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TRAILS OF THE PATHFINDERS
* * * * * *
IN THE SAME SERIES
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
=The Boy’s Catlin.= My Life Among the Indians, by GEORGE
CATLIN. Edited by MARY GAY HUMPHREYS. Illustrated.
12mo. _net_ $1.50
=The Boy’s Hakluyt.= English Voyages of Adventure and
Discovery, retold from Hakluyt by EDWIN M. BACON.
Illustrated. 12mo. _net_ $1.50
=The Boy’s Drake.= By EDWIN M. BACON. Illustrated. 12mo.
_net_ $1.50
=Trails of the Pathfinders.= By GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL.
Illustrated. 12mo. _net_ $1.50
* * * * * *
TRAILS OF THE PATHFINDERS
[Illustration:
CAPTAINS LEWIS AND CLARK WERE MUCH PUZZLED AT THIS POINT TO KNOW
WHICH OF THE RIVERS BEFORE THEM WAS THE MAIN MISSOURI.]
TRAILS OF THE PATHFINDERS
by
GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL
Author of “Blackfoot Lodge Tales,” “Pawnee Hero
Stories and Folk Tales,” “The Story of the
Indian,” “Indians of Today,” etc.
Illustrated
New York
Charles Scribner’S Sons
1911
Copyright, 1911, by
Charles Scribner’S Sons
Published April, 1911
[Illustration]
PREFACE
The chapters in this book appeared first as part of a series of
articles under the same title contributed to _Forest and Stream_
several years ago. At the time they aroused much interest and there was
a demand that they should be put into book form.
The books from which these accounts have been drawn are good reading
for all Americans. They are at once history and adventure. They deal
with a time when half the continent was unknown; when the West--distant
and full of romance--held for the young, the brave and the hardy,
possibilities that were limitless.
The legend of the kingdom of El Dorado did not pass with the passing of
the Spaniards. All through the eighteenth and a part of the nineteenth
century it was recalled in another sense by the fur trader, and with
the discovery of gold in California it was heard again by a great
multitude--and almost with its old meaning.
Besides these old books on the West, there are many others which every
American should read. They treat of that same romantic period, and
describe the adventures of explorers, Indian fighters, fur hunters and
fur traders. They are a part of the history of the continent.
NEW YORK, _April_, 1911.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION 3
II. ALEXANDER HENRY--I 13
III. ALEXANDER HENRY--II 36
IV. JONATHAN CARVER 57
V. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE--I 84
VI. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE--II 102
VII. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE--III 121
VIII. LEWIS AND CLARK--I 138
IX. LEWIS AND CLARK--II 154
X. LEWIS AND CLARK--III 169
XI. LEWIS AND CLARK--IV 179
XII. LEWIS AND CLARK--V 190
XIII. ZEBULON M. PIKE--I 207
XIV. ZEBULON M. PIKE--II 226
XV. ZEBULON M. PIKE--III 238
XVI. ALEXANDER HENRY (THE YOUNGER)--I 253
XVII. ALEXANDER HENRY (THE YOUNGER)--II 271
XVIII. ALEXANDER HENRY (THE YOUNGER)--III 287
XIX. ROSS COX--I 301
XX. ROSS COX--II 319
XXI. THE COMMERCE OF THE PRAIRIES--I 330
XXII. THE COMMERCE OF THE PRAIRIES--II 341
XXIII. SAMUEL PARKER 359
XXIV. THOMAS J. FARNHAM--I 372
XXV. THOMAS J. FARNHAM--II 382
XXVI. FREMONT--I 393
XXVII. FREMONT--II 405
XXVIII. FREMONT--III 415
XXIX. FREMONT--IV 428
XXX. FREMONT--V 435
ILLUSTRATIONS
CAPTAINS LEWIS AND CLARK WERE MUCH PUZZLED AT THIS POINT TO
KNOW WHICH OF THE RIVERS BEFORE THEM WAS THE MAIN MISSOURI
_Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“I NOW RESIGNED MYSELF TO THE FATE WITH WHICH I WAS MENACED” 28
A MAN OF THE NAUDOWESSIE 62
From _Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America_,
by Jonathan Carver
A MAN OF THE OTTIGAUMIES 62
From _Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America_,
by Jonathan Carver
ALEXANDER MACKENZIE 84
From Mackenzie’s _Voyages from Montreal Through the Continent
of North America_, etc.
