ALEXANDER HENRY (THE YOUNGER)
III
On July 28 they started on their return to the north, in constant fears
and alarms lest the Assiniboines should steal their horses. A few days
later the horses, troubled by mosquitoes, broke their ropes, and eight
of them ran off in their hobbles. These could not be found again,
and some of the people were obliged to go forward on foot, while the
baggage was loaded on the remaining horses.
On his journey back to the Pembina River, Henry had an experience
comical to read about, but not to endure. “We took the traverse for
the mountain, but on coming to Cypress River found it had overflowed
its banks about three acres on each side, and could find no fordable
place. We were obliged to turn out of our way some miles, in going to
where we perceived a large, dry poplar tree, and a few stunted willows,
but there we had the mortification to find that the wood stood on the
opposite side of the river. There being no alternative, we unloaded our
horses and stripped. I crossed over, collected what brush I could find,
and with the poplar formed a raft, so very slight as to carry scarcely
more than fifty pounds’ weight. The mosquitoes were intolerable, and as
we were obliged to remain naked for about four hours, we suffered more
than I can describe. The grass on each side was too high to haul our
raft through to dry land; we could use it only on the river by means of
two long cords, one fastened to each end. Ducharme hauled it over to
his side, and after making it fast, he went to dry land for a load in
water up to his armpits, whilst I waited with my whole body immersed
until he brought down a load and laid it upon the raft. I then hauled
it over and carried the load to dry land upon my head. Every time I
landed the mosquitoes plagued me insufferably; and still worse, the
horse that I had crossed over upon was so tormented that he broke his
fetters and ran away. I was under the cruel necessity of pursuing him
on the plains entirely naked; fortunately I caught him and brought him
back. I suffered a good deal from the sharp-pointed grass pricking my
bare feet, and mosquito bites covered my body. The sun was set before
we finished our transportation. The water in this river is always
excessively cold, and by the time we got all over, our bodies were as
blue as indigo; we were shivering like aspen leaves, and our legs were
cut and chafed by the coarse, stiff grass. We shot an old swan, and
caught two young ones that could not fly; this made us a comfortable
supper.”
Henry reached the fort August 14.
“One of our hunters killed thirty-six prime bears in the course of the
season on the Hair Hills. Whatever number of bears an Indian may kill
in the summer or fall is considered of no consequence, as they are
valueless and easy to hunt, but after they have taken up their winter
quarters the Indians glory in killing them.”
In August, 1808, Henry finally left the Panbian River on his way
westward, bidding adieu also to the Saulteur tribes, among which, as
he says, he had passed sixteen long winters. His journey was through
Lake Winnipeg to the Saskatchewan and Lake Bourbon, now known as Cedar
Lake. On the 22nd he passed old Fort Bourbon, established in 1749
by Vérendrye, and entered one of the channels of the Saskatchewan.
Wild-fowl were very abundant as they pushed up the river. At last they
entered Sturgeon Lake, and reached Cumberland House. They kept on up
the stream, ascending the north branch, from time to time meeting
Indians, some of whom were Assiniboines, called Assiniboines of the
Saskatchewan, and as they had before this purchased some horses, they
were fearful that these might be stolen. It was now September, and the
bushes were loaded with choke-cherries and service berries. Buffalo
paths running in every direction were deep and numerous. Ammunition
was issued early in September to the men for purposes of defense. Soon
buffalo were met, and here Henry first ran these animals over the rough
ground of the plains, covered with large round, stones, and pierced at
frequent intervals with badger holes. On September 13 he reached Fort
Vermilion, where was a fort of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and found the
Blackfeet all about. Here Henry wintered, expecting to be visited by
numerous tribes from the south.
Just before Christmas, in December, the Blackfeet invited Henry and his
Hudson’s Bay neighbor to come to their camp and see buffalo driven into
the pound. The two men went in dog sledges, and were kindly received
by the Indians, but the weather was insufferable, being foggy, and the
wind was contrary. They viewed the pound, where they “had only the
satisfaction of viewing the mangled carcasses strewn about the pound.
The bulls were mostly entire, none but good cows having been cut up.
The stench from this inclosure was great, even at this season, for the
weather was mild.” From the lookout hill, buffalo were seen in enormous
numbers, but as the wind was unfavorable, every herd that was brought
near to the pound dispersed and ran away. After having been there two
days, Henry became disgusted, and returned to the post; but he was
followed by a number of Blackfeet, who arrived the next day, and told
him that they had scarcely left when a large herd was brought into the
pound.
