“It isn’t the major so much,” an Osage explained to Clay Basket. “It’s his wife.”
They had heard about Mrs. Sibley from other sources, always with obvious love; she seemed a remarkable woman, but McKeag, who was perplexed as to why an agent’s wife should be so highly regarded, was told, “It’s the noise she makes.” McKeag could make nothing of that, but a Pawnee who had drifted south to the fort told him, “Oh, what a wonderful noise she makes.”
The party did not see this extraordinary woman until late afternoon on their second day at the fort. At five, some thirty Indians and traders crowded into Major Sibley’s living quarters, and McKeag saw that in one corner of the room stood a piano. So the noise, which had so captivated the Indians, was merely a piano. He smiled.
Then Mrs. Sibley appeared, a marvelous little wren dressed in a frail white dress gathered high beneath her breasts, with pink satin slippers on her tiny feet and a pale-blue ribbon in her hair. At fourteen, as the daughter of one of the distinguished citizens of Saint Louis—Judge Easton had been in turn postmaster, judge and congressman—she had formed the habit of slipping out of her parents’ home at dusk, riding bareback twenty miles to attend military dances, waltzing all night and riding back at dawn. Many soldiers had proposed to her, but shortly after her fifteenth birthday she married Major Sibley, promising ‘to go anywhere on earth with him that he cared to go.” He had brought her to Fort Osage. At first he was fearful lest the Indians frighten her, but at the end of the first week they loved her so that they would have attacked Saint Louis had she requested it.
McKeag continued to smile as she sat at the piano, adjusted her shimmering dress, turned and bowed to the Indians. This so pleased them that they made varied sounds of greeting, whereupon she started playing in dainty fashion a Mozart gigue which had floated up the river from New Orleans.
It was delightful, and Clay Basket clutched her boys to her, indicating to them how much she enjoyed it, but one of the Sac chiefs looked at Pasquinel and whispered, “Pretty soon now,” and McKeag noticed that all the Indians were bending forward, their eyes ablaze.
What happened next McKeag could not accurately determine, but Mary Sibley launched into a rather livelier tune, and with her left foot, in a most unladylike fashion, began kicking an extra pedal, which activated a large bass drum hidden in the rear of the piano. A French dance resulted, with the drum pretty well drowning out the music. As the Indians cheered, fragile Mrs. Sibley began pumping bellows with her right knee, activating a hidden wind instrument which played “Yankee Doodle Dandy”—and what with the booming drum and all of her ten fingers banging the keys as hard and as fast as possible, a veritable explosion of noise filled the salon.
Clay Basket thought it one of the finest things she had ever experienced, and the boys were enchanted with the mysterious and multiple noises. Major Sibley appeared, offering sweet punch to the chiefs and whiskey to the five white traders, while his wife passed little cakes to the women and the boys. Obviously the concert could have continued all night without tiring the audience.
“We came across Daniel Boone in the wilderness,” McKeag told the major. “He seemed near death.”
“He’ll be hunting bear by Christmas,” Sibley predicted confidently. He knew Boone and suspected that he was a long way from dying. “And if he dies, Indian Phillips is there to bury him. Boone wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Fort Osage would have been a lively place even without its chatelaine; most traders on their way to the upper Missouri halted there, and there were usually a few adventurers in attendance who didn’t know where they were headed. The boys were delighted with the varied activity and each day observed scores of things they could not have seen on the prairies: the shoeing of oxen, the tapping of a beer keg, repairs to a keel-boat, Sibley’s commissary store with its nails and buckets and brooms. Even Marcel, only five at the time, watched omnivorously as mule trains and river boats unloaded.
There were problems. This was an American military post, painfully un-French and lacking even a knowledge of prior Spanish occupation. The commandant was from Delaware and his men from Kentucky and Tennessee, and they had brought their prejudices with them. Frenchmen they distrusted; Indians they despised, and at meals they tried to abuse Pasquinel by calling him Squaw Man, knowing that this was a term normally used for launching a fight. He accepted it with a laugh, adding, “You bet. Make one fine wife.” One stranger, seeing his dark skin and Indian costume, made the mistake of calling him “you goddamned Indian,” which he also accepted gracefully.
“What kind of Indian you think?” he asked. “Cheyenne, Pawnee?”
The newcomer, guessing him to be Sioux, said, “Sigh-ox,” at which Pasquinel jumped about acting like a Sioux at a dance and shouting, “Me Sigh-ox!” In time the hangers-on at the fort stopped trying to insult him.
But they moved onto very different terrain if by word or act they insulted Clay Basket. She was a beautiful woman, her black hair hanging below her shoulders and her face with the placid composure that high cheekbones and amber skin impart. It was inevitable that in a frontier post like Fort Osage incidents would happen, but when they did, Pasquinel’s knife appeared like the fang of a rattler and even drunk men backed off.
That year passions against Frenchmen were already high over the war at New Orleans. Rumors circulated that French in the region had supported the British invaders, so it was not surprising when a newcomer from Virginia, out to survey the frontier defenses, took exception to having Pasquinel at table with him. He announced, “As a gentleman, I do not relish dining with traitors.” Pasquinel rose and left the table. At this point Clay Basket arrived, leading her two boys in for their meal.
