Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
On page 227, [)a] represents "a" with breve.
* * * * *
Early Western Travels
1748-1846
Volume XXI
Early Western Travels
1748-1846
A Series of Annotated Reprints of some of the best
and rarest contemporary volumes of travel, descriptive
of the Aborigines and Social and Economic Conditions in
the Middle and Far West, during the Period of Early
American Settlement
Edited with Notes, Introductions, Index, etc., by
Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D.
Editor of "The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents," "Original
Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," "Hennepin's
New Discovery," etc.
Volume XXI
Wyeth's Oregon, or a Short History of a Long Journey, 1832;
and Townsend's Narrative of a Journey across the Rocky
Mountains, 1834
[Illustration: logo]
Cleveland, Ohio
The Arthur H. Clark Company
1905
COPYRIGHT 1905, BY
THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Lakeside Press
R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY
CHICAGO
CONTENTS OF VOLUME XXI
PREFACE. _The Editor_ 9
I
OREGON; OR A SHORT HISTORY OF A LONG JOURNEY FROM THE
ATLANTIC OCEAN TO THE REGION OF THE PACIFIC, BY LAND;
drawn up from the notes and oral information of ...
one of the party who left Mr. Nathaniel J. Wyeth, July 28th,
1832, four days' march beyond the Ridge of the Rocky Mountains,
and the only one who has returned to New England.
_John B. Wyeth._
Author's Motto 20
Text 21
II
NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, TO
THE COLUMBIA RIVER. _John K. Townsend._
Copyright Clause 112
Publisher's Advertisement 113
Author's Table of Contents 115
Text 121
ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME XXI
Facsimile of title-page to Wyeth's _Oregon_ 19
"Hunting the Buffalo." From the London edition (1840) of
Townsend's _Narrative_ 110
Facsimile of title-page to Townsend's _Narrative_ 111
"Spearing the Salmon." From the London edition (1840) of
Townsend's _Narrative_ 259
PREFACE TO VOLUME XXI
With the present volume our series reverts to the far Northwest, and
takes up the story of the Oregon country during the fourth decade of
the nineteenth century.
After the failure of the Astorian enterprise (1811-13), recounted
with so much detail in the narratives of Franchère and Ross
(reprinted in our volumes vi and vii), the Northwest Coast fell into
the hands of the British fur-trade companies, who ruled the forest
regions with a sway as absolute as that of a czar. The "Nor'westers"
first occupied the field, sent out their daring "bourgeois" in
all directions, and reaped a rich harvest of pelts. But upon the
consolidation of the rival corporations (1821), the Hudson's Bay
Company's men succeeded them, and for the first time law and
order were enforced by the chief factors, and the denizens of the
Northwest, white and red, soon learned to obey and revere their
new masters. Prominent among the factors was Dr. John McLoughlin,
the benevolent despot of Fort Vancouver, whose will was law not
only for savages and fur-trade employés, but for all overland
emigrants, British and American, who now began swarming to the banks
of the Columbia. For twenty years he governed a province larger
than France, and friend and foe alike testify to his probity and
kindness, from which Americans profited quite as fully as those from
his own land.
To the world at large, during this long period, the land beyond the
mountains remained unknown and almost unknowable. Occasionally a New
England skipper ventured to the mouth of the Columbia, exchanging
goods from Hawaii and the South Seas for the salmon and furs of the
Northwest Coast; but the inhabitants of the interior of our country
long found the Rockies and their outlying deserts insurmountable
barriers to Western passage.
Fur-traders finally led the way into the heart of the mountains.
The Rocky Mountain Fur Company, under General William Ashley, began
in 1822 that series of explorations and excursions that opened the
highland fastnesses to the men of the West, and paved the way for
the tracing of the Oregon Trail.
But it was bona-fide settlers, not fur-traders or trappers, that
captured Oregon for the United States. Among the earliest of
these were members of the company escorted by Captain Nathaniel
Jarvis Wyeth, whose home was in the shades of academic learning at
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Wyeth, however, owed the inception of the
enterprise to another New Englander, his quondam fellow-townsman,
Hall J. Kelley. An enterprising schoolmaster, the narratives
of Lewis and Clark and of the Astorian participants fired his
imagination with a desire to behold the Far West, while the
joint-occupancy treaty with Great Britain (1818) aroused in him
a patriotic desire that the region watered by the Columbia might
be possessed by his native land. Throughout more than a decade
he published pamphlets and articles for the local press, glowing
with praise of Oregon, and succeeded in organizing the Oregon
Colonization Society, from among whose members he hoped to lead an
expedition to the far-away land of promise.
Among those who hearkened to him was the young Cambridgian, Wyeth,
whose mind, more practical than Kelley's, but as yet uninformed as
to the real difficulties of the enterprise, conceived the project
of a great commercial enterprise to the Northwest. In the winter
of 1831-32, Wyeth formed his party of pioneers and formulated his
plans. With the opening of the spring a vessel laden with supplies
was to start around Cape Horn, to meet the overland adventurers at
the mouth of the Columbia. Wyeth, meanwhile, was to lead a company
of hale young men across the continent, who should hunt and trap on
the way, and be ready on arrival to provide a cargo of furs for the
vessel, and later to develop the products of the Oregon country.
Wyeth's original plan for the land party included forty companions,
but he finally set forth from Baltimore with an enrollment of
but twenty-four. Arrived in St. Louis, he learned for the first
time of the vast operations that Western fur-traders were already
carrying on among the mountains--men to whom the experience of a
life-time had taught the conditions and the methods of trade beyond
the frontier. Nothing daunted, however, young Wyeth joined the
yearly caravan of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and under its
protection proceeded to that company's rendezvous at Pierre's Hole.
There the majority of his men, finding the hazard greater than they
had anticipated, turned back; but the leader, with a handful of
followers, pressed on, only to learn in the Oregon country that his
vessel had been wrecked on a Pacific reef, and his cargo of supplies
lost.
Received at Fort Vancouver with hospitable courtesy on the part
of the Hudson's Bay people, Wyeth passed the winter in exploring
the region and learning its resources. He became more than ever
eager to exploit the great possibilities lying before him, and
returned across the continent to Boston, making en route the famous
journey--commemorated by Washington Irving in his _Scenes in the
Rocky Mountains_--down the Bighorn and Yellowstone in a bull-boat.
While still among the mountain men, Wyeth confidently entered
into a contract with Milton Sublette and the latter's partner,
Thomas Fitzpatrick, to carry out to them their yearly supplies the
following season.
Intent on this and other projects, our adventurer hastened on to
Boston, organized the Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company,
and secured another vessel to proceed to Oregon by sea. This time
Wyeth's party was trebled, and with a following of over seventy he
started from St. Louis on March 7, 1834. Among his companions were
the naturalists Nuttall and Townsend, and the missionaries Jason
and Daniel Lee, all of whom were seeking the Oregon country on
errands of their own. The fate of Wyeth's second expedition need not
here be recounted, further than to state that the contract being
repudiated by the Rocky Mountain men, Wyeth established a trading
post in eastern Idaho, which he later (1837) sold to the Hudson's
Bay Company and proceeded on to Oregon. After indefatigable efforts,
and fatigues seldom paralleled, Wyeth finally (1836) abandoned the
country and his ambitious project, and settled down to the humdrum
role of ice-merchant in Cambridge, amassing a moderate fortune in
shipping that useful commodity to the West Indies.
In recent years the journals and correspondence of Nathaniel J.
Wyeth, recounting the experience of his two expeditions, have come
to light and been published by the Oregon Historical Society. These
documents, however, furnish but terse and bald statements of events,
whereas detailed narratives appeared in works published many years
before. The historian of the first expedition was a kinsman of its
leader--John B. Wyeth, a young man of eighteen summers, who had
previously been to sea and acquired a taste for adventure. After the
long journey into the mountains, young Wyeth became dissatisfied
with the hardships and ill prospects of the venture, and joined
those malcontents at Pierre's Hole who voted for return, thus
abandoning his leader before the journey was more than two-thirds
completed. Upon arrival at Cambridge, the narrative of the younger
Wyeth's adventures sped around the circle of his acquaintances,
and reached the ear of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, a well-known local
physician and scientist.
Waterhouse desired to discourage the prevalent wild schemes of
Western emigration, and published Wyeth's experiences as a useful
warning against such projects. The little book as issued from the
press bore the title: _Oregon; or a Short History of a Long Journey
from the Atlantic Ocean to the Region of the Pacific by Land, drawn
up from the notes and oral information of John B. Wyeth_ (Cambridge,
1833). It is not difficult for the reader to distinguish the work of
the young traveller from that of the older scientist--the literary
finish, the allusions, the moralizing and animadversions, of this
composite book, are certainly the elder's; the racy adventures, the
off-hand descriptions, surely those of the younger collaborator.[1]
[1] In Harvard University Library, the book is catalogued under
Waterhouse as author.
