in a historical way, there was on the whole river, although its
glory departed long ago. From there we'd get to our pack train and be
off for the head of the Missouri. What do you think, Rob?"
Rob was silent for a time. "Well," said he, at length, "I think we'd get
pretty much a repetition of the river work, and not much sport--hard
river, too.
"Now, it would be fine to go to old Benton by river, to the head of
navigation; but we know that Fort Benton was not one of the early fur
posts--indeed, it came in when the last of the buffalo were being
killed. It was where the traveling traders got their goods, and where
the bull outfits got their freight in 1863 for the placer mines of
Montana and was the outfit place for Bozeman and all those early points.
But that was after the fur trade was over."
"That's right," said Uncle Dick. "First came the explorers; then the fur
traders; then the miners; then the cow men; then the farmers. The end of
the buffalo came in 1883--a million robes that year; and the next, none
at all--the most terrible wild-life tragedy that ever was known. After
that came the cattle and the sheep and the irrigation men."
He sat musing for the time.
"But listen now to a little more of the early stuff. You, Jesse, do you
follow up the Yellowstone with your finger till you come to the mouth of
the Big Horn River. Got it?"
"Yes, sir," replied Jesse. "Here she is."
"All right. Now, at that place, in the year 1807--the next year after
Lewis and Clark got back home--a shrewd St. Louis trader by name of
Manuel Lisa, of Spanish descent he was, heard all those beaver stories,
and he pushed up the Missouri and up the Yellowstone, and built a post
called Fort Manuel there. He wanted to trade with the Blackfeet and
Crows both, but found those tribes were enemies. He couldn't hold the
fort. He dropped back to St. Louis and formed the first of the great fur
companies, the Missouri River Company. They were the pioneers of many
later companies.
"The Missouri River Company had their post at the Three Forks of the
Missouri--away up yonder, eight hundred miles from here--as early as
1810; that was crowding Lewis and Clark pretty fairly close, eh? Well,
then came the Rocky Mountain Company, and the American Fur Company, and
the Pacific Fur Company, and the Columbia Fur Company, and I don't know
how many other St. Louis partnerships up-river--not mentioning the
pack-train outfits under many names--and so all at once, as though by
magic, there were posts strung clear to the head of the river--one
hundred and forty of them, as I have told you. And of them all you could
hardly find a trace of one of them to-day.
"There's dispute even as to the site of Fort Union, which was just above
here and up the river a little above the Yellowstone. That was built in
1828.
"Long before that, and for twenty years after that, the fur traders kept
on building, until the mouth of every good-sized river running into the
Missouri had not only one, but sometimes three or four posts, all
competing all or part of the time! Risky business it was. Some made
fortunes; most of them died broke. Well, I reckon they had a good run
for their money, eh?"
"And when did it end?" asked the Mandan friend, who had sat an absorbed
listener to a story, the most of which was new to him.
"It has not ended yet," answered Uncle Dick. "St. Louis is to-day the
greatest fur market in the world, though now skunk and coon and rat have
taken the place of beaver and buffalo and wolf. But within the past four
years a muskrat pelt has sold for five dollars. In 1832 the average
price for the previous fifteen years had been twenty cents for a
rat-hide--many a boy in my time thought he was rich if he got ten cents.
A buffalo robe averaged three dollars; a beaver pelt, four dollars; an
otter, three dollars. Think of what they bring now! Well, the demand
combs the country, that's all.
"But in 1836 beaver slumped--because that was the year the silk hat was
invented. Did you know that? And in 1883 the buffalo robes ended. I'd
say that 1850 really was about the end of the big days of the early fur
trade--what we call the upper-river trade."
Rob put his hand down over the map. "And here it was," said he, "in this
country west of here, up the Yellowstone, up the Missouri, all over and
in between!"
"Quite right, yes," his companion nodded. "Of all the days of romance
and adventure in the Far West, those were the times and this was the
place--from here west, up the great waterway and its branches.