On the 26th of September, 1810, Henry set off on horseback, westward;
the canoes, of course, coming up the stream. Their destination was
Rocky Mountain House, a post located on the north Saskatchewan River,
a mile and a half above the mouth of Clearwater, three miles below
Pangman’s Tree, so named from the fact that Peter Pangman carved an
inscription on it when he first sighted the mountains in 1790.
On the way up the stream they found signs of beaver extremely
abundant; but although one of the Indians set traps in the hope of
taking some, the winds blew the smoke of the camp toward the traps,
and the beaver did not leave their houses that night. The next day,
however, they took two, the signs still showing the presence of great
quantities of beaver. Ahead of Henry was a camp of Sarsi, twenty-five
lodges, which had just left, for at their camp on Medicine Lodge River,
a branch of the Red Deer; the fires were still burning. They must have
made a good hunt here, since the bones of beaver, bear, moose, elk
and buffalo lay about their camp in great quantities. That afternoon
they met five lodges of Bloods and Sarsi, with whom they camped. Game
was abundant, and Henry notes on the 5th the appearance of a herd of
strongwood buffalo, the bison of the hills and mountains, so different
in appearance and some of their habits from those of the prairie. Here,
too, were seen the fresh tracks of a grizzly bear, measuring fourteen
inches in length.
When they reached the fort they found the Piegans friendly and quiet,
but suspicious of the whites. “These Piegans had the fresh hide of
a bull they had killed at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. This was
really a curiosity; the hair on the back was dirty white, and the long
hair under the throat and forelegs iron-gray, and sides and belly were
yellow. I wished to purchase it, but the owners would not part with it
under any consideration.” It is well understood that white buffalo,
or those that are spotted, or indeed of any unusual color, are very
highly esteemed by the tribes of the plains. Henry has referred to
this before, and I have called attention to the sacredness of the white
buffalo’s hide among the Blackfeet, Bloods, and Piegans, and among the
Cheyennes further to the south.
It was now an active time, Bloods, Piegans, and Sarsi coming and
going, bringing in some beaver, for which they received tobacco, rum,
and trifles, and occasionally a gift of clothing to some man who had
brought in an especially good lot of beaver. On November 4 the traders
had in store 720 beaver, 33 grizzly bears, 20 buffalo robes, 300
muskrats, 100 lynx--not a bad trade for the season of the year.
November 9: “I rode up river about three miles to the rising ground on
the north side, where Mr. Pangman carved his name on the pine in 1790.
This spot was the utmost distant of discoveries on the Saskatchewan
toward the Rocky Mountains, of which, indeed, we had a tolerable view
from this hill. The winding course of the river is seen until it enters
the gap of the mountains, a little east of which appears another gap,
through which, I am told, flows a south branch that empties into the
Saskatchewan some miles above this place. The mountains appear at no
great distance, all covered with snow; while we have none.” The arrival
this day of an express from below brought the news that an act of
Parliament had been passed prohibiting the sale of spirituous liquors
among the Indians.
The weather was now cold, the river occasionally choking up with ice,
and snow fell. The canoes were split by the frost, and axes broke
while the men were chopping with them. Men were sent out to get dogs
for hauling, and as soon as the country became covered with snow, dog
trains were sent down to lower Terre Blanche to bring up goods. Gros
Ventres of the Prairie had just returned with sixty horses, stolen from
the Flatheads, and others had gone off to try to take more. On the 27th
of December, “Our hunter had killed a large grizzly bear, very lean,
and, as usual with them in that state, very wicked; he narrowly escaped
being devoured. They seldom den for the winter, as black bears do, but
wander about in search of prey.”
In February Henry made a trip to the Continental Divide, to where the
waters of a branch of the Columbia rise within a very short distance
of the Saskatchewan. He was obliged to tell the Piegans that he was
going down the stream instead of up. Travel was by dog sledge, and
over the frozen river, in which there were no air holes to be seen. On
the way up, during the first day, they found a carcass of a deer that
had been killed by wolves. The ice was of great thickness, so that at
night, when a man was endeavoring to get water from the stream, he was
obliged to cut with an axe for an hour before it flowed. As they went
up the stream, the banks grew higher and nearer together, and at one
point there were seen tracks of animals coming down the mountains among
the rocks. “These are the gray sheep which have been seen about this
place, and which delight to dwell among precipices and caverns, where
they feed on a peculiar sort of clay.” The reference is evidently to a
“lick,” a place where a mineral spring has given a saline taste to the
earth round about. Such licks are common enough in the Rocky Mountains
and many other places, and are regularly visited by sheep, which often
gnaw away the earth in many places and over a considerable space. A
little further up the stream they were in full view of the mountains.
