VII
_INTO THE LAND OF ANARCHY_
The boats were ready, the red pirogue and the white, from St. Louis,fresh painted, trim and slim upon the water, and the big bateau,fifty-five feet from stem to stern, with setting poles, sweeps, asquare sail to catch the breeze, and twenty-two oars at the rowlocks.
Down under the decks and in the cabins, had been packed the preciousfreightage, government arms, rifles made at Harper's Ferry underLewis's own superintendence, tents, ammunition, bales and boxes ofIndian presents, provisions, tools. Into the securest lockers wentLewis's astronomical instruments for ascertaining the geography of thecountry, and the surgical instruments that did good service in thehands of Clark.
Nothing was forgotten, even small conveniences, candles, ink, mosquitobars. It took half a million to send Stanley to Africa. Fortwenty-five hundred dollars Lewis and Clark made as great a journey.
To assist in carrying stores and repelling Indian attacks, CorporalWarfington and six soldiers had been engaged at St. Louis and nineFrench boys of Cahokia, inured to the paddle and the camp.Feather-decked and beaded they came, singing the songs of old Cahokiato start the little squadron.
The Americans had knives in their belts, pistols in their holsters,knapsacks on their backs, powder horns and pouches of ammunition, inkhorns and quills, ready to face the wilderness and report. Lewisencouraged every one to keep a journal.
"I niver wint to school but nineteen days in me boyhood and that waswhin I was a man," said Patrick Gass. But what Pat lacked in books hemade up in observation and shrewd reasoning; hence it fell out thatPatrick Gass's journal was the first published account of the Lewisand Clark expedition. All honour to Patrick Gass. Of such are ourheroes.
The cession was on Wednesday, May 9, 1804, and all the men were therebut a few who guarded camp. At three o'clock the following Monday, May14, Captain Clark announced, "All aboard!" The heavy-laden bateau andtwo pirogues swung out, to the voyageurs' _chanson_, thrilling like abrass band as their bright new paddles cut the water:
"A frigate went a-sailing, _Mon joli coeur de rose_, Far o'er the seas away, _Joli coeur d'un rosier, Joli coeur d'un rosier_."
And hill and hollow echoed,
"_Mon joli coeur de rose_"
"San Chawle!" cried Cruzatte the bowsman at two o'clock, Wednesday,when the first Creole village hove in sight. At a gun, the signal oftraders, all St. Charles rushed to see the first Americans that hadever come up the Missouri. And straggling behind the Frenchmen cametheir friends, the Kickapoos of Kaskaskia, now on a hunt in theMissouri.
"Meet us up the river with a good fat deer," said Captain Clark. Thedelighted Kickapoos scattered for the hunt.
Five days the boats lay at St. Charles, waiting for Captain Lewis whowas detained fixing off the Osage chiefs at St. Louis.
Patrick Gass wrote in his journal, "It rained." Sergeant Floyd adds,"Verry much Rain." Captain Clark chronicles, "Rain, thunder, andlightning for several days." But never on account of a flurry of raindid the sociable French of St. Charles fail in polite attentions totheir guests on the river bank.
On Sunday, boats were descried toiling up from St. Louis with a dozengentlemen, who had come to escort Captain Lewis and bid "God speed!"to the expedition. Captain Stoddard was there, and Auguste Chouteau,availing himself of every opportunity to forward the enterprise.Monsieur Labbadie had advice and Gratiot and Dr. Saugrain, little andlearned, with the medicine chest.
With throbbing hearts the captains stole a moment for a last homeletter to be sent by the returning guests.
"My route is uncertain," wrote Clark to Major Croghan at Locust Grove."I think it more than probable that Captain Lewis or myself willreturn by sea."
"_Bon voyage! bon voyage, mes voyageurs!_" cried all the Frenchhabitants of St. Charles, waving caps and kerchiefs to answeringcheers from the crew and the guns. "_Bonsoir et bon voyage_--tak' carefor you--_prenez garde pour les sauvages_." With a laugh the voyageursstruck up a boat song.
The boats slid away into the west, that West where France hadstretched her shadowy hand, and Spain, and England. The reign ofFrance fell with Montcalm on the Heights of Abraham, flickering upagain only in that last act when Napoleon gave us Louisiana.
"The Kickapoos! The Kickapoos!" Through bush and brier above St.Charles, the bedraggled Indians came tugging down to the shore fourfine fat deer. Bacon fare and hardtack were relegated to the hold.From that hour Lewis and Clark threaded the gameland of the world.
"Joost wait onteel dey get ento de boofalo!" commented those wiseyoung voyageurs, Cruzatte and Drouillard, nodding at one another asthe cooks served out the savoury meat on the grass, and every man drewforth his long hunting-knife and little sack of salt.
"Where is my old friend, Daniel Boone?" inquired Captain Clark, threedays later at Charette, the last settlement on the Missouri border.This, but for Spanish interference, would have been their campingstation the previous winter. Colonel Boone, six miles from theMissouri, was holding court beneath his Judgment Tree.
