XVI
_IDAHO_
"We are going through your country to the far ocean," said CaptainLewis. "We are making a trail for the traders who will bring youguns."
"This delights me," answered Cameahwait, with his fierce eyes, and hislank jaws grown meagre for want of food. "We are driven into themountains, when if we had guns we could meet our enemies in theplains."
All the Shoshone talk was of war, war, war. Their great terror was theroving Indians of the Saskatchewan, who, with guns from the Britishtraders, came down like wolves on the fold. Only flight and wonderfulskill with the bow and arrow saved the Shoshones from destruction.
Horses were their wealth. "Most of them would make a figure on thesouth side of James River," said Lewis, "in the land of fine horses. Isaw several with Spanish brands upon them."
Brother to the Comanche, the Shoshone rode his horse over rocks andravines, up declivitous ways and almost impossible passes. Everywarrior had one or two tied to a stake near his willow hut, night andday, ready for action.
"My horse is my friend. He knows my voice. He hears me speak. He warnsme of the enemy." Little children played with them, squaws fed them,braves painted them and decorated their manes and tails witheagle-plumes, insignia of the Rocky Mountain Indian. Such horses werea boon to Lewis and Clark, for they were tractable, sure-footed,inured to the saddle and the pack.
A Shoshone found a tomahawk that Lewis had lost in the grass, andreturned it,--now a tomahawk was worth a hundred dollars to aShoshone. They had no knives or hatchets,--all their wood was splitwith a wedge of elkhorn and a mallet of stone. They started theirfires by twirling two dry sticks together.
Through all the valleys the Shoshones sent for their best horses, totrade for knives and tomahawks. Delighted they watched the fall ofdeer before the guns of white men. The age of stone had met the age ofsteel.
How to get over the mountains was the daily consultation. Cameahwaitpointed out an old man that knew the rivers. Clark engaged him for aguide:
"You shall be called Toby. Be ready to-morrow morning."
Proud of his new name, old Toby packed up his moccasins.
The Indians drew maps: "Seven days over sheer mountains. No game, nofish, nothing but roots."
Captain Clark set out to reconnoitre the Salmon River route.
"A river of high rocks," said Cameahwait, "all a river of foam. No manor horse can cross. No man can walk along the shore. We never travelthat way." Nevertheless Clark went on.
For seventy miles, "through mountains almost inaccessible, andsubsisting on berries the greater part of the route," as Clarkafterward told his brother, they pushed their way, then--"troublesjust begun," remarked old Toby.
Checking their horses on the edge of a precipice, Clark and hiscompanions looked down on the foaming Snake, roaring and fretting andlashing the walls of its inky canyon a hundred feet below, savage,tremendous, frightful.
As Cameahwait had said, the way was utterly impracticable.
"I name this great branch of the Columbia for my comrade, CaptainLewis," said Clark.
Back from the Snake River, Clark found Lewis buying horses. TheShoshone women were mending the men's moccasins. The explorers weremaking pack-saddles of rawhide. For boards they broke up boxes andused the handles of their oars.
"I have ever held this expedition in equal estimation with my ownexistence," said Lewis, urging on the preparations. "If Indians canpass these mountains, we can."
Haunched around the fires, the forlorn Indians looked and listened andshook their unkempt heads.
"Me know better route," said the friendly old Shoshone guide. "To thenorth, another great water to the Columbia."
"No! no! no!" shouted all the Shoshones. "No trail that way."
But Clark believed the faithful old Toby. Evidently the Shoshoneswished to detain them all winter.
Unseen by the Indians, at night a _cache_ was dug at the head of theJefferson, for the last of the heavy luggage, leaving out only Indiangifts and absolute necessities to carry on the pack-horses. The canoeswere filled with rocks and sunk to the bottom of the river.
August 30, the expedition was ready. Before setting out the violinswere brought and the men danced, to the great diversion of theIndians. Then, when they turned their faces to the Bitter Root, withthe old guide and his four sons, the Shoshones set out east for theirannual hunt on the Missouri.
From May to September the Shoshones lived on salmon that came up themountain streams. Now that the salmon were gone, necessity compelledthem forth. With swift dashes down the Missouri they were wont to killand dry what buffalo they could, and retreat to consume it in theirmountain fastnesses. The whites had surprised them in their verycitadel--led by Sacajawea.