John B. Wyeth's publication was distinctly annoying and hurtful to
the plans of his cousin, and caused the latter to characterize it
as "full of white lies." It is in the animus rather than the words
themselves that the deceit is to be found; but disregarding its
injudicious criticisms and comments, Wyeth's book is a readable
work of travel, written in the full flush of health and spirits
experienced by a vigorous youngster on a journey taken more as an
escapade than with serious purpose. How far this motive carried him,
is witnessed by the recitation of practical jokes in Cincinnati,
and by the disasters of the home journey, when, abandoned by his
companions, he was turned adrift in plague-stricken New Orleans to
shift for himself. As a picture of early life on the plains and in
the mountains, the account is graphic and attractive, as exampled
by the descriptions of the scene at the rendezvous--also that at
the conference between the Blackfoot chiefs and the envoys of the
whites, previous to the battle of Pierre's Hole. Vivid pictures of
the fur-trade leaders, and swift glimpses of friendly and hostile
tribesmen, jostle the description of what was in effect a New
England town-meeting in Pierre's Hole, and the report of an Indian
battle famous in the annals of the West. The Wyeth narrative was
printed privately, for circulation among friends, and therefore in a
small edition. Examples are consequently now extremely rare, and it
is believed that its reprint in the present series will be welcomed
by students of early Western exploration.
Nathaniel J. Wyeth's second expedition was even more fortunate in
its historian. John K. Townsend, a well-known Philadelphia physician
and naturalist, had long been desirous of exploring the far western
country in the interests of science. Hearing from his friend, Thomas
Nuttall, then botanist at Harvard College, that he was preparing to
join an expedition across the continent, Townsend made arrangements
to accompany him, and obtained from the American Philosophical
Society and the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia a
commission to search for birds on their behalf.
The two scientists joined Wyeth at Boonville, Missouri, after a
pedestrian journey from St. Louis to that point. The adventurers
left Independence on April 28, 1834, in company with the annual
fur-trading caravan for the Far West, and late in June arrived at
the famous Green River rendezvous. Thence the Wyeth party proceeded
to the Columbia, where a hearty welcome from Hudson's Bay officials
awaited them both at Walla Walla and Vancouver.
Townsend remained in the Oregon district for nearly two years. In
the winter of 1834-35 he spent several months in the Sandwich
Islands, returning in Wyeth's vessel, the "May Dacre," in March,
1835. The next year he was employed by the Hudson's Bay Company as
physician at Fort Vancouver, of which duties he was relieved by the
coming of one of their own surgeons from the North (March, 1836).
Still the ornithologist lingered in the country, anxious to complete
his collection of native birds. He journeyed up the Columbia to
Walla Walla, made a short excursion into the Blue Mountains,
explored the river's mouth, visited the ruins of Lewis and Clark's
Fort Clatsop, and finally embarked for home, by way of Cape Horn, on
November 30, 1836. Three months were passed in Hawaii, en route; his
stay in Chili was prolonged by illness; but at last, after a tedious
voyage, he arrived off Cape Henlopen November 13, 1837, having been
absent three years and eight months.
Townsend's account of his travels appeared at Philadelphia in 1839,
entitled: _Narrative of a Journey across the Rocky Mountains to the
Columbia River, and a Visit to the Sandwich Islands, Chili, &c.,
with a Scientific Appendix._ A London edition followed in 1840,
bearing the title, _Sporting Excursions to the Rocky Mountains
including a Journey to the Columbia River and a Visit to the
Sandwich Islands, Chili, etc._ This contains a few insignificant
changes. Our reprint is from the original Philadelphia version,
omitting both the now unessential appendix, and that portion of the
narrative which deals with Hawaii and South America, these being
outside the field of our present interest.
Townsend wrote in an easy, flowing style, and a large share of his
pages bear evidence of closely following his daily journals. Unlike
Wyeth's kinsman, Townsend had much admiration for the ability and
resource of his leader--for his "most indefatigable perseverance
and industry"--and could only attribute his failure to the
mysterious dealings of Providence. From the commercial and economic
standpoint, Wyeth's enterprise was a failure; from the historian's
point of view, it was eminently successful. Not only did he conduct
considerable parties of Americans across the continent, but some
of these became permanent settlers in the Oregon country; and his
enterprise awakened the country to the dangers of joint political
occupancy.
Lewis and Clark's journals, as paraphrased by Nicholas Biddle
in 1814, had first called popular attention to the region. John
B. Wyeth's book, in 1833, was the first American publication on
the subject, after the records of the initial exploration, and
aroused a fresh interest in at least a limited group of influential
readers; the spark was further kindled by the appearance, in 1836,
of Washington Irving's classic _Astoria_; and then appeared, three
years later, Townsend's admirable narrative, giving to the world
some detailed knowledge of the resources of the Far Northwest. In
the same year with Townsend's publication, Wyeth himself presented
to Congress his "Memoir on Oregon,"[2] which was freighted with
information concerning the worth of the new region. These several
works were important influences in forcing the Oregon question upon
the attention of Congress, and thus paving the way for the final
acquisition of that country by the United States under the Oregon
Treaty of 1846.[3]
[2] _House Ex. Reports_, 25 Cong., 3 sess., 101, app. 1.
[3] See Caleb B. Cushing "Discovery beyond the Rocky Mountains" in
_North American Review_, 1 (1840), pp. 75-144.
In the preparation of the present volume for the press, the Editor
has had, throughout, the active assistance of Louise Phelps Kellogg,
Ph.D.
R. G. T.
MADISON, WIS., October, 1905.
[Illustration: title page Oregon]
WYETH'S OREGON, OR A SHORT HISTORY OF A
LONG JOURNEY
Reprint of original edition: Cambridge, 1833
OREGON;
OR
A SHORT HISTORY OF A LONG JOURNEY
FROM THE
ATLANTIC OCEAN TO THE REGION OF THE PACIFIC.
BY LAND.
DRAWN UP FROM THE NOTES AND ORAL INFORMATION
OF
JOHN B WYETH
ONE OF THE PARTY WHO LEFT MR NATHANIEL J WYETH,
JULY 28TH, 1832, FOUR DAYS MARCH BEYOND THE RIDGE OF THE
ROCKY MOUNTAINS,
AND THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS RETURNED TO NEW ENGLAND.
CAMBRIDGE
PRINTED FOR JOHN B. WYETH.
1833.
A contented mind is a continual feast; but _entire satisfaction_ has
never been procured by wealth however enormous, or ambition however
successful.
True happiness is to no place confin'd,
But still is found in a _contented_ mind.
OREGON EXPEDITION
In order to understand this Oregon Expedition, it is necessary to
say, that thirty years ago (1803), PRESIDENT JEFFERSON recommended
to Congress to authorize competent officers to explore the river
_Missouri_ from its mouth to its source, and by crossing the
mountains to seek the best water communication thence to the
_Pacific_ Ocean. This arduous task was undertaken by Captain M.
Lewis and Lieutenant W. Clarke of the first regiment of infantry.
They were accompanied by a select party of soldiers, and arrived
at the Missouri in May, 1804, and persisted in their novel and
difficult task into the year 1806, and with such success as to
draw from President Jefferson the following testimonial of their
heroic services, viz. "The expedition of Messrs. LEWIS & CLARKE,
for exploring the river Missouri, and the best communication from
that to the _Pacific Ocean_, has had all the success which could be
expected; and for which arduous service they deserve well of their
country."[4]
[4] Quoted from Jefferson's annual message, December 2, 1806. See
James D. Richardson (ed.), _Messages and Papers of the Presidents_
(Washington, 1896), i, p. 408.--ED.
The object of this enterprise was to confer in a friendly manner
with the Indian Nations throughout their whole journey, with a view
to establish a friendly and equitable commerce with them, on {2}
principles emulating those that marked and dignified the settlement
of Pennsylvania by _William Penn_. It was beyond doubt that the
President and Congress sincerely desired to treat the Indians with
kindness and justice, and to establish peace, order, and good
neighbourhood with all the savage tribes with whom they came in
contact, and not to carry war or violence among any of them who
appeared peaceably disposed.