The river being low, flowed through numerous channels, some of which
were free from ice; others which were frozen, had water flowing over
the ice. On account of the wind there was little snow on the gravel
bars, and the hauling was hard for the dogs and bad for the sleds.
On the 5th he overtook his people, who had started several days
earlier, and who had killed three sheep and three cows. Here Henry
stopped for a day, and sent off three men to hunt sheep, wishing to
obtain the entire skin of an old ram. This they failed to secure, but
one of them had seen the tracks of a white goat. The next day, keeping
on, sheep tracks were seen, and Henry indulges in reflections on the
wonderful places which they passed over, and their sureness of foot.
The following day, “Shortly after leaving camp, we saw a herd of about
thirty rams feeding among the rocks on the north side. They did not
seem to be shy, though the noise of our bells and dogs was sufficient
to have alarmed a herd of buffalo two miles off. The rams stood for
some time gazing at us, and did not retreat until some people with
dogs climbed up to fire at them, when they set off at full speed,
directing their course up the mountain. I was astonished to see with
what agility they scaled the cliffs and crags. At one time I supposed
them hemmed in by rocks so steep and smooth that it seemed impossible
for any animal to escape being dashed to pieces below, but the whole
herd passed this place on a narrow horizontal ledge, without a single
misstep, and were soon out of sight.” Here Henry seems to have seen his
first flock of dippers, which interested him not a little; and on the
ice above this point he found the remains of a ram which had been run
down by wolves and devoured.
There were plenty of buffalo on Kutenai Plains, which they now reached,
but they killed none, a hunter firing at a sheep having driven them
off. Moose and elk were plenty here, as well as white-tailed deer and
grizzly bears; and here, too, were seen “white partridges”--in other
words, white-tailed ptarmigan. Still following up the river, the snow
grew deeper and deeper, so that at length they were obliged to take to
snow-shoes, and to beat a path for their dogs. On the 9th of February
they reached the Continental Divide, and passing through thick forest
came to a small opening where three streams of Columbian waters join.
The brook thus formed is Blueberry Creek, which runs into the Columbia.
That morning, when leaving camp, in the Kutenai Park, a place where
the Kutenais used to drive buffalo over the cliff, Henry had left his
hunter, Desjarlaix, behind, telling him to try to kill a white goat.
Shortly after his return to the camp, his hunter came in and told
Henry that he had seen large white goats on the mountain, directly off
Kutenai Park, where he had been trying since daybreak to get a shot at
them. “He was almost exhausted, the snow being up to his middle, and
the ground so steep as not to admit of snow-shoes. He had worked about
a quarter of the way up the mountain, but had been obliged to abandon
the attempt to reach the animals. They did not appear the least shy,
but stood gazing at him, and cropping the stunted shrubs and blades of
long grass which grew in crevices in places where the wind had blown
the snow off. As I desired to obtain the skin of one of those animals,
I gave him dry mittens and trousers to put on, went with him to the
foot of the mountain, and I pointed out a place where I supposed it was
possible to reach them. We could perceive all three, still standing
abreast on the edge of a precipice, looking down upon us, but they were
at a great height. He once more undertook the arduous task of climbing
up in pursuit of them, while I returned to the camp. A hunter in these
mountains requires many pairs of shoes (i. e., moccasins), the rocks
are so rough and sharp that a pair of good strong moose-leather shoes
are soon torn to pieces. The white goat is [not] larger than the gray
sheep, thickly covered with long, pure white wool, and has short black,
nearly erect horns. These animals seldom leave the mountain tops;
winter or summer they prefer the highest regions. Late in the evening
my hunter returned, exhausted, and covered with ice, having labored in
the snow till his clothes became all wet, and soon after stiff with
ice. He had ascended half way when the sun set, which obliged him to
return.”
The next day Henry wished to send his hunter out again, but the poor
fellow was so done up and his legs so swollen by the exercise of the
day before that the effort was given up. They therefore started down
the river, past the camp of the day before, where they found that the
men had killed sheep, buffalo, a large black wolf, and a Canada lynx.
The following day they saw a herd of rams on the rocks, and tried to
get a shot, “but one of our men, being some distance ahead, and not
observing them, continued to drive on, which alarmed and drove them up
into the mountains. I regretted this very much as the herd consisted
of old rams with enormous horns; one of them appeared to be very lean,
with extraordinarily heavy horns, whose weight he seemed scarcely
able to support. When the horns grow to such great length, forming a
complete curve, the ends project on both sides of the head so as to
prevent the animal from feeding, which, with their great weight, causes
the sheep to dwindle to a mere skeleton and die. We soon afterward saw
a herd of buffalo on the hills near the river, but on hearing the sound
of the bells they ran away, and appeared much more shy than sheep.”