Along the difficult Bitter Root Mountains Lewis and Clark journeyed,meeting now and then Indian women digging yamp and pounding sunflowerseeds into meal. Food grew scarce and scarcer, now and then a deer, agrouse, or a belated salmon stranded in some mountain pool. Sometimesthey had but a bit of parched corn in their wallets, like theImmortals that marched to the conquest of Illinois.
But those snowy peaks that from a distance seemed so vast,--that likethe Alps defied approach to any but a Hannibal or a Napoleon--now, asif to meet their conquerors, bent low in many a grassy glade.
In a pocket of the mountains now called Ross Hole, they came upon acamp of Flatheads, with five hundred horses, on their way to theMissouri for the Fall hunt of buffalo.
Unknown to them the Flatheads had been watching from the timber andhad reported: "Strangers. Two chiefs riding ahead, looking at thecountry. One warrior painted black. The rest leading packhorses. Keepquiet. Wait. They are coming."
York's feet had become lame and he was riding with the Captains.
When the white men came in view the Flatheads looked on their faces.They were shocked at the whiteness. Compassion was in every Indianheart.
"These men have no blankets. They have been robbed. See how cold theircheeks are. They are chilled. Bring robes. Build fires."
All the Indians ran for their beautiful white robes, and wrapped themaround the shoulders of the white men. Before the blazing fires thewhite men's cheeks grew red. Perspiration burst from every pore. Therobes slipped off, but the solicitous red men kept putting them backand stirring up the fire.
Then the Captains, touched to the heart, spoke to the kind-heartedFlatheads of a great people toward the rising sun, strong and braveand rich.
"Have they wigwams and much buffalo?" inquired the Flatheads.
"Yes. We have been sent by the Great Father, the President, to bringthese presents to his children the Flatheads."
The childlike Flatheads were much impressed. Never did they forget thevisit of those first white men. Traditions enough to fill a book havebeen handed down, and to this day they boast, "the Flathead neverkilled a white man."
The whites listened in amaze to the low guttural clucking of theFlatheads, resembling that of a chicken or parrot. Voice there wasnone, only a soft crooning to their gentle chatter, interpreted bySacajawea and the old Shoshone guide.
The women crowded around Sacajawea and untied her baby from itselkskin cradle. They fed it and gave it little garments. That baby wasan open sesame touching the hearts of all. Sacajawea, riding on herhorse to the Columbia, found friends with every tribe. Others mightpay; she, never. The Indian mother-heart opened to Sacajawea. Her verypresence was an assurance of pacific intention.
The women brought food, roots, and berries. To a late hour the whitemen continued smoking and conversing with the chiefs, when more robeswere brought, and the weary ones slept with their feet to the fire.
"Those hongry Injin dorgs ate up me moccasins lasht noight,"complained Pat in the morning. "But they're the whoitest Injins I iversaw."
More horses were brought and the lame ones exchanged, so now withforty horses and three colts the Captains and their devoted followersstruggled on, "Over the warst road I iver saw," said Pat. "Faith! 'tiswarse nor the Alleghan
ies where I rid whin a bye."
One horse loaded with a desk and small trunk rolled down a steepdeclivity until it was stopped by a tree. The desk was broken. Thatnight they camped at the snow line and more snow began to fall. Wet,cold, hungry, they killed a colt for supper and slept under the stars.
The horses were failing. Some had to be abandoned. One rolled down amountain into a creek at the bottom. Some strayed or lost their packs,and the worn-out men, ever on the jump, came toiling through thebrush, bearing on their own backs the unwieldy pack-saddles. Up herein the Bitter Root Mountains, the last of Dr. Saugrain's thermometerswas broken, which accounts for the fact that from this point on theykept no record of temperature.
September 9 the expedition journeyed down the main Bitter Root valley,named Clark's River, and crossing it came to a large creek and campeda day to rest their horses.
"Traveller's Rist, is it?" said Pat. "Me fa-a-ther's inn at Wellsburgwas the fir-r-st 'Traveller's Rist' in all Wistern Varginny," andTraveller's Rest it remained until some later explorer renamed it theLolo fork of the Bitter Root River.