A few years before the period of which we have spoken, our
government had acquired by purchase the vast and valuable Territory
of Louisiana from the renowned NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, at that time the
Chief of the French Nation. Considering his previous intentions,
and actual preparations under his famous General _Bernadotte_,[5]
nothing could be more fortunate for these United States than this
purchase. Our possession of Louisiana was so grievous a sore to the
very jealous Spaniards, that they have, till lately, done all in
their power to debar and mislead us from pursuing discoveries in
that quarter, or in the Arkansas, Missouri, or _Oregon_. Yet few or
none of them probably believed that we should, during the present
generation, or the next, attempt the exploration of the distant
_Oregon_ Territory, which extends from the _Rocky Mountains_ to the
shores of the Pacific Ocean, or in other words, from the Missouri
and Yellow Stone rivers to that of the river Columbia or Oregon
which pours into the Ocean by a wide mouth at the immense distance
from us of about four thousand miles; yet one and twenty men,
chiefly farmers and a few mechanics, had the hardihood to undertake
it, and that too with deliberation and sober calculation. But what
will not a New-England {3} man undertake when honor and interest
are the objects before him? Have not the people of that sand-bank,
Nantucket, redeemed it from the ocean, and sailed round Cape Horn in
pursuit of whales for their oil, and seals for their skins? A score
of our farmers seeing that Nantucket and New Bedford had acquired
riches and independence by traversing the sea to the distant shores
of the Pacific, determined to do something like it _by land_. Their
ardor seemed to have hidden from their eyes the mighty difference
between the facility of passing in a ship with the aid of sails,
progressing day and night, by skilfully managing the winds and the
helm, and that of a complicated wagon upon wheels, their journey to
be over mountains and rivers, and through hostile tribes of savages
who dreaded and hated the sight of a white man.
[5] Referring probably to the fact that Bernadotte had in January,
1803, been chosen minister to the United States, and tarried in
France during the negotiations for the purchase of Louisiana. After
these were concluded, Bernadotte's services being required in the
impending war with England, his projected mission to America was
abandoned. Wyeth has probably confused Bernadotte's mission with the
preparation in Holland of the armament which was, under command of
General Victor, intended to take possession of Louisiana.--ED.
This novel expedition was not however the original or spontaneous
notion of Mr. Nathaniel J. Wyeth,[6] nor was it entirely owing
to the publications of Lewis & Clarke or Mackenzie.[7] Nor was
it entirely owing to the enterprise of Messrs. Barrell, Hatch,
and Bulfinch, who fitted out two vessels that sailed from Boston
in 1787, commanded by Captains Kendrick and Gray, which vessels
arrived at Nootka in September, 1788.[8] They were roused to it
by the writings of Mr. Hall J. Kelly, who had read all the books
he could get on the voyages and travels in Asia, Africa, Europe,
and America, until he had heated his mind to a degree little short
of the valorous Knight of La Mancha, that is to say, he believed
all he read, and was firm in the opinion that an Englishman and
an American, or either, by himself, could endure and achieve any
thing {4} that any man could do with the same help, and farther,
that a New-England man or "Yankee," could with less.[9] That vast
region, which stretches from between the east of the Mississippi,
and south of the Lakes _Superior_, _Huron_, _Michigan_, _Erie_, and
_Ontario_, was too narrow a space for the enterprise of men born and
bred within a mile or two of the oldest University in the United
States.[10] Whatever be the true character of the natives of New
England, one thing must be allowed them, that of great and expansive
ideas,--beyond, far beyond the generality of the inhabitants of the
small Island of Britain. I say small, for if that Island should
be placed in the midst of these United States, it would hardly
form more than a single member of our extended republic. That
vast rivers, enormous mountains, tremendous cataracts, with an
extent corresponding to the hugeness of the features of America,
naturally inspire men with boundless ideas, few will doubt. This
adventurous disposition, at the same time, will as naturally banish
from the mind what the _new-light_ doctrine of Phrenology calls
the disposition bump of _Inhabitiveness_, or an inclination to
stay at home, and in its place give rise to a roaming, wandering
inclination, which, some how or other, may so affect the organs of
vision, and of hearing, as to debar a person from perceiving what
others may see, the innumerable difficulties in the way. Mr. Hall J.
Kelly's writings operated like a match applied to the combustible
matter accumulated in the mind of the energetic Nathaniel J. Wyeth,
which reflected and multiplied the flattering glass held up to view
by the ingenious and well-disposed schoolmaster.
[6] Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth belonged to one of the oldest families of
Cambridge, Massachusetts, his ancestor settling there in 1645, on a
place held by his descendants for over two centuries. Nathaniel's
grandfather, Ebenezer, in 1751, purchased an estate embracing part
of the present Mount Auburn, and extending to Fresh Pond. There
Nathaniel's father, Jacob (1764-1856), built a summer resort known
as Fresh Pond Hotel. Nathaniel, the fourth son, was born January
29, 1802, and was intended for Harvard College, of which his father
and eldest brother were graduates; his ambitious spirit, however,
made him impatient to begin commercial life, and to his subsequent
regret the college course was abandoned. He first aided his father
in the management of the hotel, but soon entered the ice trade, in
which he remained until his expedition of 1832-36. In 1824 marrying
his cousin Elizabeth Jarvis Stone, he shortly before the first
expedition moved into a new house on the family estate, in which
he resided until his death in 1856. For the Oregon expeditions,
see the preface of the present volume. Returning to Cambridge in
1836, he re-entered the ice traffic, and after 1840 was the head
of the concern. His highly accentuated qualities of activity and
enterprise, added to his strong personality, caused him to be
esteemed by his contemporaries.--ED.
[7] In the centennial years of the Lewis and Clark expedition,
their original journals were for the first time printed as
written--Thwaites (ed.), _Original Journals of the Lewis and
Clark Expedition_ (New York, 1904-05). For an account of the
earlier edition of their journals, edited by Nicholas Biddle,
see Introduction to the work just cited. On Mackenzie, consult
Franchère's _Narrative_ in our volume vi, p. 185, note 4.--ED.
[8] On the expedition of Captains Kendrick and Gray, consult
Franchère's _Narrative_, in our volume vi, p. 183, note 1.--ED.
[9] Hall J. Kelley may properly be called the father of the Oregon
emigration movement. Born in New Hampshire in 1790, he left home
at the age of sixteen and engaged in teaching at Hallowell,
Maine. In 1814 he was graduated from Middlebury College, and the
following year removed to Boston, where he was occupied as teacher
and philanthropist, assisting in founding the Boston Young Men's
Education Society, the Penitent Female Refuge Society, and the first
Sunday School in New England. He was also a surveyor and engineer,
and in 1828 invested his entire patrimony in a canal project at
Three Rivers (later, Palmer), Massachusetts, whither he removed in
1829. This enterprise proved a failure, and his investment a total
loss. For many years he had been interested in the Oregon country,
and soon after the publication of Biddle's version of the journals
of the Lewis and Clark expedition (1814), Kelley began an agitation
for the American occupation of the district. He tried to interest
Congress, and the first Oregon bills (1820) bear the impress of his
thought--see F. F. Victor, "Hall J. Kelley," in _Oregon Historical
Quarterly_, ii, pp. 381-400. Finding his frequent petitions of no
avail, he formed a company in 1829 (incorporated in 1831) known
as the "American Society for encouraging the settlement of Oregon
territory." The winter of 1831-32 was spent in preparation for an
emigration movement. Wyeth was a member of this organization, and
at first proposed to accompany Kelley; but finding the latter's
plans impracticable, organized his own party. Kelley set out in the
spring of 1832 with a small company, who all abandoned him at New
Orleans. Proceeding alone to Vera Cruz, his goods were confiscated
by the Mexican government; but although now penniless, he worked
his way through to California. There, in the spring of 1834,
he met Ewing Young (see our volume xx, p. 23, note 2), whom he
persuaded to accompany him overland to Oregon. Kelley was ill, but
was treated with slight respect by the British authorities at Fort
Vancouver, and lived without the fort during the winter, exploring
the country in the intervals of his fever. In the following spring
(1835) he shipped for Hawaii, and returned to Boston, determined,
notwithstanding his misfortunes, to further Oregon emigration--see
report to Congress, _House Reports_, 26 Cong., 3 sess., i, 101.
Kelley's health became undermined by the hardships which he had
endured, his eyesight was impaired, and he passed his latter years
in Palmer, Massachusetts, in poverty and obscurity, dying there in
1874.--ED.
[10] Harvard College was established by act of the general court of
Massachusetts in 1636.--ED.