The Virginian, flushed by his victory over the husband, did not intend sharing the table with his squaw, so he said firmly, “This is for Americans. We don’t allow Indians here,” and Clay Basket moved dutifully away. McKeag, who was watching mutely from his own place, grew apprehensive, but still Pasquinel did nothing.
Jacques, however, did not intend coming so close to food without getting any and he pushed his way to the table. The Virginian shoved him off, snapping at him, “No breeds here. Out! Out!”
In a flash, Pasquinel’s knife was loosed and with one terrifying backhand sweep he gave the Virginian a near-mortal gash across the neck. The sight of blood inflamed the others, and they leaped at Pasquinel. In so doing, Clay Basket was knocked down. McKeag, when he saw her fall, reacted automatically, leaping into the brawl with his knife. Someone from the fort fired a pistol and soldiers rushed in to halt the riot. Pasquinel and McKeag retreated methodically, forming a bastion behind which Clay Basket and the boys gathered. In this way they left the mess hall.
Pasquinel had a slight cut across his chest. McKeag had a hand wound, which was easily stanched, and Clay Basket was unhurt, but in spite of this she gave a scream of pain, for she saw that Jacques had suffered a bleeding gash across the right side of his face. Some flashing knife, intended for his mother had caught him. One inch lower and his throat would have been severed.
The child made no outcry. Putting his hand to the cut, he saw the blood and pressed his fingers against the wound to halt it. His eyes kept moving, imprinting the scene indelibly upon his angry brain: the lights outside the room; the soldiers running about; the cut across his father’s chest; and especially his mother’s anxiety. He was seven years old that night, and he would remember everything.
In the morning the agent visited the lodge where Pasquinel was staying and said, “You’d better head north.”
“The others started it,” Pasquinel said.
“I’m sure of that,” Major Sibley said. “But it’s too risky ... having you here now.”
Pasquinel felt no necessity to thank McKeag for his assistance in the brawl. It was taken for granted that each would support the other, and that kind of partnership required no periodic review. McKeag was distressed, however, when Pasquinel casually announced, “You take Clay
Basket and the boys back to the buttes. I’ll take the pelts down to Saint Louis.” McKeag argued that now was not the time to desert the Indian family, since they were already disturbed by affairs at the fort, but Pasquinel brushed such objections aside: “I’d like to see Lise and the boy.” And it was that summer, after an absence of several years, that he fathered his daughter Lisette.
During Pasquinel’s happy stay in Saint Louis, his other family and McKeag paddled west in a canoe burdened with contention. Clay Basket enjoyed being with McKeag and loved anew this quiet, gentle man, but he was mortally afraid of her, proscribed as she was by being the wife of his partner. Young Jacques was abominable, despising each moment of a trip from which his father was missing; he sensed the constraint that existed between his mother and McKeag, and suspected that something was wrong between McKeag and his father. He moved in a world of insecurity and hate, and tried to punish his younger brother for it, but chubby-cheeked Marcel simply laughed at his tormenting.
By the time the little party left the Pawnee village on their journey home, a kind of truce had been arranged between McKeag and Jacques. The travelers would probably have reached Beaver Creek without incident, except that a band of Kiowa, invading from a remote area to the south where guns were not yet common, came to trade with the Pawnee for rifles. In the village was an agent for an English fur company, and he saw the Kiowa as a means to rid himself of troublesome competition, so he offered them two badly worn rifles and a bottle of cheap whiskey if they would pursue McKeag’s unprotected group and destroy it. The Kiowa, seeing a chance to obtain two children for their tribe, set out in eager pursuit.
They overtook the canoe at a barren spot in the river. McKeag and Clay Basket were already in trouble, for there was not enough water for paddling, and they looked with misgiving as the strangers approached. Prudently McKeag laid out his armament as Pasquinel had taught, hauled the canoe against a bank and reminded Clay Basket how to load the two guns.
The Kiowa halted a short distance away and launched an arch of arrows, which accomplished nothing. McKeag waited for them to draw closer, and saw that there were six in the party. His first rifle shot would be crucial. Taking careful aim, he held his breath as the warriors crept closer, then fired almost point-blank at the leader, killing him with much display of blood. As the others drew back, McKeag took from Clay Basket his second gun and killed a horse. Its rider fell and became tangled in the reins, and with his first gun reloaded, McKeag could have killed him, but he wisely contented himself with hitting the man in the legs. There was much shouting and confusion, and after a while the Kiowa withdrew. They had the beads and the whiskey; they had tried to kill the trader but that could wait till another day. Placing their wounded comrade on the horse of the dead warrior, they rode south.
It was not until they were out of sight that Jacques displayed the only casualty. A Kiowa arrow, launched at random, had come down in a sweeping arc to strike him in the hand, severing the tip of his little finger. Clay Basket found the arrowhead, sharper than a knife, and McKeag bored a small hole through the shank so that Jacques could wear it about his neck.
