The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark
IX
_THE ROMANCE OF THE MANDANS_
"What will they find?" asked the people of the United States,discussing the journey of Lewis and Clark.
"Numerous powerful and warlike nations of savages, of giganticstature, fierce, treacherous, and cruel, and particularly hostile towhite men."
"The mammoth of prehistoric time feeding from the loftiest forests,shaking the earth with its tread of thunder."
"They will find a mountain of solid salt glistening in the sun withstreams of brine issuing from its caverns."
"They will find blue-eyed Indians, white-haired, fairer than othertribes, planting gardens, making pottery, and dwelling in houses."
"Oh, yes," said the Federalists, "Jefferson has invented these storiesto aggrandise the merit of his purchase. They never can cross themountains. Human enterprise and exertion will attempt them in vain."
"It was folly! folly to send those men to perish miserably in thewilderness! It was a bold and wicked scheme of Jefferson. They willnever return alive to this country."
Had not Jefferson himself in his anxiety directed Lewis and Clark tohave recourse to our consuls in Java, the Isles of France and Bourbon,and the Cape of Good Hope? Heaven alone knew whither theMissouri--Columbia might lead them!
But the white Indians--
In the history of Wales there is a story that on account of wars inWales a Welsh Prince in 1170 "prepared certain shipps, with men andmunition, and sought adventures by seas, sailing west, and leaving thecoast of Ireland so farre north, that he came to land unknowne, wherehe saw many strange things.... This Madoc arriving in the countrey, inthe which he came in the year 1170, left most of his people there, andreturning back for more of his nation, went thither again with tensails," and was never again heard of.
Six hundred years later Welshmen in America imagined that they couldtalk with some tribes, who said "they came from white people but werenow Indians," and the legend was related that white people had oncelived on the Atlantic coast, but had so many wars they crossed themountains and made boats and went down the Ohio and up the Missouri,"where to this day live the fair-haired, blue-eyed Mandans."
Our grandfathers believed this story, believed these whites might havebeen cut off at the Falls of the Ohio and some escaped. This is theexcuse that Cornstalk gave to Lord Dunmore for the attack at PointPleasant:
"Long ago our fathers destroyed the whites in a great battle at theFalls of the Ohio. We thought it might be done again."
As if in proof of this statement, George Rogers Clark and other firstexplorers at the Falls found Sand Island at low water a mass of hackedand mutilated human bones, whether of Indians or whites, no man couldtell.
And here now were Lewis and Clark, in the Autumn of 1804, among thefabled Mandans, and here before them was a Mr. Hugh McCracken, anIrishman, and Rene Jussaume, a Frenchman, independent traders, who fora dozen winters had drawn their goods on dog sleds over from theBritish fort on the Assiniboine to trade with the Mandans for buffalorobes and horses. Thirty dogs they owned between them, great Huskiesof the Eskimo breed.
Jussaume was immediately engaged as interpreter, and the first Sundaywas spent in conversation with Black Cat, head chief of the Mandans.All day the hospitable blue-eyed, brown-haired Mandan women, fairerthan other Indians, kept coming in with gifts of corn, boiled hominy,and garden stuffs, raised by their own rude implements. Girls of tenyears old with silver-gray hair hanging down to their knees stoodaround and listened.
Yes, they had earthen pots and gardens, even extensive fields of corn,beans, squashes, and sunflowers, and houses--mud huts. They lived inlittle forted towns that had been moved successively up, up, up theMissouri.
"I believe what you have told us," said one of the chiefs in the greatcouncil on Monday. "We shall now have peace with the Ricaras. Mypeople will be glad. Then our women may lie down at night withouttheir moccasins on. They can work in the fields without looking everymoment for the enemy."
"We have killed the Ricaras like birds," said another, "until we aretired of killing them. Now we will send a chief and some warriors tosmoke with them."
Thus was the first effort for peace in the Mandan country.
The high chill wind almost blew down the awning over the greatcouncil. The men paraded up from the boats, the blunderbuss was firedfrom the bow of the big bateau, the long reed-stemmed stone-bowledpipes were smoked in amity.