Mr. Nathaniel J. Wyeth had listened with peculiar {5} delight to
all the flattering accounts from the Western regions, and that at
a time when he was surrounded with apparent advantages, and even
enviable circumstances. He was born and bred near the borders of a
beautiful small Lake, as it would be called in Great Britain; but
what we in this country call a large Pond; because we generally give
the name of Lakes only to our vast inland seas, some of which almost
rival in size the Caspian and Euxine in the old world. It seems that
he gave entire credit to the stories of the wonderful fertility of
the soil on the borders of the Ohio, Missouri, the river Platte,
and the Oregon, with the equally wonderful healthfulness of the
climate. We need not wonder that a mind naturally ardent and
enterprising should become too enthusiastic to pursue the laborious
routine of breaking up and harrowing the hard and stubborn soil of
Massachusetts within four miles of the sea, where the shores are
bounded and fortified by stones and rocks, which extend inland,
lying just below the surface of the ground, while the regions of the
West were represented as standing in need of very little laborious
culture, such was the native vigor of its black soil. The spot where
our adventurer was born and grew up, had many peculiar and desirable
advantages over most others in the county of Middlesex. Besides rich
pasturage, numerous dairies, and profitable orchards, and other
fruit trees, it possessed the luxuries of well cultivated gardens
of all sorts of culinary vegetables, and all within three miles of
the Boston Market-House, and two miles of the largest live-cattle
market in New England. All this, and more too, had not sufficient
attractions to retain Mr. Wyeth in his native town and county.
{6} Besides these blessings, I shall add another. The Lake I spoke
of, commonly called _Fresh Pond_, is a body of delightful water,
which seems to be the natural head or source of all the numerous
underground rivers running between it and the National Navy Yard
at Charlestown, which is so near to the city of Boston as to be
connected to it by a bridge; for wherever you sink a well, between
the body of water just mentioned, you strike a pelucid vein of it at
from nineteen to twenty-two feet depth from the surface. With the
aforesaid Lake or Pond is connected another not quite so large, but
equally beautiful. Around these bodies of inosculating waters, are
well cultivated farms and a number of gentlemen's country-seats,
forming a picture of rural beauty and plenty not easily surpassed
in Spring, Summer, and Autumn; and when winter has frozen the lakes
and all the rivers, this spot has another and singular advantage;
for our adventurer sold the _water_ of this pond; which was sent to
the West-Indian Islands, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and other places
south of this; which is so much of a singularity as to require
explanation.
In our very coldest weather, January and February, the body of
water we spoke of is almost every year frozen to the thickness of
from eighteen inches to two feet,--sometimes less, and very rarely
more. It is then sawed into cubes of the size just mentioned, and
deposited in large store-houses, and carted thence every month in
the year, even through the dog-days, in heavy teams drawn by oxen
and horses to the wharves in Boston, and put on board large and
properly constructed vessels, and carried into the hot climates
already {7} mentioned. The heavy teams five, or six, or more, close
following each other, day and night, and even through the hottest
months, would appear incredible to a stranger. Here was a traffic
without any drawback, attended with no other charge than the labor
of cutting and transporting the article; for the pond belonged to
no man, any more than the air which hung above it. Both belonged
to mankind. No one claimed any personal property in it, or control
over it from border to border. A clearer profit can hardly be
imagined. While the farmer was ploughing his ground, manuring and
planting it, securing his well-tended crop by fencing, and yet
after all his labor, the Hessian-fly, the canker or slug worm, or
some other destructive insect, or some untimely frost, as was the
case last winter, might lay waste all his pains and cut off all his
expectations. The only risk to which the Ice-merchant was liable
was a blessing to most of the community; I mean the mildness of a
winter that should prevent his native lake from freezing a foot or
two thick. Our fishermen have a great advantage over the farmer in
being exempt from fencing, walling, manuring, taxation, and dry
seasons; and only need the expence of a boat, line, and hook, and
the risk of life and health; but from all these the Ice-man is in
a manner entirely exempted; and yet the Captain of this Oregon
Expedition seemed to say, All this availeth me nothing, so long as I
read books in which I find, that by only going about _four thousand
miles_, over land, from the shore of our _Atlantic_ to the shore of
the _Pacific_, after we have there entrapped and killed the beavers
and otters, we shall be able, after building vessels for {8} the
purpose, to carry our most valuable peltry to China and Cochin
China, our seal-skins to Japan, and our superfluous grain to various
Asiatic ports, and lumber to the Spanish settlements on the Pacific;
and to become rich by underworking and underselling the people of
Hindostan; and, to crown all, to extend far and wide the traffic in
oil by killing tame whales on the spot, instead of sailing round the
stormy region of Cape Horn.
All these advantages and more too were suggested to divers
discontented and impatient young men. Talk to them of the great
labor, toil, and risk, and they would turn a deaf ear to you:
argue with them, and you might as well reason with a snow-storm.
Enterprising young men run away with the idea that _the farther
they go from home, the surer they will be of making a fortune_.
The original projector of this golden vision first talked himself
into the visionary scheme, and then talked twenty others into the
same notion.[11] Some of their neighbours and well-wishers thought
differently from them; and some of the oldest, and most thoughtful,
and prudent endeavoured to dissuade them from so very ardous and
hazardous an expedition. But young and single men are for tempting
the untried scene; and when either sex has got a notion of that
sort, the more you try to dissuade them, the more intent they are
on their object. Nor is this bent of mind always to be censured,
or wondered at. Were every man to be contented to remain in the
town in which he was born, and to follow the trade of his father,
there would be an end to improvement, and a serious impediment to
spreading population. It is difficult to draw the exact line between
contentment, and that inactivity {9} which approaches laziness.
The disposition either way seems stamped upon us by _nature_,
and therefore innate. This is certainly the case with birds and
beasts;--the wild geese emigrate late in the Autumn to a southern
climate, and return again in the Spring to a northern one, while
the owl and several other birds remain all their lives near where
they were hatched; whereas man is not so much confined by a natural
bias to his native home. He can live in all climates from the
equator to very near the dreary poles, which is not the case with
other animals; and it would seem that nature intended he should
live anywhere;--for whereas other animals are restricted in their
articles of food, some living wholly on flesh, and others wholly
on vegetables, man is capable of feeding upon every thing that is
eatable by any creature, and of mixing every article together, and
varying them by his knowledge and art of cookery,--a knowledge and
skill belonging to man alone. Hence it appears that _Providence_,
who directs everything for the best, intended that man should wander
over the globe, inhabit every region, and dwell wherever the sun
could shine upon him, and where water could be obtained for his use.
[11] For partial lists of members of this party, consult H. S.
Lyman, _History of Oregon_ (New York, 1903), iii, pp. 101, 108, 254;
see also _post_.--ED.
So far from deriding the disposition to explore unknown regions,
we should consider judicious travellers as so many benefactors of
mankind. It is most commonly a propensity that marks a vigorous
intellect, and a benevolent heart. The conduct of the Spaniards,
when they conquered Mexico and Peru with the sole view of robbing
them of their gold and silver, and of forcing them to abandon their
native religion, has cast an odium on those first adventurers upon
this continent and their first {10} enterprises in India have
stigmatized the Dutch and the English; nor were our own forefathers,
who left England to enjoy religious freedom, entirely free from the
stain of injustice and cruelty towards the native Indians.--Let us
therefore in charity, nay, in justice, speak cautiously of what
may seem to us censurable in the first explorers of uncivilized
countries; and if we should err in judgment, let it be on the side
of commendation.
Mr. Wyeth, or as we shall hereafter call him, _Captain_ Wyeth, as
being leader of the Band of the Oregon adventurers, after having
inspired twenty-one persons with his own high hopes and expectations
(among whom was his own brother, Dr. Jacob Wyeth,[12] and a
gun-smith, a blacksmith, two carpenters, and two fishermen, the rest
being farmers and laborers, brought up to no particular trade) was
ready, with his companions, to start off to the Pacific Ocean, the
first of March, 1832, to go from Boston to the mouth of Columbia
river by land.
[12] Dr. Jacob Wyeth, eldest brother of Nathaniel, was born February
10, 1779, at Cambridge, Massachusetts. After being graduated from
Harvard (1820), he studied medicine both in Boston and Baltimore,
and settled in New Jersey, whence he set out to join his brother's
expedition. After returning from Pierre's Hole--as narrated
_post_--Dr. Wyeth settled in the lead-mine region of northwest
Illinois, and married into a prominent family. He died in his
adopted state.--ED.
