Explorers and Travellers
by A. W. Greely · English · Gutenberg #36069 · 509,654 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Explorers and Travellers
Author: A. W. Greely
Release date: May 9, 2011 [eBook #36069]
Most recently updated: April 22, 2023
Language: English
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Transcriber's note:
The following typographical errors have been corrected:
Page 48: "... Brouillan, governor of Placentia, who assumed entire
command, interfered with Iberville's contemplated movements, and
declared that his own troops, the Canadians, should not accompany
him on the opening campaign." 'Brouillan' amended from
'Brouillian'.
Page 157: "The difficulties of communicating with the Chopunish
were very great, and if errors occurred it was not astonishing."
'Chopunish' amended from 'Chopunnish'.
Page 180: "... well armed and prepared as braves to sell their
lives dearly; that they should go on, and if the Pawnees opposed,
the great American father would send other warriors to avenge the
dead." 'Pawnees' amended from 'Pawness'.
Page 202: "Most unfortunately, on the chart transmitted to Ross by
Wilkes, he entered, without distinguishing marks, land between
longitudes 160° E. and 165° E., near the sixty-sixth parallel ..."
'parallel' amended from 'paralled'.
Page 289: "The consensus of opinion in the Lady Franklin expedition
pointed to Cape Joseph Goode, 80° 14´ N., ..." 'consensus' amended
from 'concensus'.
[Illustration: A. W. Greely]
_MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT_
EXPLORERS AND TRAVELLERS
BY
GENERAL A. W. GREELY, U.S.A.
GOLD MEDALLIST OF ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY AND SOCIÉTÉ DE
GÉOGRAPHIE, PARIS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1894
COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
PREFACE
The compiler of a series of sketches of American Explorers and
Travellers experiences at the very outset a serious embarrassment from
the superabundant wealth of original material at his command. The
history of America for two hundred years after the voyage of Joliet has
been the history of courageous, persistent, and successful exploration,
wherein the track of the explorer, instantly serving as a trail for the
pioneer, has speedily broadened into the wagon-road of invading
immigrants.
Explorations and journeys of such an extent as in other and older lands
would have excited praise and merited reward have been so frequent in
this continent as to pass almost unnoticed. Hence the scope of this
modest volume is necessarily confined to explorations of great
importance or peculiar interest, and when made by men of American birth
who are no longer living.
In deference to the author's advisers, two exceptions have been made--Du
Chaillu and Stanley, Americans by adoption--otherwise African
exploration, so wondrously successful in this generation and so fruitful
in its results, would have been unrepresented. Again, the unparalleled
growth and progress of our American republic owes no small debt to the
wealth of physical vigor and strong intellectuality contributed by its
sturdy emigrants. These men, American in idea, purpose, and action,
whose manhood outgrew the slow evolution of freedom in their natal
country, merit recognition. What thousands of other naturalized citizens
have industrially wrought of the wonderful and great in this country,
these selected representatives have equalled in African exploration.
A chronological arrangement appeared best suited to these sketches,
which from Joliet to Frémont exhibit the initiation, growth, and
development of geographic discovery in the interior and western portions
of the United States. Since the sketches rest very largely on original
narratives some current errors at least have been avoided.
Generalization and criticism have been made always with reference to
later exploration, which necessarily enhances or diminishes the
importance of any original work.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. LOUIS JOLIET, Re-discoverer of the Mississippi, 9
II. PETER LE MOYNE, SIEUR D'IBERVILLE, Founder of Louisiana, 41
III. JONATHAN CARVER, the Explorer of Minnesota, 71
IV. CAPTAIN ROBERT GRAY, the Discoverer of the Columbia River, 88
V. CAPTAIN MERIWETHER LEWIS AND LIEUT. WILLIAM CLARK, First
Trans-Continental Explorers of the United States, 105
VI. ZEBULON MONTGOMERY PIKE, Explorer of the Sources of the
Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers, 163
VII. CHARLES WILKES, the Discoverer of the Antarctic Continent, 194
VIII. JOHN CHARLES FRÉMONT, the Pathfinder, 212
IX. ELISHA KENT KANE, Arctic Explorer, 240
X. ISAAC ISRAEL HAYES, and the Open Polar Sea, 272
XI. CHARLES FRANCIS HALL, and the North Pole, 293
XII. GEORGE WASHINGTON DE LONG, and the Siberian Arctic Ocean, 312
XIII. PAUL BELLONI DU CHAILLU, Discoverer of the Dwarfs and
Gorillas, 330
XIV. STANLEY AFRICANUS AND THE CONGO FREE STATE, 349
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FULL-PAGE
FACING PAGE
GENERAL A. W. GREELY, U. S. A., (_Frontispiece._)
ON THE SHORES OF THE PACIFIC, 96
A BLACKFOOT TEPEE, 112
CASTLE ROCK, ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER, 140
CHARLES WILKES, 194
PAUL BELLONI DU CHAILLU, 330
HENRY M. STANLEY, 349
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
PAGE
SIGNATURE OF JOLLIET (OLD SPELLING), 10
"MARQUETTE'S MAP," 15
THE RECEPTION OF JOLIET AND MARQUETTE BY THE ILLINOIS, 25
DE SOTO, 34
SIGNATURE OF LE MOYNE, 42
BIENVILLE, 57
BIENVILLE'S ARMY ON THE RIVER, 63
NEW ORLEANS IN 1719, 70
INDIAN TOMAHAWK, 74
THE FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY IN THE RIVER MISSISSIPPI, 77
A CALUMET, 80
NAUDOWESSIE INDIANS, 85
INDIAN MAUL, 93
CAPTAIN MERIWETHER LEWIS, 119
BUFFALO HEAD, 125
LIEUTENANT WILLIAM CLARK, 132
BUFFALO SKULL, 162
GENERAL Z. M. PIKE, 165
INDIAN SNOW-SHOES, 172
THE ICE-BARRIER, 199
THE VINCENNES IN A STORM, 202
VIEW OF THE ANTARCTIC CONTINENT, 205
IN AN ICE-FIELD, 208
JOHN CHARLES FRÉMONT, 214
JESSIE BENTON FRÉMONT, 215
ASCENDING FRÉMONT'S PEAK, 218
KIT CARSON, 226
LAKE KLAMATH, 231
ELISHA KENT KANE, 242
THE ARCTIC HIGHWAY, 246
A SLEEPING-BAG FOR THREE MEN, 251
THE COMING ARCTIC NIGHT, 256
ESQUIMAU BOYS FISHING, 260
AN ARCTIC STREAM, 264
ISAAC ISRAEL HAYES, 273
UPERNIVIK, 276
HAYES'S WINTER-QUARTERS, 280
ADRIFT ON A BERG, 285
CHARLES FRANCIS HALL, 294
IGLOOS, OR ESQUIMAU HUTS, 299
IN WINTER-QUARTERS, 302
AN ARCTIC FIORD, 305
A WOMAN OF THE ARCTIC HIGHLANDERS. SKETCHED FROM LIFE, 308
ESQUIMAU WOMAN. SKETCHED FROM LIFE, 310
GEORGE WASHINGTON DE LONG, 313
HERALD ISLAND, 317
IN THE PACK, 321
WHERE THE BODIES WERE FOUND, 323
NOROS AND NINDEMANN, 326
FINDING THE BODIES, 328
THE GORILLA (TROGLODYTES GORILLA), 334
A VILLAGE OF DWARFS, 339
A PIGMY WARRIOR, 342
A DWARF PRISONER, 345
ARROWS OF THE AFRICAN PIGMIES, 348
THE HUT WHERE LIVINGSTONE DIED, 352
MAP SHOWING POSITION AND BOUNDARIES OF THE CONGO STATE, 355
TIPPU TIB, 359
EMIN PASHA, 363
FINDING NELSON IN DISTRESS AT STARVATION CAMP, 366
A STOCKADED CAMP, 370
RUWENZORI (THE SNOWY MOUNTAIN), IDENTIFIED BY STANLEY
WITH "THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON," 372
EXPLORERS AND TRAVELLERS
I.
LOUIS JOLIET,
RE-DISCOVERER OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
If one should ask which is the most important river basin in the world,
there is no doubt that the Mississippi would be named, with its million
and a quarter square miles of area and its twenty-five or more billions
of aggregated wealth. Favored in climate, soil, and navigable streams,
and endowed with practically inexhaustible veins of coal, copper, iron,
and silver, feeding the world with its hundreds of millions of bushels
of corn and wheat, and clothing it by other millions of bales of cotton,
it is hardly so astonishing that within 217 years from its discovery by
Joliet this greatest of river basins should be the abiding-place of
twenty-seven and a half millions of people.
Speaking of Joliet, Bancroft wrote that his short voyage brought him
immortality; but in the irony of fate his explorations have not even
given his name a place in the last edition of the Encyclopædia
Britannica. In writing on American explorers, it seems most fitting that
this series of sketches should be headed by this Canadian, whose name
is scarcely known by one in a thousand. That aught is obtainable
concerning the details of his life is due to the investigations of Shea,
which later were admirably summed up by Parkman.
[Illustration: Signature of Jolliet (Old Spelling).]
Louis Joliet, the son of John Joliet and Mary d'Abancour, was born at
Quebec, September 21, 1645. His father was a wagon-maker, in the service
of the Company of One Hundred Associates, then owners of Canada.
The son in youth was imbued with devout feelings, which, possibly
fostered by the elder Joliet as certain to bring station and influence
in manhood, led to his being educated in the Jesuit College for the
priesthood, in which indeed he received the minor orders in 1662. Four
years later, in the debates on philosophy, which were participated in by
the Intendant and listened to by the colonial dignitaries, Joliet showed
such skill as to elicit especial commendation from the Fathers.
His future career shows that his studies with the Fathers were not lost
on him, and doubtless they contributed largely to make Joliet that
intelligent, well-poised leader who filled with credit all duties and
positions incident to his varied and adventurous life.
It is probable, however, that during all these years he was at heart a
true voyageur, and that his thoughts turned continually from the
cloister and books to the forest and its attractive life. Be this as it
may, he practically abandoned all ideas of the priesthood at the age of
twenty-two, and turned to the most certain, and indeed, in Canada, the
only path to wealth, that of a trader in furs with the Indians. In this
trade only the hardy, shrewd, intelligent, and tireless subordinate
could hope to thrive and rise. Success meant long and hazardous journeys
into the very heart of the Indian country, where were needed great
physical courage and strength, perfect skill with gun, paddle, axe,
sledge, or snow-shoe, a thorough knowledge of wood-craft, indomitable
will or casuistry and tact according to the occasion. To paddle a canoe
from sunrise to sunset of a summer day, to follow the sledge or break a
snow-shoe path before it as far as a dog can travel in a march, to track
a moose or deer for leagues without rest, to carry canoes and heavy
packs over long portages through an untravelled country, were the
ordinary experiences of a voyageur, which were accomplished for the
great part on a diet of smoked meat and boiled Indian corn, with no
shelter in fair weather and the cover of an upturned canoe or bark hut
in stress of storm.
Joliet did not long remain in private adventure, for in 1669 Talon, then
Intendant of Canada, sent him to discover and explore the copper-mines
of Lake Superior, in which quest he failed. It was on his return trip
that Joliet met with La Salle and the priests Dolier and Galinée, on
September 24, 1669, near the present town of Hamilton, in which
direction Joliet's Indian guide had misled him when returning from Lake
Erie, through fear of meeting enemies at the Niagara portage.
Joliet's facility for map-making in the field is evident from the fact
that at this time he showed to the priests with La Salle a copy of the
map that he had made of such parts of the upper lakes as he had visited,
and gave them a copy of it. He moreover evidenced continued interest in
religious matters by telling them that the Pottowattamies and other
Indian tribes of that region were in serious need of spiritual succor.
La Salle later, in November, 1680, repaid this frank tender of
information of the little-known west by intimating his belief that
Joliet never went but little south of the mouth of the Illinois, and is
also stated to have declared that Joliet was an impostor.
In his account of La Salle's last journey, Father Douay, referring to
Joliet's discoveries as related by Marquette, says: "I have brought with
me the printed book of this pretended discovery, and I remarked all
along my route that there was not a word of truth in it."
The efforts to deprive Joliet of the credit of the original discovery of
the Mississippi falls before the despatch of Count Frontenac to Colbert,
then Minister, dated Quebec, November 14, 1674: "VI. Sieur Joliet, whom
Monsieur Talon advised me, on my arrival from France, to despatch for
the discovery of the South Sea, has returned three months ago, and
discovered some very fine country, and a navigation so easy through the
beautiful rivers he has found, that a person can go from Lake Ontario
and Fort Frontenac in a bark to the Gulf of Mexico, there being only one
carrying-place, half a league in length, where Lake Ontario communicates
with Lake Erie.... He has been within ten days of the Gulf of Mexico....
I send you by my secretary the map he has made of it.... He has lost all
his minutes and journals in the shipwreck he suffered in sight of
Montreal.... He left with the Fathers at Sault St. Marie copies of his
journal."
But to return to the circumstances under which Joliet made the voyage.
Among other orders of Louis XIV. regarding Canada was a charge to
discover the South Sea and Mississippi, and Jean Talon, Intendant of
Canada, lost no chance of furthering this object. La Salle's journey of
1670 had failed to reach the great river, though he descended the Ohio
to the falls at Louisville, and at his recall in 1672 Talon had the
subject of further exploration in hand. Joliet had lately returned from
his unsuccessful efforts to discover copper mines on Lake Superior,
during which he had probably been the first white man to pass through
the Straits of Detroit. Despite his late failure he had impressed Talon
as the man best fitted to lead such an expedition, and so before sailing
for France the Intendant recommended Joliet for the work to Count
Frontenac, the new Governor.
In those days the Church and Government went hand in hand, and but few
French expeditions went westward from Montreal without a priest to carry
the faith to such Indian tribes as were allies of France or liable to be
won over. As Joliet's priest-associate, James Marquette, a young Jesuit,
then a missionary at St. Esprit, La Pointe, Lake Superior, was chosen.
No better man could have been sent. Marquette was in the prime of life,
an expert linguist--as he had learned in six years to speak fluently six
Indian languages--gentle, patient, and tactful with the natives, devout
in faith, singularly holy in life, fearless, imaginative, nature-loving
and observant, as shown by his journal, which, owing to Joliet's
shipwreck, is the only original story of the voyage. His enthusiasm is
shown by the opening sentences of his journal: "I have obtained from God
the favor of being enabled to visit the nations on the Mississippi
River, ... and find myself in the happy necessity of exposing my life
for the salvation of all these tribes, especially the Illinois."
Joliet followed the St. Lawrence to Fort Frontenac, at the entrance of
Lake Ontario, and with the exception of the portage at the Falls of
Niagara, skirted in his canoe the shores of the Great Lakes until he
reached the Straits of Mackinaw, on the north side of which, at Point
St. Ignace, he found the enthusiastic Marquette devotedly laboring for
the spiritual welfare of the Hurons and Ottawas there gathered.
[Illustration: A Part of the Map Published in Paris by Thevenot as
"Marquette's Map." It shows the route taken by Joliet across Wisconsin
from the Baie des Puans (now Green Bay) to the Mississippi River, also
part of the return journey, that is, from the present site of Chicago,
northward along Lake Michigan.]
The contemplated line of travel was that of Jean Nicollet, an
interpreter who had spent many years with the Indian tribes, who was
sent in 1638 to bring about a peace between the Hurons and Winnebagoes
who lived near Green Bay. After his negotiations he ascended the Fox
River, and making a portage to the Wisconsin, descended that stream some
distance, so that, as he thought, from the designation of "the great
water" by the Indian guide to the Mississippi, he was within three days
of the South Sea.
Joliet, however, was too practical to trust entirely to tradition or
oral description. He had already carefully charted all that was
definitely known of the western lake regions, and now at St. Ignace,
with Marquette's invaluable assistance, gathered all possible
information from such Indians at the mission as had frequented the
unknown country. This information being duly weighed and considered,
Joliet extended his map to cover all the new country, marking thereon
the navigable rivers, the names of nations and villages along their
proposed route, the course of the great river, and other useful
information.
Their means of subsistence and travel were the simplest imaginable, two
canoes and as large quantities of smoked meat and Indian corn as could
be conveniently carried. Their canoes were of the usual Canadian
pattern, of birch-bark covering, stayed with spruce-root ribs and
cedar-splint, with white-pine pitch smeared over the birch-bark joints
so as to render them water-tight. Such canoes were of astonishing
strength and carrying capacity, and of such lightness that four men
could carry the largest across portages.
On a bright spring morning, May 17th, Joliet and Marquette, with five
other men, left behind them the palisaded post and chapel of St. Ignace.
Plying briskly their paddles from sunrise to sunset, they made rapid
progress, coasting the lake shore until they turned aside to visit the
Menominees, or Wild-rice Indians, whose village was on the river of that
same name. Here inquiries for information of the "great river" brought
from the savage allies strenuous efforts to dissuade them from visiting
this Mississippi, where, they said, the unsparing ferocity of the tribes
brought unfailing death by the tomahawk to even inoffensive strangers,
and that war now raged among the intervening nations. They further
recited the dangers of navigating the rapids of the Great River, the
presence of frightful water monsters who swallowed up men and canoes,
the roaring demon who engulfed all travellers, and lastly the existence
of such excessive heat as to ensure certain death. After religious
instruction and service the explorers embarked in their canoes and soon
reached the southern extremity of Green Bay, where, says Marquette, "our
fathers labor successfully in the conversion of these tribes, having
baptized more than 2,000."
Joliet from Green Bay entered Fox River, finding it a gentle, beautiful
stream, promising easy and pleasant passage and abounding in wildfowl.
Soon, however, these agreeable aspects gave way to the sterner phases of
exploration, for sharp rapids were fallen in with where the strong and
uncertain cross-currents often threatened the total destruction of their
frail canoes, which would have proved fatal to their plans, by dashing
them against the sharp bowlders.
A serious but lesser evil to these enduring voyagers was the injury to
their mocassin-shod feet, which were cut and bruised by the sharp edges
of the rocky bed of the river over which they slowly and painfully
dragged their canoes for long distances.
The many rapids were safely passed, and on the 7th of June, 1673, our
explorers reached an Indian town which marked the extreme western limits
of French discoveries, being the farthest point reached by Nicollet in
his adventurous journey.
In this town dwelt bands from three different tribes, the Miamis,
Maskoutens, or Fire Nation, and Kickapoos. The latter two were inferior
in manners and appearance to the Miamis, who, more civil, liberal, and
well-made, wore two long ear-locks that Marquette thought becoming;
besides they were reputed warriors, who rarely failed in their forays.
They proved docile, attentive, and interested in religious matters, as
was shown not only by their talk with Father Allouez, but also by a
cross standing in the centre of the town, which was adorned with votive
offerings of skins, belts, bows and arrows to the Great Manitou for an
abundance of game during the dreaded famine time of winter.
The Indians used for their beds mats, probably made of rushes, which in
default of bark also served as material for the walls and roofs of
their unsubstantial shelters. Since Marquette refers to the advantage of
such building material as capable of being rolled up and easily moved
during hunts, it is probable that this town was of a temporary
character. It appears to have been well located, being on an eminence,
whence the approach of an enemy or the presence of game could be readily
observed in the open country. Marquette says of it: "The view is
beautiful and very picturesque, for from the eminence on which it is
perched are seen stretching out on every side, as far as eye can reach,
prairies broken by thickets or groves of lofty trees." The Indians grew
much corn, and gathered wild plums and "grapes, from which," his
thoughts turning to home, he says, "good wine could be made if they
chose."
Joliet lost no time, but immediately on arrival assembled the sachems
and told them that he was sent by his Governor to discover new
countries. He made them a present and asked that two guides be sent to
show him the way, which resulted in the gift to Joliet of a mat to serve
as a bed, and the sending of two Miamis as guides.
The next day, June 10th, they proceeded, two Miamis and seven Frenchmen
in two canoes, up the river to the portage, through a net-work of
marshes, little lakes, and meandering channels so hidden by the wild
rice that their guides were very useful. Conducting Joliet to a portage
of 2,700 paces, and assisting in the transportation of the canoes across
it, the Miamis then returned, leaving the explorers "alone in an
unknown country, in the hands of Providence."