MACKENZIE AND THE MEN JUMPED OVERBOARD 118
LIEUTENANT ZEBULON MONTGOMERY PIKE, MONUMENT AT COLORADO SPRINGS,
COLORADO 208
BUFFALO ON THE SOUTHERN PLAINS 236
From Kendall’s _Narrative of the Texas Santa Fé Expedition_
TWO MEN MOUNTED ON HER BACK, BUT SHE WAS AS ACTIVE WITH THIS LOAD
AS BEFORE 270
FUR TRADERS OF THE NORTH 280
ASTORIA IN 1813 302
From Franchere’s _Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest
Coast of America_
CARAVAN ON THE MARCH 334
From Gregg’s _Commerce of the Prairies_
WAGONS PARKED FOR THE NIGHT 340
From Gregg’s _Commerce of the Prairies_
TRAPPERS ATTACKED BY INDIANS 360
From an old print by A. Tait
TRAIN STAMPEDED BY WILD HORSES 372
From Bartlett’s _Texas, New Mexico, California_, etc.
MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN C. FREMONT 394
AN OTO COUNCIL 414
From James’s _An Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky
Mountains by Major Stephen H. Long_.
MAP
PAGE
ROUTES OF SOME OF THE PATHFINDERS 2
TRAILS OF THE PATHFINDERS
[Illustration: ROUTES OF SOME OF THE PATHFINDERS]
TRAILS OF THE PATHFINDERS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Three centuries ago half a dozen tiny hamlets, peopled by white men,
were scattered along the western shores of the North Atlantic Ocean.
These little settlements owed allegiance to different nations of
Europe, each of which had thrust out a hand to grasp some share of the
wealth which might lie in the unknown wilderness which stretched away
from the seashore toward the west.
The “Indies” had been discovered more than a hundred years before, but
though ships had sailed north and ships had sailed south, little was
known of the land, through which men were seeking a passage to share
the trade which the Portuguese, long before, had opened up with the
mysterious East. That passage had not been found. To the north lay ice
and snow, to the south--vaguely known--lay the South Sea. What that
South Sea was, what its limits, what its relations to lands already
visited, were still secrets.
St. Augustine had been founded in 1565; and forty years later the
French made their first settlement at Port Royal in what is now Nova
Scotia. In 1607 Jamestown was settled; and a year later the French
established Quebec. The Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts in 1620 and
the first settlement of the Dutch on the island of Manhattan was in
1623. All these settlers establishing themselves in a new country
found enough to do in the struggle to procure subsistence, to protect
themselves from the elements and from the attacks of enemies, without
attempting to discover what lay inland--beyond the sound of the salt
waves which beat upon the coast. Not until later was any effort made to
learn what lay in the vast interior.
Time went on. The settlements increased. Gradually men pushed farther
and farther inland. There were wars; and one nation after another was
crowded from its possessions, until, at length, the British owned all
the settlements in eastern temperate America. The white men still clung
chiefly to the sea-coast, and it was in western Pennsylvania that the
French and Indians defeated Braddock in 1755, George Washington being
an officer under his command.
A little later came the war of the Revolution, and a new people sprang
into being in a land a little more than two hundred and fifty years
known. This people, teeming with energy, kept reaching out in all
directions for new things. As they increased in numbers they spread
chiefly in the direction of least resistance. The native tribes were
easier to displace than the French, who held forts to the north, and
the Spanish, who possessed territory to the south; and the temperate
climate toward the west attracted them more than the cold of the
north or the heat of the south. So the Americans pushed on always
to the setting sun, and their early movements gave truth to Bishop
Berkeley’s famous line, written long before and in an altogether
different connection, “Westward the course of empire takes its way.”
The Mississippi was reached, and little villages, occupied by Frenchmen
and their half-breed children, began to change, to be transformed into
American towns. Yet in 1790, ninety-five per cent. of the population of
the United States was on the Atlantic seaboard.
Now came the Louisiana Purchase, and immediately after that the
expedition across the continent by Meriwether Lewis and William
Clark. The trip took two years’ time, and the reports brought back
by the intrepid explorers, telling the wonderful story of what lay
in the unknown beyond, greatly stimulated the imagination of the
western people. Long before this it had become known that the western
ocean--the South Sea of an earlier day--extended north along the
continent, and that there was no connection here with India. It was
known, too, that the Spaniards occupied the west coast. In 1790,
Umfreville said: “That there are European traders settled among the
Indians from the other side of the continent is without doubt. I,
myself, have seen horses with Roman capitals burnt in their flanks with
a hot iron. I likewise once saw a hanger with Spanish words engraved on
the blade. Many other proofs have been obtained to convince us that
the Spaniards on the opposite side of the continent make their inland
peregrinations as well as ourselves.”