I was the youngest of the company, not having attained my twentieth
year; but, in the plentitude of health and spirits, I hoped every
thing, believed every thing my kinsman, the Captain, believed
and said, and all doubts and fears were banished. The Captain
used to convene us every Saturday night at his house for many
months previous to our departure, to arrange and settle the plan
of our future movements, and to make every needful preparation;
and such were his thoughtfulness and vigilance, that it seemed to
us nothing was forgotten and every thing necessary provided. Our
three vehicles, or wagons, if we may call by that name a _unique_
contrivance, half boat, and half carriage, may be mentioned as an
instance of our Captain's {11} talents for snug contrivance. It
was a boat of about thirteen feet long, and four feet wide, of a
shape partly of a canoe, and partly of a gondola. It was not calked
with tarred oakum, and payed with pitch, lest the rays of the sun
should injure it while upon wheels; but it was nicely jointed, and
dovetailed. The boat part was firmly connected with the lower, or
axletree, or wheel part;--the whole was so constructed that the
four wheels of it were to be taken off when we came to a river,
and placed in the wagon, while the tongue or shaft was to be towed
across by a rope. Every thing was as light as could be consistent
with safety. Some of the Cambridge wags said it was a boat begot
upon a wagon,--a sort of mule, neither horse nor ass,--a mongrel,
or as one of the collegians said it was a thing _amphibious_,
anatomically constructed like some equivocal animals, allowing it
to crawl upon the land, or to swim on the water; and he therefore
thought it ought to be denominated an _amphibium_. This would have
gone off very well, and to the credit of the learned collegian, had
not one of the gang, who could hardly write his own name, demurred
at it; because he said that it reflected not back the honor due
to the ingenious contriver of the commodious and truly original
vehicle; and for his part, he thought that if they meant to give
it a particular name, that should redound to the glory of the
inventor, it ought to be called a _Nat-wye-thium_; and this was
instantaneously agreed to by acclamation! Be that as it may, the
vehicle did not disgrace the inventive genius of New England. This
good-humored raillery, shows the opinion of indifferent people,
merely lookers-on. The fact was, the generality {12} of the people
in Cambridge considered it a hazardous enterprise, and considerably
notional. About this time there appeared some well written essays in
the Boston newspapers, to show the difficulty and impracticability
of the scheme, purporting to doubt the assertions of Mr. Hall J.
Kelly respecting the value and pleasantness of the Oregon territory.
The three vehicles contained a gross of axes, a variety of articles,
or "_goods_" so called, calculated for the Indian market, among
which vermilion and other paints were not forgotten, glass beads,
small looking-glasses, and a number of tawdry trinkets, cheap
knives, buttons, nails, hammers, and a deal of those articles,
on which young Indians of both sexes set a high value, and white
men little or none. Such is the spirit of trade and traffic, from
the London and Amsterdam merchant, down to an Indian trader and a
yankee tin-ware man in his jingling go-cart; in which he travels
through Virginia and the Carolinas to vend his wares, and cheat the
Southerners, and bring home laughable anecdotes of their simplicity
and ignorance, to the temporary disgrace of the common people of the
Northern and Eastern part of the Union, where a travelling tin-man
dare hardly show himself,--and yet is held up in the South as the
real New-England character, and this by certain white people who
know the use of letters!
The company were uniform in their dress. Each one wore a coarse
woollen jacket and pantaloons, a striped cotton shirt, and cowhide
boots: every man had a musket, most of them rifles, all of them
bayonets in a broad belt, together with a large clasped knife for
eating and common purposes. The Captain and one or two more added
pistols; but {13} every one had in his belt a small axe. This
uniformity had a pleasing effect, which, together with their curious
wagons, was noticed with commendation in the Baltimore newspapers,
as a striking contrast with the family emigrants of husband, wife,
and children, who have for thirty years and more passed on to the
Ohio, Kentucky, and other territories. The whole bore an aspect of
energy, good contrivance, and competent means. I forgot to mention
that we carried tents, camp-kettles, and the common utensils for
cooking victuals, as our plan was to live like soldiers, and to
avoid, as much as possible, inns and taverns.
The real and avowed object of this hardy-looking enterprise was to
go to the river Columbia, otherwise called the river _Oregon_, or
river of the _West_,[13] which empties by a very wide mouth into the
Pacific Ocean, and there and thereabouts commence a fur trade by
trafficking with the Indians, as well as beaver and other hunting
by ourselves. We went upon shares, and each one paid down so much;
and our association was to last during five years. Each man paid our
Leader forty dollars. Captain Wyeth was our Treasurer, as well as
Commander; and all the expenses of our travelling on wheels, and by
water in steam-boats, were defrayed by our Leader, to whom we all
promised fidelity and obedience. For twenty free-born New-England
men, brought up in a sort of Indian freedom, to be bound together
to obey a leader in all things reasonable, without something
like _articles of war_, was, to say the least of it, a hazardous
experiment. The Captain and crew of a Nantucket whaling ship came
nearest to such an association; for in this case each man runs that
great risk of his life, {14} in voluntarily attacking and killing a
whale, which could not be expected from men hired by the day, like
soldiers; so much stronger does association for gain operate, than
ordinary wages. As fighting Indians from behind trees and rocks is
next, in point of courage, to attacking a whale, the monarch of the
main, in his own element, a common partnership is the only scheme
for achieving and securing such dangerous purposes.
[13] For the origin of the word Oregon, see Ross's _Oregon
Settlers_, in our volume vii, p. 36, note 4.--ED.
We left the city of Boston, 1st of March, 1832, and encamped on
one of the numerous islands in its picturesque harbour, where we
remained ten days, by way of inuring ourselves to the tented field;
and on the 11th of the same month we hoisted sail for Baltimore,
where we arrived after a passage of fifteen days,[14] not without
experiencing a snow-storm, severe cold, and what the landsmen
considered a hard gale, at which I, who had been one voyage to sea,
did not wonder. It made every man on board look serious; and glad
were we to be set on shore at the fair city of Baltimore, in which
are to be found a great number of merchants, traders, and mechanics
from different parts of New England, and where of course there are
none, or very few, of those ridiculous prejudices against what they
call Yankees, that are observable in Virginia and the Carolinas.
[14] For further accounts of the preparation and voyage to Baltimore
on the brig "Ida," consult F. G. Young, "Correspondence and Journals
of Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth, 1831-36," in _Sources of the History
of Oregon_ (Eugene, Oregon, 1899), pp. 42-50. _Niles' Register_
xlii, p. 82 (March 31, 1832), notes their arrival and departure with
twenty-two men and all necessary equipment.--ED.
At Baltimore our amphibious carriages excited great attention, and I
may add, our whole company was an object of no small curiosity and
respect. This, said they, is "_Yankee all over!_"--bold enterprise,
neatness, and good contrivance. As we carefully avoided the expense
of inns and taverns, we marched two miles out of Baltimore, and
there encamped during four days; and then we put {15} our wagons
into the _cars_ on the rail-road; which extends from thence sixty
miles, which brought us to the foot of the Alleghany mountains.[15]
Quitting the rail-road at the foot of the Alleghany, we encountered
that mountain. Here we experienced a degree of inhospitality not
met with among the savages. The Innkeepers, when they found that
we came from New England, betrayed an unwillingness to accommodate
Yankees, from a ridiculous idea, that the common people, so
nicknamed, were too shrewd at a bargain and trading, for a slow and
straight-forward Dutchman; for the inhabitants of this mountainous
region, were generally sons and grandsons of the Dutch and German
first settlers; and it cannot be denied and concealed, that the
New England land-jobbers were in their bargains too hard for the
torpid Dutchman, who, it is true, loved money as much as any people,
yet when they, or their fathers had been the sufferers from a set
of roving sharpers, it is no wonder that an hereditary prejudice
should descend with exaggeration and aggravation from father to
son, and that their resentment should visit their innocent sons to
the third and fourth generation. No one pretends to mention any
fact or deed, in which those Dutch foreigners were defrauded of
their rights and dues; and all that can be, with truth, said, was,
that the land-speculators from Connecticut and Massachusetts were
to New-England what Yorkshire men are thought to be to the rest of
the people of England, a race more sharp and quick-sighted than
their neighbours,--and with a sort of constitutional good humor,
called _fun_, they could twist that uneducated progeny of a German
stock around their fingers;--hence their reluctance {16} to have
any thing to do with men, whose grand-fathers were too knowing for
them. You never hear the French or the English complaining of the
over-shrewdness of the New-England people. They accord very well
together, and very frequently intermarry. No, it is the Dutch, and
the descendants of transported convicts, who sneer at those they
call Yankees, whom their fathers feared, and of course hated.
[15] The line of the Baltimore and Ohio railway was first opened
for traffic December 1, 1831, when the road extended as far as
Frederick, sixty-one miles from Baltimore. On April 1, 1832, it was
extended to Point of Rocks, some forty miles beyond; but by that
time the expedition had passed farther west.--ED.