Before launching their canoes into strange waters, which were to bear
them into unknown lands, they knelt on the bank and offered up devout
aspirations to God for continued success. The new river was the
Weskousing (Wisconsin), whose broad shallows and sandy bottom, while
rendering navigation slow and very laborious, yet contrasted
delightfully with the rocky rapids of the Fox.
Father Marquette sets forth delightfully the ideal voyage down this
stream, past vine-clad islets, along sloping banks, now bordered by the
lovely prairie, with its sweet odors of fresh grasses and blooming
flowers, and anon fringed by the primeval forest, beautiful with its
tangle of shrubbery and in its June foliage. The gnarled oak, the
straight walnut, the elegant whitewood, and other stately trees of
unknown species met their vision at times, while again their eyes
scarcely separated from the heavens the distant horizon of the green
level plains, whose luxuriant vegetation afforded the richest pasturage
for numerous herds of deer and moose, and in spots showed the fertility
of its alluvial soil by the fields of Indian corn.
Each morning, before they relaunched their canoes, they attuned their
voices to the praise of God, and, in their unique joy of successful
discovery, must have felt on those delightful June days that their
devotions had not been uplifted in vain. From sunrise to sunset they
labored unceasingly, now paddling briskly along the deep reaches, and
then struggling stoutly through mazes of shallows and sand-bars, where
tedious and frequent portages were patiently made.
Each evening their hearts rejoiced and their tired limbs found
delightful repose at some spot where Joliet's judgment directed the
canoes to be drawn out, inspected, and upturned by some, while others
started the camp-fire and prepared the evening meal. This camp was
always so placed that the approach of an enemy could be seen from afar,
and where fuel for fire and branches for bedding were at hand. The best
hunter was told off for game, and rarely did the meal lack fresh meat or
fruit and berries in season. After supper the soothing pipe, prayers and
songs of praise, and then under the over-arching trees such sound
slumber as only comes to men sleeping under the open sky.
As they advanced it was often possible to use sail and relieve the men
to some extent from the fatigue of the paddle, and such rapid progress
was made that, on June 17th, they safely entered the long-desired
Mississippi, "with a joy," writes Marquette, "which I cannot express."
They were then in latitude 43° 03´ N., opposite the site of the present
city of Prairie du Chien.
Turning eagerly southward, their progress facilitated by the gentle
current of the Mississippi, they journeyed more than a hundred leagues
without seeing on the land aught save birds and beasts. The solitude of
the great river appalled them: a vast torrent of rolling water,
bordered by forest and plain, so well fitted for the happiness of man,
and yet no human being in all this land! What could it mean, and what
would be the outcome? Joliet, of long experience with savage tribes, and
astute in forest craft, distrusted the silence and solitude, and kept as
keen guard as though on the war-path. A tiny camp-fire was built only
for meals, and the nights were passed in the crowded canoes as far from
shore as it was possible to anchor them in the deep river. Even then
strict watch was kept, and every strange or unusual noise excited
feelings of trepidation lest a hidden foe be the cause.
Their journey by day was not entirely devoid of incident and excitement,
says Marquette. "From time to time we met monstrous fishes, one of which
struck the canoe so violently I took it for a large tree. Another time
we perceived on the water a monster [probably an American tiger-cat]
with a head like a tiger and a pointed snout like the wild-cat, with
beard and ears erect, a grayish head, and entirely black neck." They
cast their nets successfully, and once caught a spade-fish, whose
appearance caused much astonishment. In 41° 28´ N. latitude (near Rock
Island), wild turkeys took the place of wild fowl; while as to animals,
only buffalo were seen, being so numerous and fearless as to be easily
killed, and thus offering a welcome change of food. These new beasts
presented themselves to our explorers as hideous, especially those with
thick, long manes falling over their eyes in such tangles as to prevent
their seeing clearly. Marquette records that the Indians tan
buffalo-skins into beautiful robes, which they paint into various
colors; and further recites the ferocity of the buffalo as yearly
causing the death of some Indian. When near the present city of Keokuk,
at the mouth of the Des Moines River, on June 25th, they perceived the
first signs of man in all this solitude: foot-prints by the riverside,
and then a beaten path, which, entering a beautiful prairie, impressed
them as leading to some Indian village.
They had journeyed seventeen days without seeing the face of man, and
so, after deliberation, they resolved to visit the village; this
decision doubtless being urged by Marquette, who for years had sought by
prayer "to obtain of God the grace to be able to visit the nations on
the river Mississippi," and who now would allow no danger to deter him.
Joliet was fully aware of the great risk, and took most careful
precautions to ensure the safety of their canoes and people by charging
them strictly to beware of surprise, while he and Marquette ventured to
put themselves at the discretion of an unknown savage people. Cautiously
following the little path in silence across the beautiful prairie and
through the thickets for a distance of two leagues, they suddenly came
in view of an Indian village, picturesquely placed on a river bank, and
overlooked by two others on a neighboring hill; they pressed on with
successful caution and silence, but with much doubt and fear. Having,
as Marquette says, "recommended ourselves to God with all our hearts,"
and "having implored his help, we passed on undiscovered, and came so
near we even heard the Indians talking." Stepping into the open, they
halted and announced themselves by a loud cry; at which the Indians
rushed out of their cabins, and recognizing them as French, and seeing a
"Blackgown" (the well-known Indian name for a Jesuit), sent four of
their chief warriors forward. Two chiefs, carrying calumets, or
tobacco-pipes, elaborately trimmed with various feathers, advanced very
slowly and in silence, lifting their calumets as if offering them for
the sun to smoke. Marquette, encouraged by their friendly attitude, and
still more on seeing that they wore French cloth, broke the silence; to
which the Indians answered that they were Illinois, who, in token of
peace, presented their pipes to smoke and invited the strangers to their
village.
[Illustration: The Reception of Joliet and Marquette by the Illinois.]
Joliet and Marquette were received at the door of a wigwam, as was usual
for strangers, by an old chief, who stood perfectly naked, with
outstretched hands raised toward the sun, as if to screen himself from
its rays, which nevertheless passed through the open fingers to his
face. As they came near him, he said: "How beautiful is the sun, O
Frenchmen, when thou comest to visit us. All our town awaits thee, and
thou shalt enter all our cabins in peace." After smoking the calumet,
they went by invitation to visit the Great Sachem of all Illinois, at a
near village. With good nature and childish curiosity, a throng of
Indians went along, and says Marquette, "could not tire looking at us;
they threw themselves on the grass by the wayside; they ran ahead, then
turned and walked back to see us again, all in silence, with marks of
great respect." They were received by the Great Sachem and two old
chiefs, all naked and with their calumet turned to the sun. After
smoking the calumet, Marquette, speaking in Algonquin, said that they
marched in peace to visit the nations on the river to the sea; that God
their Creator had pity, and had sent his messenger to make him known as
their Creator, whom they should acknowledge and obey; that Frontenac had
spread peace everywhere; and last asked for all the information they had
of the sea and the nations between them and it.
The Sachem answered in a beautiful speech worthy of the occasion:
"I thank thee, Blackgown, and thee, Frenchman," addressing M. Joliet,
"for taking so much pains to come and visit us; never has the earth been
so beautiful, nor the sun so bright, as to-day; never has our river been
so calm, nor so free from rocks, which your canoes have removed as they
passed; never has our tobacco had so fine a flavor, nor our corn
appeared so beautiful as we behold it to day. Here is my son, that I
give thee, that thou mayst know my heart. I pray thee to take pity on me
and all my nation. Thou knowest the Great Spirit, who has made us all;
thou speakest to him and hearest his words: ask him to give me life and
health, and come and dwell with us, that we may know him."
It is interesting to note the condition of the Illinois when first
visited. Their chiefs wore over the left shoulder a belt, ingeniously
made of the hair of bear and buffalo, which passed around the waist and
ended in a long fringe; arm, knee, and wrist bands of deer or
buffalo-skin, and the rattles of deer hoofs were also worn, and the face
was painted with red ochre. In addition to abundant game, they raised
beans, melons, squashes, and Indian corn. Their dishes were of wood,
their spoons of the bones of buffalo, their knives stone, their arms,
bows and arrows with an occasional gun bought from other tribes.
The word calumet is due to Father Marquette, and his description of this
interesting Indian pipe and its uses among the Indians over two hundred
years ago is best given in his own words:
"It now remains for me to speak of the calumet, than which there is
nothing among them more mysterious or more esteemed. Men do not pay to
the crowns and sceptres of kings the honor they pay to it. It seems to
be the god of peace and war, the arbiter of life and death. Carry it
about you and show it, and you can march fearlessly amid enemies, who
even in the heat of battle lay down their arms when it is shown. Hence
the Illinois gave me one, to serve as my safeguard amid all the nations
that I had to pass on my voyage. There is a calumet for peace and one
for war, distinguished only by the color of the feathers with which they
are adorned, red being the sign of war. They use them also for settling
disputes, strengthening alliances, and speaking to strangers. It is
made of a polished red stone, like marble, so pierced that one end
serves to hold the tobacco, while the other is fastened on the stem,
which is a stick two feet long, as thick as a common cane, and pierced
in the middle; it is ornamented with the head and neck of different
birds of beautiful plumage; they also add large feathers of red and
green and other colors, with which it is all covered. They esteem it
peculiarly, because they regard it as the calumet, or pipe, of the sun;
and, in fact, they present it to him to smoke when they wish to obtain
calm, or rain, or fair weather."
Leaving the Illinois one afternoon, about the end of June, they embarked
in sight of the whole admiring tribe, and, following the river, reached
the mouth of the muddy Missouri. They were the first white men who had
ever gazed on the turbulent waters of this mighty stream. Impressed by
the size and majesty of the Missouri Marquette believed and hoped that
later, by making a prairie portage of twenty or thirty leagues, he could
reach a deep westerly running river that would carry him to the Red Sea
(the Gulf of California).
The Missouri, or Pekitanoui, as Marquette called it, was evidently at
the flood stage, for he says: "A mass of large trees, entire with
branches, real floating islands, came rushing from the mouth of the
river so impetuously that we could not pass across without exposing
ourselves to great danger. The agitation was so great that the water was
all muddy."
Immediately above the site of Alton, Ill., they came in sight of the
famous Piasa pictograph, which was totally destroyed about fifty years
ago. Of it Marquette wrote: "As we coasted along rocks, frightful for
their height and length, we saw painted thereon two monsters, which
startled us at first, and on which the boldest Indian dare not gaze
long. They have a fearful look, are as large as a calf, have red eyes,
the horns of a deer, the beard of a tiger, and the face of a man, while
around the scale-covered body was a fish's tail twice encircling it. The
two monsters were very well painted in green, red, and black colors, and
so high upon the rocks that they were apparently inaccessible to man."
Later they discovered a very rich iron-mine of many veins, one a foot
thick, and large masses of metal combined with pebbles; also purple,
violet, and red clay, which colored the water a blood red. They now
passed the dreaded home of the Manitou, or demon, who devours all who
pass; which proved to be a frightful rapid where large detached rocks
and a narrow channel caused a furious commotion of the waters tumbling
over each other, and a tremendous roaring, which struck terror to the
Indian's heart. Passing this, they reached the mouth of the Ohio, which
Marquette calls "Ouaboukidou," on which there were no less than
thirty-eight villages of the Chaouanons (Shawnees). A little beyond,
Marquette's eye was delighted by the appearance of breaks, wherein the
canes were of an exquisite green, with knots crowned by long,
narrow-pointed leaves. At every landing the keen eyes of the Canadian
explorers searched out everything that was new or that seemed suitable
for food; so we find the persimmon and the chicopin and other fruits and
nuts described in detail.
By this time, in early July, they found themselves suffering from the
double annoyance of mosquitoes and the excessive and insupportable heat
of the sun, from which they sheltered themselves as best they could by
making a kind of cabin with their sails, while their canoes were borne
on by the current.
Finally they perceived on the river-bank Indians armed with guns, who
awaited their approach. Joliet, ready either for peace or war, put
Marquette forward with his feathered peace calumet upraised, while the
rest stood to arms, ready to fire on the first volley of the savages.
Marquette hailed them in Huron, and the party was not only peacefully
received, but invited to their village and presented with food of
various kinds. Joliet found among them guns, axes, hoes, powder, etc.,
and was assured that they bought cloth and other articles from Europeans
to the east, doubtless the Spaniards of Florida. Marquette was troubled
to find they had received no instruction in the faith, which, as far as
he could, he gave them.
Being assured that the sea was not more than ten days' journey distant,
they were greatly encouraged, and instead of drifting with the current,
took up their paddles with renewed ardor.
Passing beyond the prairie land, they found both sides of the river
lined with dense woods, wherein the cottonwood, elm, and white-wood were
of such height and size as to excite their admiration. That the forests
were not dense seemed evident from the bellowing of cattle behind the
fringe of trees, which were enlivened for our travellers by flocks of
quail along the water's edge and an occasional parrot with its brilliant
coloring of red, yellow, and green.
Nearing the mouth of the Arkansas, they saw on the river-bank an Indian
village called Mithiganea, near which Joliet and his party had an
exciting and fearful experience, which Marquette thus describes:
"We heard from afar the Indians exciting one another to the combat by
continual yells. They were armed with bows, arrows, axes, war-clubs, and
bucklers, and prepared to attack us by land and water. Some embarked in
large wooden canoes, a part to ascend, the rest to descend, the river,
so as to cut our way and surround us completely. Those on shore kept
going and coming, as if about to begin the attack. In fact, some young
men sprang into the water to come and seize my canoe, but the current
having compelled them to return to the shore, one of them threw his war
club at us, but it passed over our heads without doing us any harm. In
vain I showed the calumet, and made gestures to explain that we had not
come as enemies. The alarm continued, and they were about to pierce us
from all sides with their arrows, when God suddenly touched the hearts
of the old men on the water side, doubtless at the sight of our calumet,
which at the distance they had not distinguished; but as I showed it
continually, they were touched, restrained the ardor of their youth, and
two of the chiefs, having thrown their bows and quivers into our canoe,
and as it were at our feet, entered and brought us to the shore, where
we disembarked, not without fear on our part."
An old chief was at last found who spoke a little Illinois, and through
him they were told that they could get full information regarding the
sea at another great village called Akamsea, about ten leagues down the
river. Presents were exchanged and the night passed among them with some
uneasiness. The loving missionary spirit of Marquette is shown here for,
he says: "I know not whether they understood what I told them of God and
the things which concerned their salvation. It is a seed cast in the
earth which will bear its fruit in season."
At Akamsea (Arkansas) they were received by the sachem holding up a
peace calumet, after which they had the customary smoke and a repast of
different dishes made of Indian corn. Presents were interchanged and
speeches made through a young Indian who understood Illinois. The whole
day was spent in feasting, and the dishes of Indian corn were
continuously supplemented by pieces of dog flesh.
Joliet and Marquette learned from them that the sea was only ten days'
journey distant for the Indians, which meant five days for our explorers
in their birch canoes. They further set forth the very great danger of
passing on, owing to the continual war parties moving along the river. A
secret council of the sachems with a view to killing the party for
plunder was only broken up through the influence of the chief, who,
sending for the explorers, danced a calumet dance as a mark of perfect
assurance, and then to remove all fears, presented his peace calumet to
Marquette as a guarantee of safety.
The famous calumet dance is performed only on important occasions--to
strengthen peace, for a war assembly, at public rejoicings, and in honor
of important personages or invited strangers. The principal features
are, first, a dance; second, a mock combat; third, a self-laudatory
speech, during all of which the pipe plays an important part, being
smoked and handled to the measured cadence of voices and drums.
Joliet and Marquette now took counsel together as to whether they should
continue their voyage in face of such adverse conditions or turn back.
Finally, after long and careful consideration it was decided to return.
They realized that in their present latitude, 33° 40´ N., they could not
be more than two or three days from the sea, and that the Mississippi,
by its general course, undoubtedly flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, and
not into the South Sea through California.
Neglecting the dangers from warlike Indians along the lower river, they
considered, moreover, that they risked losing the fruit of this voyage
if they should throw themselves into the hands of the Spaniards, who
would at least imprison them.
[Illustration: De Soto.]
Joliet's farthest was on the east bank, opposite a river, probably the
Arkansas, and could not have been far from the point where De Soto more
than a hundred years before, in April, 1541, reached the Mississippi.
What a contrast between the means and experiences of these two
explorers! De Soto, a noble Spaniard, with an armament of ten vessels
equipped with all the paraphernalia of war, having, with three hundred
and fifty horsemen, a thousand picked men in mail who had been chosen
from the flower of the Spanish and Portuguese nobility. His followers
were animated by ambition, eager seekers for wealth and power, their
track marked by fire and sword, their action often treacherous and
always characterized by the savageness of their age. They reaped the
natural harvest, and although they reached the Mississippi, yet constant
warfare, continued privations, toil, and disasters had sadly wasted
their strength and numbers, and finally not one man in four ever reached
again a Spanish settlement. Joliet, an American of humble birth, with
two frail canoes equipped only with an ordinary hunting outfit, had six
followers who, inspired by neither hope of gold nor desire of conquest
other than that of a spiritual kind, came with peace and confidence,
were received by all tribes with hospitality, and returned to their own
without harm or contumely.
The result of De Soto's work was an unprofitable, soon-forgotten
discovery, utterly barren of results. Joliet reduced the fables of the
Indians to facts, discovered the muddy Missouri, and what is more, gave
definite knowledge to the world of the fertile valleys of the
Mississippi basin, wherein he planted the first germs of civilization,
which speedily took the practical form of missions and settlements.
After a day's rest, Joliet and his party left Akamsea July 17th, and
tediously retraced their course against the strong currents of the
Mississippi. Through the advice of the Indians they quitted the great
river at the mouth of the Illinois, which greatly shortened their way
and brought them with little trouble to the present site of Chicago,
they passing on the way through an Illinois town, Kaskaskia, of
seventy-four cabins, from which an escort of braves guided them to Lake
Michigan.
Marquette appears to have had a prophetic eye for the great future of
the present State of Illinois, for he says, "We have seen nothing like
this river for the fertility of the land, its prairies, woods, wild
cattle, deer, wild-cats, bustards, swans, ducks, parrots, and even
beaver; its many little lakes and rivers."
Coasting the shores of Lake Michigan, the end of September, 1673,
brought them to Green Bay, where the rude comforts of a frontier mission
and the solace of friendly intercourse were once more theirs. They had
been absent four months, and in that time had paddled their frail canoes
more than twenty-five hundred miles. Here Marquette remained to recruit
his health, impaired by physical hardships, continued exposure, and lack
of suitable food. The hardy Joliet lost no time, however, but pressed
on, too eager to report his grand discoveries to Frontenac.
As mentioned in Frontenac's dispatch, the misfortunes of Joliet began
when his long and perilous voyage was practically ended. In the rapids
of La Chine, near Montreal, his canoe overset; three of his party were
drowned, all his papers lost, and he himself narrowly escaped. In a
letter to Frontenac he says: "I had escaped every peril from the
Indians; I had passed forty-two rapids, and was on the point of
disembarking, full of joy at the success of so long and difficult an
enterprise, when my canoe capsized after all danger seemed past. I lost
two men, an Indian boy and my box of papers within sight of the first
French settlements, which I had left almost two years before. Nothing
now remains to me but my life and the ardent desire to employ it on any
service which you may be pleased to direct."
We have to rest content with the graphic account written by Marquette,
as it was impossible for Joliet to reproduce his lost journal. As
regards the map, his natural and acquired skill in cartography was such
that Joliet reproduced his discoveries in the shape of a small map,
which he presented to Frontenac, by whom it was sent to Colbert, with a
despatch dated November 14, 1674, and now is in the famous Chart Office
at Paris. It is entitled, "Map of the Discovery of Sieur Joliet," etc.,
and has a brief explanatory letter thereon, from which I have quoted
above.
Joliet's discoveries were most joyfully received in France, Colbert
especially appreciating their value and importance both as regards the
extent and fertility of the countries traversed and also as to the easy
water communication therewith. It afforded an opportunity of extending
the limits of French possessions in America, which was not neglected. It
did not fall, however, to Joliet to play any part in this great work,
which was the lot of his great rival, the energetic, persistent, and
far-seeing La Salle, who received in 1678 a royal patent with seignorial
rights over all lands which he might discover and colonize within twenty
years, and who gave Louisiana to the French crown.
