party was just about to enter a narrow valley, Ross with thirty-five
men set out to examine it before the main party entered. They had
looked it partly over, when they saw distant Indians hurrying to cover,
and pursued them. The strangers got into the timber. The trappers asked
the Indians to come out of the woods and smoke, and the Indians invited
them to come into the woods and smoke; but neither party accepted the
invitation. The Indians claimed to be Crows, but Ross believed they
were Blackfeet. The traders picked up some robes, arms, and moccasins,
thrown away in flight, which they left near the hiding-place of the
Indians, and were just about to return, when, as they were mounting,
they saw what looked like a large party of people coming. They made
preparations for a fight, and then discovered that the approaching body
consisted of a large band of horses, driven by four men. Ross with
fifteen men charged toward the horses, whose drivers fled, leaving the
herd. Among the horses were forty-three which belonged in Ross’s camp
and one of those taken from the two trappers sent as messengers to the
Goddin River party. The trappers overtook and captured three of the
Indians and took them back to the camp. There a court-martial was held
and the three captives were condemned to die, but Ross the next morning
succeeded in letting them escape.
The return to the Flathead House was devoid of any special events save
those of ordinary prairie and mountain travel. On the way they had to
pass through deep snows and across frozen rivers where the ice was not
always safe, and at one such point they lost a horse, and two of the
men came near sharing its fate. They reached there the last of November.
The results of the trip amounted to five thousand beaver, exclusive of
other furs--a very successful summer.
In a note appended to a brief vocabulary of the Snake language given
by Ross he makes the following interesting prophecy: “I can state with
undiminished confidence, that the Snake country towards the Rocky
Mountains is, and will be, rich in furs for some generations to come,
and full of interest to men of enterprise. Indeed, the dangers by which
it was then, and still is, in a more or less degree, surrounded, will
always tend to preserve the furs in that inland quarter.”
Little more than two generations have passed, and the fur in what used
to be the Snake country has absolutely disappeared. The dangers from
Indians have long been forgotten, though among the Indians toward the
coast the tradition of the terrible Blackfeet yet persists, and they
still speak of the Blackfeet as “bad people.”
The following spring Governor Simpson wrote to Ross, asking him to try
and procure two Indian boys to be educated at the Red River Colony.
Ross succeeded in getting a Kutenai and a Spokane boy, each ten or
twelve years old. They were given up by the Indians with great regret.
One of the fathers said: “We have given you our hearts--our children
are our hearts; but bring them back again to us before they become
white men--we wish to see them once more Indians--and after that, you
can make them white men, if you like.” The Kutenai boy died after two
or three years at school, but some years later the Spokane boy returned
to his people. He did not turn out very well.
The next spring Ross started to Spokane House to turn in his furs, and
then finally to leave the fur trade. Here he met Governor Simpson, who
promised him a situation in Red River Colony until such time as he
should be able to establish himself. The governor started back with the
party. The return journey was long and laborious. Isolated parties of
Indians were met, in all of whom Ross took keen interest. He gives a
graphic description of travel through mountains, and draws a picture
which gives some idea of the difficulties of the journeys made by these
early travellers, and of the hardihood and endurance of those who
performed them.
Little does the traveller of the present day, hurrying along by train,
or by steamboat, comprehend the constant labor of those early days.
They were journeying on foot up the course of a winding, rushing river:
“When the current proves too strong or the water too deep for one
person to attempt [to cross] it alone, the whole join hands together,
forming a chain, and thus cross in an oblique line, to break the
strength of the current; the tallest always leading the van. By their
united efforts, when a light person is swept off his feet, which not
unfrequently happens, the party drag him along; and the first who
reaches the shore always lays hold of the branches of some friendly
tree or bush that may be in the way; the second does the same, and so
on till all get out of the water. But often they are no sooner out than
in again; and perhaps several traverses will have to be made within
the space of a hundred yards, and sometimes within a few yards of each
other; just as the rocks, or other impediments bar the way. After
crossing several times, I regretted that I had not begun sooner to
count the number; but before night, I had sixty-two traverses marked on
my walking-stick, which served as my journal throughout the day.