"No one can estimate the value of the Missouri River to the United
States. It made more history for us than the Mississippi itself. It made
our first maps--the fur trade did that. It led us across and got us
Oregon. It led us to the placers which settled Montana. It took the
first horses and wagons and plows into the upper country in its day, as
well as the first rifles and steel traps. It brought us into war with
the Indians, and helped us win the war. It carried our hunters up to the
buffalo, and carried all the buffalo down, off from the face of the
earth. And it rolls and boils and tumbles on its way now as it did when
the great bateaux swept down its flood, over a hundred miles a day,
loaded with robes and furs."
"I wish we could see it all!" grumbled Jesse, again.
"You can see it all now, Jess," said his uncle, "better than you could
if you plugged up its stream without looking at a map or book. And even
if you did look at both, you've got to see the many different periods
the old Missouri has had in its history, and balance one against the
other.
"Dates are not of so much importance, but reasons for great changes are
important. If I had to select just one date in Western history, do you
know what that would be?"
"Eighteen hundred and four, when our men started up with the flag!" said
Rob.
Uncle Dick shook his head.
"Eighteen hundred and six, when they got back," ventured Jesse.
"No."
"Eighteen hundred and forty-eight, when they found gold in California!"
said John.
"No! Great years, yes, and the discovery of gold was a great event in
changing all the country. But to the man who really has studied all the
story of the Missouri River, I believe that the year 1836 was about the
pivotal date. And it only marks the invention of the silk hat! But that
year the plow began to take the place of the steel trap in the way of
making a living in the West. That was the year, I might say, when the
mystery and romance of the unknown West found their end, and the day
began of what we call business and civilization.
"That's all. Go to bed, fellows. Our friend has been most kind to us,
and we have to get him a good breakfast in the morning, since he must
leave us then."
The Mandan friend rose and put out his hand. "I want to thank you, sir,"
he said. "I'm in your debt. I wish my own boys were along with this
party."
The next day they parted and the young Alaskans were speeding west by
rail, making the great jump of about six hundred miles, between the
mouth of the Yellowstone and the Great Falls of the Missouri.
CHAPTER XVIII
WHERE THE ROAD FORKED
"Well, fellows," began Rob, "this is a place I've always wanted to see.
I've read about old Fort Benton many a time. Now, here we are!"
The little party stood curiously regarding an old and well-nigh ruined
square structure of sun-dried brick, not far from which lay yet more
dilapidated remnants of what once had been the walls and buildings of an
old abode inclosure. They were on their third day out from the mouth of
the Yellowstone River, having come by rail, and were spending the day at
Fort Benton, between the junction point of Havre and the modern city of
Great Falls.
"There's not much of it left," scoffed Jesse. "I don't call this so much
of a fort. You could pretty near push over all that's left of it."
"Not so, Jess," replied Rob, the older of the three boys. "Nothing can
push over the walls of old Fort Benton! It has foundations in history."
"Oh, history!" said Jesse. "That's all right. But I'm sore we didn't
run the river up from Buford. Just when we hit some wild stuff, we take
the cars! Besides, we might have seen some white bears or some bighorn
sheep."
John smiled at Jesse. "Not a chance, Jess," said he, "though it's true
we have jumped over what was the most interesting country we had struck
till then--castles and towers and walls and fortresses; and as you say,
plenty of game. Tell him about it, Uncle Dick. He's grouching."
Uncle Dick smiled and put his hand on Jesse's curly head. "No, he
isn't," said he. "He just isn't satisfied with jack rabbits where there
used to be grizzlies and bighorns. I don't blame him.
"Yet to the east of us, to the end of the river at Buford, to the south
along the Yellowstone, and on all the great rivers that the cowmen used
for range--along the Little Missouri and the Musselshell and the Judith
and countless other streams whose names you have heard--lay the greatest
game country the world ever saw, the best outdoor country in the world!
"This was the land of the Wild West Indian and buffalo days, so wild a
country that it never lived down its reputation. Buffalo, antelope, and
elk ranged in common in herds of hundreds of thousands, while in the
rough shores of the river lived countless bighorns, hundreds of
grizzlies, and a like proportion of buffalo and antelope as well, not to
mention the big wolves and other predatories. Yes, a great wilderness it
was!"
"And we jumped it!" said Jesse.
"Yes, because I knew we'd save time, and we have to do that, for we're
not out for two years, you see.