The natural despondency of Joliet over the loss of his maps and
journals soon gave way to happier experiences; for the following year,
October 7, 1675, he married Clare Frances Bissot. His father-in-law, a
Canadian, was a wealthy Indian trader, so Joliet naturally resumed his
former occupation, and in 1679 made a journey to Hudson Bay by way of
the Saguenay. He found the English strongly intrenched in their
successful efforts to monopolize the Indian trade of that quarter. The
usual attempts to draw Canadians into their service were made in
Joliet's case. He not only declined service, but on his return to Quebec
made such representations of the inevitable effect of English rivalry,
if unopposed, on the trade of Canada, that a competing company was
organized by French merchants.
Joliet in the meantime had only received fair words, but after strenuous
efforts he succeeded in 1679 in obtaining a grant of the Islands of
Mignan, and in the following year the French Government granted him the
Island of Anticosti, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Here he established
himself with his family, and with six servants engaged in fisheries.
In the course of time he added to his buildings and extended his
interests, but his peaceful pursuits were destined to interruption and
devastation. In 1690 an English fleet, under command of Sir William
Phipps, sailed to attack Quebec, and in course of time anchored at
Anticosti. In those days war was waged with utter disregard of the
rights of private property. Joliet was then absent. A detachment from
the English fleet landed on the island, devastated Joliet's
establishment, destroyed his buildings by fire, and even carried away as
prisoners his wife and mother-in-law, who fortunately were soon
exchanged.
Deprived in a day of the accumulation of years, his future actions
showed that age and adversity made but small inroads on his manly
spirit. Obliged to exertion for the support of his family, he turned
again in his fiftieth year to a voyage of exploration and adventure. A
Canadian company contemplated the extension of its seal and whale
fisheries to the rugged and dangerous coast of Labrador, then little
known, and in 1694 Joliet explored the greater part of this ice-covered
and rock-bound coast under the auspices and in the interest of this
company.
Some years earlier Joliet had shown his merits as a skilful surveyor and
navigator by charting the waters of the St. Lawrence, and when, on his
return from Labrador, occupation failed, Frontenac recognized his
deserving abilities by naming him for the post of royal pilot of the St.
Lawrence, still later appointing him hydrographer at Quebec.
The emoluments of his royal offices were a mere pittance, and in 1695 he
is found on Mignan Islands, where, with his wife, he contracted with his
brother-in-law Bissot and other parties with a view of developing his
interests both on land and at sea. In 1697 he was granted by the Crown
the Seignory of Joliet. This honor he did not long enjoy, for he died,
apparently a poor man, in 1699 or 1700. He was fortunate in his burial
place, one of the Mignan Islands, which is forever associated with his
fame, having been granted him by the French Crown for that great and
dangerous voyage which gave to the world its first definite knowledge of
the location, extent, and fertility of the great valley of the
Mississippi.
While Joliet followed the rugged and peaceful pursuits of his
island-home, ill fared it with his vigorous Norman successor. The great
La Salle fell under the hand of a mutinous follower, while his fated
Texan colony perished totally by desertion, betrayal, and massacre. So
relapsed the lower Mississippi into its primal savagery and grandeur,
until the domineering energy of the great Canadian, Iberville, awakened
it into a vast dominion, to the glory, if not to the profit, of France.
[Illustration]
II.
PETER LE MOYNE, SIEUR D'IBERVILLE,
FOUNDER OF LOUISIANA.
Among the very earliest settlers of Hochelega, now Montreal, was the son
of a Norman innkeeper, a young French lad of fifteen, Charles le Moyne,
who came to this Indian village in 1641. Apt, strong, daring, and
zealous, he soon became one of the most efficient aids to French power.
The language, the wood-craft, the arts of the savage soon became his,
and added to these such suavity of manner, clearness of perception, and
native kindness as made him loved equally by French and savage. As
interpreter, soldier, negotiator, and captain of the guard, he rendered
such great service to the young and exposed colony as caused him to be
made captain of Montreal, and later, in 1668, to be ennobled by Louis
XIV. under the title of Sieur of Longueuil. For four years service in
the country of the Hurons he received for his entire pay the sum of
twenty crowns and his clothing, but he gained also such a knowledge of
the possibilities of the country, such an insight into Indian character,
and such a wealth of vigorous manhood as enabled him to acquire during
his life an estate that was princely. He did better than this, he
married a woman worthy of him, whose family is scarcely known,
Catherine Tierry, an adopted daughter of Antoine Primot.
In all the history of American families there is none that has as
distinguished and brilliant a history as the twelve sons and two
daughters born of this French peasant and the son of a Norman innkeeper
in the forests of Canada. The two daughters married nobles, and of the
twelve sons nine live distinguished in history, three of them were
killed in the service of France, ten of them were ennobled, and four,
Iberville, Serigny, Chateauguay, and Bienville the younger, played
important parts in the founding of Louisiana.
[Illustration: Signature of le Moyne.]
There were many brilliant and picturesque figures among the actors in
the founding of a New France in the wilds of North America, but among
them all there was scarcely one whose personality and deeds excited more
admiration among his contemporaries, or whose services and career are
more deserving of recognition by posterity, than Peter le Moyne, Sieur
d'Iberville, third son of Longueuil, who was born on the extreme
frontier, at the outpost of Montreal, July 16, 1661. As a soldier he
rose to be the leader and idol of his fellow-Canadians; as a sailor he
became an extremely skilful navigator, who was acknowledged as one of
the greatest of French naval commanders; and as an explorer and
administrator he so successfully accomplished his plans as to merit and
receive the title of the Founder of Louisiana.
The freedom, vigor, and wildness of Canadian life developed men early,
and Iberville entered the French Navy as midshipman at the age of
fourteen. His first service of note, however, was as a soldier in the
wilds of his native land, in the Canadian overland campaign to recover
possession of an Indian trading post on Hudson Bay, which it was claimed
the English had illegally seized. Iberville volunteered for this
campaign under De Troye, and exhibited such judgment and vigor as caused
him to be put in command of a small party of nine, some say twelve, men
with two canoes, wherewith he did not hesitate to attack and compel the
unconditional surrender of an English ship manned by fourteen, including
the commander of Hudson Bay. St. Helene, his brother, meantime captured
another vessel, and with the two as means of transport, the two brothers
pushed on to Fort Quitchitchouen, which surrendered after withstanding a
sharp cannonade.
These victories not only insured to the French the command of the entire
southern part of Hudson Bay, but put them in possession of a vast amount
of stores. Indeed, so destructive to English interests were the
campaigns of Iberville in 1687-88, that the Hudson Bay Company declared
that their actual losses amounted to 108,520 pounds sterling, an
enormous sum in the young colonies of that day. The consequential losses
must have been very great, for we are told that the value of furs
obtained in the trade of one year amounted to 400,000 livres (francs).
Iberville remained in charge of the country which his valor had
recaptured, and in 1688, while the Iroquois were ravaging Canada, waged
successful war in Hudson Bay. One of his lieutenants, capturing an
English official, found on him an order from the London Company to
proclaim English sovereignty over the whole bay. Later two ships, with
twenty-eight cannon and eight swivels, appeared before St. Anne in order
to expel the French. Eventually Iberville compelled the surrender of the
English ships, and releasing the smaller vessel for the safe transport
of such prisoners as he paroled, himself navigated the larger ship, with
eleven Hudson Bay pilots held prisoners, to Quebec through Hudson
Strait.
In 1690 Iberville volunteered, under his brother St. Helene, for the
retaliatory expedition in mid-winter against Schenectady, wherein a
large number of the inhabitants of that unhappy town were ruthlessly
massacred by the French and their Indian allies. Iberville seems to have
exerted his influence to restrain the savagery of the Indians, and saved
the life of at least one Englishman.
It seems that the successes of the young Canadian had attracted
attention in France, and when in 1691, through the efforts of the
Northern Company, Louis XIV. had decided to recover Port Nelson, Hudson
Bay, from the English, Du Tast came to Quebec with fourteen sail, it was
with express orders that Iberville should be entrusted with a share of
the work and glory. Du Tast objected to such division of honor, and by
plausible objections as to the lateness of the season, although it was
only the 16th of July, succeeded in delaying the departure of the
expedition for that year.
Iberville seemed determined to show the speciousness of the reasons, for
he made a trip to the bay and brought back in 1691 two ships loaded with
furs, much to the consolation of Frontenac. He immediately went to
France to advance the expedition against Port Nelson, which he knew was
much favored at court. Iberville found favor with the king, who gave him
two ships for the reduction of Port Nelson, and orders to guard it after
reduction.
Delays in France and contrary winds on the Atlantic brought Iberville to
Quebec only in October, far too late for the safe navigation of Hudson
Bay. To fill in his time he set forth to take Pemaquid, but did not make
an attack, this being the only instance in his long career where he
failed to show extreme daring, even against desperate odds. The delay of
the vessels was unfortunate for France as far as Hudson Bay was
concerned, for in 1693 three English vessels attacked and captured St.
Anne, with fifty thousand peltries, and again the control of the bay
passed from France.
In September, 1694, Iberville, with two ships, la Poli and la Charante,
the former commanded by his brother, de Serigny, appeared before Port
Nelson, which he was six weeks in approaching owing to the heavy moving
ice, which nearly destroyed his vessel. The fort had a double palisade,
thirty-two cannon and swivels in the main body, and fourteen cannon in
outer works, the whole manned by fifty-three men. Iberville landed
without hesitation, invested the fort with forty Canadians, worked with
his usual energy and skill, and in fourteen days he had his outworks
established, his batteries placed and mortars in position. His final
summons for surrender resulted in the capitulation of the fort, on
condition that personal property should be spared and safe transport be
given the garrison to England the coming year. His success was saddened
for Iberville by the death of the elder Chateauguay, the third of his
brothers to fall in the service of his king, who perished while
gallantly repelling a sortie of the beleaguered garrison. The name of
Port Nelson was changed to Fort Bourbon, and the river was rechristened
St. Therese, because, says Jeremie, in his _Relation de la Baie de
Hudson_, the capitulation was made on October 14th, the day of that holy
saint.
The victory did not prove to be cheap, for scurvy, then the dreaded
scourge of the sailor, broke out during the long, dark, excessively cold
winter, and caused the death of twenty men. Late the next summer, after
waiting to the last moment for the English ships he counted on
capturing, and leaving a garrison of sixty-seven at Fort Bourbon,
Iberville sailed for Quebec; but the winds were so contrary and his crew
so debilitated by scurvy, that he turned his prows to France and
fortunately arrived at Rochelle, October 9, 1695.
His victories in Hudson Bay so commended him to the king that Iberville
was charged with the reduction and destruction of the strong fort which
James II. of England had erected at Pemaquid, Maine. While on this
cruise our Canadian fell in with three English ships near the mouth of
the St. John. He unhesitatingly attacked them, dismasted, fired, and
captured the flag-ship of the squadron, the Newport, a ship of eighty
men and twenty-four guns.
Reinforced by several hundred Indians, as a land and besieging force,
Iberville arrived at Pemaquid, August 13, 1696, and invested the fort
the next day. He summoned the commander, Colonel Chubb, to capitulate,
but that officer replied that, "if the sea was covered with French
vessels and the land with Indians, he would not surrender until
compelled to do so." Iberville promptly landed, and used such expedition
that within the short space of thirteen hours he established his
batteries in position and opened fire, when the garrison surrendered on
honorable terms. Iberville, doubtless mindful of his experiences at
Schenectady, took the wise and humane precaution of quartering his
prisoners under the guns of the royal ships, so as to secure them from
the fury of his bloodthirsty allies, the Indians, who desired to
supplement the entire destruction of the fort by the slaughter of the
garrison.
In withdrawing from the demolished post, while doubling the island at
the mouth of the Penobscot, he had an opportunity of justifying his
reputation as the most skilful officer in the French service; for,
falling in with an English squadron of seven sail, he successfully
evaded them by bold seamanship along the very coast line of that
dangerous and rock-bound shore.
His capacity as a military commander was now to be tested. Charged by
the king to co-operate in the reduction of Newfoundland to French power,
Iberville found himself viewed with jealousy by his colleague,
Brouillan, governor of Placentia, who assumed entire command, interfered
with Iberville's contemplated movements, and declared that his own
troops, the Canadians, should not accompany him on the opening campaign.
Iberville realizing the necessity of zealous and concerted action in an
enterprise of such importance, decided to leave the field free to
Brouillan, and so announced his intention of returning to France.
Immediately the Canadians declared to a man that they were bound to him
alone, that Frontenac's orders recognized Iberville as commander, and
finally, that they would return to Quebec sooner than accept another.
Brouillan recognizing that Iberville was the idol of his Canadian
countrymen, and unable to deny that the king had confided all the
enterprises to be undertaken during the winter to Iberville, made such
concessions as brought about reconciliation; nevertheless the campaign
undertaken against St. John's was marked by dissension. Iberville
displayed his usual energy and gallantry in the advance and subsequent
skirmishes which ultimately resulted in the surrender of St. John's,
which was abandoned and destroyed by fire. The campaign was pursued with
such energy and success that at the end of two months the English had
nothing left in Newfoundland except Bona Vista and Carbonniere Island.
During these operations Iberville displayed marked ability in handling
troops, both in the field and during siege operations. His eagerness to
share every danger, and willingness to undergo every hardship in common
with his troops, endeared him to all and contributed much to the
enthusiasm with which his men followed him or obeyed his orders.
In May, 1697, his brother Serigny arrived at Placentia with four
vessels, destined for the command of Iberville in a proposed attempt to
again reduce Hudson Bay. With these ships--le Pelican, fifty guns; le
Palmier, forty guns; le Profond, le Vespe, and a brigantine--Iberville
entered the mouth of Hudson Strait on August 3d, and was immediately
beset with heavy ice. The floes were driven hither and thither with such
violence by the currents that Iberville directed, as the best means of
safety, that each vessel should moor itself to the largest attainable
iceberg. This expedient saved four of the ships, but an unexpected
movement of two large bergs crushed so completely the brigantine that
she sank instantly, the crew barely escaping with their lives.
After a besetment of twenty-four days, Iberville succeeded in
extricating his vessel from the ice and passed into the bay. He was
alone and in utter ignorance of the fate of his consorts, which had been
hidden from view by the ice for the past seventeen days. Iberville was
not the man to turn back, nor indeed to delay in an expedition which
demanded haste, so he pushed on alone and reached Port Nelson on
September 4th.
The next morning he discovered three ships several leagues to the
leeward, tacking to enter the harbor. He hoped that they were his
consorts, and he at once made signals, which being unanswered showed
that the ships were English. It was indeed an English squadron,
consisting of the Hampshire, fifty-two guns and two hundred and thirty
men; the Hudson Bay, thirty-two guns, and the Deringue, also of
thirty-two guns, against which force Iberville had but one ship of fifty
guns. It was with reason that, as Jeremie says, "they flattered
themselves with the idea of capturing Iberville, seeing that they were
three to one, and they were amazed at the boldness with which he
attacked them."
Indeed, almost any other officer in the French navy would have
considered an attack as simply madness, but such desperate odds only
served to stimulate to the highest degree the known courage and skill of
Iberville. He cleared his decks for action, and instantly quitting the
shelter and supposed advantage of the harbor, attacked the English
squadron in the open sea, where Iberville doubtless counted that his
skill in handling ship would inure to his benefit.
Charlevoix thus describes this desperate fight:
"The cannonade opened about half-past nine in the morning and was kept
up incessantly till one with great vigor on both sides. Meanwhile the
Pelican had only one man killed and seventeen wounded. Then Iberville,
who had kept the weather-gauge, bore down straight on the two frigates,
pouring in several broadsides at close quarters in order to disable
them. At that moment he perceived the third, the Hampshire, coming on
with twenty-six guns in battery on each side, with a crew of two hundred
and thirty men.
"He at once proceeded to meet her, all his guns pointed to sink her, ran
under her lee, yard-arm to yard-arm, and having brought his ship to,
poured in his broadside. This was done so effectively that the
Hampshire, after keeping on about her own length, went down. Iberville
at once wore and turned on the Hudson Bay, the ship of the remaining two
that could most easily enter St. Teresa River; but as he was on the
point of boarding her, the commandant struck his flag and surrendered.
"Iberville then gave chase to the Deringue, the third, which was
escaping to the northeast, and which was only a good cannon-shot off;
but as that vessel was as good a sailor as his own ship he soon gave up
the chase, not daring to crowd sail, having had much of his rigging cut,
two pumps burst, his shrouds considerably injured, hull cut up by seven
cannon-balls and pierced at the water's edge, with no way of stopping
the leak. He accordingly veered and sent the Sieur de la Sale in his
boat with twenty-five men to man the prize. He then proceeded to repair
damage, and having done so with great expedition, he renewed the chase
of the enemy, who was now three leagues off.
"He began to gain on him when, in the evening, the wind changed to the
north, and a thick fog suddenly rising, he lost sight of the Deringue.
This accident compelled him to rejoin the Hudson Bay, and he anchored
near the Hampshire, now almost out of sight, and from which not a soul
had been saved."
In this fight with an enemy more than twice his superior in guns and men
Iberville had sunk one ship, captured another, and put the third to
flight; but this was followed by other experiences, which at the outset
presented conditions apparently not less desperate and discouraging. Two
days later, pending his siege operations against Port Nelson, a violent
gale arose, in which, says Charlevoix, "In spite of all d'Iberville's
efforts to ride it out--and there was not, perhaps, in the French navy
one more skilful in handling a ship--he was driven ashore with his
vessel, the Pelican, and his prize, the Hudson Bay. The misfortune
happened at night, the darkness increasing the horrors of the storm and
preventing them from beaching the vessels at a favorable place and so
saving them, and before the break of day they broke up and filled."
Both vessels were crowded with wounded men and prisoners, who
endeavored as best they could to reach the shore in the storm and
darkness. Twenty-three perished in the attempt, but fortunately the
receding tide left such shallows that the rest reached shore, and most
of the prisoners successfully sought the friendly shelter of Fort
Nelson.
Iberville now found himself in most desperate plight--shipwrecked on a
barren coast, with a hostile garrison on land, the return of the English
ship at sea possible, and destitute of provisions. He turned to the
wrecked vessels and found that it was possible to obtain from them
cannon and other munitions of war, and, undismayed, he set his cold,
wet, and hungry crew at this task, resolved to obtain food by carrying
the English fort by assault. At this juncture his missing vessels,
having extricated themselves from the ice of Hudson Strait, appeared,
and the fort surrendered without putting Iberville to the last proof of
his courage.
As might be expected, Iberville became the hero of the day on his return
to France in 1697; but true to himself and his career, he sought the
influence of friends at court only to obtain other difficult and
dangerous service that might add to the glory of France. He was now to
enter on a new career as an explorer, colonizer, and administrator,
where, if he was to perform less brilliant deeds than in earlier life,
he was destined to open up to settlement by his countrymen the fertile
lands of Louisiana, and thus lay the foundations of its future
greatness.
It was now twelve years since the tragic fate of La Salle's colony on
the coast of Texas had spread dismay and terror among all who had been
especially interested in the scheme of French colonization on the
Mississippi River. The sentiment seemed to be that the mouth of the
great river could never be found and that further effort would only
result in useless sacrifice of life and vessels. With the march of time,
however, these impressions of doubt and disaster had faded out of mind,
and as now the attention of the ministry was especially turned to that
part of Louisiana which could be reached from the St. Lawrence, it
appeared to Iberville to be a suitable season to revive the project of
discovering the mouth of the Mississippi and of planting a colony.
A plan for the colonization of Louisiana was formally submitted to the
French Government by M. de Remonville, while Iberville for his part
pledged his reputation as a navigator both to find the mouth of the
Mississippi and to successfully plant there a colony. The ministry were
easily persuaded that the scheme was practicable and advantageous, their
decision being doubtless affected by the knowledge that both Spain and
England contemplated the early settlement of the northern coasts of the
Gulf of Mexico. It was even reported, as afterward transpired to be the
truth, that colonizing expeditions were already en route, and in order
to insure protection should Iberville first reach the ground, Count
Pontchartrain projected and arranged for the construction of a fort at
the mouth of the Mississippi.
As was always the case, schemes of trade were interwoven with the policy
of colonization and extension of the royal domain. The principal objects
of the trade proved fanciful or chimerical, being, first, the idea of
making bison wool an article of trade, a scheme fostered in France by La
Salle, and, second, in the hope that valuable pearl fisheries might be
found. In Iberville's instructions we find that "one of the great
objects proposed to the king, when he was urged to discover the mouth of
the Mississippi, was to obtain wool from the cattle (buffalo) of that
country, and for this purpose these animals must be tamed and parked and
the calves sent to France."
