XV
_A WOMAN PILOT_
Monday, July 15, 1805, the boats were launched above the Great Fallsof the Missouri. Clark followed by land along an old Indian trail,worn deep by the lodge-poles of ages.
Little did he realise that nuggets lay scattered all over that land,where yet the gold hunters should dot the hills with shafts andmounds; that near here a beautiful city, named for Helen of Troy,should arise to become a golden capital.
"My people! My people!" Sacajawea excitedly pointed to desertedwickiups and traces of fires. She read their story at a glance.
"It was winter. They were hungry. There were no buffalo. See!" Shepointed to the pines stripped of bark and the tender inner wood, thelast resort of famishing Shoshones.
With flags hoisted to notify the Indians that they were friends, thecanoes passed within the Gates of the Mountains, where the mightyMissouri breaks through the Belt Range of western Montana. Nothing inAlleghany lands compares with this tremendous water-gap. Through thedark cavern the river ran narrow and rapid and clear. Down throughtributary canyons on either side came rifts of light, odours of pine,and the roar of waterfalls.
With unmoved countenance Sacajawea looked upon the weird overhanginggrayish granite walls through which she had been hurried in terror byher Minnetaree captors, five years ago.
"We are coming to a country where the river has three forks," saidSacajawea.
Exhilaration seized the men, as they sent the boats up the heavycurrent that rolled well-deep below. That night they camped in acanyon that is to-day a pleasure resort for the people of Helena.
Again following the Indian trail, on the 25th of July Clark arrived atthe three forks of the Missouri, near the present site of Gallatin.From the forks of the far eastern rivers where Pittsburg rises, theyhad come to the forks of the great river of the West.
For days the swift current had required the utmost exertion. The mencomplained of fatigue and excessive heat.
"You push a tolerable good pole," said the Kentuckians, when Lewistook a hand.
Captain Clark was worn out. With the thermometer at ninety, for dayshe had pushed ahead, determined to find the Shoshones.
"Let us rest a day or two," said Captain Lewis. "Here, boys, build abower for Captain Clark. I'll take a tramp myself in a few days tofind these yellow gentlemen if possible."
Camping at the three forks, every man became a leather dresser andtailor, fixing up his buckskin clothes. Leggings and moccasins hadbeen sliced to pieces by the prickly pear.
"What a spot for a trading post!" the Captains agreed.
"Look," said Lewis, "see the rushes in the bottom, high as a man'sbreast and thick as wheat. This will be much in favour of anestablishment here,--the cane is one of the best winter pastures forcows and horses."
From the heights at the three forks, Lewis and Clark looked out uponvalleys of perennial green. Birds of beautiful plumage and thrillingsong appeared on every hand. Beaver, otter, muskrat, sported in thistrapper's paradise. Buffalo-clover, sunflowers and wild rye,buffalo-peas and buffalo-beans blossomed everywhere.
All the Indian trails in the country seemed to converge at this point.Here passed the deadly Blackfoot on his raids against the Shoshones,the Bannocks, and the Crows. Here stole back and forth the timidShoshone to his annual hunt on the Yellowstone and the Snake Riverplains. Hither from time immemorial had the Flatheads and Nez Percesresorted for their supplies of robes and meat. Even from the farSaskatchewan came the Piegans and Gros Ventres to this favoured anddisputed spot.
The Blackfeet claimed the three forks of the Missouri, no tribe dweltthere permanently. The roads were deep, like trenches, worn by thetrailing lodgepoles of many tribes upon this common hunting ground.
The naming of the rivers,--that was an epic by itself.
The gay Cabinet ladies who had fitted him out at Washington flittedthrough the mind of Meriwether Lewis,--Maria Jefferson, companion ofhis earliest recollection, Dolly Madison, whose interest never failedin his adventures, Mrs. Gallatin, the queenly dark-haired wife of thescholarly Secretary of the Treasury. With what pleasure had theygathered at the White House to fashion "housewives," full of pins andneedles and skeins of thread, for these wanderers of the West. Not aman in the party but bore some souvenir of their thoughtfulhandiwork.
Clark's earliest memory was of Jefferson, the friend of his father, ofhis older brothers, and then of himself. "Jimmy" Madison and GeorgeRogers Clark had been schoolmates in the "old field school" of DonaldRobertson.
So then and there the Captains agreed that three great statesmen andtheir wives should be commemorated here by the Madison, the Jefferson,and the Gallatin forks of the Missouri.
"On this very spot my people camped five years ago. Here were theirtents," said Sacajawea, pointing out the embers of blackened fires."The Minnetarees peered over the hills. We ran up this fork and hid inthe thick woods."
The boats were reloaded and the party began to ascend the Jefferson onJuly 30, to its head in the Bitter Root Mountains. At noon they campedfor dinner.
"And here was I captured!" cried Sacajawea. "I was made a prisoner. Wewere too few to fight the Minnetarees. They pursued us. Our menmounted their horses and fled to the mountains. The women and childrenhid. I ran. I was crossing this river. They caught me and carried meaway."
What a realistic glimpse of daily terror! Fighting, hunting,wandering, famishing, in the land of anarchy. Formerly the Shoshoneswere Indians of the plains. Now they had been driven by their enemiesinto almost inaccessible fastnesses.
"The Beaver Head! The Beaver Head!"
Sacajawea pointed to a steep, rocky cliff shaped like a beaver's head,one hundred and fifty feet above the water, an Indian landmark fromtime immemorial.
"This is not far from the summer retreat of my countrymen. We shallmeet them soon, on a river beyond the mountains running to the west."