At one public house on the mountains near which we halted, the
master of it, learning that we came from Boston, refused us any
refreshment and lodging. He locked up his bar-room, put the
key in his pocket, went out, and came back with four or five
of his neighbours, when the disagreement ran so high, that the
tavern-keeper and the Yankee Captain each seized his rifle. The
latter pointing to the other's _sign_ before his door, demanded
both lodging and refreshment, as the legal condition of his
tavern-license;[16] and the dispute ended in our Captain's sleeping
in the house with three of his party, well armed, determined to
defend their persons, and to insist on their rights as peaceable
and unoffending travellers, while the rest of the company
bivouacked near their wagons, and reposed themselves, like veteran
soldiers, in their tents and wagons.
[16] Taverners are by law to be provided with suitable bedding
for travellers, and stables and provisions for horses and cattle.
Brownsville is a flourishing town situated on the point, where
the great Cumberland road strikes the head of navigation of the
Monongahela, and has long been a place of embarkation for emigrants
for the West.--WYETH.
We gladly departed from the inhospitable Alleghany or Apalachian
mountains, which extend from the river St. Lawrence to the confines
of Georgia, {17} and which run nearly parallel to the sea-shore
from sixty to one hundred and thirty miles from it, and dividing
the rivers, which flow into the Atlantic on the east, from those
that run into the lakes and into the Mississippi on the west. The
part we passed was in the state of Pennsylvania. Our next stretch
was for the river Monongahela, where we took the steamboat for
_Pittsburg_.[17] This town has grown in size and wealth, in a
few years, surprisingly. It is two hundred and thirty miles from
Baltimore; three hundred from Philadelphia. It is built on a point
of land jutting out towards the river Ohio, and washed on each side
by the Alleghany and Monongahela, which rivers uniting are lost in
the noble Ohio. It was originally a fortress built by the French,
called _Fort du Quesne_ being afterwards taken by the English in
1759, it was called fort _Pitt_, in honor of the famous _William
Pitt_, afterwards Earl of Chatham, under whose administration it
was taken from the French, together with all Canada.[18] On this
spot a city has been reared by the Americans, bearing the name
of _Pittsburg_ which has thriven in a surprising manner by its
numerous manufactories in glass, as well as in all the metals in
common use. To call it the Birmingham of America is to underrate its
various industry; and to call the English Birmingham Pittsburg,
would be to confer upon that town additional honor; not but what
the British Birmingham is by far the most pleasant place to live
in. Pittsburg is the region of iron and fossil coal, of furnaces,
glass-works, and a variety of such like manufactures. This town has
somewhat the color of a coal-pit, or of a black-smith's shop. The
wonder is, that any gentleman {18} of property should ever think
of building a costly dwelling-house, with corresponding furniture,
in the coal region of the western world; but there is no disputing
_de gustibus_--_Chacun á son gout_. The rivers and the surrounding
country are delightful, and the more so from the contrast between
them and that hornet's nest of bustle and dirt, the rich capital.
Thousands of miserable culprits are doomed to delve in deep mines
of silver, gold, and quicksilver among the Spaniards for their
crimes; but here they are all freemen, who choose to breathe smoke,
and swallow dirt, for the sake of clean dollars and shining eagles.
Hence it is that the Pittsburgh workmen appear, when their faces are
washed, with the ruddiness of high health, the plenitude of good
spirits, and the confidence of freemen.
[17] The expedition proceeded by way of Brownsville, and arrived at
Pittsburg on April 8, 1832. Pittsburg, as the point of departure
for the West, is described by most early travelers. In particular,
consult Cuming's _Tour_, in our volume iv, pp. 242-255.--ED.
[18] For Fort Duquesne, see F. A. Michaux's _Travels_, in our volume
iii, p. 156, note 20; for Fort Pitt, Post's _Journals_, in our
volume i, p. 281, note 107, and A. Michaux's _Travels_, volume iii,
p. 32, note 11.--ED.
From the busy city of thriving Pittsburg our next important
movement was down the Ohio. We accordingly embarked in a very
large steam-boat called The Freedom; and soon found ourselves, bag
and baggage very much at our ease and satisfaction, on board a
truly wonderful floating inn, hotel, or tavern, for such are our
steam-boats. Nothing of the kind can surpass the beauty of this
winding river, with its fine back-ground of hills of all shapes and
colors, according to the advancement of vegetation from the shrubs
to the tallest trees. But the romantic scenery on both sides of
the Ohio is so various and so captivating to a stranger, that it
requires the talents of a painter to give even a faint idea of the
picture; and the effect on my mind was, not to estimate them as I
ought, but to feed my deluded imagination with the belief that we
should find on the {19} Missouri, and on the Rocky Mountains, and
Columbia river, object as much finer than the Ohio afforded, as this
matchless river exceeded our Merrimac or Kennebeck: and so it is
with the youth of both sexes; not satisfied with the present gifts
of nature, they pant after _the untried scene_, which imagination is
continually bodying forth, and time as constantly dissipating.
The distance from Pittsburg to the Mississippi is about one thousand
miles. Hutchins estimated it at one thousand one hundred and
eighty-eight,--Dr. Drake at only nine hundred and forty-nine.[19]
Wheeling is a town of some importance. Here the great national
road into the interior from the city of Washington, meets that of
Zanesville, Chillicothè, Columbus, and Cincinnati.[20] It is the
best point to aim at in very low stages of the water, and from
thence boats may go at all seasons of the year. We passed Marietta,
distinguished for its remarkable remains of mounds, and works,
resembling modern fortifications, but doubtless the labor of the
ancient aboriginals, of whom there is now no existing account;
but by these works, and articles found near them, they must have
belonged to a race of men farther advanced in arts and civilization
than the present Indian in that region,[21]--a people who, we may
well suppose, were the ancestors of the Mexicans. Yet we see at this
time little more than log-houses belonging to miserable tenants of
white people. All the sugar used by the people here is obtained
from the maple tree. Fossil coal is found along the banks. There
is a creek pouring forth _Petroleum_, about one hundred miles from
Pittsburg on the Alleghany, called _Oil_ Creek, which will blaze on
the application of a {20} match. This is not uncommon in countries
abounding in bituminous coal. Nitre is found wherever there are
suitable caves and caverns for its collection. The people here are
rather boisterous in their manners, and intemperate in their habits,
by what we saw and heard, more so than on the other side of the
river where slavery is prohibited. Indeed slavery carries a black
moral mark with it visible on those whose skins are naturally of a
different color; and Mr. Jefferson's opinion of the influence of
slavery on the whites, justifies our remark.[22]
[19] Thomas Hutchins (1730-89), born in New Jersey, entered the
British army at an early age. He served in the French and Indian
War, and later as assistant engineer under Bouquet (1764), for whom
he prepared a map. In 1779 he was arrested in London, on a charge
of sympathizing with the American cause. Escaping to Paris, he
finally joined the continental army at Charleston, South Carolina,
and was made geographer general by General Greene. The estimate
here referred to is in his _Topographical Description of Virginia,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina_ (London, 1778), p. 5.
For Dr. Daniel Drake, see Flint's _Letters_ in our volume ix, p.
121, note 61.
The length of the Ohio from Pittsburg is estimated by the map of the
U. S. corps of engineers, published in 1881, as 967 miles.--ED.
[20] For Wheeling and the National Road, see A. Michaux's _Travels_,
in our volume iii, p. 33, note 15, and Flint's _Letters_, in our
volume ix, p. 105, notes 51, 52.--ED.
[21] For a more extended description of Marietta and its
antiquities, consult Cuming's _Tour_, in our volume iv, pp. 123-125.
The mounds are now believed to be the work of North American
Indians; consult Cyrus Thomas, "Mound Explorations," in U. S. Bureau
of Ethnology _Report_, 1890-91.--ED.
[22] Referring to Jefferson's account of the degradation of masters
under the régime of slavery, in _Notes on Virginia_ (original
edition, 1784), pp. 298-301.--ED.
We stopped one day and night at the flourishing town of
_Cincinnati_, the largest city in the Western country, although laid
out so recently as 1788.[23] It is twenty miles above the mouth
of the Great Miami, and four hundred and sixty-five miles below
Pittsburg. It appears to great advantage from the river, the ground
inclining gradually to the water. Three of us had an evidence of
that by a mischievous trick for which we deserved punishment. We
were staring about the fine city that has risen up with a sort of
rapid, mushroom growth, surprising to every one who sees it, and who
considers that it is not more than forty years old. In the evening
we went into a public house, where we treated ourselves with that
sort of refreshment which inspires fun, frolic, and mischief. We
remained on shore till so late an hour that every body appeared to
have gone to bed, when we set out to return to our steam-boat. In
our way to it we passed by a store, in the front of which stood
three barrels of lamp-oil, at the head of a fine sloping street.