Iberville worked with his usual energy, and the expedition, consisting
of two small frigates, the Badine, the Marin, and two Norman
fishing-boats, sailed from Brest, October 4, 1698. It was Friday, but
Iberville no more than Columbus minded the day, and in the reluctance of
the other vessels, himself led in the Badine.
A storm off Madeira caused the disappearance of one of the
fishing-boats, but after a short search Iberville tarried no more than
he did in the Hudson Straits for his missing consort, but pushed on and
reached San Domingo early in December. Here the governor, Ducasse, was
so impressed with Iberville's elucidation of his projects that he
expressed to the home government his opinion that the views and genius
of Iberville seemed to equal his valor in war.
English vessels had been cruising in the neighborhood of San Domingo,
which led Iberville to believe that it was a colonizing expedition, so
he worked day and night in completing his preparations, and on January
1, 1699, sailed for the Gulf of Mexico. On the afternoon of the
twenty-third day, Iberville as usual leading, land was sighted in the
northeast. It proved to be the harbor of Pensacola, where Iberville was
chagrined to find himself preceded by a Spanish colony under command of
Don Andres de la Riola. There were two frigates yet in the harbor, which
four months before had brought up three hundred colonists from Vera
Cruz. The half-finished fort, the dissatisfied garrison, and the
uncertainty of the future explorations to the westward were so many
inducements for Iberville to drive out the Spaniards and secure the
harbor. Iberville made arrangements to enter the harbor, but was
notified by the Spanish governor that he had formal orders from Spain to
permit no foreign ships to enter the harbor. Under pretence that he
feared heavy weather the French fleet sounded the entrance to the harbor
and prepared to enter. The Spanish commander, however, begged that they
would retire, and fortunately having been given information by the
Spanish pilot, Iberville decided to sail to the west. Iberville,
exploring the coast, anchored at the eastern point of the entrance to
Mobile Bay, where violent gales nearly destroyed the squadron.
[Illustration: Bienville.]
Reconnoitring boats giving such unsatisfactory reports of the depth of
the channel, Iberville determined, with his usual energy, to survey it
himself. Taking his younger brother Bienville and a crew of his
faithful Canadians he started, despite approaching darkness, so as to
begin work at day-light; the storm breaking with great violence,
Iberville's efforts to make headway over the billows were in vain.
Finally, his rowers exhausted, the boat was turned to the nearest land,
but the sea was so high and the wind so violent that unceasing efforts
were needful to prevent the boat from swamping. It was due to
Iberville's great skill that the boat was finally beached in a
favorable spot on the sandy beach, which the crew reached with
difficulty, so exhausted were they with their struggles. Here they were
weather-bound three days, and so had an opportunity to explore the
island. It was with horror that they discovered in one place ghastly
piles of human bones and skulls, mute witnesses of a scene of slaughter,
which terrified many of the crew until they found the island to be
uninhabited. The island, now known as Dauphin, was called Massacre by
Iberville, who, undisturbed by the sight, visited the mainland with a
few of his men and made every effort to discover the inhabitants, of
whom he found recent traces.
Finally came good weather, and with it the continued voyage to the west
brought the fleet to safe anchorage on a bright February morn off Ship
Island. The live-stock landed, Iberville gave his freight consorts
permission to return to France, while he explored the mainland that now
lay fair and bright before him. The Indians were communicated with,
after many failures, but, beyond the discovery of the Pascagoula and
reports of a larger river to the west, which the Bayagoula Indians
called Malbouchia, no valuable information was obtained. Iberville
planned to reach the great river by one of its reported outlets, and,
following the main channel down, thus learn the way for his vessel; but,
the Indians giving him the slip, it only remained to search every foot
of the coast until the river was gained. He was thus thrown on his own
resources, which had never failed and were not to do so now. Iberville,
with his brother Bienville and fifty picked men, largely Canadians, and
twenty days' provisions, started February 27th, on two Biscayennes or
barges, for his difficult task, the discovery of the mouth of the
Mississippi.
It is useless to detail this journey of Iberville through an apparently
endless maze of islets, mud-banks, sand-banks, reefs, and marshy shoals,
which go to make up the great level delta of the Mississippi. It would,
even to-day, be a difficult search for most mariners without a chart,
but then well-nigh impossible. Iberville's skill and patience were
tasked to the utmost, and, when he did find the mouth of the great
river, it almost seemed to be by the intervention of Providence. On the
eve of March 3, 1699, while struggling along the mainland, to which they
persistently clung, the violence of an increasing gale threatened to
swamp their barges, despite every effort, if they kept off shore, while
every approach to watch the shore-line, and thus make certain of the
river-mouth, incurred danger of beaching and destruction. Darkness came
on and the gale increased, making certain, as it seemed to them, that
they must choose death at sea or death on land. Suddenly Iberville put
his barge before the wind, and into the face of death as his followers
thought, but it shot between huge piles of interlaced drift-wood into a
turbid stream of whitish water. Iberville put out his hand and tasted.
The water was fresh, and the Mississippi was rediscovered.
The Spaniards had spoken of the river as La Palisada, which Iberville
thought most appropriate when he saw the bristling barricades of huge
jagged trees with outstretched limbs and contorted roots borne
incessantly onward by the strong current.
Iberville camped that night at the edge of the dense rank sedge-growth,
saying: "Stretched on the sedges and sheltered from the gale, our
pleasure is so much the greater that we feel our escape from a great
peril. It is a very lively business, this exploring the unknown shores
of a sea in shallops too small to carry sail in the open sea, too tiny
to anchor, and yet so large that they strand and ground half a league
from land."
The next morn was that of Mardi-Gras, when our devout explorers
celebrated mass, sang joyfully the Te Deum and raised a commemorative
cross before voyaging further.
Never in their wildest dreams could the hardy Canadian explorers from
their marshy camp in the delta of the Mississippi ever have presaged,
that in the coming time, from the many millions of future inhabitants in
the Valley of the Mississippi should be gathered tens of thousands to
celebrate the merry day of carnival in the metropolitan city that was to
spring up from their memorable voyage.
The Mississippi was near its high stage, so that travel was tediously
slow, mostly by oar. The land rose somewhat, the sedge gave way first to
cane and willows, and later to richly foliaged trees with graceful
festoons pleasing to the eye and fruitful of promise in the coming
autumn. The country, largely flooded, would have seemed uninhabited save
for the Indian ferry-boats, bundles of cane pointed at both ends and
fastened together by crossbars of wood, and an occasional column of
smoke rising in the distant blue. The rapid current obliged the oarsmen
to hug the bank closely, while diminishing food and increasing piles of
drift-wood discouraged them; but the indomitable Iberville cheered on
his Canadians, and on the fifth day, some thirty-five leagues from the
river's mouth, six pirogues, or canoes, full of Indians were seen. The
savages fled, but one was captured, and through him communication and
friendly overtures were established with the Annochys. Through these
Indians Iberville was taken to the present site of New Orleans and was
shown the portage over which the Indians travelled to Lake
Pontchartrain, and thence to the bay where the ship was at anchor.
Farther up the stream Iberville visited the village of the Bayougoulas,
which consisted of about two hundred souls. The men, well made, with
short hair and painted faces, stalked around most unconcernedly in a
naked state. The women blackened their teeth, tied up their hair in a
top-knot, tattooed their faces and breasts, and wore girdles woven of
bark fibre, dyed red or bleached white, with pendulous fringes reaching
to the knee. The ornaments of the women were metal bracelets and bangles
and fancy articles made of feathers, while the young braves wore sashes
of feathers, which, weighted with bits of metal, made merry sound as
they danced. In short, they were an inoffensive folk, content with the
simple fruits of the earth, which largely served as their sustenance.
Iberville visited one of their temples, a structure some thirty feet in
diameter, which Charlevoix describes as follows: "In the centre were
slowly burning logs (keeping up a perpetual fire), and at the end a
platform on which lay skins of deer, buffalo, and bear, offerings to the
Chouchouacha (the opossum), the god of the Bayougoulas, which animal was
painted in red and black at various points in the temple. The roof was
decorated with the figures of various animals, among which a red fox was
conspicuous. On either side of the entrance were other animal figures,
such as bears and wolves and also various birds, but above all the
Chouchouacha (the opossum), an animal about the size and having the head
of the sucking pig, the white and gray fur of the badger, the tail of
the rat, the paws of an ape, and a sack under its stomach."
The great discrepancies between the topography of the river and the
descriptions given in the accounts of the journeys of La Salle and Tonti
so impressed Iberville that he was really doubtful if he was on the
Mississippi, and so his journey was pursued up the river to the Oumas, a
short distance below the mouth of the Red River. Fortunately his
brother, Bienville, obtained from an Indian chief a letter, which the
savage had carried for thirteen years, given him by Tonti, who
descended the river from Illinois in 1686 and left this letter addressed
to La Salle, whose active and loyal assistant Tonti was.
[Illustration: Bienville's Army on the River.]
Iberville was now over seven hundred miles distant from his ship, and
his original stock of provisions was exhausted, so that the men were
obliged to live on the corn of the Indians and such meat or game as
could be bought or killed. Sending his men back by the delta with the
barges, Iberville decided to try himself the route of portages to the
Gulf. With an Indian guide he entered the Ascantia, a narrow, winding
bayou, where with his four Canadians and two pirogues fifty portages
over fallen trees and drift were made the first day in a distance of
seven leagues. It is not surprising that the Indian guide, unaccustomed
to such tremendous labor and fatigue, deserted the second day. Iberville
none the less pushed on undauntedly, confident that he could reach his
ship through this unknown country, guide or no guide. Next, one of his
hardy Canadians fell sick, and Iberville took his place and oar, and in
the portages carried his end of a pirogue. After eighty portages they
passed into Lake Maurepas and next into Lake Pontchartrain, whence the
way was easy to the ship, which was reached eight hours in advance of
the barges from the delta.
In his absence of six weeks Iberville had found again the Mississippi,
explored its shores almost to the Red River, made friends with all its
native tribes, discovered the short route to the sea, travelled about
fifteen hundred miles, and had returned to his ship with every man of
his party. What volumes these few facts speak for the energy, tact,
skill, and foresight of this wonderful Canadian!
Casting about for a convenient spot Iberville decided to build his fort
at the head of Biloxi Bay, and in this unfortunate location, under the
spurring supervision of the chief, Fort Biloxi soon rose, and there on
Easter Sunday mass was celebrated, vespers sung, and a sermon preached.
On May 2, 1700, Iberville sailed for France, leaving his lieutenant,
Sauvole, as the first governor of the province of Louisiana and
Bienville second in command.
The action of France and the desperate haste of Iberville in occupying
the mouth of the Mississippi were most timely. The very month in which
our Canadian sailed from Brest an expedition left England under the
auspices of Mr. Cox, who sent out three vessels loaded with emigrants.
They wintered in the Carolinas, where many settled, but in 1700 two
ships continued their voyage to the Mississippi. One of these vessels
was commanded by a Captain Banks, who once captured by Iberville in
Hudson Bay now found himself worsted by his rival in the peaceful work
of colonization. One of the English ships appeared in the lower
Mississippi, into which Banks had found entrance, in September, 1700.
Bienville, with five men and two pirogues, met the English vessel, and
setting forth to the captain that France was in possession of all the
surrounding country, succeeded either by argument or cajolery in
persuading the captain to withdraw from the Mississippi.
Iberville was not long delayed by the delights and pleasures of the
French court, but speedily returned to Biloxi, where he arrived on the
eve of Twelfth Night with supplies, and more important of all, with
sixty hardy and energetic Canadians, with whom he established a fort a
short distance below the present site of New Orleans. The winter proved
a very cold one, the drinking-water freezing in the cups, but it did not
delay the rapid progress of the new fort. In the midst of this work
Chevalier de Tonti arrived with twenty Canadians from their former
settlement in Illinois.
Thus for the first time, with intercommunication established between the
permanent settlement in Illinois, Tonti's fort on the Arkansas, and the
new colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, Iberville felt that France
had indeed entered into actual possession of its great province of
Louisiana. He realized, however, the necessity of permanently connecting
these settlements, many hundred miles apart, and of facilitating
intercommunication through the establishment of intermediate posts.
Iberville contemplated an exploration of the Red River, thinking it
might afford access to the gold and silver mines of New Spain, but
abandoned the project owing to the representations of the Indians that
the river was unnavigable from the interlaced drift-wood, later known as
rafts. He turned his attention to the main river, the Mississippi, and
visited the Natchez, a brave and powerful tribe of Indians, whose
country delighted his heart as resembling France, and where he planned a
city to be called Rosalie (now Natchez), which, however, it was not his
fate to ever see take definite form, as it was only built long after his
death, in 1714, by his brother Bienville. It was at this time that Le
Sueur, sent up the Mississippi by Iberville, discovered the St. Peter
River, in Minnesota, and attempting mining operations, later brought
back a worthless cargo of green earth. To Iberville's credit, it may be
said, he viewed this and many other similar schemes of development with
a sceptical and practical eye.
Later he sent his brother Bienville across country to explore the Red
River, which was done with good success. His priest Montigny was also
active in extending the faith, both among the Natchez Indians and in the
basin of the Tensas River. Indeed, every effort was made under
Iberville's sagacious direction to obtain a knowledge of the
possibilities of the country, so that its resources might be properly
developed.
Iberville returned to France ill with fever, but despite his disease, he
displayed extraordinary energy in personally advancing the practical
affairs of his new colony. Moreover, he prepared a memoir urging the
cession of Pensacola by Spain to France, which nation was to establish
forts and arm the Indians along the Mississippi River, whereby the
interior of America from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada would be under
French domination, save the narrow strip along the Atlantic coast
already occupied by England. It was a sagacious scheme which if it had
been properly supported by France would have entirely changed the future
of America. It received, however, but a perfunctory support, and only
resulted in exciting the jealousy of Spain.
Iberville's last voyage to Louisiana was made in 1701, when his health,
undermined by the climate, was impaired by the formation of an abscess
which confined him to his bed for two months. His mind worked
incessantly, and his activity through other hands was wonderful. He
planned the royal magazines on Dauphine Island, located the new post on
Mobile River, told off the relief of workmen for the various
enterprises, planned flat-boats for lighters, extended relief to the
Spaniards at Vera Cruz, and sent Tonti as an agent to make peace with
the Choctaws and Chickasaws and secure them as allies. His sailor's eye
was particularly pleased with the magnificent forests of Mobile Bay,
where the oaks and pines presented the finest timber for ship-building
he had ever seen.
With Mobile commenced, the royal storehouses erected, and the alliance
of the Choctaws and Chickasaws secured, Iberville felt that the colony
of Louisiana was on a secure foundation, and on March 31st he sailed
from Dauphine Island, then the headquarters of that colony for which he
had done so much, and which he was destined never again to see.
The domain of Louisiana, obtained by so much heroic endeavor and
individual suffering on the part of Joliet, Marquette, La Salle, Tonti,
Iberville, and their associates, passed at once, by an edict of Louis
XIV., into a monopoly and under the control of a courtier, Anton Crozat,
for trading purposes, by the decree of September 14, 1712. In this
decree the limits of Louisiana were for the first time defined,
including "all the territories by us (France) possessed, and bounded by
New Mexico and by those of the English in Carolina.... The river St.
Louis, formerly called the Mississippi, from the sea-shore to the
Illinois, together with the rivers St. Phillipe, formerly called the
Missouries, and the St. Jerome, formerly called the Wabash (the Ohio),
with all the countries, territories, lakes in the land, and the rivers
emptying directly or indirectly into that part of the river St. Louis.
All the said territories, countries, rivers, streams, and islands we
will to be and remain comprised under the name of the government of
Louisiana."
There was another and blacker page to the decree, whereby Crozat was
further authorized to introduce African slavery: "If the aforesaid Sieur
Crozat considers it advisable to have negroes in the said country of
Louisiana, for agriculture or other use on plantations, he can send a
ship each year to trade directly with the Guinea coast, ... and is
further authorized to sell negroes to the settlers of Louisiana."
But prior to this condition of affairs the great Canadian naval
commander had passed to his final reward, having died of yellow fever at
Havana, July 9, 1706. The last leaf in his history was, however, an
effort, through his personal bravery and skill, to secure French
domination in America by driving out of the Antilles the determined
English seamen whose successful raids so often militated against the
interests of France. Despite his health, undermined by fevers, Iberville
left France with a fleet with which he hoped to carry out this great
plan. Intending to make a descent upon Barbadoes, he learned that the
English, warned of his plans, were prepared for him. He therefore seized
on the islands of Nevis and St. Christopher, where his fleet captured an
enormous amount of booty of all kinds. He decided next to ravage the
English colonies in the Carolinas, but stopping at Havana for
reinforcements he lost his own life by the epidemic which destroyed
eight hundred others of his fleet.
Among the qualities of this great Canadian all must admire his
intrepidity in war, his skill as a navigator, and his capacity as an
explorer; but beyond these were the astonishing administrative ability
and political sagacity which he displayed in such an eminent degree in
the planning, founding, and fostering of the great province of
Louisiana.
[Illustration: New Orleans in 1719.]
III.
JONATHAN CARVER,
THE EXPLORER OF MINNESOTA.
Throughout the bloody series of French and Indian wars which ravaged the
frontier settlements of America during the first half of the eighteenth
century, France maintained secure possession of the regions of the great
lakes and the basin of the upper Mississippi. The successful campaign of
the gallant Wolfe against the no less gallant Montcalm ultimately
resulted in the termination of French supremacy in these sections, and
under the treaty of Paris, in 1763, Canada with all other dominions of
France east of the Mississippi passed under the control of Great
Britain.
To this time the English colonists had confined their operations almost
entirely to the region of the Atlantic Coast, so when Great Britain
acquired her immense war-inheritance the country to the west of the
Appalachian Mountain range was practically an unknown region to its new
masters. The extension of English settlements toward the interior of the
continent was determined on by the English Government, and the more
accessible of the French trading-posts in the northwest were immediately
occupied. Maps were few and inaccurate, information as to the Indians
vague and exaggerated, while nothing was known as to the resources of
the country except that furs were obtainable in large numbers.
Scarcely were the terms of the treaty promulgated than the enterprising
pioneers moved westward and gradually pressed back the Indians nearest
the English settlements. A few other men, however, undertook to
penetrate the valley of the Mississippi to the very frontier of
Louisiana, which remained a French possession.
Among these hardy and adventurous Americans the most enterprising was
Captain Jonathan Carver, who was born in Stillwater, N. Y., in 1732. He
was the grandson of William Joseph Carver, one of the earliest of the
royal appointments in Connecticut, and his first public service was at
the age of eighteen, when he secured an ensigncy in a Connecticut
regiment. In 1757, when Colonel Oliver Partridge raised a battalion of
infantry in Massachusetts to serve against Canada, Carver was made a
lieutenant therein. Later he served as captain under Colonel Whitcomb,
in 1760, and under Colonel Saltonstall, in 1762, and participated in the
taking of Crown Point and other operations in northern New York.
Doubtless his association with scouts and camp-followers, largely
consisting of fur-traders and frontiersmen, induced a lively interest in
their accounts of the western country held by their enemies, the Indian
and the Frenchman. Certain it is that Carver acquired such ideas of the
extent, fertility, natural wealth, and possibilities of the great and
unknown West as fired his adventurous spirit with a firm determination
to solve the important geographical problems connected therewith.
His objects, he states, were to gain knowledge concerning the Indian
tribes to the west of the Mississippi, to ascertain the natural
resources of the country, and to cross the American continent between
the forty-third and forty-sixth degrees of north latitude. Ultimately he
contemplated the establishment of a trading-post at some suitable point
on the Pacific Coast.