“When not among ice and snow, or in the water, we had to walk on a
stony beach, or on gravelly flats, being constantly in and out of the
water: many had got their feet blistered, which was extremely painful.
The cold made us advance at a quick pace, to keep ourselves warm; and
despatch was the order of the day. The Governor himself, generally at
the head, made the first plunge into the water, and was not the last
to get out. His smile encouraged others, and his example checked
murmuring. At a crossing-place there was seldom a moment’s hesitation;
all plunged in, and had to get out as they could. And we had to be
lightly clad, so as to drag less water. Our general course to-day was
north-east, but we had at times to follow every point of the compass,
and might have travelled altogether twenty miles, although in a direct
line we scarcely advanced eight. The ascent appeared to be gradual, yet
the contrary was indicated by the rapidity of the current. After a day
of excessive fatigue, we halted at dusk, cooked our suppers, dried our
clothes, smoked our pipes, then, each spreading his blanket, we laid
ourselves down to rest; and, perhaps, of all rest, that enjoyed on the
voyage, after a hard day’s labour, is the sweetest.
“To give a correct idea of this part of our journey, let the reader
picture in his own mind a dark, narrow defile, skirted on one side by
a chain of inaccessible mountains, rising to a great height, covered
with snow, and slippery with ice from their tops down to the water’s
edge. And on the other side, a beach comparatively low, but studded
in an irregular manner with standing and fallen trees, rocks, and
ice, and full of drift-wood; over which the torrent everywhere rushes
with such irresistible impetuosity, that very few would dare to
adventure themselves in the stream. Let him again imagine a rapid river
descending from some great height, filling up the whole channel between
the rocky precipices on the south and the no less dangerous barrier
on the north. And lastly, let him suppose that we were obliged to make
our way on foot against such a torrent, by crossing and recrossing it
in all its turns and windings from morning till night, up to the middle
in water,--and he will understand that we have not exaggerated the
difficulties to be overcome in crossing the Rocky Mountains.”
At last the party reached the summit of the Rocky Mountains, and
passing by the Rocky Mountain House, took canoes. Here they found
Joseph Felix Larocque, and from here they went on down the Athabasca
in canoes to Jasper House and to Fort Assiniboine; and there again
changing to horses, at last reached Edmonton. This was then the centre
of a great trade, and was under charge of Mr. Rowan, chief factor of
the Hudson Bay Company, and earlier a partner in the Northwest Company.
The further journey back toward the Red River was marked by the
meeting, near Lake Bourbon--Cedar Lake--with Captain Franklin and Dr.
Richardson on their overland Arctic expedition.
At Norway House Governor Simpson stopped, while Ross was to keep on
eastward. Governor Simpson, after again trying to persuade Ross to
remain in the service of the company, made him a free grant of one
hundred acres of land in the Red River Settlement, and paid him many
compliments on his efficiency and success in the Snake country.
With a party of twenty-seven people, a motley crew of incompetents,
Ross started from Norway House for Red River. He quotes an
interestingly boastful speech by an ancient French voyageur:
“‘I have now,’ said he, ‘been forty-two years in this country. For
twenty-four I was a light canoe-man; I required but little sleep, but
sometimes got less than I required. No portage was too long for me;
all portages were alike. My end of the canoe never touched the ground
till I saw the end of it. Fifty songs a day were nothing to me. I
could carry, paddle, walk, and sing with any man I ever saw. During
that period, I saved the lives of ten bourgeois, and was always the
favourite, because when others stopped to carry at a bad step, and
lost time, I pushed on--over rapids, over cascades, over chutes; all
were the same to me. No water, no weather, ever stopped the paddle
or the song. I have had twelve wives in the country; and was once
possessed of fifty horses, and six running dogs, trimmed in the first
style. I was then like a bourgeois, rich and happy: no bourgeois had
better-dressed wives than I; no Indian chief finer horses; no white
man better-harnessed or swifter dogs. I beat all Indians at the race,
and no white man ever passed me in the chase. I wanted for nothing;
and I spent all my earnings in the enjoyment of pleasure. Five hundred
pounds, twice told, have passed through my hands; although now I have
not a spare shirt to my back, nor a penny to buy one. Yet, were I young
again, I should glory in commencing the same career again. I would
gladly spend another half-century in the same fields of enjoyment.