"Here are suits of clothes for your chiefs," said Lewis, handing outof a wooden chest the handsome laced uniforms, cocked hats, andfeathers. "To your women I present this iron corn-mill to grind theirhominy."
The solemn, sad-faced chiefs took the clothes and put them on. Thewomen flew at the corn-mill. All day long they ground and ground andwondered at "the great medicine" that could make meal with so littletrouble. Mortars and pestles were thrown behind the lodges, discarded.
The next day Mr. McCracken set out on his return to Fort Assiniboine,one hundred and fifty miles away, with a friendly letter to the ChiefFactor, Chaboillez, enclosing the passport of Lewis and Clark from theBritish minister at Washington.
Yes, a passport,--so uncertain was that boundary--never yet defined.Where lay that line? To the sources of the Mississippi? But thosesources were as hidden as the fountain of the Nile. No white man yethad seen Itasca.
Since before the Revolution the Chaboillez family had traded atMichilimackinac. They were there in the days when Wabasha descended onSt. Louis, and had a hand in all the border story.
While Lewis was negotiating with the Indians, Captain Clark set outwith Black Cat to select a point where timber was plenty to build awinter camp.
"Hey, there! are ye going to run aff and leave me all to mesilf?"exclaimed Patrick Gass, head carpenter, busy selecting his tools andequipments. "Niver moind, I can outwalk the bist o' thim."
Strong, compact, broad-chested, heavy-limbed, but lean, sprightly, andquick of motion, Pat was soon at the side of his Captain. "I can showye a pint or two about cabins, I'm thinkin'."
Clark smiled. He knew something about cabins himself.
The day was fine and crowds of Indians came to watch proceedings asClark's men began to cut the tall cottonwoods and roll up the cabins.
Every day the Indians came in crowds to watch the wonderful buildingof the white men's fort, the deer-skin windows and mud-plasteredchimneys. Turning loose their horses, all day long the red men lay onthe grass watching the details of this curious architecture. At night,gathering an armful of cottonwood boughs stripped from the forttimber, each fed his horse and meandered thoughtfully homeward in thered sunset.
One day two squaws came, a leathery old dame and a captive Indian girlfrom the Rocky Mountains,--the handsome young Sacajawea, theBird-Woman.
"She my slave," said Charboneau, a Frenchman in blanket capote andkerchief around his head. "I buy her from de Rock Mountain. I make hermy wife." Charboneau lived with the Minnetarees, friends andneighbours of the Mandans.
Shahaka, the Big White Head Chief, came, too, with his squaw packingon her back "one hundred pounds of very fine meat." Whenever Shahakacrossed the river his squaw picked up the buffalo-skin canoe andcarried it off on her back. Those canoes were made exactly like aWelsh coracle.
The days grew colder, the frost harder. Ice began to run in the riverand the last boats in from the hunt brought thirty-two deer, elevenelk, and buffalo that were jerked and hung in the winter smoke-house.
By November 20 the triangular fort was ready,--two rows of cabins offour rooms each, with lofts above where, snug and warm under the roofnext to the chimneys, the men slept through the long cold winternights on beds of grass, rolled up in their blankets and fuzzy robesof buffalo.
In the frosty weather there came over the prairies from FortAssiniboine seven Northwest traders, led by Francois Antoine Larocqueand Charles Mackenzie, with stores of merchandise to trade among theMandans. They immediately waited upon Lewis and Clark.
"We are not traders," said the Americans, "but explorers on
our way tothe Pacific."
Through Larocque's mind flashed the journey of Sir Alexander Mackenzieand its outcome. That might mean more than a rival trader. "He isdistributing flags and medals among the Mandans," came the rumour.
"In the name of the United States I forbid you from giving flags andmedals to the Indians, as our Government looks upon those things assacred emblems of the attachment of the Indians to our country," saidCaptain Lewis to Monsieur Larocque when next he called at Fort Mandan.
"As I have neither flags nor medals, I run no risk of disobeying thoseorders, I assure you," answered the easy Frenchman.
"You and all persons are at liberty to come into our territories totrade or for any other purpose, and will never be molested unless yourbehaviour is such as would subject an American citizen himself topunishment," continued Lewis.
"And will the Americans not trade?"