Carver was not ignorant of the great danger involved in such an
undertaking, where he was obliged to intrust his life to the mercy of
unknown Indians for a prolonged time. Indeed, considering his
experiences at the massacre of Englishmen and provincials at Fort Henry,
it seems surprising that he would ever trust a savage or a Frenchman. In
the campaign of 1757, Carver volunteered to accompany the detachment of
fifteen hundred men which General Webb sent forward to reinforce the
garrison at Fort Henry, then anticipating an attack from Montcalm. The
garrison, commanded by the gallant Monro, who resisted until his guns
burst and his ammunition was nearly exhausted, surrendered to the
combined force of Indians and French under Montcalm, who promised safe
conduct and private property. As the English force moved out the next
morning the Indians, inflamed by liquor, song, and dance, butchered the
sick and wounded and then fell upon the helpless captives, of whom there
were, according to French accounts, about sixty killed and four hundred
robbed and maltreated. Montcalm and Levi, to their credit, though too
late, made heroic personal efforts which mitigated the horrors of the
situation.
[Illustration: Indian Tomahawk. (From Carver's Book.)]
Among the unfortunates was Carver, who, robbed and stripped by the
savages, appealed to a French sentry for protection only to be repelled
with abuse. Realizing finally that to remain quiet was to meet certain
death, Carver and a few others attempted to escape by breaking unarmed
through the surrounding lines of Indian fiends. In this desperate effort
for life Carver was twice wounded, badly beaten, seized by two Indians,
and led away to death, which he escaped by the appearance of a British
officer in full uniform, who was such a prize that his captors left
Carver to secure a more valuable victim. Profiting by the respite Carver
fled to the nearest woods, where, exhausted and nearly naked, he
concealed himself in a thicket until night. For three days he wandered
through the densest part of the forest, suffering tortures from travel
under such conditions, often in danger of recapture, and without food
until he reached, in a nearly exhausted condition, the English
settlements.
An attempt at transcontinental exploration was then looked on as
foolhardy and visionary in the extreme, even to those friends of Carver
who never deserted him. One of these, Dr. Lettsom, wrote in the third
edition of Carver's travels, fifteen years after the journey, as
follows: "He suggested an attempt by land across the northwest parts of
America, and actually drew a chart of his proposed route for effecting
his project, which, however visionary it may now be deemed, affords at
least a proof of the enterprising spirit of Carver."
Unmoved by the sneers of his critics, and undeterred by recollections of
Indian cruelty and perfidy, Carver arranged the details of his journey
at his private expense, and in June, 1766, he quitted Boston, and
travelling by the way of Albany and Niagara reached his headquarters,
Michillimackinac, now known as Mackinac. Here he made definite
arrangements for his serious work of exploration. At this time English
traders extended their journeys to Prairie-du-Chien for the purpose of
purchasing furs from Indians rendezvousing there, and with one of these
parties Carver was to travel, relying on the Governor of Mackinaw to
forward supplies to St. Anthony. Leaving the Fort, September 3d, and
travelling by canoe, he reached the islands of the Grand Traverse, and
there spent one night. One of the chiefs, to whom a present was given,
made, on Carver's departure, the following prayer, which is worthy of
reproduction as a specimen of Indian eloquence: "May the Great Spirit
favor you with a prosperous voyage; may He give you an unclouded sky and
smooth waters by day, and may you lay down by night on a beaver blanket
to uninterrupted sleep and pleasant dreams, and may you find continual
protection under the calumet of peace."
Carver followed the route of Joliet and Marquette through Green Bay and
up Fox River to the great town of the Winnebagoes, where he found the
Indians presided over by a queen instead of a sachem. Carver speaks of
the extreme richness of soil and abundance of cultivated products and
wild game, mentioning grapes, plums, Indian corn, beans, pumpkins,
squashes, watermelons, and tobacco from cultivation; fish from the lake;
wild fowl so abundant that frequently the sun would be obscured by them
for some minutes together, while deer, bears, and beavers were very
numerous. The usual portage was made by him from the Fox to the
Wisconsin River, into which his canoes were launched on the 8th of
October. Seven days carried him to Prairie-du-Chien, at the junction of
the Wisconsin and Mississippi, which was at that time a town of some
three hundred families and had become a great trading mart for the
adjacent tribes, who assembled in great numbers annually in the latter
part of May.
[Illustration: _The falls of_ St. Anthony _in the River_ MISSISSIPPI,
_near 2400 Miles from its entrance into the Gulf of Mexico._ (From
Carver's Book.)]
At Prairie-du-Chien Carver parted with the traders, who were to winter
at that point, and obtaining a Canadian as interpreter and a Mohawk
Indian as a servant, he purchased a canoe, and on October 19th,
proceeding up the Mississippi, he fell in with a straggling band of
Indians which barely failed of plundering him. November 1st brought him
to Lake Pepin, near which he discovered what appeared to be the remains
of extended intrenchments, centuries old, as he thought, but which are
now known to be Indian mounds, probably erected as sites for their
wigwams, so as to keep them above the annual overflow and inundation.
The coming of winter and the forming of river ice obliged him to quit
his canoe opposite the mouth of the St. Peter, or Minnesota River,
whence by land he reached the Falls of St. Anthony on November 17, 1766,
probably the first white American to visit them.
The noise and appearance of the Falls of St. Anthony impressed Carver
very strongly, and his account of them is worthy of reproduction in view
of the changes that have taken place within the past one hundred and
thirty years:
"This amazing body of waters, which are above 250 yards over, form a
most pleasing cataract; they fall perpendicularly about thirty feet, and
the rapids below, in the space of 300 yards more, render the descent
considerably greater; so that when viewed at a distance, they appear to
be much higher than they really are.
"In the middle of the Falls stands a small island about forty feet
broad and somewhat longer, on which grow a few cragged hemlock and
spruce trees; and about half way between this island and the eastern
shore is a rock lying at the very edge of the Fall, in an oblique
position, that appears to be about five or six feet broad and thirty or
forty long."
Leaving the falls, Carver proceeded up the Mississippi to the mouth of
the St. Francis, the farthest of Hennepin in 1680, discovering on the
way Rum and Goose Rivers. Warned by the severity of the cold that winter
was fast coming on, Carver returned to his canoe at the mouth of the
Minnesota River and decided to explore that stream, of which only the
lower portion had ever been visited--by Le Sueur in 1700.
Following the Minnesota about two hundred miles he reached, on December
7th, the winter camp of a large tribe of Indians, about one thousand in
number, who were designated by Carver as the Naudowessie (Santees).
Advancing boldly, with his calumet of peace fastened to the prow of his
canoe, he was received in a friendly manner. After the usual smoking of
the pipe of peace, during which he says the tent was nearly broken down
by the crowd of savages, who, as a rule, had never seen a white man, he
was treated with great respect.
Among these Indians Carver passed the winter, filling in his five
months' stay by hunting and other Indian amusements. From the Indians he
learned that the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the Bourbon (the Red
River of the North) had their sources within thirty miles of each
other. This led to the natural but erroneous opinion that Carver had
reached the highest land of North America, when in reality he was at an
elevation of only twelve hundred feet.
Carver also spoke of "the Oregon, or the River of the West," as having
its sources somewhat farther to the west. This is the first time that
the word Oregon appears in literature, and Carver gives no account of
its meaning.
[Illustration: A Calumet. (From Carver's Book.)]
The Indians had traditions as to the extreme plentifulness of gold to
the west of the "Shining Mountains," of which our explorer says, on the
strength of Indian reports:
"The mountains that lie to the west of St. Peter are called the Shining
Mountains, from an infinite number of crystal stones of an amazing size
with which they are covered and which, when the sun shines full upon
them, sparkle so as to be seen at a very great distance."
Carver's enthusiasm and interest in the West led him to make the
following striking prediction, which time has fully justified. He says:
"This extraordinary range of mountains is calculated to be more than
three thousand miles in length, without any very considerable intervals,
which, I believe, surpasses anything of the kind in the other quarters
of the globe. Probably, in future ages, they may be found to contain
more riches in their bowels than those of Hindostan and Malabar, or than
are produced on the golden coast of Guinea, nor will I except even the
Peruvian mines. To the west of these mountains, when explored by future
Columbuses or Raleighs, may be found other lakes, rivers, and countries,
full fraught with all the necessaries or luxuries of life, and where
future generations may find an asylum, whether driven from their country
by the ravages of lawless tyrants, or by religious persecutions, or
reluctantly leaving it to remedy the inconveniences arising from a
superabundant increase of inhabitants; whether, I say, impelled by these
or allured by hopes of commercial advantages, there is little doubt but
their expectations will be fully gratified in these rich and unexhausted
climes."
Carver described the valley of the Minnesota as a most delightful
country, abounding with all the necessities of life, which grow
spontaneously. Fruit, vegetables, and nuts were represented as being
particularly abundant, and the sugar-maple grew in amazing numbers.
In April, 1767, the Santees descended the Minnesota in order, among
other things, to bury their dead near a remarkable cave on Lake Pepin,
known to the Indians as the "dwelling of the Great Spirit."
Finding that supplies had not been sent to the Falls of St. Anthony,
Carver returned to Prairie-du-Chien in order to get sufficient stores to
enable him to reach Lake Superior, whence he hoped to be able to cross
the continent from Grand Portage. Obtaining such supplies, he proceeded
up the Mississippi to the Chippeway River, and, after ascending to its
head, made portages to the St. Croix, and reached Lake Superior,
possibly by the river now known as the Bois Brule.
From this point Carver, in his canoe, skirted the coast of Lake Superior
to the Grand Portage, where he awaited the arrival of the Hudson Bay or
northern traders, from whom he anxiously hoped to obtain supplies that
would enable him to journey west; but he was destined to disappointment,
as nothing could be obtained from them. Carver coasted around the north
and east borders of Lake Superior, and arrived at the Falls of Ste.
Marie the beginning of October, having skirted nearly twelve hundred
miles of the shores of Lake Superior in a birch canoe.
The Sault Ste. Marie was then the resort of the Algonquin Indians, who
frequented the falls on account of the great numbers of whitefish that
filled the waters, particularly in the autumn, when that fish leaves
the lakes in order to spawn in shallow running waters.
In November, 1767, Carver arrived at Mackinac, having, as he says, "been
sixteen months on this extensive tour, travelled nearly four thousand
miles, and visited twelve nations of Indians living to the west and
north. His picture of Detroit on his return, in 1768, is of
retrospective interest.
"The town of Detroit contains upward of one hundred houses. The streets
are somewhat regular, and have a range of very convenient and handsome
barracks with a spacious parade at the south end. On the west side lies
the King's Garden, belonging to the Governor, which is very well laid
out, and kept in good order. The fortifications of the town consist of a
strong stockade, made of round piles, fixed firmly in the ground, and
lined with palisades. These are defended by some small bastions, on
which are mounted a few indifferent cannon of an inconsiderable size,
just sufficient for its defence against the Indians or an enemy not
provided with artillery. The garrison in time of peace consists of two
hundred men, commanded by a field-officer, who acts as chief magistrate
under the Governor of Canada.
"In the year 1762, in the month of July, it rained on this town and the
parts adjacent a sulphurous water of the color and consistency of ink,
some of which being collected in bottles, and wrote with, appeared
perfectly intelligible on the paper, and answered every purpose for
that useful liquid. Soon after, the Indian wars already spoken of broke
out in these parts. I mean not to say that this incident was ominous of
them, notwithstanding it is well known that innumerable well-attested
instances of extraordinary phenomena, happening before extraordinary
events, have been recorded in almost every age by historians of
veracity; I only relate the circumstance as a fact, of which I was
informed by many persons of undoubted probity, and leave my readers, as
I have heretofore done, to draw their own conclusions from it."
It is beyond question that certain chapters of Carver's work,
supplementary to his account of his personal explorations, and
especially devoted to Indians and to the natural history of the
Northwest, are practically translations of the accounts of Charlevoix,
Hennepin, and particularly of Lahontan. It does not appear from the
first part of the work that Carver was a man endowed with those powers
of observation and assimilation which are essential traits for the
successful traveller and author.
When the brief recital of his personal travels is examined, it seems
difficult to determine on what grounds his truthfulness has been
questioned by a few hostile critics. His story is simple and
straightforward, devoid of boastfulness, free from any exaggeration as
to his personal prowess, and the statement that he passed a winter of
five months in the valley of the Upper Minnesota is, in my opinion,
worthy of entire credence.
Fortunately, however, evidence of the most convincing character exists
as to Carver's residence among the Naudowessies or Santees. The
exhaustive bibliography of the Siouan languages, by Mr. James C.
Pilling, indicates that Carver is the first author who ever published a
vocabulary of the Santee tongue, and its length, eight pages, renders it
evident that it was an original compilation which must have required
considerable time and patience.
[Illustration: Naudowessie Indians.
Carver's drawing of "A man and woman of the Naudowessie," herewith
reproduced, if somewhat fanciful in its details, must be considered of
historical value as indicating in the main the costumes of the Santees
when first visited by the whites.]
The importance of Carver's charts and journals at that time was evident
to the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations in England to whom
Carver was referred when praying for reimbursement of his expenses.
Carver appeared before the Board and, after an examination, was granted
authority to publish his papers. Later, after Carver had, as he says,
disposed of them and they were nearly ready for the press, an order was
issued from the Council Board requiring him to immediately turn in all
the originals of his charts, journals, and other papers relative to his
discoveries.
Meanwhile interest in the extension of English influence into the
interior of North America was waning steadily with the growing
conviction that the colonies would establish their independence, and the
Government had no mind to reimburse an enterprising American, even
though he remained loyal. Carver was reduced gradually to the greatest
straits, was compelled to sell his book for a pittance, and finally, his
end hastened by lack of proper food and suitable attendance, died in the
direst poverty in London, January 13, 1780.
His own generation could best judge as to the timeliness and importance
of Carver's exploration, and as to the value of the information set
forth in his book of travels. Suffice it to say that no less than
twenty-three editions of this book have appeared, in four languages.
This, too, at a time when the war of independence naturally destroyed
current interest in the extension of English settlements in the interior
of North America.
Explorations, however, are wisely esteemed by posterity according to the
results which flow therefrom in the shape of definite additions to the
knowledge of the world or in the more important direction of disclosing
lands suitable for colonization. In this latter manner the exploration
of Jonathan Carver and the accounts of his travels had an important
influence. They first brought into popular and accessible form
information and ideas concerning the interior parts of North America
which before had been practically inaccessible to the general public of
England and America.
Twenty-five years after this journey toward the "Shining Mountains" and
"Oregon, the River of the West," the ultimate scheme of Carver found its
justification in the success of Alexander Mackenzie, a young Scotchman,
who was the first white man to cross the continent of America to the
north of Mexico; and yet ten years later Lewis and Clark were despatched
on their famous expedition which explored the valley of the Columbia,
where in 1810, under the energetic management of John Jacob Astor, arose
the trading-post of Astoria, thus turning into reality the dreams and
aspirations of Jonathan Carver, the soldier and explorer.
IV.
CAPTAIN ROBERT GRAY,
THE DISCOVERER OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER.
Within the past century no American explorer has contributed more
materially to the welfare of the United States and to its maritime glory
than Captain Robert Gray, the discoverer of the Columbia River and the
first circumnavigator who carried the flag of the United States around
the world.
Robert Gray was born at Tiverton, R. I., in May, 1757, and in early
youth, inspired with the spirit of independence which dominated the
American Colonies, entered the naval service during the war of the
Revolution, wherein he served with credit as an officer.
At the termination of the war it is probable that he continued his
natural or acquired vocation as a seaman. At all events, we find him
first and foremost among that band of American citizens whose courage,
energy, and nautical skill enabled them to attain unsurpassed success as
whalers and sealers in the Antarctic Ocean, as traders dealing direct
with China, or as explorers and fur dealers on the unsurveyed and
dangerous coast of northwest America.
In 1787, J. Barrell, S. Brown, C. Bulfinch, J. Darby, C. Hatch, and J,
M. Pintard, merchants of Boston, associated for the purpose of combining
the fur traffic of the northwest coast of America with the silk and tea
trade of China. For this purpose they sent, under the command of Captain
John Kendrick, in 1787, the ship Columbia and the sloop Washington with
cargoes of blankets, knives, iron bars, and other articles suitable for
the northwest trade. They were provided with sea letters issued
according to a resolution of Congress, with passports from the State of
Massachusetts, and with commendatory letters from the Spanish minister
plenipotentiary to the United States.
Captain Kendrick, who commanded the Columbia, was a man of marked
ability and great energy, who withal had most enthusiastic opinions as
to the future of the Pacific Coast region, which he believed would in a
few years utterly dwarf the growing importance of the Atlantic seaboard.
Gray was the master of the Washington, and his professional standing in
the eyes of the merchants of Boston was shown by his designation as the
most desirable officer to assume command in case of death or injury to
Captain Kendrick.
Many aspersions have been cast by English writers on the policy pursued
and methods followed by Americans engaged in trading with the Indians of
the northwest coast of America. Doubtless such reflections were
justified in individual cases of Americans, as of traders of other
nationality; but the instructions given by the merchants of Boston to
Kendrick and Gray show that fair, honest, and peaceful methods were
regarded as the true means of establishing a permanent and profitable
trade. Among other injunctions were the following:
"If you make any fort or any improvement of land on the coast, be sure
you purchase the soil of the natives.... Let the instrument of
conveyance bear every authentic mark that circumstances will admit....
We cannot forbear to impress on your mind our will and expectation that
the most inviolable harmony and friendship may subsist between you and
the natives, and that no advantage may be taken of them in trading, but
that you endeavor by honest conduct to impress on their minds a
friendship for Americans." While enjoining peace, it was not to be a
peace on any terms, for thus runs the instructions: "The sea letters
from Congress and this State you will show on every proper occasion, and
although we expect you will treat all nations with respect and civility,
yet we depend you will suffer insult and injury from none without
showing that spirit which becomes a free and independent American."
The vessels sailed from Boston September 30, 1787, via the Cape Verde
and Faulkland Islands, and in January doubled Cape Horn, when they
thought the perils of storm were past. In latitude 59° S., however, a
violent gale arose, which not only separated them, but also seriously
damaged the Columbia. The storm over, Kendrick found himself in a sad
plight, his consort gone, perhaps lost, his ship in an unseaworthy
condition, and the nearest spot for repairs a thousand miles distant.
This port, that of the island of Juan Fernandez, if now famous and
delightful to the adventurous mind through its associations with the
fascinating tale of Robinson Crusoe, was then most objectionable from
the fact that it was under Spanish rule and so was to be avoided by
Kendrick, whose instructions ran as follows:
"You are strictly enjoined not to touch at any port of the Spanish
dominion on the western continent of America, unless driven there by
unavoidable accident, in which case you are to give no offence to any of
the subjects of his Catholic Majesty."
Kendrick, to his surprise, was received with great kindness and aided in
repairing his injured vessel by Don Blas Gonzales, the humane commandant
of the Spanish garrison of Juan Fernandez.
Spain at this time claimed the right of exclusive jurisdiction over the
entire western continent of America by virtue of the papal concession,
1493, and by right of discovery. It had failed to colonize the northwest
coast of America, but it prohibited other nations from entering in
possession. It now illustrated its narrow and jealous policy in its
treatment of a subordinate who had ventured to assist a vessel in
distress and provided with letters from the accredited minister of Spain
to the United States. Ambrose O'Higgins, then captain-general of Chili,
under whom Gonzales was serving, on hearing of this act recalled him and
put him in arrest, pending definite orders from his own superior, Teodor
Lacroix, viceroy of Peru. After due consideration of the case the
unfortunate commandant, Gonzales, was cashiered for his remissness in
allowing a strange ship to leave Juan Fernandez instead of seizing her
and her crew. The viceroy set forth to the captain-general of Chili the
legal opinion that by the royal ordinance of November, 1692, every
foreign vessel found in those seas without a license from the court of
Spain was to be treated as an enemy, even though belonging to a friend
or ally of the king, "seeing that no other nation had, or ought to have,
any territories, to reach which its vessels should pass around Cape Horn
or through Magellan's Straits." The viceroy therefore sent a ship from
Callao to track or intercept the Columbia; the authorities on the coasts
of Peru and Chili were especially enjoined to be vigilant, and in case
any foreign vessel should appear in the country to seize her.
Under Gray's skilful handling the Washington escaped unharmed from the
hurricane, and continuing his course toward King George Sound, the
concerted rendezvous, he made the American coast, about 46° N., in
August, 1788. Here he barely escaped loss of his vessel in trying to
cross the bar of an unknown river, probably the Columbia, when his ship
grounded. He, however, visited shore, and found that the sea was
perchance the less inhospitable of the two, for he was so savagely and
violently attacked by swarms of Indians that he was very glad to escape
therefrom with one seaman dead and the mate wounded.