Continuing down the river, they reached the fort, February 13.
Henry finished the winter at Rocky Mountain House, and in May, 1811,
started down the river to Fort Augustus.
There is now a long break, extending over two years, in Henry’s
journal, the third part, as Dr. Coues has divided it, being devoted to
the Columbia. November 15, 1813, finds him at Astoria, the scene of so
many trials of fur traders, and the place about which so many books
have been written. The journal for the two intervening years has not
been discovered. It may yet turn up and, if it shall, will undoubtedly
give us much interesting information. What we know is that Henry came
to Astoria from Fort William, but how he got there we do not know. His
party came, however, in bark canoes, for a contemporary writer says
as much as that. Not only was Henry here on the west coast, but his
nephew, William Henry, who had been frequently associated with him in
past years, even back on the Pembina River.
The character of the Indians here interested Henry, and he makes his
usual frank and not always elegant comments on them. On November 30
the British ship “Raccoon” reached Astoria, captured the place, and
thereafter it was a British trading-post, under the name Fort George.
Duncan McDougal, the chief factor, had left the Northwest Company
to enter Mr. Astor’s service, in 1810, but without any particular
hesitation he surrendered to the British ship, although the Indians
were only too anxious to defend the place for the Americans, and to
assist the white men in holding it. As a matter of fact, however, most
of the employees of Mr. Astor were British subjects, and were very glad
to have the place taken.
Much time was expended on the final settlement of the accounts between
McDougal, who had been Mr. Astor’s representative at Astoria, and the
representatives of the Northwest Company, who were now in possession;
but at last this was all finished, and on December 31 the “Raccoon”
made sail, and disappeared behind Point Adams.
Rains were constant, and the fur traders and their property suffered
much from wet and dampness. With this spring, Henry for the first
time seems to have seen the Indians catching smelts and herrings, and
describes the well-known rake used on the western coast: “They had a
pole about ten feet long and two inches thick, on one side of which was
fixed a range of small sharp bones, like teeth, about one inch long, a
quarter of an inch asunder, the range of teeth ascending six feet up
the blade. This instrument is used in smelt fishery.” As is well known,
the Indians sweep this instrument through the water in places where the
small fish are schooled, and at each sweep of the rake from one to half
dozen fish are impaled, when the implement being brought to the surface
and held over the canoe, the fish are jarred from it into the vessel.
On the 28th of February a ship, the “Pedler,” brought Mr. Hunt, who was
second to Mr. Astor in the management of the Pacific Fur Company, and
headed the original overland Astor expedition in 1810-1812.
There was now a gathering of all the partners and those interested in
the Northwest Company and the Pacific Fur Company for a settling of
accounts between Hunt and McDougal. The “Pedler” got under way April 2.
On April 4 a brigade of ten canoes set off up the river. This left a
small contingent at Fort George, and this contingent very ill provided.
They had a little spoiled California beef and a little bad grease. In
addition they had only the smelts caught by the Indians and these were
often spoiled, so that the men refused to eat them, and the little
provision that they could buy from the Indians, a few beaver, deer, and
elk--called _biche_ by Henry. As a result many of the men were ill, and
fourteen were in hospital at one time. To help out the lack of sugar or
molasses, they experimented in making a decoction of camas root, which
produces a kind of syrup, preferable to molasses for sweetening coffee.
Among the skins brought in by the Indians were occasionally those of
tame cats, which Henry conjectures to be the offspring of cats lost
from Spanish ships that had been cast ashore.
April 22 a ship was seen, which proved to be the “Isaac Todd,” on
which came Mr. J. C. McTavish, who was to take charge of Fort George
as governor. Work went on; loading and unloading the ship, buying
provisions, the annoyances of small quarrels between various people.
The entry in Henry’s diary of May 21, 1814, is partly finished, and
then ends with a dash; for on Sunday, May 22, Alexander Henry, Donald
McTavish, and five sailors were drowned while going out to the ship.
So perished Alexander Henry, the younger, after twenty-two years of
adventure, extending from the Great Lakes to the Pacific, and from the
Missouri River north to Lake Athabasca. It may fairly be said of all
the books that have been written by the early travellers and traders in
America this is the most interesting and the most curious.