Western travel and exploration, within the United States, began
soon after the return of Lewis and Clark. The trapper, seeking for
peltry--the rich furs so much in demand in Europe--was the first to
penetrate the unknown wilds; but close upon his heels followed the
Indian trader, who used trapper and Indian alike to fill his purse.
With the trapper and the trader, naturalists began to push out into
the west, studying the fauna and flora of the new lands. About the
same time the possibilities of trade with the Mexicans induced the
beginnings of the Santa Fé trade, that Commerce of the Prairies which
has been so fully written of by the intrepid spirits who took part
in it. Meantime the government continued to send out expeditions,
poorly provided in many ways, scarcely armed, barely furnished with
provisions, without means of making their way through the unknown and
dangerous regions to which they were sent, but led by heroes.
For forty years this work of investigation went on; for forty years
there took place a peopling of the new West by men who were in very
deed the bravest and most adventurous of our brave and hardy border
population. They scattered over the plains and through the mountains;
they trapped the beaver and fought the Indian and guided the explorers;
and took to themselves wives from among their very enemies, and raised
up broods of hardy offspring, some of whom we may yet meet as we
journey through the cattle and the farming country which used to be the
far West.
If ever any set of men played their part in subduing the wilderness,
and in ploughing the ground to receive its seed of settlement, and to
rear the crop of civilization which is now being harvested, these men
did that work, and did it well. It is inconceivable that they should
have had the foresight to know what they were doing; to imagine what
it was that should come after them. They did not think of that. Like
the bold, brave, hardy men of all times and of all countries, they did
the work that lay before them, bravely, faithfully, and well, without
any special thought of a distant future; surely without any regrets for
the past. As the years rolled by, sickness, battle, the wild beast,
starvation, murder, death in some form, whether sudden or lingering,
struck them down singly or by scores; and that a man had been “rubbed
out,” was cause for a sigh of regret or a word of sorrow from his
companions, who forthwith saddled up and started on some journey of
peril, where their fate might be what his had been.
At the end of forty years the first series of these exploratory
journeys came to an end. Gold was discovered in California. The Mexican
War took place. This was not unexpected, for in the Southwest, about
the pueblos of Taos and Santa Fé, skirmishings and quarrels between the
Spanish-Indian inhabitants and the rough mountaineers and teamsters
from the States had already given warning of a conflict soon to come.
Now, well travelled wagon roads crossed the continent, and a stream of
westward immigration that seemed to have no end. Before long there came
Indian wars. The immigrants imposed upon the savages, ill-treated their
wives, and were truculent and over-bearing to their men. The Indians
stole from the immigrants, and drove off their horses. Then began a
season of conflict which, by one tribe and another, yet with many
intermissions, lasted almost down to our own day. For the most part,
these Indian wars are well within the memory of living men. They have
been told of by those who saw them and were a part of them.
Of the travellers who marched westward over the arid plains, during the
period which intervened between the return of Lewis and Clark and the
establishment of the old California trail, and of the earlier northmen
who trafficked for the beaver in Canada, a few left records of their
journeys; and of these records many are most interesting reading,
for they are simple, faithful narratives of the every-day life of
travellers through unknown regions. To Americans they are of especial
interest, for they tell of a time when one-half of the continent which
now teems with population had no inhabitants. The acres which now
contribute freely of food that supplies the world; the mountains which
now echo to the rattle of machinery, and the shot of the blasts which
lay bare millions worth of precious metal; the waters which are churned
by propeller blades, transporting all the varied products of the land
to their markets; the forests, which, alas! in too many sections, no
longer rustle to the breeze, but have been swept away to make room for
farms and town sites--all these were then undisturbed and natural, as
they had been for a thousand years. Of the travellers who passed over
the vast stretches of prairie or mountain or woodland, many saw the
possibilities of this vast land, and prophesied as to what might be
wrought here, when, in the dim and distant future, which none could yet
foresee, settlements should have pushed out from the east and occupied
the land. Other travellers declared that these barren wastes would ever
prove a barrier to westward settlement.