Quitting this unfortunate place he sailed north and entered Nootka
Sound, Vancouver Island, September 17, 1788, where he found two English
vessels, the Felice and Iphigenia, sailing under the Portuguese flag and
commanded by Captains Meares and Douglass. There were no signs of the
Columbia, but her arrival a few days later relieved Gray from further
anxiety in this respect.
[Illustration: Indian Maul.]
Douglass's vessel, the Iphigenia, was in serious need of supplies and
assistance, which Gray generously furnished. Later he not only made to
the northward a successful trading trip, but in the following year, in
June, 1789, explored the whole east coast of Queen Charlotte Islands, to
which he gave the name of Washington Islands, in honor of General
Washington, then President of the United States. In another trading
excursion from Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island, Gray entered the broad
opening southeast of the island and sailed to the east-southeast fifty
miles, where he found the passage still five leagues wide. This opening
was the Straits of Fuca, and the first authentic exploration of the
strait is the account of Gray. The credit of first passing through the
entire length of the Straits of Fuca is due to Kendrick, who made the
passage in the sloop Washington, after the departure of Gray to China on
the Columbia.
The account of the passage of the Washington through the Straits of Fuca
was especially called to Vancouver's attention by the British Admiralty
on the occasion of his surveying voyage of 1791, when he was
particularly to "examine the supposed Strait of Juan de Fuca, said to be
situated between the forty-eighth and forty-ninth north latitude, and to
lead to an opening through which the sloop Washington was reported to
have passed in 1789, and to have come out again to the northward of
Nootka." Vancouver later denied to Americans the credit of first sailing
entirely through the Straits of Fuca, resting his opinion on Gray's
statement that he sailed only fifty miles within it, which was true; the
credit belonging to Kendrick in his voyage with the Washington after
Gray's departure from the coast in 1789.
The efforts of Kendrick and Gray resulted in the obtaining of a full
cargo of furs, which in accordance with their instructions were to be
sold in China. Kendrick, fascinated with the prospects of fortune and
success, and perhaps reluctant to face his owners owing to his lack of
caution which resulted in the unfortunate killing of some thirty
natives, decided to remain on the northwest coast, his imaginary
Eldorado.
Gray consequently transferred to the Columbia and set sail for Canton,
then the great fur mart of the world. His voyage across the Pacific was
prosperous, his furs were readily sold, and after taking a cargo of tea
on board, Gray sailed for the Cape of Good Hope, and on the 10th of
August, 1790, the Columbia entered the port of Boston, the first vessel
to circumnavigate the world under the flag of the United States.
His success and conduct so impressed the owners of the ship that they
immediately decided upon sending Gray back to the northwest coast, and
seven weeks later, September 28, 1790, he sailed in the Columbia, which
was described as a ship of two hundred and twelve tons, manned by thirty
men, and equipped with an armament of ten guns.
Gray was also provided with a sea letter signed by George Washington,
then President, which ran as follows:
"To all Emperors, Kings, Sovereign princes, State and Regents and to
their respective officers, civil and military and to all others whom
it may concern.
"I, George Washington, President of the United States of America do
make known that Robert Gray, Captain of a ship called the Columbia of
the burden of about 230 tons, is a citizen of the United States and
that the said ship which he commands belongs to the citizens of the
United States; and as I wish that the said Robert Gray may prosper in
his lawful affairs, I do request all the before mentioned, and of each
of them separately, when the said Robert Gray shall arrive with his
vessel and cargo, that they will be pleased to receive him with
kindness and treat him in a becoming manner &c. and thereby I shall
consider myself obliged.
"September 16, 1790--New York City
(Seal U. S.)
"GEO. WASHINGTON,
_President_.
"THOMAS JEFFERSON,
"_Secy of State_."
He further was provided with a similar letter from John Hancock, the
Governor of Massachusetts.
[Illustration: On the Shores of the Pacific.]
His letter of instructions from the owners, signed by Joseph Barrell,
enjoins, in similar and even stronger terms than those given Kendrick
three years before, friendly treatment, strict honesty, honorable
conduct, and the avoidance of unjust advantage in trade with the
natives, the shunning of Spanish ports, tender treatment of his crew,
urgency of despatch in reaching the northwest coast, and the refraining
from all unnecessary connections with foreigners or Americans. It
further speaks of Gray's rising reputation, and expresses the belief
that a regard for his own honor, and a respect for the sea letter with
which the President had honored and indulged him, would cause Gray to
doubly exert himself for the success of the voyage.
Gray used such despatch and was so fortunate that he reached Cape
Flattery, at the mouth of the Straits of Fuca, June 5, 1791, his voyage
of eight months having been devoid of any occurrence worthy of note.
Proceeding northward to Queen Charlotte Island for trade, he there fell
in with Ingraham, formerly mate of the Columbia, but now, July 23, 1791,
in command of the Hope. The autumn was spent in trading and exploring
among the islands and along the coast to the east and north of Queen
Charlotte Island. During one trip Gray penetrated an inlet near 55° N.
latitude, probably the northern extension of Vancouver Strait, to a
distance of one hundred miles to the northeastward without reaching the
end of the passage, which he supposed to be the Rio de Reyes of Admiral
Fonte. Gray's visit was most unfortunate, for a portion of his crew
landing at a port on the mainland in 55° N., on August 22d, a large band
of savages fell on the party and killed Joshua Caswell, his second mate,
and seamen Joseph Barns and Job Folgier. This fatal spot was therefore
named Massacre Cove.
The attitude of the Indians was a matter of constant anxiety, so that
Gray and his crew were obliged to exercise the greatest caution in all
their intercourse with such tribes as they fell in with. In Pintard
Sound, 51° 30´ N., near the entrance, an attack was attempted on the
Columbia, which obliged Gray to fire on the Indians, whereby two of the
chiefs were killed, but it did not excite lasting resentment, as these
savages traded with him later as though nothing had happened.
Returning to Clyoquot, Port Cox, Vancouver Island, with the Columbia,
Gray went into winter quarters. The owners had sent out the frames for a
sloop of about thirty tons, with three carpenters to build the vessel. A
fortified habitation, called Fort Defiance, was constructed for
occupancy by the working party, which finished and launched the sloop
that winter, christening her as the Adventurer.
In the spring of 1792, while the crews of the Columbia and Adventurer
were preparing for sea they were visited by many Indians, who, through
their chiefs, established such relations with a Sandwich Islander, who
was one of the crew of the Columbia, as to excite Gray's suspicions. The
Islander on being closely questioned by Gray confessed that the Indians
had formed a plan to murder the whole party and seize the vessels, the
Hawaiian to aid them by wetting the priming of all the guns, and in
return be made a chief among the Indians. Gray took immediate steps to
keep his crew on their guard during their remaining stay, and thus
completely baffled the design of the savages without bloodshed.
In April, 1792, Gray, sending the Adventurer northward under command of
Haswell, his first mate, turned himself southward, and on the 29th fell
in with Vancouver, who was approaching the northwest coast on a voyage
of exploration in the English ship Discovery, with the Rambler under
Broughton as a consort.
Vancouver eagerly sought information from Gray as to his knowledge of
the coast, which the American gave fully and cheerfully. Gray set forth
his voyages in the Straits of Fuca, around Queen Charlotte Island, and
further, that in 1788 he had "been off the mouth of a river, in the
latitude of 46° 10´, where the outset or reflux was so strong as to
prevent his entering for nine days." This latter information was most
surprising and distasteful to Vancouver, who, fitted out at great
expense with two vessels for exploration alone, found the accuracy of
his own observations of the coast, as recorded in his journal two days
earlier, thrown in doubt by the statements of this American trader.
Vancouver had written before meeting Gray: "The several large rivers and
capacious inlets that have been described as discharging their contents
into the Pacific, between the fortieth and forty-eighth degrees of north
latitude, were reduced to brooks insufficient for our vessels to
navigate, or to bays inaccessible as harbors. Under the most fortunate
and favorable circumstances of wind and weather, so minutely has this
extensive coast been inspected, that the surf has been constantly seen
to break on its shores from the mast-head." After hearing Gray's
relation Vancouver wrote: "If any inlet should be found, it must be a
very intricate one, and inaccessible to vessels of our burden.... I was
thoroughly convinced, as were also most persons of observation on
board, that we could not possibly have passed any safe navigable opening
harbor or place of security for shipping on this coast." Later Broughton
by Vancouver's orders entered and surveyed a part of the Columbia in the
latter part of October, 1792, when very much to his surprise he found
himself preceded by another American trader, Captain Baker, master of
the brig Jenny, of Bristol, R.I. Vancouver's report of the Columbia is
scarcely creditable to that great navigator, for he attempted to prove
that the mouth of the Columbia is an inlet separate from the main river,
and that Gray is consequently not entitled to the credit of discovering
the main river, a misstatement that cannot stand either in light of
Gray's journal or the hydrography of the river.
Doubtless Gray was sufficiently irritated by Vancouver's doubts and
criticisms as to the existence and navigability of the unknown river, to
cause him to again venture the dangers which had so nearly caused the
loss of his vessel on his previous visit. Of it Wilkes wrote: "Mere
description can give little idea of the terrors of the bar of the
Columbia. All who have seen it have spoken of the wildness of the scene,
the incessant war of the waters, representing it as one of the most
fearful sights that can possibly meet the eye of the sailor."
Gray pursued the even tenor of his way to the southward, and within two
weeks justified his previous statements by not only entering and
navigating the Columbia, but also discovered a haven (Bulfinch or Gray
Harbor) affording safe anchorage and shelter for small vessels.
The following extracts from the log-book of the ship Columbia give the
account of Gray's discoveries in his own words:
"1792, May 7. 10 A.M. Being within six miles of the land, saw an
entrance in land which had a very good appearance of an harbour.... At
half-past three bore away and ran in N.E. by E. sounding from 4 to 5
fathoms, sandy bottom, and as we drew nearer in between the bars had
from 10 to 12 fathoms. Having a very strong tide of ebb to stem, many
canoes came alongside, and at 5 P.M. came to in 5 fathoms of water,
sandy bottom, in a safe harbour well sheltered from the sea by long
sand-bars and spits. Our latitude observed this day 46° 58´ N." This
harbor, called Bulfinch by Gray, now properly bears the name of its
discoverer.
"10 (May). Fresh breezes and pleasant weather. Many natives alongside,
at noon all the canoes left. At 1 P.M. began to unmoor, took up the
best bower anchor and hove short on the small anchor; at half-past
four being high water hove up the anchor and came to sail and a
beating down the harbour.
"11. At half-past 7 we were out clear of the bar and directed our
course to the southward along shore. At 8 P.M. the entrance of
Bulfinch harbour bore N., distant 4 miles, the S. one extreme of the
land, bore SSE. ½ E.: the N. ditto, NNNW. Sent up the main top-gallant
yard and set all sail. At 4 (?) P.M. saw the entrance of our desired
port, bearing ESE., distance 6 leagues, in steering sails and hauled
our wind in shore. At 8 A. (P.?) M. being a little to the windward of
the entrance to the harbour, bore away and run in ENE between the
breakers having from 5 to 7 fathoms water. When we were over the bar
_we found this to be a large river of fresh water_, up which we stood.
Many canoes came alongside. At 1 (11?) P.M. came to with the small
bower in 10 fathoms, black and white sand; the entrance between the
bars bore WSW, distance 10 miles. The north side of the river, a half
mile distant from the ship, the south side 2½ miles distance; a
village (Chinook) on the north side of the river, W. by N., distance ¾
of a mile. Vast numbers of natives came alongside. People employed in
pumping the salt water out of our water-casks in order to fill with
fresh water which the ship floated in. So ends.
* * * * *
"(May) 14. Sailed upwards of 13 or 15 miles, when the channel was so
very narrow that it was almost impossible to keep it.... Ship took
ground, but she did not lay long before she came off without any
assistance.
* * * * *
"The jolly-boat was sent to sound the channel out but found it not
navigable any farther up; so, of course, we must have taken the wrong
channel.
* * * * *
"15 (May). ... In the afternoon Capt. Gray and Mr. Hoskins in the
jolly-boat went on shore to take a short view of the country....
"19 (May). ... Capt. Gray gave this river the name of Columbia's
river, and the north side of the entrance Cape Hancock, the south side
of the entrance, Adams Point."
The day following (20th) Gray left the river, crossing the bar after
several attempts, and sailed northward to rejoin the Adventurer.
Completing his cargo of furs, Gray again visited Canton, and by his
former route returned to Boston. He married on the 4th of February,
1794, and died, while in command of a coasting vessel, in the summer of
1806, at Charleston, S. C., leaving a wife and four daughters.
On March 27, 1846, a committee of Congress considered a petition of
Martha Gray, his widow, who applied for a pension for his services to
the United States in war and as an explorer. The committee in question
considered that the most suitable return for Gray's valuable services
would be the grant of a township in Oregon, but as surveys had not yet
been made it deferred such action as then inexpedient. It recommended,
however, that Congress should pass a bill giving Mrs. Gray the sum of
five hundred dollars per annum. In its report the committee said that
Gray was the first discoverer of the country; that such discovery
conferred on the United States a title to the whole basin drained by the
river, known then as Oregon Territory; that the hazard and labor of the
journey were great, especially in the unsurveyed bar of the Columbia.
Americans did not confine their title to the valley of the Columbia to
the mere right of discovery without occupation and use, but they
proceeded to develop its capacities for trade and settlement. From the
year 1797 American vessels regularly entered the Columbia and traded
with its natives.
When in 1826 the rights of the United States in regard to Oregon were
formulated and made the subject of consideration by plenipotentiaries on
the parts of Great Britain and the United States, the claims of the
latter were urged on three grounds, the most important or first being
from their own proper right, which was founded on Gray's discovery of
the Columbia River.
If Vancouver had discovered the Columbia prior to Gray, it is impossible
to say what complications and results would have arisen in connection
with the extension and development of the United States. It is therefore
a source of endless gratification that Captain Robert Gray, by his
courage, enterprise, and seamanship, in discovering and entering the
Columbia, ultimately secured to the United States this fertile
territory, almost twice as extensive in area as Great Britian.
With its six hundred and sixty thousand of inhabitants, its great
cities, its enormous accumulations of wealth, the young empire added to
the United States through Robert Gray is fast shaping into substance the
golden visions of the enthusiastic Kendrick.
V.
CAPTAIN MERIWETHER LEWIS AND LIEUT. WILLIAM CLARK.
FIRST TRANS-CONTINENTAL EXPLORERS OF THE UNITED STATES.
The burning genius and intense patriotism of Thomas Jefferson found
their most brilliant setting in his draft of the most famous paper in
the world, the Declaration of Independence. If Jefferson thus struck the
keynote of freedom for America, he was not content with a free people
restricted in their habitat to the eastern half of the continent, and in
his ripest life gave no more conspicuous evidence of his foresight and
statesmanship than in the inauguration of a policy which comprehended in
its scope the exploration and settlement of the entire trans-Mississippi
region. He not only urged and completed the purchase of Louisiana, but
sought the extent of its natural resources, appreciated the undeveloped
wealth of the great West, and drafted a scheme of land divisions and
settlement which foreshadowed the beneficial homestead legislation of
later years.
Jefferson was for years interested in the exploration of the western
parts of North America, which were absolutely unknown save the
coast-line of the Pacific. In 1784, while in Paris, he met John Ledyard,
who had made an unsuccessful effort to organize a company for the fur
trade on the western coast of America. Ledyard, by Jefferson's advice
and intercession, attempted to cross by land to Kamschatka, and thence
to the west coast of America, and across country to the Missouri River.
Ledyard's arrest in Siberia and expulsion from the country by the
Russian Government ended this plan. In 1802 Jefferson initiated, through
the American Philosophical Society, a subscription for the exploration
of the western parts of North America, by ascending the Missouri River,
crossing the Rocky Mountains, and descending the nearest river to the
Pacific Ocean. Although only two persons were to go, Meriwether Lewis
urgently sought the appointment, and with M. André Michaux the voyage
was commenced; but his companion being recalled by the French minister
at Washington, the journey was abandoned.
On January 18, 1803, Jefferson, then President, recommended in a
confidential message to Congress modifications of the act regarding
trade with Indians, and with the view of extending its provisions to the
Indians on the Missouri, recommended the exploration of the Missouri
River to its source, the crossing of the Rocky Mountains, and descent to
the Pacific Ocean by the best water communication. Congress approved the
plan and voted money for its accomplishment. Captain Meriwether Lewis,
of the United States Army, who had been for nearly two years private
secretary to the President, renewed his solicitations for command, which
was given him.
Jefferson showed his versatility in the instructions to Captain Lewis,
which are a model of fulness and clearness. The route to be followed,
natural products and possibilities--animal, vegetable, and
mineral--climatic conditions, commercial routes, the soil and face of
the country, were all dwelt on. The character, customs, disposition,
territory occupied, tribal relations, means of subsistence, language,
clothing, disease, moral attributes, laws, traditions, religion,
intellectuality, extent and means of trade, war methods, with respect to
the Indian tribes visited, were to be studied and reported. The
topography of the country was to be accurately determined,
astronomically and otherwise, and the maps and notes multiplied to avoid
total loss. The good-will of the chiefs was to be sought, peaceful
methods pursued, and the inflexible opposition of any extensive force
promising bloodshed was to be met by withdrawal and retreat. The country
then being outside the limits of the United States, passports from the
ministers of Great Britain, Spain, and France were furnished.
Meriwether Lewis was born August 17, 1774, near Charlottesville, Va.,
being the son of John Lewis and Miss Meriwether, and grand-nephew of
Fielding Lewis, who married a sister of George Washington. Volunteering,
at the age of twenty, in the militia called out by Washington to put
down the Shay rising, he was made ensign of the Second Sub-Legion May
1, 1795, and appointed in First Infantry November, 1796, where he rose
to be paymaster and captain in 1800. He was a considerate and efficient
officer, an expert hunter, versed in natural history, familiar with
Indian character and customs. Appreciating his deficiencies in certain
branches of science important in this expeditionary duty, he at once
sought instruction from competent professors.
Jefferson describes Lewis as follows: "Of courage undaunted, possessing
a firmness and perseverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities
could divert from its direction, ... honest, disinterested, liberal, of
sound understanding and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever
he should report would be as certain as seen ourselves." The management
and success of the expedition, it may here be said, fully justified the
selection by and encomiums of Jefferson.
Lewis, given his choice of associate, selected William Clark, who was
appointed by Jefferson second lieutenant of artillery. Clark was a
brother of George Rogers Clark, by whose valor and sagacity the Illinois
or Northwest Territory was secured to the United States, and this
connection made his selection for further extension of the country seem
most fitting. Moreover young Clark had qualifications and experiences
which strongly commended him to Lewis. Born in Virginia, August 1, 1770,
William Clark had a thorough knowledge of the privations and conditions
of frontier life. Skilful as a hunter, a keen observer, familiar with
military life from four years of service as a lieutenant of infantry,
and developed from his ill health, which caused him to leave the army in
1796, into a magnificent specimen of manhood, he proved so efficient a
coadjutor that his name will ever be inseparably associated with that of
Lewis.
Lewis left Washington July 5, 1803, his mission being enhanced in its
importance by the formal cession of Louisiana to the United States by
the treaty of Paris, April 30, 1803, which news reached him July 1st.
The rendezvous was at St. Louis, which was reached via Pittsburgh and
the Ohio, recruits being selected at various posts, while Lieutenant
Clark joined at Louisville, though he was not commissioned in the army
till the following March.
When the party reached St. Louis, in December, 1803, formal notice of
the transfer of Louisiana had not reached the Spanish commandant, who
would not permit their passage westward. They passed the winter in camp
opposite the mouth of the Missouri, where they built a barge with
sail-power and two smaller boats, with which they started up the
Missouri River on May 14, 1804.
The expedition, commanded by Captain Lewis, with Lieutenant Clark as
second, comprised thirty-four selected men, eleven being watermen, a
negro servant, and a hunter, who was also an interpreter.