"Now look at your notes and at the _Journal_. It took Lewis and Clark
thirty-five days to get here from the mouth of the Yellowstone, and
we've done it in one, you might say. The railroad calls it three hundred
and sixty-seven miles."
"Well, the _Journal_ calls it more," broke in Rob, "yet it sticks right
to the river."
"And now they began to travel," added John. "They did
twenty--eighteen--twenty-five--seventeen miles a day right along, more'n
they did below Mandan, a lot.
"They make it six hundred and forty-one miles from the Yellowstone to
the Marias, which is below where we are now. That's about eighteen miles
a day. Yet they all say the river current is much stiffer."
"We'd have found it stiff in places," said their leader. "But the
reason they did so well--on paper--was that now they couldn't sail the
canoes very well, and so did a great deal of towing. The shores were
full of sharp rocks and the going was rough, and they had only
moccasins--they complained bitterly of sore feet.
"Their hardships made them overestimate the distances they did--and they
did overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the Rat
Portage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember we
figured on double what we had actually done? A man's wife corrected him
on how long they had been married. He said it was twenty years, and she
said it was ten, by the records. 'Well, it seems longer,' he said. Same
way, when they did ten miles a day stumbling on the tracking line, they
called it twenty. It seemed longer.
"Now, when the river commission measured these distances accurately,
they called it seventeen hundred and sixty miles from the mouth of the
river to the mouth of the Yellowstone, and not eighteen hundred, as the
_Journal_ has it. And from Buford to Benton, by river, is not six
hundred and forty-one miles, as the _Journal_ makes it, but only five
hundred and three. So the first white men through those canyons and
palisades below us yonder were one hundred and thirty-eight miles over
in their estimates, or more than one-fourth of the real distance.
"This tendency to overestimate distances is almost universal among
explorers who set the first distances, and it ought to be reckoned as a
factor of error, like the dip of the magnetic needle. But they did their
best. And we want to remember that they were the first white men to come
up this river, whereas we are the last!"
"Anyhow," resumed Rob, "we are at old Benton now."
"Yes, and I think even Jesse will agree, when we stop to sum up here,
that this is a central point in every way, and more worth while as a
standing place that any we would have passed in the river had we run it.
"This is the heart of the buffalo country, and the heart of the old
Blackfoot hunting range--the most dreaded of all the tribes the early
traders met. We're above the breaks of the Missouri right here. Look at
the vast Plains. This was the buffalo pasture of the Blackfeet. The
Crows lay below, on the Yellowstone.
"Now as they came up through the Bad Lands and the upper breaks of the
big river, the explorers gave names to a lot of creeks and buttes, most
of which did not stick. Two of them did stick--the Judith and the
Marias. Clark called the first Judith's river, after Miss Julia Hancock,
of Virginia, the lady whom he later married. Her friends all called her
Judy, and Clark figured it ought to be Judith.
"In the same way Lewis called this river, near whose mouth we now are
standing, Maria's River, after his cousin, Miss Maria Wood. Clark's
river, famous in military days, and now famous as the wheat belt of the
Judith Basin, lost the possessive and is now plain Judith. That of
Meriwether Lewis still has all the letters, but is spelled Marias River,
without the possessive apostrophe. So these stand even to-day, the names
of two Virginia girls, and no doubt will remain there while the water
runs or the grass grows, as the Indians say."
"But even now you've forgotten something, Uncle Dick," interrupted John.
"You said this was the Forks of the Road. How do you mean?"
"Yes. This later proved one of the great strategic points of the West.
As you know, this was the head of steamboat navigation, and the
outfitting point for the bull trains that supplied all the country west
and south and north of us. No old post is more famous. But that is not
all.
"I have reference now, really, not to Fort Benton, but to the mouth of
the Marias River, below here. Now, see how nearly, even to-day, the
Marias resembles the Missouri River. Suppose you were captain, Jess, and
you had no map and nothing to go by, and you came to these two rivers
and didn't have any idea on earth which was the one coming closest to
the Columbia, and had no idea where either of them headed--now, what
would you do?"
"Huh!" answered Jesse, with no hesitation at all. "I know what I'd have
done."
"Yes? What, then?"
"Why, I'd have asked that Indian girl, Sacagawea, that's what I'd have
done. She knew all this country, you say."