There is no life so happy as a voyageur’s life; none so independent;
no place where a man enjoys so much variety and freedom as in the
Indian country. Huzza! huzza! pour le pays sauvage!’ After this _cri de
joie_, he sat down in the boat, and we could not help admiring the wild
enthusiasm of the old Frenchman. He had boasted and excited himself,
till he was out of breath, and then sighed with regret that he could no
longer enjoy the scenes of his past life.”
On the journey there was excitement enough, storms and running
aground--usual incidents of canoe travel--but at last they reached Red
River, and Ross’s fur trading journeys were over.
WHEN BEAVER SKINS WERE MONEY
I
BENT’S FORT
Whenever the history of the Southwest shall be written, more than one
long and interesting chapter must be devoted to the first permanent
settlement on its plains and the first permanent settler there. In the
accounts of that wide territory through which the old Santa Fé trail
passed, William Bent and Bent’s Old Fort have frequent mention.
Who were the Bents and whence did they come?
Silas Bent was born in the Colony of Massachusetts in 1768. His father
is said to have been one of those who attended the famous “Boston Tea
Party.” Silas was educated for the bar, and came to St. Louis in 1804
at the time the government of Louisiana was turned over to the American
authorities. Here he served as a judge of the Superior Court, and here
he resided until his death, in 1827.
Of his seven sons, John was educated for the bar and became a
well-known attorney of St. Louis. The youngest son, Silas, as
flag-lieutenant of the flag-ship “Mississippi,” was with Perry
in Japan, and wrote a report on the Japan current for an American
scientific society. He delivered addresses on meteorology in St. Louis
in 1879, and on climate as affecting cattle-breeding in the year 1884.
Four other sons--Charles, William W., and later George and Robert--were
prominent in the Indian trade on the upper Arkansas and elsewhere
between 1820 and 1850, and remained trading in that region until they
died.
The leading spirit in this family of Indian traders was William W.
Bent. Early in life Charles and William Bent had been up on the
Missouri River working for the American Fur Company. Colonel Bent
stated to his son George that he went up there in the year 1816, when
very young.[5] Very likely he was then a small boy only ten or twelve
years old. It was there that Charles and William Bent became acquainted
with Robert Campbell, of St. Louis, who remained a firm friend of
the brothers throughout his life. William Bent could speak the Sioux
language fluently and the Sioux had called him Wa-sī´cha-chischī´-la,
meaning Little White Man, a name which confirms the statement that he
entered the trade very young, and seems to warrant the belief that his
work for the fur company was at some post in the Sioux country.
[5] The history of _The Bent Family in America_ gives the date
of William Bent’s birth as 1809, which can hardly be made to
agree with this statement.
In his testimony before the joint commission which inquired into Indian
affairs on the plains in 1865, William Bent stated that he had first
come to the upper Arkansas and settled near the Purgatoire, just below
the present city of Pueblo, Colorado, in 1824; that is to say, two
years before he and his brother began to erect their first trading
establishment on the Arkansas. Previous to this time William Bent had
been trapping in the mountains near there, and may very well have done
some individual trading with the Indians.
William Bent was undoubtedly the first permanent white settler in what
is now Colorado, and for a very long time he was not only its first
settler, but remained its most important white citizen.
By his fair and open dealings, by his fearless conduct, and by his love
of justice, William Bent soon won the respect and confidence of the
Indians with whom he had to do. Among the rough fraternity of mountain
trappers he was also very popular, his reputation for courage being
remarkable even among that class of daring men. He was tirelessly
active in prosecuting the aims of his trade, making frequent trips to
the camps of the various tribes with which he, and later his company,
had dealings, and to the Mexican settlements in the valley of Taos
and to Santa Fé. Every year, probably from 1824 to 1864, he made at
least one journey from the fort on the Arkansas, across the plains of
Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri, to the settlements on the Missouri
frontier.