Here the boys mended their garments torn and tattered in themountains, and the hunters went out for game. They returned with threeFlatheads.
"Ay! Ay!" clucked the gentle Flatheads, "the river goes to the greatlake. Our relations were there and bought handkerchiefs like these ofan old white man that lives by himself."
Lame and weary, straight across Idaho they struggled, over seams andstreaks of precious metal that they saw not, the gold of Ophirconcealed in the rocky chambers of the Idaho Alps,--struggled into theLolo trail used by the Indians for ages before any whites ever cameinto the country.
Over the Lolo trail went the Nez Perces to battle and to hunt buffaloin the Montana country. Down over this trail once came a war party andcaptured Wat-ku-ese, a Nez Perce girl, and carried her away to thedistant land of white men,--_so-yap-po_, "the crowned ones," shecalled them, because they wore hats.
Still ever Wat-ku-ese dreamed of her Nez Perce home and one dayescaped with her infant on her back. Along the way white traders werekind to her. On and on, footsore and weary she journeyed alone. In theFlathead country her baby died and was buried there. One day some NezPerces came down over the Lolo trail bringing home Wat-ku-ese, weak,sick, dying.
She was with her people at their camas ground, Weippe, when Lewis andClark came down over the Lolo trail.
"Let us kill them," whispered the frightened Nez Perces.
Wat-ku-ese lay dying in her tent when she heard it. "White men, didyou say? No, no, do not harm them. They are the crowned ones who wereso good to me. Do not be afraid of them. Go near to them."
Cautiously the Nez Perces approached. The explorers shook their hands.This was to the Indians a new form of greeting.
Everywhere Indian women were digging the camas root, round like anonion, and little heaps lay piled here and there. They paused in theirwork to watch the strangers. Some screamed and ran and hid. Littlegirls hid their baby brothers in the brush. Others brought food.
So starved and famished were the men that they ate inordinately of thesweet camas and the kouse, the biscuit root. The sudden change to awarmer climate and laxative roots resulted in sickness, when theexpedition might have been easily attacked but for those words ofWat-ku-ese, who now lay dead in her tent.
To this day the Nez Perces rehearse the story of Wat-ku-ese. It wasthe beginning of a lifelong friendship with the whites, broken onlywhen Chief Joseph fled over the Lolo trail. But even Chief Josephfound he must give up the vast areas over which he was wont to roam,and come under the laws of civilised life.
As fast as their weakness permitted councils were held, when theCaptains told the Nez Perces of the Great Father at Washington, whohad sent them to visit his children.
Twisted Hair, the Nez Perce Tewat, a great medicine man, dreamer andwizard and wise one, drew on a white elkskin a chart of the rivers.Admiring redmen put their hands over their mouths in amazement.
No one but Twisted Hair could do such things. He was a learned Indian,knew all the trails, even to the Falls of the Columbia.
"White men," said he, "live at the Tim-tim [falls]."
Thus into Idaho had penetrated the story of Ko-na-pe, the wreckedSpaniard, who with his son Soto had set out up the great river to findwhite people and tarried there until he died. Seven years laterAstor's people met Soto, an old man dark as his Indian mother, butstill the Indians called him white. Twenty years later Soto's daughterwas still living on the Columbia in the days of the Hudson's BayCompany.
To save time and trouble, canoes were burnt out of logs. Leaving theirhorses with the Nez Perces, on October 4 the explorers were glad toget into their boats with their baggage and float down the clearKooskooske, into the yellow-green Snake, and on into the blueColumbia.
At the confluence of the rivers medals were given and councils held onthe present site of Lewiston. Day by day through wild, romantic sceneswhere white man's foot had never trod, the exultant young men weregliding to the sea.
Ahead of the boats on horseback galloped We-ark-koompt, an Indianexpress. Word flew. The tribes were watching. At the dinner camp,October 16, five Indians came up the river on foot in great haste,took a look and started back, running as fast as they could.
That night Lewis and Clark were met at the Columbia by a procession oftwo hundred Indians with drums, singing, "Ke-hai, ke-hai," theredmen's signal of friendship.