The evil spirit of mischief put it into our heads to set them a
rolling down the inclined plane to the river. No sooner hinted,
than executed. {21} We set all three a running, and we ran after
them; and what may have been lucky for us, they were recovered
next day whole. Had there been legal inquisition made for them, we
had determined to plead _character_, that we were from Boston, the
land of steady habits and good principles, and that it must have
been some gentlemen Southerners, with whose characters for nightly
frolics, we, who lived within sound of the bell of the University
of Cambridge were well acquainted. The owners of the oil came down
to the steam-boat, and carried back their property without making a
rigid examination for the offenders; without suspecting that prudent
New-England young men would indulge in a wanton piece of fun, where
so much was at stake. But John Bull and Jonathan are queer fellows.
[23] For the early history of this city, see Cuming's _Tour_, our
volume iv, p. 256, note 166.--ED.
From Cincinnati to St. Louis, we experienced some of those
disagreeable occurrences, that usually happen to democratical
adventurers. Our Captain, to lessen the expenses of the expedition,
had bargained with the Captain of the steam-boat, that we of his
band should assist in taking on board wood from the shore, to keep
our boilers from cooling. Although every one saw the absolute
necessity of the thing, for our common benefit and safety, yet some
were for demurring at it, as not previously specified and agreed
upon. Idleness engenders mutiny oftener than want. In scarcity and
in danger men cling together like gregarious animals; but as soon as
an enterprising gang can sit down, as in a steam-boat, with nothing
to do but to find fault, they are sure to become discontented, and
discontent indulged leads to mutiny. Whatever I thought then, I do
not think now that Captain Wyeth was {22} to blame for directing his
followers to aid in _wooding_; nor should the men have grumbled at
it. I now am of opinion that our aiding in wooding the steam-boat
was right, reasonable, and proper. Every man of us, except the
surgeon of the company, Dr. Jacob Wyeth, ought, on every principle
of justice and generosity, to have given that assistance.
Our navigation from Cincinnati to St. Louis was attended with
circumstances new, interesting, and very often alarming. Passing
the rapids of the Ohio, or _falls_ as they are called, between
the Indiana territory and Kentucky, was sufficiently appalling to
silence all grumbling. These falls, or rapids are in the vicinity
of Louisville, Jeffersonville, Clarksville, and Shipping-port, and
are really terrific to an inexperienced farmer or mechanic.[24]
Our Hell-gate in Long-Island Sound is a common brook compared with
them; and when we had passed through them into the Mississippi, the
assemblage of trees in the river, constituting snags and sawyers,
offered themselves as a species of risk and danger, which none of us
had ever calculated on or dreamt of. We knew that there was danger
in great storms, of huge trees blowing down on one's head; and
that those who took shelter under them in a thunder-storm, risked
their lives from lightning; but to meet destruction from trees in
an immense river, seemed to us a danger of life, which we had not
bargained for, and entirely out of our agreement and calculation. We
had braced ourselves up only against the danger of hostile Indians,
and enraged beasts, which we meant to war against. Beyond that, all
was smooth water to us. The truth of the matter is,--the {23} men
whom Captain Wyeth had collected were not the sort of men for such
an expedition. They were too much on an equality to be under strict
orders like soldiers. Lewis & Clarke were very fortunate in the men
they had under them. Major Long's company was, in a great degree,
military, and yet three of his soldiers deserted him at one time,
and a fourth soon after.[25]
[24] Wyeth somewhat exaggerates the difficulties of the navigation
of the Falls of the Ohio. See our volume i, p. 136, note 106; also
Thwaites, _On the Storied Ohio_ (Chicago, 1903), pp. 218-222. For
Jeffersonville, see Flint's _Letters_, in our volume ix, p. 160,
note 80; for Clarksville and Shippingsport, Cuming's _Tour_, our
volume iv, pp. 259, 260, notes 170, 171.--ED.
[25] See our volumes xiv-xvii for James's _Long's Expedition_.--ED.
On the 18th of April, 1832, we arrived at St. Louis. As we had
looked forward to this town, as a temporary resting-place, we
entered it in high spirits, and pleased ourselves with a notion that
the rest of our way till we should come to the Rocky Mountains would
be, if not down hill, at least on a level: but we counted without
our host.
_St. Louis_ was founded by a Frenchman named _Peter la Clade_ in
1764, eighty-four years after the establishment of Fort Crève-coeur
on the Illinois river; and inhabited entirely by Frenchmen and
the descendants of Frenchmen, who had carried on for the most
part a friendly and lucrative trade with the Indians.[26] But
since the vast Western country has been transferred to the United
States, its population has been rapidly increased by numerous
individuals and families from different parts of the Union; and its
business extended by enterprising mechanics and merchants from the
New-England States; and its wealth greatly augmented. The old part
of St. Louis has a very different aspect from that of Cincinnati,
where every thing appears neat, and new, and tasteful; as their
public buildings, their theatre, and spacious hotels, not forgetting
Madam Trollope's bazar, or, as it is commonly called, "Trollope's
Folly,"[27] as well as its spacious streets, numerous coaches, and
other {24} marks of rapid wealth, and growing luxury. As St. Louis
has advanced in wealth, magnitude, and importance, it has gradually
changed the French language and manners, and assumed the American.
It however contains, I am told, many of the old stock that are very
respectable for their literary acquirements and polished manners.
[26] For the foundation of St. Louis, see A. Michaux's _Travels_,
in our volume iii, p. 71, note 138. Fort Crêvecoeur was La Salle's
Illinois stockade, built in 1680. See Ogden's _Letters_ in our
volume xix, p. 46, note 34.--ED.
[27] Frances Milton Trollope (1780-1863), an Englishwoman of
note, came to the United States in 1827 with Frances Wright. She
established herself at Cincinnati, and attempted to recuperate the
family fortunes by the opening of a bazaar for the sale of small
fancy articles. The experiment failed, and the Trollope family
returned to England (1831), where Mrs. Trollope issued _Domestic
Manners of Americans_ (London, 1832), a criticism of our national
customs that gave great umbrage to our forebears in the West. She
later became a novelist of note, dying in Florence in 1863. Her sons
were Anthony and Adolphus Trollope, well-known English authors.--ED.
We shall avoid, as we have avowed, any thing like censure of Captain
Wyeth's scheme during his absence; but when we arrived at St. Louis,
we could not but lament his want of information, respecting the
best means of obtaining the great objects of our enterprise. Here
we were constrained to sell our complicated wagons for less than
half what they originally cost. We were convinced that they were
not calculated for the rough roads, and rapid streams and eddies
of some of the rivers we must necessarily pass. We here thought
of the proverb, "that men never do a thing right the first time."
Captain Wyeth might have learned at St. Louis, that there were two
wealthy gentlemen who resided at or near that place, who had long
since established a regular trade with the Indians, Mr. M----,
and a young person, Mr. S----, and that a stranger could hardly
compete with such established traders. The turbulent tribe, called
the _Black-foot_ tribe, had long been supplied with fire arms and
ammunition, beads, vermilion and other paints, tobacco and scarlet
cloth, from two or three capital traders at, or near, St. Louis, and
every article most saleable with the Indians. Both parties knew each
other, and had confidence in each other; and having this advantage
over our band of adventurers, it does not appear that Mr. Mackenzie,
and Mr. Sublet felt any apprehensions or jealousy {25} of the new
comers from Boston; but treated them with friendship, and the latter
with confidence and cordiality; the former gentleman being, in a
manner, retired from business, except through numerous agents.[28]
He owns a small steam-boat called the Yellow Stone, the name of
one of the branches of the Missouri river.[29] Through such means
the Indians are supplied with all they want; and they appeared not
to wish to have any thing to do with any one else, especially the
adventurous Yankees. These old established traders enjoy a friendly
influence, or prudent command, over those savages, that seems to
operate to the exclusion of every one else; and this appeared from
the manner in which they treated us, which was void of every thing
like jealousy, or fear of rivalship. Their policy was to incorporate
us with their own troop.
[28] Kenneth McKenzie was born in Rossshire, Scotland, in 1801, of
a good family, relatives of Sir Alexander Mackenzie the explorer.
Coming to America at an early age, young McKenzie entered the
service of the North West Company; but upon its consolidation with
the Hudson's Bay Company (1821), he entered the fur-trade on his own
account. Going to New York in 1822, he secured an outfit on credit,
and for some time traded on the upper Mississippi. Later he formed
a partnership with Joseph Renville in the establishment of the
Columbia Fur Company. This concern was bought out by its rival, the
American Fur Company in 1827, whereupon McKenzie was taken into the
latter corporation. He was soon placed in command of what was known
as the "Upper Missouri Outfit," and built Fort Union at the mouth of
the Yellowstone, where for several years he ruled almost regally.