"We may and shall probably have a public store well assorted of allkinds of Indian goods. No liquors are to be sold."
"A very grand plan they have schemed," muttered Larocque, as he wentaway, "but its being realised is more than I can tell."
While talking with the Captains, Larocque had an eye on a Hudson's Baytrader who had appeared on the scene.
"Beg pardon. I must be off," said Larocque, slipping out withCharboneau to outwit if possible the Hudson's Bay man and reach theIndians first. But before he got off a letter arrived from Chaboillezthat altered all plans.
Unknown to Lewis and Clark, though they gradually came to discover it,hot war was waging in the north. For the sake of furs, rival traderscut and carved and shot and imprisoned each other. For the sake offurs those same traders had held Detroit thirteen years beyond theRevolution. Furs came near changing the balance of power in NorthAmerica.
The old established Hudson's Bay Company claimed British America. Theambitious, energetic Northwesters of Montreal disputed the right. Andnow that Sir Alexander Mackenzie, a Canadian _bourgeois_, had become afamous explorer, knighted by the King, jealousies broke out in theNorthwest company itself.
Simon McTavish, lord of the Northwesters, who had done all he could tohold the Lakes for Britain, would rule or ruin. But the Northwestersswore by Mackenzie. So the two factions fought each other, and bothfought the Hudson's Bay Company.
"The Northwesters are no better than they ought to be," said the menof Hudson's Bay. "They sent an embassy to Congress in 1776." In fact alittle change in the balance might have thrown the Northwesters overto the American side and altered the history of a continent.
"The quarrelling traders of the North are almost as bad as theIndians," said Lewis,--"they demoralise and inflame the Indians."
"Trade with me," said Hudson's Bay. "The Northwesters will cheat you."
"Trade with me," said the Northwester. "Hudson's Bay are bad men."
With troubled eyes the Indians listened, then scalped them both. Somebloody tales that North could tell, around the plains of lovelyWinnipeg, out on the lone Saskatchewan, and over to Athabasca.
But now the Americans,--this was a new force in the West.
December 1, the Americans began to cut and carry pickets to completethe high stockade and gate across the front of Fort Mandan. December 6it was too cold to work, and that night the river froze over in frontof the fort with solid ice an inch and a half thick.
At nine o'clock next morning Chief Shahaka, Big White, came puffing inwith news.
"De boofalo! de boofalo!" interpreted Jussaume, listening intently tothe long harangue of the chief who was making all sorts of signlanguage and excitedly pointing up the river.
"De boofalo, on de prairie, comin' eento de bottom."
In short order Lewis, Clark, and fifteen men were out with the Indiansmounted on horseback. Then came the din and chase of battle, a sightto fire the blood and thrill the calmest heart.
Riding among the herd, each Indian chose his victim, then, drawing hisarrow to the last notch of the bowstring, let it fly. Another andanother whizzed from the same string until the quiver was exhausted.The wounded beast, blinded by its mane, sometimes charged the hunter.But the swift steed, trained for the contest, wheeled and was gone.The buffalo staggered for a little, then, struck in a mortal part,fell headlong, pawing up the dust and snow in frantic efforts to riseand fly.
Into the midst came the Captains and their men, and every man broughtdown his buffalo. At twelve degrees below zero and in a northwestwind, Lewis and his men started out again the next morning to chasethe herds that darkened the prairie. The air was filled with frostyflakes, the snow was deep and clinging, but all day and until afterdark the exciting hunt held them to the saddle, and only when theycame to the fire did the participants realise that their hands andfeet were frostbitten.
Cold and colder grew the days. Two suns shone in the sky,prognosticator of still deeper frost. Brilliant northern lights glowedalong the Arctic, but still they chased the buffalo until the morningof December 13, when Dr. Saugrain's thermometer stood twenty degreesbelow zero at sunrise. In fur caps, coats, mittens, and doublemoccasins they brought home horseload after horseload of juicy beef tohang in the winter storehouse. And fortunately, too, for one day theyawoke to find the buffalo gone.
Some winters there was great suffering for food among the Mandans, butthis was destined to be a year of plenty. Out of their abundance thechiefs, also, came to the fort with their dog sleds loaded with meatfor their friends at the garrison.