The June rise of the Missouri was at hand. Days of rain and meltingsnows had set the mad streams whirling. The muddy Missouri, frothing,foaming, tore at its ragged banks that, yawning, heavily undermined,leaped suddenly into the water. Safety lay alone in mid-stream, wherethe swift current, bank-full and running like a millrace, bore downtoward the Mississippi.
To stem it was terrific. In spite of oars and sails and busy poling,the bateau would turn, raked ever and anon with drifts of fallentrees. And free a moment, some new danger arose. Down out of sight,water-soaked logs scraped the keel with vicious grating. And above,formidable battering-rams of snags sawed their black heads up and downdefiantly, as if Nature herself had blockaded the way with a _chevauxde frise_.
Poles broke, oars splintered, masts went headlong, the boat itselfcareened almost into the depths. It was a desperate undertaking tostem the mad Missouri in the midst of her wild June rise.
But that very rise, so difficult to oppose upstream, was a slidingincline the other way. May 27, two canoes loaded with furs cameplunging full tilt out of the north.
"Where from? What news?"
"Two months from the Omaha nation, seven hundred miles up the river,"sang out the swiftly passing Frenchmen bound for St. Louis.
Behind them a huge raft,--
"From the Pawnees on the Platte!"
And yet behind three other rafts, piled, heaped, and laden to thewater's edge,--
"From the Grand Osage!"
Such alone was greeting and farewell, as the barks, unable to bechecked, went spinning down the water.
What a gala for the winter-bound trapper! Home again! home again!flying down the wild Missouri in the mad June rise! They stopped notto camp or to hunt, but skimming the wave, fairly flew to St. Louis.They came, those swift-gliding boats, like visions of another world,the world Lewis and Clark were about to enter.
June 5, two more canoes flashed by with beaver,--
"From eighty leagues up the Kansas river!"
June 8, boats with beaver and otter slid by, and rafts of furs andbuffalo tallow,--
"From the Sioux nation!"
Dorion, an old Frenchman on a Sioux raft, engaged to go back withLewis and Clark to interpret for them the language of his wife'srelations.
A thousand miles against the current! Now and then a southwest windwould fill out the big square-cut sail and send the heavy bargeploughing steadily up. Again, contrary winds kept them on the walkingboards all day long, with heads bent low over the setting-pole.
Warm and warmer grew the days. Some of the men were sunstruck. Theglitter of sun on the water inflamed their eyes. Some broke out withpainful boils, and mosquitoes made night a torture.
Now and then they struck a sand-bar, and leaping into the water thevoyageurs ran along shore with the _cordelle_ on their shoulders,literally dragging the great boat into safety.
"_Mon cher_ Captinne! de win' she blow lak' hurricane!" cried thevoyageurs.
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Down came the prairie gale, almost a tornado, snapping the timber onthe river-banks, and lashing the water to waves that surged up, over,and into the boats. The sky bent black above them, the fierce windhowled, and the almost exhausted men strained every nerve to hold therocking craft.
"I strong lak' moose, not 'fraid no t'ing," remarked Cruzatte,clambering back into the boat wet as a drowned kitten.
Hot and tired, June 26 they tied up at the mouth of Kansas River. "Eatsomet'ing, tak' leetle drink also," said the voyageurs. On the presentsite of Kansas City they pitched their tents, and stretched theirlimbs from the weariness of canoe cramp.
"The most signs of game I iver saw," said Patrick Gass, wandering outwith his gun to find a bear. "Imince Hurds of Deer," bears in thebottoms, beaver, turkeys, geese, and a "Grat nomber of Goslins," saythe journals, but not an Indian.
"Alas!" sighed the old voyageurs with friendly pity. "De Kansas wereplaintee brave people, but de Sac and de Sioux, dey drive 'em up deKansas River."
Caesar conquered Gaul, but the mercatores were there before him. Lewisand Clark ascended the Missouri, but everywhere the adventurousFrenchmen had gone before them, peddlers of the prairie, out withIndian goods buying skins.
But now Americans had come. The whippoorwill sang them to sleep, thewolf howled them awake. The owl inquired, "Who? Who? Who?" in the darktreetops at the mouth of the Kansas River.
On, on crept the boats, past grand old groves of oak and hickory, ofwalnut, ash, and buckeye, that had stood undisturbed for ages. Swiftfawn flitted by, and strange and splendid birds that the great Audubonshould come one day to study. On, on past the River-which-Cries, theWeeping Water, the home of the elk. Tall cottonwoods arose likeCorinthian columns wreathed with ivy, and festoons of wild grapedipped over and into the wave.
The River-which-Cries marked the boundary of two nations, the Otoesand Omahas. Almost annually its waters were reddened with slaughter.Then came the old men and women and children from the Otoe villageson the south and from the Omahas on the north and wept and wept there,until it came to be known as Nehawka, the Weeping Water.
July came and the waters were falling. With a fair wind, on the 21stthey sailed past the mouth of the great river Platte. In the summerevening Lewis and Clark in their pirogue paddled up the Platte.
"Here I spen' two winter wit' de Otoe," said Drouillard the hunter."De Otoe were great nation, but de Sioux an' de 'Maha drove dem backon de Pawnee."
"And the Pawnees?"