"By Jove! Not a bit bad, Jess, come to think of it. But look at your
_Journal_. You'll find that at precisely the first time they needed to
ask her something they could not! The girl was very sick, from here to
above the Great Falls. They thought she was going to die, and it's a
wonder she didn't, when you read what all they gave her by way of
medicines. She was out of her head part of the time. They never asked
her a thing on the choice of these rivers!
"Well now, what did they do? They spent more than a week deciding, and
it was time well spent. They sent out small parties up each fork a
little way, and the men all thought the Marias, or right-hand fork, was
the true Missouri. Then Clark was sent up the south fork, which was
clearer than the other. He went thirty-five miles. If he had gone twenty
miles farther, he'd have been at the Great Falls; and the Minnetaree
Indians had told of those falls, and of an eagle's nest there, though
they said nothing about the river to the north. Chaboneau had never been
here. His wife was nearly dead. No one could help.
"Lewis took a few men and went up the Marias for about sixty miles. They
came back down the Marias, and decided on the left-hand fork, against
the judgment of every man but Clark.
"His reasoning is good. The men all pointed out that the right-hand fork
was roily, boiling, and rolling, exactly like the Missouri up which they
had come, whereas the other fork was clear. But Lewis said that this
showed that the Marias ran through plains country and did not lead close
to the Rockies, from which the water would run clearer; and they did
not want to skirt the mountains northerly, but to cross them, going
west.
"Lewis had an old English map, made by a man named Arrowsmith, based on
reports of a Hudson's Bay trader named Fidler, who had gone a little
south of the Saskatchewan and made some observations. Now look at your
_Journal_, and see what Lewis thought of Mr. Fidler.
"The latter marked a detached peak at forty-five degrees latitude. Yet
Lewis--who all this time has been setting down his own latitude and
longitude from his frequent observations--makes the Marias as
forty-seven degrees, twenty-four minutes, twelve and eight-tenths
seconds. He says:
"'The river must therefore turn much to the south between this and
the rocky mountain to have permitted Mr. Fidler to have passed
along the eastern border of these mountains as far south as nearly
45 deg. without even seeing it.... Capt. Clark says its course is
S. 29 W. and it still appeared to bear considerably to the W. of
South.... I think therefore that we shall find that the Missouri
enters the rocky mountains to the North of 45 deg. We did take the
liberty of placing his discoveries or at least the Southern
extremity of them about a degree farther North ... and I rather
suspect that actual observations will take him at least one other
degree further North. The general course of Marias river ... is 69
deg. W. 59'.'
"Lewis also figured that Fidler in his map showed only small streams
coming in from the west, 'and the presumption is very strong that those
little streams do not penetrate the Rocky Mountains to such distance as
would afford rational grounds for a conjecture that they had their
sources near any navigable branch of the Columbia.' He was right in
that--and he says those little creeks may run into a river the Indians
called the Medicine River. Now that is the Sun River, which does come in
at the Falls, but which Lewis had never seen!
"Again, the Minnetaree Indians had told him, in their long map-making
talks at the Mandan winter quarters, that the river near the Falls was
clear, as he now saw this stream. The Minnetarees told him the Missouri
River interlocked with the Columbia. And as he was now straight west of
the Minnetarees, he figured that when they went hunting to the head of
the Missouri, as they had, they couldn't have passed a river big as this
south fork without mentioning it. And the Indians said that the Falls
were a 'little south of the sunset' from the Mandans--and Lewis had his
latitude to show he was still on that line and ought to hold to it.
"Lastly, he reasoned that so large a river must penetrate deeply into
the Rockies--and that was what he wanted. He knew it could not rise in
dry plains. So, relying on his Minnetarees and his horse sense, and not
on Mr. Fidler, Lewis refused to go any farther north, because he could
not figure out there a big river penetrating into the Rockies. He was
absolutely right, as well as very shrewd and wise.
"Now, reasoning at first shot, the _voyageurs_ would have gone up the
Marias. Cruzatte especially, their best riverman, was certain the Marias
was the true Missouri. They would then maybe have met the Blackfeet and
would never have crossed the Rockies; which would have meant failure, if
not death; whereas this cold-headed, careful young man, Meriwether
Lewis,
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