The books that were written concerning this new land are mostly long
out of print, or difficult of access; yet each one of them is worth
perusal. Of their authors, some bear names still familiar, even though
their works have been lost sight of. Some of them made discoveries of
great interest in one branch or other of science. At a later day some
attained fame. Parkman’s first essay in literature was his story of
_The California and Oregon Trail_, a fitting introduction to the many
fascinating volumes that he contributed later to the early history of
America; while in Washington Irving, historian and essayist, was found
a narrator who should first tell connectedly of the fur trade of the
Northwest, and the adventures of Bonneville.
Besides the books that were published in those times, there were
also written accounts, usually in the form of diaries, or of notes
kept from day to day of the happenings in the life of this or that
individual, which are full of interest, because they give us pictures
of one or another phase of early travel, or hunting adventures, or of
trading with the Indians. Such private and personal accounts, never
intended for the public eye, are to-day of extreme interest; and it is
fortunate that an American student, the late Dr. Elliott Coues, has
given us volumes which tell the stories of Lewis and Clark, Pike and
Garces, of Jacob Fowler, of Alexander Henry the younger, and of Charles
Larpenteur--contributions to the history of the winning of the greater
West whose value is only now beginning to be appreciated.
The chapters that follow contain much of history which is old, but
which, to the average American, will prove absolutely new. One may
imagine himself very much interested in the old West, familiar with
its history and devoted to its study, but it is not until he has gone
through volume after volume of this ancient literature that he realizes
how greatly his knowledge lacks precision and how much he still has to
learn concerning the country he inhabits.
The work that the early travellers did, and the books they published,
showed to the people of their day the conditions which existed in the
far West, caused its settlement, and led to the slow discovery of its
mineral treasures, and the slower appreciation of its possibilities to
the farmer and stock-raiser. Each of these volumes had its readers, and
of the readers of each we may be sure that a few, or many, attracted by
the graphic descriptions of the new land, determined that they, too,
would push out into it; they, too, would share in the wealth which it
spread out with lavish hand.
It is all so long ago that we who are busy with a thousand modern
interests care little about who contributed to the greatness of the
country which we inhabit and the prosperity which we enjoy. But there
was a day, which men alive may still remember, a day of strong men, of
brave women, hardy pioneers, and true hearts, who ventured forth into
the wilderness, braving many dangers that were real, and many more that
were imaginary and yet to them seemed very real, occupied the land,
broke up the virgin soil, and peopled a wilderness.
How can the men and women of this generation--dwellers in cities, or
in peaceful villages, or on smiling farms--realize what those pioneers
did--how they lived? He must have possessed stern resolution and firm
courage, who, to better the condition of those dearest to him, risked
their comfort--their very lives--on the hazard of a settlement in the
unknown wilderness. The woman who accompanied this man bore an equal
part in the struggle, with devoted helpfulness encouraging him in
his strife with nature or cheering him in defeat. If the school of
self-reliance and hardihood in which their children were reared gave
them little of the lore of books, it built strong characters and made
them worthy successors of courageous parents. We may not comprehend how
long and fierce was the struggle with the elements, with the bristling
forest, with the unbroken soil; how hard and wearing the annoyance
of wild beasts, the anxiety as to climate, the fear of the prowling
savage. Yet the work was done, and to-day, from the Alleghanies to the
Pacific, we behold its results.
Through hard experience these pioneers had come to understand life.
They possessed a due sense of proportion. They saw the things which
were essential; they scorned those which were trivial. If, judged
by certain standards, they were rough and uncouth, if they spoke a
strange tongue, wore odd apparel, and lived narrow lives, they were yet
practising--albeit unconsciously--the virtues--unflinching courage,
sturdy independence and helpfulness to their neighbors--which have made
America what it is.
In the work of travel and exploration in that far West of which we used
to read, the figure which stands out boldest and most heroic of all is
unnamed. Bearded, buckskin-clad, with rough fur cap, or kerchief tied
about his head, wearing powder-horn and ball-pouch, and scalping-knife,
and carrying his trusty Hawkins rifle, the trapper--the _coureur des
bois_--was the man who did the first work in subduing the wild West,
the man who laid the foundations on which its present civilization is
built.
All honor to this nameless hero. We shall meet him often as we follow
the westward trail.