"Dey built villages an' plant corn an' wage war wid de Osage."
Ten days later preparations were made to meet the Otoes at CouncilBluffs. On a cottonwood pole the flag was flying. A great feast wasready, when afar off, Drouillard and Cruzatte were seen approachingwith their friends.
"Boom," went the blunderbuss, and the council smoke arose under anawning made of the mainsail of the bateau. Every man of theexpedition, forty-five in all, paraded in his best uniform.
Lewis talked. Clark talked. All the six chiefs expressed satisfactionin the change of government. They begged to be remembered to theirGreat Father, the President, and asked for mediation between them andthe Omahas.
"What is the cause of your war?"
"We have no horses," answered the childlike Otoes. "We borrow theirhorses. Then they scalp us. We fear the Pawnees also. We very hungry,come to their village when they are hunting, take a little corn!"
The Captains could scarce repress a smile, nor yet a tear. Thefts,reprisals, midnight burnings and slaughter, this was the reignimmemorial in this land of anarchy. In vain the tribes mightplant,--never could they reap. "We poor Indian," was the universallament.
Severely solemn, Lewis and Clark hung medals on the neck of eachchief, and gave him a paper with greetings from Thomas Jefferson withthe seals of Lewis and Clark impressed with red wax and attached witha blue ribbon.
"When you look at these, remember your Great Father. You are hischildren. He bids you stop war and make peace with one another." In1860, the Otoe Indians exhibited at Nebraska City those identicalpapers, borne for more than half a century in all their homelesswanderings, between flat pieces of bark and tied with buckskin thongs.
Then gifts were distributed and chiefs' dresses. With morehandshakings and booming of cannon, the flotilla sailed away thatsultry afternoon one hundred years ago. The chiefs stood still on theshore and wonderingly gazed at one another.
"These are the peacemakers!"
A week later Lewis and Clark entered the Omaha country and raised aflag on the grave of Blackbird. Encamping on a sandbar opposite thevillage, Sergeant Ordway and Cruzatte were dispatched to summon thechiefs. Here Cruzatte had traded two winters. Up from the river hefound the old trails overgrown. Breaking through sunflowers, grass,and thistles high above their heads, they came upon the spot whereonce had stood a village. Naught remained but graves.
The Omahas had been a military people, feared even by the Sioux, theKansas, and the far-away Crows. Strange mystery clung to Blackbird.Never had one so powerful ruled the Missouri. At his word his enemyperished. Stricken by sudden illness, whoever crossed the will ofBlackbird died, immediately, mysteriously.
Then came the smallpox in 1800. Blackbird himself died and half hispeople. In frenzy the agonised Omahas burnt their village, slew theirwives and children, and fled the fatal spot,--but not until they hadburied Blackbird. In accord with his last wish, they took the corpseof the Omaha King to the top of the highest hill and there entombedhim, sitting upright on his horse that he might watch the traders comeand go.
And one of those traders bore in his guilty heart the secret ofBlackbird's power. He had given to him a package of arsenic.Blackbird and Big Elk's father went to St. Louis in the days of theFrench and made a treaty. A portrait of the chief was then paintedthat is said to hang now in the Louvre at Paris.
A delegation of Otoes had been persuaded to come up and smoke thepeace-pipe with the Omahas. But not an Omaha appeared. And the Otoes,released from overwhelming fear, Big Horse and Little Thief, Big Oxand Iron Eyes, smoked and danced on the old council ground of theirenemies, whose scalps they had vowed to hang at their saddle bow.
Sergeant Floyd danced with the rest that hot August night, and becameoverheated. He went on guard duty immediately afterward, and lay downon a sandbar to cool. In a few moments he was seized with frightfulpains.
Nathaniel Pryor awakened the Captains.
"My cousin is very ill."
All night Lewis and Clark used every endeavour to relieve thesuffering soldier. At sunrise the boats set sail, bearing poor Floyd,pale and scarce breathing. There was a movement of the sick boy'slips,--
"I am going away. I want you to write me a letter."
And there, on the borders of Iowa, he dispatched his last message tothe old Kentucky home. When they landed for dinner Floyd died.
With streaming tears Patrick Gass, the warm-hearted, made a strongcoffin of oak slabs. A detail of brother soldiers bore the body to thetop of the bluff and laid it there with the honours of war, the firstUnited States soldier to be buried beyond the Mississippi, and on acedar post they carved his name.
With measured tread and slow the soldiers came down and camped onFloyd's River below, in the light of the setting sun.
Years passed. Around that lovely height, Floyd's Bluff, Sioux Citygrew. Travellers passed that way and said, "Yonder lies Charles Floydon the bluff." Relic hunters chipped away the cedar post. Finally, theMissouri undermined the height, and the oakwood coffin came nearfalling into the river, but it was rescued and buried farther back in1857. Recently a magnificent monument was dedicated there, tocommemorate his name and his mission for ever,--the first light-bearerto perish in the West.
A few days later a vote was cast for a new sergeant in the place ofFloyd, and Patrick Gass received the honour. Every day Floyd hadwritten in his journal, and now it was given into the hand of CaptainClark to be forwarded, on the first opportunity, to his people.