The valley of the lower Missouri was well known to the French Canadians,
who, pushed westward by the irruption of English settlers in the
Illinois region, sought isolation and freedom from foreign restraint in
the country west of the Mississippi. St. Louis was their headquarters,
but the Missouri was their field of fortune. The village of St. Charles,
with its single street, had about five hundred souls, who lived by
hunting and trade with the Indians, agriculture being quite neglected;
and an outpost of seven poverty-stricken families existed at La
Charrette, the advance guard of civilization. But the typical French
trader and trapper disdained the shelter of a roof and the restraint of
communities. His adventurous spirit pushed his frail bark into the quiet
waters of the upper Kansas, through the shallows of the Platte, under
the overshading trees of the beautiful James, along the precipitous
red-clay cliffs of the Big Sioux, and, in search of the beaver, even
penetrated the winding narrows of the Cheyenne and Little Missouri. They
did not even stop at transient visits, but, fascinated by the roving,
aimless life of the savage, took up abode with him, shared his tepee and
wanderings, adopted his customs, took his squaw to wife, until longings
strange and uncontrollable drew them back in old age to the home and
religion of their youth. One of these venturesome wanderers named
Durion, who had lived twenty years among the Sioux, was picked up on the
river and accompanied Lewis to the mouth of the James, as a much-needed
interpreter.
The mouth of the Platte was passed on July 21st, and on the next day
Lewis camped on the site of the present city of Council Bluffs, thus
named by Lewis on account of his council with the Ottoes and Missouri
Indians at this point. Here the first of a continuing series of presents
was given to the grand chief: an American flag, a large medal, which was
placed around his neck as a mark of consideration, paint, garters, cloth
ornaments, a canister of powder, and the indispensable bottle of
whiskey. The subordinate chiefs received inferior medals and presents
according to their importance. These presents were made with much form
and ceremony, wherein an important part were speeches setting forth the
transfer of the territory to the United States, the benefits of peace,
and the advantages of trade at the new post to be occupied by Americans.
Both Lewis and Clark had been accustomed to Indian life on the Eastern
frontiers, but they found much that was strange and striking among the
denizens of the great interior plains. Beyond the breech-cloth a loose
buffalo robe usually kept the savage from nudity. The necklace of
grizzly bear-claws, the ornaments of porcupine and feathers, the
scalp-poles, the conical teepes covered with gayly-figured skins, the
blue smoke up-curling from the open tent-top, the hoop-tambourine or
half-drum, the queer whip-rattle of the hoofs of goats and deer, the
bladder-rattle full of pebbles, the shaven heads of the men, the
white-dressed buffalo robe with its jingling rows of porcupine quills
and uncouth painted figures, emblematic of the brave's war-history, the
hawk-feather or eagle-plume head-dress worked with porcupine quills,
the polecat skin trailing from the young brave's moccasins, the
deer-paunch tobacco-pouch, and a score of other novelties met their
observing eyes. Among the Rickarees the octagonal earth-covered lodges,
the picketed villages, the cultivated patches of corn, beans, and
potatoes, the basket-like boats of interwoven boughs covered with a
single buffalo skin, in which squaws paddled unconcernedly over high
waves, were unknown phases of savage life.
Even the earth gave up its treasure, and they found the first of the
famous petrifactions of the trans-Missouri region in the back-bone of a
fish forty-five feet long, in a perfect state.
[Illustration: A Blackfoot Tepee.]
Game gradually grew plentiful as they ascended the river. Buffalo was
not seen till the Big Sioux was reached, but later fifteen herds and
three bands of elk were visible at one time, and near Mandan large
flocks of goats were seen crossing from their summer grazing grounds to
find west of the Missouri winter shelter in the hilly regions. As they
passed the Indians drove large flocks of migrating goats into the river,
where even boys killed the helpless animals by scores with sticks.
Indeed, the Missouri then appears to have been a hunter's paradise, for
there are mentioned among the regular game antelope, bear, beaver,
buffalo, badger, deer, elk, goats, and porcupine. Three thousand
antelope were seen at one time, and of this animal Lewis accurately
remarks: "The antelope possesses most wonderful swiftness, the acuteness
of their sight distinguishes the most distant danger, the delicate
sensibility of their smell defeats the precautions of concealment, and
when alarmed their rapid career seems more like the flight of birds than
the movements of an earthly being."
The river furnished abundant supply of cat and buffalo fish, and
feathered game, such as plover, grouse, geese, turkeys, ducks, and
pelican, also abounded; among the vegetable products are enumerated
several kinds of grapes, currants and plums, wild apples, billberries,
cherries, gooseberries, mulberries, raspberries, acorns, and hazel-nuts.
As regards the voyage thus far, it was true that the sail could rarely
be used, that the labor of propelling the boats by oar or pole was most
laborious, and that the shallows gave great trouble; but the Indians,
save a single threatening occasion, were most friendly, and the only
death, that of Sergeant Floyd, was from acute disease. Indeed, the
journey had been most attractive and free from special hazard, and when
rapidly advancing winter obliged them to go into permanent quarters, on
October 27th, it seemed rather a long hunting excursion than a dangerous
voyage of discovery.
Their winter quarters, called Fort Mandan, were on the eastern side of
the Missouri, sixteen hundred miles from St. Louis, and in latitude 47°
22´ N., a short distance above the present city of Bismarck. The
buildings were wooden huts, which joined and formed two sides of a
triangle, while the third side was of pickets. As the huts opened
inward, they had a stockaded place easy of defence.
On his arrival at Fort Mandan, Lewis found a Mr. McCracken, of the
Hudson Bay Company, engaged in trading for horses and buffalo robes.
During the winter ten or twelve different traders of this company
visited Mandan, and although one bore a letter from the chief factor,
Mr. Charles Chabouilles, offering any service in his power, yet it was
evident to Lewis that these traders were cultivating sentiments
unfriendly to Americans among the Indians, and Chaboneau, the
interpreter was tampered with; but the prompt and judicious action of
Lewis resulted in apologies and promises to refrain from such conduct in
future. Laroche, one of the Hudson Bay traders, desired to go west with
the expedition, but it was thought best to decline the offer. At this
time the nearest English trading-post was at the forks of the
Assiniboin, about one hundred and fifty miles distant by the way of
Mouse River.
The stay at Fort Mandan was marked by two sad experiences for the
Indians encamped near the post: an autumnal prairie fire which burned
two Indians to death, and an attack of the Sioux, wherein one Mandan was
killed and two wounded. A Frenchman, Jesseaume, living with the Indians,
served as interpreter, and they learned much of the Mandans, Rickarees,
and Minnetarees. The Rickarees appeared in a very sensible light by
refusing spirits, with the remark that they did not use it, and were
surprised that their father should present to them a liquor which would
make them fools. The sensibilities of these Indians in their peculiar
way appeared in a chief who cried bitterly at seeing a court-martial
sentence of flogging carried out on a soldier. The chief acknowledged
the necessity of exemplary punishment, and said that for the same
offence he had killed his braves, but that he never whipped any one, not
even children.
The Mandans, through intervention, made peace with the Rickarees, and
restored traps and furs which they had taken from French hunters. During
the entire winter these Indian tribes were most friendly, and their
stores of corn, obtained by the expeditionary force by trade or
purchase, were of material benefit to the party. The negro was a
constant source of wonder to the crowds of Indians who visited them. The
one-eyed great chief of the Minnetarees said that some foolish young men
had told him there was a person quite black. When York, the negro,
appeared, the one-eyed savage, much surprised, examined the negro
closely, and spitting on a finger rubbed the skin in order to wash off
the paint, and it was not until the negro showed his curly hair that the
Indian could be persuaded he was not a painted white man.
Game, though at some distance, was abundant, and seventy head of large
animals were obtained in a hunt of ten days. With regard to the Indians
Lewis says: "A camp of Mandans caught within two days one hundred goats
a short distance below us. Their mode of hunting them is to form a large
strong pen or fold, from which a fence is made of bushes gradually
widening on each side; the animals are surrounded by the hunters and
gently driven toward this pen, in which they imperceptibly find
themselves enclosed, and are then at the mercy of the hunters.
"When the Indians engage in killing buffalo, the hunters mount on
horseback and, armed with bows and arrows, encircle the herd and
gradually drive it into a plain or open place fit for the movement of
horse; they then ride in among them, and singling out a buffalo, a
female being preferred, go as close as possible and wound her with
arrows till they think they have given the mortal stroke; when they
pursue another till the quiver is exhausted. If, which rarely happens,
the wounded buffalo attacks the hunter, he evades the blow by the
agility of his horse, which is trained for the combat with great
dexterity."
The winter proved to be of unusual severity, and several times the
temperature fell to forty degrees below zero, and proof spirits froze
into hard ice. The fortitude with which the hardy savages withstood such
extreme cold, half naked as they often were, impressed our explorers.
Spring opened early, and on April 7, 1805, Fort Mandan was abandoned,
one party of ten with the barge going down the river with despatches and
specimens. Lewis and Clark with their party of thirty started up the
Missouri in six canoes and two large open boats, which had been
constructed by them. They had three interpreters--Drewyer, Chaboneau,
and his wife. Drewyer was a Canadian half-breed who had always lived in
the woods, and while he had inherited from his mother the intuitive
sagacity of the Indian in following the faintest trail, he had also
acquired to a wonderful degree that knowledge of the shifts and
expedients of camp life which is the resource and pride of the frontier
huntsman. Chaboneau's life had been largely spent among the Blackfeet,
by whom his wife, a Snake Indian, had been taken in war and enslaved
when a young girl.
At the mouth of the Little Missouri the three French hunters, who had
ventured to follow the party, stopped for trapping, as they found beaver
very plentiful. Chaboneau Creek, the farthest point on the Missouri yet
visited by white men, was passed, and on April 26th they arrived at the
mouth of the Yellowstone. Lewis was here particularly pleased with the
wide plains, interspersed with forests of various trees, and expressed
his opinion that the situation was most suitable for a trading
establishment.
Spring had now fairly opened, the trees were in leaf, a flower was seen,
and despite the scanty verdure of the new grass, game was very abundant.
In many places, however, the barren banks and sand-bars were covered
with a white incrustation of alkali salts, looking like frost or newly
fallen snow, which were present in such quantities that all the small
tributaries of the Missouri proved to be bitter and unhealthy water.
Signs of human life became rarer, but now and then they passed an old
Indian camp, and near one saw the burial place of an Indian woman. The
body, carefully wrapped in dressed buffalo robes, rested on a high
scaffold, with two sleds and harness over it. Nearby lay the remains of
a dog sacrificed to the shades of his dead mistress. In a bag were
articles fitting for women--moccasins, red and blue paint, beavers'
nails, scrapers for dressing hides, dried roots, a little Mandan
tobacco, and several plaits of sweet-smelling grass.
The oar was plied unceasingly save when a favoring wind filled their
sails and facilitated their progress. In early May they drew up their
canoes for the night at the mouth of a bold, beautiful stream, and in
the abundant timber found feeding on the young willows so many clumsy
porcupines that they called it Porcupine River. Game was present in vast
quantities; the elk were tame, and the male buffalo would scarcely quit
grazing at the approach of man. As Lewis remarks: "It has become an
amusement to supply the party with provisions."
On May 8th they dined at the mouth of a river flowing from a level,
well-watered, and beautiful country. As the water had a peculiar
whiteness they were induced to call it Milk River. The Missouri now
turned to the southwest and south, the country became more open, and
timber, of pine mostly, small and scanty.
[Illustration: Captain Meriwether Lewis.]
Although the buffalo were so tame and harmless that the men drove them
out of their way with sticks, yet the grizzly bear never failed to be a
dangerous and vicious visitor. One day six good hunters attacked a
grizzly, and four firing at forty paces, each lodged a ball in the body,
two going through the lungs. The animal ran at them furiously, when the
other hunters fired two balls into him, breaking a shoulder. The bear
yet pursued them, driving two into a canoe and the others into thickets,
from which they fired as fast as they could reload. Turning on them, he
drove two so closely that they dropped their guns and sprang from a
precipice twenty feet high into the river followed by the bear, who
finally succumbed to a shot through the head after eight balls had
passed completely through his body. Another bear, shot through the
heart, ran a quarter of a mile with undiminished speed before he fell
dead.
On the 20th, twenty-two hundred and seventy miles from St. Louis, they
came to the greenish-yellow waters of the Musselshell, and a short
distance beyond Captain Lewis caught his first glimpse of the Rocky
Mountains, the object of his hope and ambition. Beyond the Musselshell
their experiences were less pleasant: the country became more barren,
game and timber scarce, mosquitoes annoying; the high dry winds, full of
sand, made their eyes sore; the sun of midday burned, while almost every
night ice or frost chilled them.
The clear waters of the Judith River and its woods beautiful with
multitudinous mountain roses, the fragrant honeysuckle, and the tiny red
willows delighted their eyes; but the sight of a hundred and twenty-six
lately abandoned lodge-fires caused some uneasiness, as indicating a
late camping-place of a war-party of vicious northern Minnetarees or
Blackfeet.
A few miles farther, as they passed a precipice a hundred and twenty
feet high, they saw evidence of the cunning and wasteful methods of
hunting by Indians, for the remains of over a hundred buffalo were
scattered around, though the stream must have washed many away. Lewis
adds: "These buffaloes had been chased down the precipice in a way very
common on the Missouri, and by which vast herds are destroyed in a
moment. The mode of hunting is to select one of the most active and
fleet young men, who is disguised in a buffalo skin round his body. The
skin of the head, with the ears and horns, are fastened on his own head
in such a way as to deceive the buffalo. Thus dressed he fixes himself
at a convenient distance between a herd of buffalo and any of the river
precipices, which sometimes extend for several miles. His companions, in
the meantime, get in the rear and side of the herd, and at a given
signal show themselves and advance toward the buffalo. They instantly
take the alarm, and finding the hunters beside them they run toward the
disguised Indian or decoy, who leads them on at full speed toward the
river, when suddenly securing himself in some crevice of the cliff,
which he had previously fixed on, the herd is left on the brink of the
precipice. It is then in vain for the foremost to retreat or even to
stop; they are pressed on by the hindmost ranks, who, seeing no danger
but from the hunters, goad on those before them till the whole are
precipitated and the shore is strewed with their dead bodies. Sometimes
in this perilous seduction the Indian himself is either trodden under
foot or, missing his footing in the cliff, is urged down the precipice
by the falling herd."
The river now took the form of frequent rapids, which made the work of
dragging the heavy canoes very painful, and the narrative runs: "The
banks are so slippery in some places, and the mud so adhesive, that the
men are unable to wear moccasins. One-fourth of the time they are
obliged to be up to their arm-pits in the cold water, and sometimes walk
for yards over sharp fragments of rocks."
On June 3d they came to where the river divided into two large streams,
and it became of vital importance to the expedition to determine which
was the Missouri or Ahmateahza, as the Minnetarees called it, and which
they said approached very near to the Columbia. The success of the
expedition depended on the right decision, so Captain Lewis concluded to
encamp until reconnoitering columns could examine the two forks.
Lewis following up the north branch, two days' march, decided that it
was not the Missouri, and named it Maria's River. In returning he
narrowly escaped slipping over a precipice some ninety feet high. Lewis
had just reached a spot of safety when, says the narrative,
"He heard a voice behind him cry out, 'Good God, Captain, what shall I
do?' He turned instantly and found it was Windsor, who had lost his
foothold about the middle of the narrow pass and had slipped down to the
very verge of the precipice, where he lay on his belly, with his right
arm and leg over the precipice, while with the other leg and arm he was
with difficulty holding on to keep himself from being dashed to pieces
below. His dreadful situation was instantly perceived by Captain Lewis,
who, stifling his alarm, calmly told him that he was in no danger, that
he should take his knife out of his belt with the right hand and dig a
hole in the side of the bluff to receive his foot. With great presence
of mind he did this, and then raised himself on his knees. Captain Lewis
then told him to take off his moccasins and come forward on his hands
and knees, holding the knife in one hand and his rifle in the other. He
immediately crawled in this way till he came to a secure spot."
One of Lieutenant Clark's party, on the south fork, at the same time,
ran great danger from a grizzly bear which attacked near camp a man
whose gun, being wet, would not go off. The man took to a tree, so
closely followed by the animal that he struck the hunter's foot as he
was climbing. The bear showed his intention of waiting until the man
should be forced to descend, but fortunately alarmed by the cries and
signal-shots of a searching-party decamped.
While Lewis and Clark concurred in believing the south fork to be the
true Missouri, the rest of the party were unanimous in thinking the
north the right course. Finally caching their heaviest boat and all the
supplies which could well be spared, the entire party followed the south
fork.
Lewis, pushing on confidently with four men, confirmed his opinion by
reaching, on June 13th, the great falls of the Missouri, which by their
sublime majesty and stupendous magnitude fascinated him. The description
of these falls at the time of their first view by civilized man is
worthy of reproduction. The river, three hundred yards wide, was shut
in by precipitous cliffs, and "for ninety yards from the left cliff the
water falls in one smooth sheet over a precipice of eighty feet. The
rest of the river precipitates itself with a more rapid current, but
received as it falls by the irregular and projecting rocks below, forms
a splendid prospect of white foam two hundred yards in length.... This
spray is dissipated in a thousand shapes.... As it rises from the fall
it beats with fury against a ledge of rocks which extend across the
river." On examination Lewis found that "the river for three miles below
was one continued succession of rapids and cascades, overhung with
perpendicular bluffs from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet
high; in short, it seems to have worn itself a channel through the solid
rock." At the main falls, five miles above the first, "the whole
Missouri is suddenly stopped by one shelving rock, which without a
single niche and with an edge as straight and regular as if formed by
art, stretches itself from one side of the river to the other for at
least a quarter of a mile. Over this the river precipitates itself in an
even, uninterrupted sheet to the perpendicular depth of fifty feet,
whence, dashing against the rocky bottom, it rushes rapidly down,
leaving behind it a spray of the purest foam across the river. The scene
was singularly beautiful, without any of the wild irregular sublimity of
the lower falls." In a cottonwood tree, on a small island in the middle
of the rapids, an eagle had fixed its nest, a solitary bird which had
not escaped the observation of the Indians, who had previously
described it to Lewis.
[Illustration]
On leaving the falls Lewis saw a herd of a thousand buffalo, and killed
one for supper. In his eagerness he failed to reload his rifle, when he
beheld a grizzly bear stealing on him and not over twenty paces distant.
"He felt that there was no safety but in flight. It was in the open,
level plain, ... so that there was no possible mode of concealment....
As soon as he turned the bear ran, open mouthed and at full speed, upon
him. Captain Lewis ran about eighty yards, but finding that the animal
gained on him fast ... he turned short, plunged into the river about
waist deep, and facing about presented the point of his spontoon. The
bear arrived at the water's edge within twenty feet of him, but as soon
as he put himself in this posture of defence, the animal seemed
frightened and retreated with as much precipitation as he had pursued."
The means and route for portage presented difficult problems for the
exhausted party, as it was clearly evident that the men could not carry
the boats on their shoulders such great distances. Fortunately a creek
was found at the foot of the falls, where the banks afforded easy access
to the highlands. It was first necessary to cross the Missouri, and here
the party went into camp while preparations were made for the portage.
Lieut. Clark with a few men carefully surveyed the trail to be followed,
others engaged in hunting in order to lay up a store of dried meat, and
the handy men of the party set to work on a carriage for the transport
of the boats. By good fortune they found a large cottonwood-tree, about
twenty-two inches in diameter, large enough to make the carriage-wheels,
"perhaps the only tree of that size within twenty miles." As they had
decided to cache a part of their stores and leave their largest boat
behind, its mast supplied them with two axle-trees.
In the meantime the survey of Clark showed that the series of cataracts
had an aggregate descent of three hundred and sixty-three feet in
seventeen miles, and that a very difficult portage of thirteen miles was
necessary. The country was barely practicable for travel, and was
covered with frequent patches of prickly pear, against the tiny
penetrating needles of which the moccasins of the dragging men afforded
almost no protection. To add to their misfortunes, when about five miles
from their destination the axle-trees, made of the old mast, broke, and
then the tongues of green cottonwood gave way. After diligent search
sweet-willow trees were found with which they managed, by shifts and
expedients familiar to frontiersmen, to patch up the carriage so as to
go on. It broke down so completely about a half mile from the new camp
that it was easier to carry boat and baggage on their shoulders than to
build a new conveyance. The condition of the party is evident from the
narrative:
"The men are loaded as heavily as their strength will permit; the
crossing is really painful; some are limping with the soreness of their
feet, others are scarcely able to stand for more than a few minutes from
the heat and fatigue; they are all obliged to halt and rest frequently,
and at almost every stopping-place they fall, and many of them are
asleep in an instant."