About 1835 William Bent married Owl Woman, the daughter of White
Thunder, an important man among the Cheyennes, then the keeper of the
medicine arrows. Bent’s Fort was his home, and there his children were
born, the oldest, Mary, about 1836, Robert in 1839--his own statement
made in 1865 says 1841--George in July, 1843, and Julia in 1847. Owl
Woman died at the fort in 1847 in giving birth to Julia, and her
husband afterward married her sister, Yellow Woman. Charles Bent was
the child of his second marriage.
William Bent appears to have been the first of the brothers to go into
the Southwestern country to trade for fur, but Charles is said to
have gone to Santa Fé as early as 1819, and a little later must have
joined William. The two, with Ceran St. Vrain and one of the Chouteaus,
established the early trading post near the Arkansas. After occupying
this stockade for two years or more, they moved down below Pueblo and
built another stockade on the Arkansas. Two years later they began
to build the more ambitious post afterward known as Bent’s, or Fort
William, or Bent’s Old Fort. George and Robert Bent apparently did not
come out to the fort until after it was completed--perhaps after it
had been for some time in operation. Benito Vasquez was at one time a
partner in the company.
[Illustration: BLACK BEAVER, DELAWARE SCOUT]
[Illustration: GEORGE BENT]
It was in 1828 that the Bent brothers, with St. Vrain, began this
large fort, fifteen miles above the mouth of Purgatoire River. It was
not completed until 1832. Four years seems a long time to be spent
in the construction of such a post, even though it was built of
adobe brick, but there were reasons for the delay. Charles Bent was
determined that the fort should be built of adobes in order to make
it fireproof, so that under no circumstances could it be burned by
the Indians. Besides that, adobes were much more durable and more
comfortable--cool in summer, warm in winter--than logs would have been.
When the question of how the fort should be built had been decided,
Charles Bent went to New Mexico, and from Taos and Santa Fé sent over
a number of Mexicans to make adobe brick. With them he sent some
wagon-loads of Mexican wool to mix with the clay of the bricks, thus
greatly lengthening the life of the adobes.
Only a short time, however, after the laborers had reached the intended
site of the fort, smallpox broke out among them, and it was necessary
to send away those not attacked. William Bent, St. Vrain, Kit Carson,
and other white men who were there caught the smallpox from the
Mexicans, and though none died they were so badly marked by it that
some of the Indians who had known them well in the early years of the
trading did not recognize them when they met again.
During the prevalence of the smallpox at the post William Bent sent
a runner, Francisco, one of his Mexican herders, north, to warn the
Cheyennes not to come near the post. Francisco set out for the Black
Hills, and on his way encountered a large war-party of Cheyennes on
their way to the fort. He told them of what had happened, and warned
them to return north and not to come near the post until sent for. The
Cheyennes obeyed, and it was not until some time later, when all at
Fort William had recovered and when the temporary stockade with all
the infected material that it contained had been burned, that Bent and
St. Vrain, with a few pack-mules, started north for the Black Hills to
find the Cheyennes and invite them to return to the post. The year of
this journey has been given me as 1831. Perhaps it may have been a year
earlier.
After the smallpox had ceased, more Mexican laborers were sent for, and
work on the fort was resumed. Not long before his death, Kit Carson
stated that at one time more than a hundred and fifty Mexicans were at
work on the construction of the post.
Accounts of the dimensions of the fort differ, but on certain points
all agree: that it was of adobes, set square with the points of the
compass, and on the north bank of the Arkansas River. Garrard says
that the post was a hundred feet square and the walls thirty feet in
height. Another account says that the walls ran a hundred and fifty
feet east and west and a hundred feet north and south, and that they
were seventeen feet high. J. T. Hughes, however, in his _Doniphan’s
Expedition_, printed in Cincinnati in 1848, says:
“Fort Bent is situated on the north bank of the Arkansas, 650 miles
west of Fort Leavenworth, in latitude 38° 2´ north, and longitude 103°
3´ west from Greenwich. The exterior walls of this fort, whose figure
is that of an oblong square, are fifteen feet high and four feet thick.
It is 180 feet long and 135 feet wide and is divided into various
compartments, the whole built of adobes or sun-dried bricks.”