A half-breed child only seven years old, he had already been scarred twice, once by the knife of a white man, once by the flint of an Indian.
Pasquinel had such a good time in Saint Louis that he prolonged his visit. Lise surprised him with the information that she had sold the stone house on Rue des Granges in order to build a substantial brick house atop the hill, and when Pasquinel protested that no one would want to climb so high for a family visit, she assured him, “Soon all the interesting families will live up here. The Presbyterians are even building their church on this level.”
Life with Lise was more enjoyable than he had remembered, and sometimes he wondered why he ever deserted so pleasant a place to endure privation on the prairie. Hermann Bockweiss was doing well with his silver, but Pasquinel noticed that the prudent German was still using his profits to acquire pieces of real estate whose value would grow if the town expanded. It was this possibility that Bockweiss had in mind when he took his son-in-law aside and said, “Why not stay here permanently? You’re getting older. Your son needs you.”
Pasquinel replied that his job was in the mountains trading for pelts. “No,” Bockweiss reasoned, “you have a partner for that. Leave the trapping for him.”
Pasquinel gave this idea serious consideration, because it had logic behind it. McKeag with his languages was now the expert trader, and soon young Jacques would be old enough to help. Clay Basket? It didn’t matter much about her. Any Indian squaw who had learned to live with one white trader could easily catch hold of another, and as a matter of fact, one of these days McKeag would be needing a wife.
He had every reason to stay in Saint Louis. But in the end he decided against it. In December he was back in his canoe heading west, and when he reached Rattlesnake Buttes the customary emotional reconciliation took place and even little Jacques was happy again.
McKeag marveled at the ease with which Pasquinel switched from one of his families to the other and his lack of compunction about doing so. But when McKeag compared Pasquinel with other traders who also kept Indian wives, he had to admit that Pasquinel handled this problem with far more grace than any of them. The others always deprived one of their families, but not Pasquinel; he treated both equally. He loved Lise and was proud of the way she ran his house, and after his initial disappointment over the gold, he had come to accept Clay Basket as the superior woman she was. He strove to be a good father, and showed equal affection for his half-breed children and his white.
It was during a visit to his Saint Louis family in the autumn of 1817 that he made a crucial decision. Observing that Bockweiss had developed a large and profitable market in New Orleans and the smaller settlements along the Mississippi for his major silver pieces, he told his father-in-law, “It’s a waste of your time to keep on making trinkets for the Indians.”
“True,” the German agreed. “But where else would you get them?”
“I don’t need them any more. I’m through with trading. Going to trap my own beaver.”
Bockweiss frowned, for he had followed the history of other coureurs who had tried to by-pass the Indians and trap directly. They all ended with arrows through their hearts. “The Indians will fight you,” he warned.
Pasquinel shrugged. “Traders also get killed,” he said, recalling his own narrow escapes.
Bockweiss started to argue this point, but when he saw Pasquinel’s obstinate determination, he halted. “How many traps will you need?” he asked.
“For daily use in the rivers, fourteen. For spares, six.”
“I’ll buy them,” Bockweiss said, and with the traps taking the place of trade goods, Pasquinel set forth upon the adventure that would lure him and his Indian family deep into the Rockies. When he reached McKeag and Clay Basket he told them, “No more trade goods. No more trapping. We’ll get our own beaver.”
“What will the Indians do?” McKeag asked cautiously.
“They’ll fight us,” Pasquinel said. “They’ll probably kill us. But we might as well die rich.”
“Do you know how to trap?” McKeag asked.
“I know this,” and he showed McKeag and his sons a small bottle of castoreum. Early next morning he gave a demonstration of the trapping process.
“Set your traps about four inches under the surface of the water. Fasten one end of the chain to the trap, the other to a stick of dead wood. It must be dead or the beaver will stop there to eat. Then jab another dead stick into the bank so that its end hangs over the hidden trap. And on the end of this stick is where you put your castoreum. Like this. No beaver can come down this stream and smell that without coming over here to investigate. To reach it, he has to plant his feet right in your trap. Slam! He dives for deep water and the weight of the chain drowns him. You come by next day, one beaver.”
In January, February and March, when trapping was impossible, Pasquinel spent
his time studying dams, calculating where the hibernating animals would appear when thaws came. While he was so occupied, McKeag took responsibility for feeding the camp, and with his thrifty approach, reckoned a day lost if he fired bullets without bringing down game. Turkey, antelope, buffalo calf, young deer—they ate well. It was also his job to cure hides; he made two good buffalo robes for their beds. To be prepared when Pasquinel started bringing in beaver, he spent much time in winter looking for aspen saplings, which he cut and bent into circles about four feet across, lashing the ends with elk sinew so as to form rigid frames.
McKeag became an expert in skinning beaver: a swift cut from neck to anus plus four quick cuts about the feet, and he had the skin off. With deer sinews attached to a long bone needle, he sewed the moist skin to the frame, using big looping stitches. At times their camp would have thirty skins hung to dry at one time.