"We must meet those Indians," said Lewis, "it is our only hope forhorses to cross the mountains."
Lewis and Clark camped August 7, 1805, at Beaverhead Rock. There,fifty-seven years later, chased by bears, robbed by Indians,unsheltered, unshod, and almost starving, the gold hunter stumbledupon the auriferous bed of an ancient river that made Montana. Goldwas discovered at Alder Gulch in 1863, ten miles south of BeaverheadRock, and the next year mining began in the streets of the presentcity of Helena. The pick and the shovel in the miner's hand became thelamp and the ring in the grasp of Aladdin.
The next morning after passing Beaverhead Rock, Captain Lewis andthree of the men slung their knapsacks over their shoulders and setout for the mountains, determined not to return until they met somenation of Indians.
Two days later, August 11, Lewis with his spyglass espied a lonehorseman on the hills. The wild-eyed Shoshone, accustomed to scan thehorizon, saw him also.
"He is of a different nation from any we have met," remarked Lewis,watching intently through his glass. "He has a bow and a quiver ofarrows, and an elegant horse without a saddle."
Like a lookout on the hills, the Indian stood and waited.
"He is undoubtedly a Shoshone. Much of our success depends on thefriendly offices of that nation."
Slowly Lewis advanced. Slowly the Indian came forward, until, within amile of each other the Indian suddenly stopped. Captain Lewis alsostopped, and drawing a three-point blanket from his knapsack held itby the corners above his head, and unfolding brought it to the groundas in the act of spreading. Three times he repeated the Indian signalof hospitality--"Come and sit on the robe with me."
Still the Indian kept his position, viewing with an air of suspicionthe hunters with Lewis.
"_Tabba bone, tabba bone_," said Lewis, stripping up the sleeve of hisshirt to show the colour of his skin,--"white man, white man," a termlearned of Sacajawea.
Paralysed the Indian looked, then fled like a frightened deer. Nocalls could bring him back.
He said to his people, "I have seen men with faces pale as ashes, whoare makers of thunder and lightning
."
"He is a dreamer!" exclaimed the incredulous Shoshones. "He makes uptales. He must show us these white men or be put to death," andtrembling he started back with a body of warriors.
Lewis, disappointed at the flight of the Shoshone, pressed on.Narrower and narrower grew the river.
"Thank God, I have lived to bestride the Missouri!" exclaimed HughMcNeil, planting a foot on either side of the mountain rivulet.
Two miles farther up they drank from the ice-cold spring at theriver's source, and stood on the summit of the Great Divide. A littlecreek flowed down the ridge toward the west. Stooping, they drank,--ofthe waters of the Columbia, and slept that night in Idaho. The nextmorning, following a well-worn Indian trail, Lewis came upon two womenand a child. One fled, the other, an old dame encumbered by the child,sat down and bowed her head as if expecting instant death.
Captain Lewis advanced, lifted her, loaded her with gifts.
"_Tabba bone, tabba bone._" Stripping up his sleeve he showed to theamazed woman the first white skin she had ever seen.
"Call your companion," motioned Lewis toward the fleeing woman.
The old dame raised her voice. As fast as she ran away the young womancame running back, almost out of breath. She, too, was loaded withtrinkets, and the cheeks of all were painted with vermilion, theShoshone emblem of peace.
Without fear now she led him toward sixty mounted warriors, who wereadvancing at a gallop as to battle.
"_Tabba bone! tabba bone!_" explained the women, introducing thestranger and exhibiting their gifts.
"_Ah hi e! Ah hi e!_"--"I am much pleased! I am much pleased!"exclaimed the warriors, leaping from their horses and embracing Lewiswith great cordiality.
Lewis drew forth his imposing calumet of red pipestone and lighted it.This was a sign language of all tribes.
Putting off their moccasins as if to say, "May I walk the forestbarefoot forever if I break this pledge of friendship," they sat downand smoked.
The chief, too, brought out a pipe, of the dense transparent greenstone of the Bannock Mountains, highly polished. Another led him to alodge and presented a piece of salmon,--then Lewis no longer doubtedthat he was on waters flowing to the Pacific.
Slowly, Clark, ill with chills and fever, had been coming forward,urging the canoes up the difficult and narrowing stream.
Sacajawea, the little Bird-woman, could not wait. In her anxiety shebegged to walk ahead along shore, and with her husband went dancing upthe rivulet of her childhood. She flew ahead. She turned, pirouettinglightly on her beaded moccasins, waving her arms and kissing herfingers. Her long hair flew in the wind and her beaded necklacesparkled.
Yes, there were the Indians, and Lewis among them, dressed like anIndian too. The white men had given everything they had to theIndians, even their cocked hats and red feathers, and taken Indianclothes in exchange, robes of the mountain sheep and goat.
An Indian girl leaned to look at Sacajawea. They flew into eachother's arms. They had been children together, had been captured inthe same battle, had shared the same captivity. One had escaped to herown people; the other had been sold as a slave in the Land of theDakotahs. As girls will, with arms around each other they wandered offand talked and talked of the wonderful fortune that had come toSacajawea, the wife of a white man.
A council was immediately called. The Shoshones spread white robes andhung wampum shells of pearl in the hair of the white men.
"Sacajawea. Bring her hither," called Lewis.
Tripping lightly into the willow lodge, Sacajawea was beginning tointerpret, when lifting her eyes to the chief, she recognised her ownbrother, Cameahwait. She ran to his side, threw her blanket over hishead, and wept upon his bosom.
Sacajawea, too, was a Princess, come home now to her Mountain Kingdom.