At the southwest and northeast corners of these walls were bastions, or
round towers, thirty feet in height and ten feet in diameter inside,
with loopholes for muskets and openings for cannon. Garrard speaks of
the bastions as hexagonal in form.
Around the walls in the second stories of the bastions hung sabres and
great heavy lances with long, sharp blades. These were intended for use
in case an attempt were made to take the fort by means of ladders put
up against the wall. Besides these cutting and piercing implements, the
walls were hung with flint-lock muskets and pistols.
In the east wall of the fort was a wide gateway formed by two immense
swinging doors made of heavy planks. These doors were studded with
heavy nails and plated with sheet-iron, so that they could never be
burned by the Indians. The same was true of the gateway which entered
the corral, to be described later.
Over the main gate of the fort was a square watch tower surmounted
by a belfry, from the top of which rose a flagstaff. The watch tower
contained a single room with windows on all sides, and in the room was
an old-fashioned long telescope, or spy-glass, mounted on a pivot.
Here certain members of the garrison, relieving each other at stated
intervals, were constantly on the lookout. There was a chair for
the watchman to sit in and a bed for his sleeping. If the watchman,
through his glass, noticed anything unusual--for example, if he saw a
great dust rising over the prairie--he notified the people below. If a
suspicious-looking party of Indians was seen approaching, the watchman
signalled to the herder to bring in the horses, for the stock was never
turned loose, but was always on herd.
In the belfry, under a little roof which rose above the watch tower,
hung the bell of the fort, which sounded the hours for meals. Two tame
white-headed eagles kept at the fort were sometimes confined within
this belfry, or at others were allowed to fly about free, returning of
their own accord to sleep in the belfry. One of these eagles finally
disappeared, and for a long time it was not known what had become of
it. Then it was learned that it had been killed for its feathers by a
young Indian at some distance from the fort.
[Illustration: PLAN OF BENT’S OLD FORT]
At the back of the fort over the gate, which opened into the corral,
was a second-story room rising high above the walls, as the watch tower
did in front. This room--an extraordinary luxury for the time--was
used as a billiard-room during the later years of the post. It was
long enough to accommodate a large billiard-table, and across one end
of the room ran a counter, or bar, over which drinkables were served.
These luxuries were brought out by Robert and George Bent, young
men who did not come out to the fort until some time after it had been
constructed, and who, being city-dwellers--for I have no record of
their having any early experience of frontier life--no doubt felt that
they required city amusements.
The watch tower and billiard-room were supported on heavy adobe walls
running at right angles to the main enclosing walls of the fort, and
these supporting walls formed the ends of the rooms on either side of
the gates in the outer walls.
The stores, warehouses, and living-rooms of the post were ranged around
the walls, and opened into the patio, or courtyard--the hollow square
within. In some of the books dealing with these old times it is said
that when the Indians entered the fort to trade, cannon were loaded
and sentries patrolled the walls with loaded guns. This may have been
true of the early days of the fort, but it was not true of the latter
part of the decade between 1840 and 1850. At that time the Indians,
or at least the Cheyenne Indians, had free run of the post and were
allowed to go upstairs, on the walls, and into the watch tower. The
various rooms about the courtyard received light and air from the doors
and windows opening out into this courtyard, which was gravelled. The
floors of the rooms were of beaten clay, as was commonly the case in
Mexican houses, and the roofs were built in the same fashion that long
prevailed in the West. Poles were laid from the front wall to the rear,
slightly inclined toward the front. Over these poles twigs or brush
were laid, and over the brush clay was spread, tramped hard, and gravel
thrown over this. These roofs were used as a promenade by the men of
the fort and their families in the evenings. The top of the fort walls
reached about four feet above these roofs, or breast-high of a man, and
these walls were pierced with loopholes through which to shoot in case
of attack.
Hughes in his _Doniphan’s Expedition_ says: “The march upon Santa
Fé was resumed Aug. 2, 1846, after a respite of three days in the
neighborhood of Fort Bent. As we passed the fort the American flag was
raised in compliment to our troops and in concert with our own streamed
most animatingly on the gale that swept from the desert, while the
tops of the houses were crowded with Mexican girls and Indian squaws,
beholding the American Army.”