Later it was needful to repair the carriage and to travel over and over
the portage until, after ten days of weary labor, all the equipage was
above the falls.
In the meantime the hunters had accumulated nearly half a ton of dried
meat, buffalo being plenty. The grizzly bear, however, was also present,
active, aggressive, and dangerous as usual. They infested the camp at
night, causing much alarm, and once carried off buffalo-meat from a pole
within thirty yards of the men. A hunter sent out to bring in meat was
boldly attacked by a bear and narrowly escaped death, being pursued to
within forty paces of the camp. Another animal was killed when rushing
up to attack men who had to climb a tree, while making sufficient noise
to attract their rescuer, Drewyer, the interpreter and hunter, who shot
him through the head. He proved to be the largest they had seen, being
eight feet seven and a half inches long, while his fore feet measured
nine inches and hind feet seven inches across, and eleven and
three-quarters long exclusive of the talons. Another hunter was attacked
by a grizzly, fortunately near the river, so that he was able to conceal
himself under a steep bank; otherwise he would probably have lost his
life.
The perils of navigation and the chase were not all, for a cloud-burst
and hail-storm contributed to their danger and suffering. The hail was
so large and driven so furiously by the high wind that it knocked down
several of the men, one three times, bruising another very badly and
wounding some so that they bled freely. The fallen hail lay in drifts,
which in places completely covered the ground, and some of the stones
weighed three ounces and measured seven inches in circumference. Clark,
Chaboneau and his wife took shelter under shelving rocks in a deep
ravine, congratulating themselves on their protected position. Suddenly,
however, the rain fell in a solid mass, and instantly collecting in the
ravine, came rolling down in a dreadful torrent, carrying rocks and
everything before it.
"But for Lieut. Clark, Chaboneau, his wife and child would have been
lost. So instantly was the rise of the water, that as Lieut. Clark had
reached his gun and began to ascend the bank, the water was up to his
waist, and he could scarce get up faster than it rose, till it reached
the height of fifteen feet, with a furious current which, had they
waited a moment longer, would have swept them into the river just above
the Great Falls, down which they must have inevitably been
precipitated."
Though the phases of their daily life brought much that was rough and
hard, yet their privations were not unmixed with pleasures, rude though
they may seem to the city dweller. Long tramps and exciting rides after
game, side marches to commanding hill-tops for grateful views of an
unknown country--barren to the eye, perhaps, but grateful to the soul,
for were they not the first men of their race who ever looked upon
it?--or pleasant journeys through upland forests or the undergrowth of
the intervale, to search and gather whatever was beautiful to the eye,
novel to the mind, or a welcome addition to their scanty larder; such
were their rare pleasures.
Now they waded through waist-high patches of wild rye, recalling with
its fine soft beard the waving fields of grain they had left in the far
East; again they pushed on in dense copses of the sinuous redwood, whose
delicate inner bark furnished pleasant Indian tobacco to the Frenchman
and half-breed. Sometimes the trail lay through an open wood with
smaller undergrowth, where beds of odorous mint recalled his Virginian
home to Lewis; where the delicate mountain-rose, in countless thousands,
was born to blush unseen; where, if only one ripened berry to-day
invited the hunter, other kinds promised their welcome fruit in due but
later season.
Rarely did the dull gray of the sky dim the glory of a whole day, and
the short summer showers, freshening the beauty of the landscape and
abating the fervid heat of mid-summer, seemed only too infrequent. And
above all, the pure, free, upland air, that gives vigor and health to
the body, joy and lightness to the heart, almost annihilates distance to
the eye; and in breathing which, one drinks into the lungs the very wine
of life. Surely more than the heroes of Virgil's song did they feel that
sweet in their memory would abide these days forever.
Of the mountains, now always in sight, and a constant source of
inspiration to the eager explorers, those to the north and northwest
were yet snow-capped, and Lewis says: "They glisten with great beauty
when the sun shines on them in a particular direction, and most
probably from this glittering appearance have derived the name of the
Shining Mountains."
During his explorations of the country around the falls Captain Lewis
visited a remarkable and beautiful spring, near the present city of
Great Falls, Montana. Of it he writes:
"The fountain, which perhaps is the largest in America, is situated in a
pleasant level plain, about twenty-five yards from the river, into which
it falls over some steep irregular rocks, with a sudden descent of about
six feet in one part of its course. The water boils up from among the
rocks with such force near the centre, that the surface seems higher
than the earth on the sides of the fountain, which is a handsome turf of
fine green grass."
While the main party was making the portage, a detachment was "occupied
in fitting up a boat of skins, the iron frame of which, thirty-six feet
long, had been prepared for the purpose at Harper's Ferry. The iron
frame is to be covered with skins, and requires thin-shaved strips of
wood for lining. The skins necessary to cover it have already been
prepared--twenty-eight elk and four buffalo skins." This experimental
boat proved to be a total failure, and it was not till Lewis's long
journey was nearly over that he copied the skin boat of the Indian
squaws, which had excited his surprise, and found that the methods of
the locality could be followed with advantage in navigation as well as
otherwise.
[Illustration: Lieutenant William Clark.]
As the six canoes were insufficient to carry all their men and
supplies, Clark was sent ahead to find suitable wood for two more, there
being no fit trees below the falls. With much difficulty trees were
found, and two canoes, three feet wide and twenty-five and thirty-three
feet long respectively, were fashioned. Near here a deserted Indian
lodge or council house was seen. It was two hundred and sixteen feet in
circumference, made of sixteen cottonwood poles, fifty feet long,
converging toward the centre, where they were united and secured by
large withes of sinewy willow.
Although the swivel and some other articles had been cached at the head
of the falls, their loads were yet very heavy, and all walked except
those engaged in working the canoe. The windings of the river became
very tortuous, and frequent rapids made their progress correspondingly
slow and laborious.
Game was less plentiful, and, as it was necessary to save the dried and
concentrated food for the crossing of the mountains, it became somewhat
of a task to provide food for a party of thirty-two which consumed a
quantity of meat daily equal to an elk and deer, four deer or one
buffalo. Fortunately, the berries were now ripening, and, as they grew
in great quantities, proved a not inconsiderable contribution to their
food-supply. Of currants there were red, purple, yellow, and black, all
pleasant to the taste; the yellow being thought superior to any other
known variety. The purple service-berry and pinkish gooseberry were also
favorites. Besides, they made use of the very abundant and almost
omnipresent sunflower. Of it Lewis says: "The Indians of the Missouri,
more especially those who do not cultivate maize, make great use of the
seed of this plant for bread or in thickening their soup. They first
parch and then pound it between two stones until it is reduced to a fine
meal. Sometimes they add a portion of water, and drink it thus diluted;
at other times they add a sufficient proportion of marrow grease to
reduce it to the consistency of common dough and eat it in that manner.
This last composition we preferred to all the rest, and thought it at
that time a very palatable dish."
The Missouri now took in general a southerly course, and on July 18th
they reached a bold clear stream, which was named Dearborn River for the
then Secretary of War. They had intended to send back a small party in
canoes with despatches, but as they had not met the Snake Indians, and
so were uncertain as to their friendliness, it was thought best not to
weaken their already small party for hostilities. Lewis decided,
however, to send Clark, with three men, in advance to open up
communication with these Indians and, if possible, to negotiate for
horses. Clark's journey was a failure, for the Indians, alarmed at the
firing of a gun, fled into the mountains.
The mountains now closed in on the explorers and they camped one night
at a place named the Gates of the Rocky Mountains. "For five and
three-quarter miles these rocks rise perpendicularly from the water's
edge to the height of nearly twelve hundred feet. They are composed of
black granite near the base, but ... we suppose the upper part to be
flint of a yellowish brown and cream color. Nothing can be imagined more
tremendous than the frowning blackness of these rocks, which project
over the river and threaten us with destruction.... For the first three
miles there is not a spot, except one of a few yards, in which a man
could stand between the water and the towering perpendicular of the
mountains."
On July 25th Clark, who was in advance, reached the three forks of the
Missouri, where he had to camp, his party worn out, their feet full of
prickly pear needles and Chaboneau unable to go farther. The forks were
all clear pebbly streams, discharging large amounts of water. The
southeast fork was named Gallatin, the middle Madison, and the southwest
Jefferson, the latter two, of equal size, being larger branches than the
Gallatin.
At the three forks Sacajawea, the wife of Chaboneau, was encamped five
years before, when the Minnetarees of Knife River attacked the Snakes,
killed about a dozen and made prisoners of her and others of her tribe.
Strangely enough Chaboneau nearly lost his life crossing the Madison,
where Clark saved him from drowning. Lewis was struck with the seeming
indifference of the Snake woman on her return to the spot and her own
country.
The party followed Jefferson River, their journey being marked by the
killing of a panther seven and a half feet long, and the overturning of
a canoe, injuring one of the party, Whitehouse, losing some articles,
and wetting others, but the all-important powder was so well packed that
it remained dry.
"Persuaded," says the narrative, "of the necessity of securing horses to
cross the mountains, it was determined that one of us should proceed ...
till he found the Shoshones, ... who could assist us in transporting
our baggage." Captain Lewis with three men preceded, and on August 11,
saw "with the greatest delight a man on horseback, at the distance of
two miles, coming down the plain toward them. On examining him with the
glass, Captain Lewis saw that he was armed with a bow and a quiver of
arrows; mounted on an elegant horse without a saddle, and a small string
attached to the under jaw answered as a bridle. Convinced that he was a
Shoshonee, and knowing how much of our success depended on the friendly
offices of that nation, Captain Lewis was full of anxiety to approach
without alarming him, and endeavor to convince him that he was a white
man. He therefore proceeded on towards the Indian at his usual pace;
when they were within a mile of each other the Indian suddenly stopped,
Captain Lewis immediately followed his example, took his blanket from
his knapsack, and holding it with both hands at the four corners, threw
it above his head and unfolded it as he brought it to the ground, as if
in the act of spreading it. This signal, which originates in the act of
spreading a robe or skin as a seat for guests to whom they wish to show
a distinguished kindness, is the universal sign of friendship among the
Indians on the Missouri and Rocky Mountains." Unfortunately, the brave
took alarm at the movement of Lewis's companions and fled. The next day
brought them to the head-waters of the Jefferson. Here, "from the foot
of one of the lowest of these mountains, which rises with a gentle
ascent for about half a mile, issues the remotest water of the
Missouri. They had now reached the hidden sources of that river, which
had never yet been seen by civilized man; and as they quenched their
thirst at the chaste and icy fountain--as they sat down by the brink of
that little rivulet, which yielded its distant and modest tribute to the
parent ocean, they felt themselves rewarded for all their labors and all
their difficulties."
Pushing on they soon saw, to the west, high, snow-topped mountains.
"The ridge on which they stood formed the dividing line between the
waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. They followed a descent much
steeper than that on the eastern side, and at the distance of three
quarters of a mile reached a handsome, bold creek of cold, clear water
running to the westward. They stopped to taste for the first time the
waters of the Columbia, and, after a few minutes, followed the road
across steep hills and low hollows, till they reached a spring on the
side of a mountain. Here they found a sufficient quantity of dry willow
brush for fuel, and therefore halted for the night, and, having killed
nothing in the course of the day, supped on their last piece of pork,
and trusted to fortune for some other food to mix with a little flour
and parched meal, which was all that now remained of their provisions."
In the early morn of August 13, Lewis hastened impatiently forward
without food, and after a few hours of travel saw three Indians; but
they fled. A little later he surprised three women, and succeeded in
reaching two, who covered their heads and awaited in silence their
expected death. Showing them that he was a white man, and giving them
trinkets, they were reassured and recalled their comrade, when he
painted their cheeks with vermilion, a Shoshone custom emblematic of
peace.
The women pointed out the direction of camp, and Lewis, marching on,
soon saw a band of sixty well-mounted Indian warriors riding full speed
toward him and his two companions. With perfect composure and undaunted
courage Lewis laid down his rifle, and alone marched forward to parley
with this horde of unknown savages, relying on the integrity and
uprightness of his mission. Received with the greatest cordiality, Lewis
at once smoked a pipe of peace with them, and after giving them some
blue beads and vermilion went to their camp.
On arrival he was inducted into a council lodge and seated on a robe,
when a fire was kindled. "The chief then produced his pipe and tobacco,
the warriors pulled off their moccasins, and our party were requested to
take off their own. This being done, the chief lighted his pipe at the
fire within the magic circle, and then retreating from it, began a
speech several minutes long, at the end of which he pointed the stem
toward the four cardinal points of the heavens, beginning with the east
and concluding with the north."
By this time the day was well spent, and no food of any kind had passed
the lips of Lewis and his men since the previous day. On learning this
the chief told him that they only had cakes made of sun-dried service-
and choke-berries, which served as a hearty meal to the hungry men.
Later an Indian gave Lewis a piece of antelope and a bit of salmon,
which satisfied him that he was now on the waters of the Columbia.
The next day they had an experience of the Indian mode of hunting, which
is thus described: "The chief game of the Shoshonees is the antelope,
which, when pursued, retreats to the open plains, where the horses have
full room for the chase. But such is its extraordinary fleetness and
wind, that a single horse has no chance of outrunning it or tiring it
down, and the hunters are therefore obliged to resort to stratagem.
About twenty Indians, mounted on fine horses and armed with bows and
arrows, left camp. In a short time they descried a herd of antelopes;
they immediately separated into little squads of two or three, and
formed a scattered circle round the herd for five or six miles, keeping
at a wary distance, so as not to alarm them till they were perfectly
enclosed, and usually selecting some commanding eminence as a stand.
Having gained their positions, a small party rode toward the herd, and
with wonderful dexterity the huntsman preserved his seat, and the horse
his footing, as he ran at full speed over the hills and down the steep
ravines and along the borders of the precipices. They were soon
outstripped by the antelopes, which, on gaining the other extremity of
the circle, were driven back and pursued by the fresh hunters. They
turned and flew, rather than ran, in another direction; but there, too,
they found new enemies. In this way they were alternately pursued
backward and forward, till at length, notwithstanding the skill of the
hunters, they all escaped; and the party, after running for two hours,
returned without having caught anything, and their horses foaming with
sweat. This chase, the greater part of which was seen from the camp,
formed a beautiful scene; but to the hunters is exceedingly laborious,
and so unproductive, even when they are able to worry the animal down
and shoot him, that forty or fifty hunters will sometimes be engaged for
half a day without obtaining more than two or three antelopes."
Captain Lewis succeeded with great difficulty in persuading the band of
Shoshones to pass over the divide in order to assist in bringing his
impedimenta across. The presence of a Shoshone woman, the monstrosity of
a man entirely black, favorable barter for their horses were urged; in
short he played on their avarice, curiosity, tribal pride, and by
questioning their courage succeeded in stimulating them to make the
journey.
It transpired that Cameahwait, the Shoshone chief, was the brother of
Sacajawea, and one of the Shoshone women, now in camp, had been for some
time prisoner with her in the hands of the Minnetarees. The meeting of
these Indians after long separation disclosed such emotion as proved
their tender feelings and genuine interest in each other.
[Illustration: Castle Rock, on the Columbia River.]
A long and tedious council was held, with the usual smoke and speeches.
Lewis set forth in lively terms the strength of the government, the
advantages of trade, and the importance of hastening the day of
fire-arms and supplies by facilitating the journey. Meanwhile they were
amused, as the Indian must be, by the queer negro, the sagacious and
well-trained dog, the rifles, the air-gun, clothing, canoes, etc. All
game brought in was divided; the Indians feasted on hulled corn, and
presents were liberally distributed.
The good-will of the Shoshones was finally secured, and four horses
purchased by barter; so that Lewis was to send Clark ahead to
reconnoitre the route along the Columbia, and build canoes if possible,
which the Indians declared to be impracticable, as timber was wanting,
and the river and mountains impassable. They said that for seven days
the route lay over steep, rocky mountains, with no game and only roots
for food; then for ten days an arid sandy desert, where men and horses
would perish for want of food and water. On inquiry, Clark learned that
Nez Percés came from the west by a very bad road towards the north,
where they suffered excessively from hunger and travel. Believing that
difficulties surmountable to Indians with women and children could not
be formidable, Clark pushed on with a guide, but soon found that the
Indian accounts had not been exaggerated, as he fell in with the points
of four mountains, which were rocky, and so high that it seemed almost
impossible to cross them with horses. The road lay over sharp fragments
of broken rock which had fallen from the mountains and were strewed in
heaps for miles together.
Occasionally he met small parties of Indians, who, in wretched plight
themselves, yet acted most generously, giving him, as he says, willingly
what little they possessed, which was usually a few dried berries and a
bit of salmon, never enough to entirely appease the hunger of his
famished men. Clark says:
"Our men, who are used to hardships, but have been accustomed to have
the first wants of nature regularly supplied, feel very sensibly their
wretched situation; their strength is wasting away; they begin to
express an apprehension of being without food in a country perfectly
destitute of any means of supporting life, except a few fish."
Clark's explorations showed that it was impossible to follow the river,
to which he gave the name of Lewis, as he was the first white man to
visit its waters, either by canoe or along its banks on horses. The
mountains were one barren surface of broken masses of rock which crowded
into the river, where the stream presented either continuous rapids or
series of shoals.
Meanwhile, Lewis moved his necessary baggage to the Shoshone village,
previously caching his surplus baggage and sinking his canoes for
safety. As a rule the Indians were most friendly, but during a hunting
expedition a young brave snatched up his rifle and made off with it.
Drewyer pursued him ten miles, and overtaking the women of the party,
watched his opportunity, and seeing the Indian off his guard, galloped
up to him and seized his rifle. The Indian struggled for some time, but
finding Drewyer getting too strong for him, had the presence of mind to
open the pan and let the priming fall out; he then let go his hold, and
giving his horse the whip, escaped at full speed, leaving the women at
the mercy of the conqueror.
Considerable time was spent in making needful preparations for crossing
the mountains and in negotiating for horses, of which they obtained
twenty-nine--young, vigorous animals, though in poor flesh and with sore
backs.
This necessary delay gave Lewis ample opportunity to observe the habits
and modes of life of the Shoshones, which are especially interesting as
the record of an Indian tribe before it had come in contact with the
white men. The Shoshones, or Snakes, who here number four hundred souls,
lived a migratory, wretched existence, seeking at one season the salmon
of Lewis River, at another the buffalo of the upper Missouri, and again
in the mountains barely maintaining life on roots. They were, however,
gay, frank, fair-dealing, honest, fond of ornaments, amusements, and
games of chance, kind and obliging, and somewhat given to boasting of
their warlike exploits. The narrative continues: "The mass of females
are condemned, as among all savage nations, to the lowest and most
laborious drudgery. When the tribe is stationary they collect the roots
and cook; they build the huts, dress the skins, and make clothing,
collect the wood, and assist in taking care of the horses on the route;
they load the horses, and have charge of all the baggage. The only
business of the man is to fight: he therefore takes on himself the care
of his horse, the companion of his warfare, but he will descend to no
other labor than to hunt and to fish."
Their inferior arms put them at the mercy of the Minnetarees of Knife
River, who mercilessly stole their horses and killed their braves. They
seemed an adventurous and courageous people, and Cameahwait's vehement
declaration that, with guns, they would never fear to meet their
enemies, did not seem boastful.
Their common arms are bow and arrow, shield, lance, and a weapon called
by the Chippeways, by whom it was formerly used, the poggamoggon.
Their method of producing fire was by an arrow and a dry prepared stick,
which, being rubbed together vigorously and dexterously for a few
minutes, first creates a fine dust, then bursts speedily into flame.
The great wealth of the tribe consists in large numbers of small, wiry,
and hardy horses, capable of great endurance, sure footed and fleet.
They were second in value to the women alone, who carried the baggage
when horses failed.
The Shoshones were well dressed, with shirts, leggings, and moccasins of
dressed deer, antelope, etc., skins. A robe with the hair on served as
a cloak or as a bed-covering; the shirts were ornamented with porcupine
quills of different colors and sometimes by beads, also the moccasins.
Elaborate tippets of elegant pattern were also worn, made of otter and
fringed with many ermine skins; also collars of various kinds of
sea-shells, of the sweet-scented grass, of tusks of the elk, and of the
claws of the grizzly bear.
"The names of the Indians vary in the course of their life. Originally
given in childhood from the mere necessity of distinguishing objects, or
from some accidental resemblance to external objects, the young warrior
is impatient to change it by something of his own
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