Among his earliest successes--to which Wyeth here refers--was his
acquisition of the Blackfoot trade. This tribe, influenced by
British traders, had long been hostile to Americans; McKenzie had,
however, been known to them in the North West Company, and through
one of their interpreters, Berger, he secured a treaty with them and
built (1831-32) a post in their country. McKenzie lost the good-will
of the American Fur Company, by erecting a distillery at Fort Union,
in defiance of United States laws. In 1834 he came down the river,
and visited Europe; but at intervals he re-ascended to his old post,
until in 1839 he disposed of his stock in the company. He then made
his home in St. Louis, until his death in 1861. It does not appear
that he had considered retirement as early as Wyeth's visit in 1832,
for he was then in the full tide of success. He lived magnificently
at Fort Union, ruling over a wide territory, an American example of
the "bourgeois of the old Northwest."
For William Sublette, see our volume xix, Gregg's _Commerce of the
Prairies_, p. 221, note 55.--ED.
[29] The "Yellowstone" was the first steamboat to visit the upper
Missouri. McKenzie and Pierre Chouteau, Jr., convinced of the
utility to the fur-trade of such a craft, persuaded the American Fur
Company to secure a steamer. She was built at Louisville, Kentucky,
in the winter of 1830-31, departing from St. Louis on her first
voyage, April 16, 1831, with Captain B. Young as master. This season
she ascended to Fort Tecumseh (near Pierre), and the following
year made her initial trip to the mouth of the Yellowstone River.
She had left St. Louis about a month before the arrival of Wyeth's
party.--ED.
We put our goods, and other baggage on board the steam-boat Otter,
and proceeded two hundred and sixty miles up the Missouri river,
which is as far as the white people have any settlements. We were
obliged to proceed very slowly and carefully on account of the
numerous _snags_ and _sawyers_ with which this river abounds. They
are trees that have been loosened, and washed away from the soft
banks of the river. They are detained by sandbanks, or by other
trees, that have floated down some time before. Those of them whose
sharp branches point opposite the stream are the _snags_, against
which boats are often impelled, as they are not visible above water,
and many are sunk by the wounds these make in their bows. The
_sawyers_ are also held fast by their roots, while the body of the
tree whips up and down, alternately visible and concealed beneath
the surface. These {26} are the chief terrors of the Missouri and
the Mississippi rivers. As to crocodiles they are little regarded,
being more afraid of man than he of them. On account of these snags
and sawyers, boatmen avoid passing in the night, and are obliged to
keep a sharp look out in the day-time. The sawyers when forced to
the bottom or near it by a strong current, or by eddies, rise again
with such force that few boats can withstand the shock. The course
of the boat was so tediously slow, that many of us concluded to
get out and walk on the banks of the river. This, while it gave us
agreeable exercise, was of some service in lightening our boat, for
with other passengers from St. Louis, we amounted to a considerable
crew. The ground was level, and free from underwood. We passed
plenty of deer, wild turkeys, and some other wild fowl unknown to
us, and expected to find it so all the way.
We arrived at a town or settlement called _Independence_.[30]
This is the last white settlement on our route to the Oregon, and
this circumstance gave a different cast to our peregrination,
and operated not a little on our hopes, and our fears, and our
imaginations. Some of our company began to ask each other some
serious questions; such as, Where are we going? and what are we
going for? and sundry other questions, which would have been wiser
had we asked them before we left Cambridge, and ruminated well on
the answers. But _Westward ho_! was our watchword, and checked all
doubts, and silenced all expressions of fear.
[30] For Independence, see Gregg's _Commerce of the Prairies_, in
our volume xix, p. 189, note 34.--ED.
Just before we started from this place, a company of sixty-two in
number arrived from St. Louis, under the command of _William Sublet,
Esq._, an experienced Indian trader, bound, like ourselves, {27} to
the American Alps, the Rocky Mountains, and we joined company with
him, and it was very lucky that we did. Our minds were not entirely
easy. We were about to leave our peaceable country-men, from whom
we had received many attentions and much kindness, to go into a
dark region of savages, of whose customs, manners, and language, we
were entirely ignorant,--to go we knew not whither,--to encounter
we knew not what. We had already sacrificed our amphibious wagons,
the result of so much pains and cost. Here two of our company
left us, named Kilham and Weeks. Whether they had any real cause
of dissatisfaction with our Captain, or whether they only made
that an excuse to quit the expedition and return home early, it
is not for me to say. I suspect the abandonment of our travelling
vehicles cooled their courage. We rested at Independence ten days;
and purchased, by Captain Sublet's advice, two yoke of oxen, and
fifteen sheep, as we learnt that we ought not to rely entirely upon
transient game from our fire-arms for sustenance, especially as
we were now going among a savage people who would regard us with
suspicion and dread, and treat us accordingly. From this place we
travelled about twenty-five miles a day.
Nothing occurred worth recording, till we arrived at the
first Indian settlement, which was about seventy miles from
Independence.[31] They appeared to us a harmless people, and not
averse to our passing through their country. Their persons were
rather under size, and their complexion dark. As they lived near
the frontier of the whites, they were not unacquainted with their
usages and customs. They have cultivated spots or little farms, {28}
on which they raise corn and pumpkins. They generally go out once
a year to hunt, accompanied by their women; and on killing the
Buffalo, or Bison, what they do not use on the spot, they dry to
eat through the winter. To prevent a famine, however, it is their
custom to keep a large number of dogs; and they eat them as we do
mutton and lamb. This tribe have imitated the white people in having
fixed and stationary houses. They stick poles in the ground in a
circular form, and cover them with buffalo-skins, and put earth
over the whole, leaving at the top an aperture for the smoke, but
small enough to be covered with a buffalo-skin in case of rain or
snow.--We found here little game; but honey-bees in abundance.
[31] This appears to have been an insignificant village of
somewhat sedentary Indians, probably of the Kansa tribe, near the
northwestern corner of what is now Douglas County, Kansas. Joel
Palmer notes it in 1845; see our volume xxx.--ED.
We travelled on about a hundred miles farther, when we came to a
large _prairie_, which name the French have given to extensive
tracts of land, mostly level, destitute of trees, and covered with
tall, coarse grass. They are generally dreary plains, void of water,
and rendered more arid by the Indian custom of setting fire to the
high grass once or twice a year to start the game that has taken
shelter there, which occasions a hard crust unfavorable to any
vegetable more substantial than grass. At this unpromising spot,
three more of our company took French leave of us, there being, it
seems, dissatisfaction on both sides; for each complained of the
other. The names of the seceders were Livermore, Bell, Griswell.[32]
In sixteen days more we reached the River _La Platte_, the water of
which is foul and muddy.[33] We were nine days passing this dreary
_prairie_. We were seven and twenty days winding our way along the
borders of the La Platte, which river we could not leave on {29}
account of the scarcity of water in the dry and comfortless plains.
Here we slaughtered the last of our live stock, and at night we
came to that region where buffaloes are often to be found; but we
suffered some sharp gnawings of hunger before we obtained one, and
experienced some foretaste of difficulties to come.
[32] Thomas Livermore was a cousin of Nathaniel Wyeth, whose home
was in Milford, New Hampshire. He was a minor, and his father's
consent was essential that he might join the party.
Bell appears to have been insubordinate from the start, and upon
his return to the East, published letters injurious to Wyeth's
reputation; consult Wyeth, _Oregon Expeditions_, index.--ED.
[33] For the River Platte, see our volume xiv, p. 219, note 170. The
Oregon Trail from Independence led westward, south of the Kansas,
crossing the latter stream near the present site of Topeka; thence
up the Big and Little Blue rivers, and across country to the Platte,
coming in near Grand Island.--ED.
The Missouri Territory[34] is a vast wilderness, consisting of
immense plains, destitute of wood and of water, except on the edges
of streams that are found near the turbid La Platte. This river owes
its source to the Rocky mountains, and runs pretty much through
the territory, without enlivening or fructifying this desert.
Some opinion may be formed of it by saying that for the space of
six hundred miles, we may be said to have been deprived of the
benefits of two of the elements, _fire_ and _water_. Here were, to
be sure, buffaloes, but after we had killed them we had no wood or
vegetables of any kind wherewith to kindle a fire for cooking. We
were absolutely compelled to dry the dung of the buffalo as the
best article we could procure for cooking our coarse beef. That
grumbling, discontent, and dejection should spring up amongst us,
was what no one can be surprised at learning. We were at times very
miserable, and our commander could be no less so; but we had put
our hands to the plough, and most of us were too stuffy to flinch,
and sneak off for home without reaching the Rocky Mountains; still
hunger is hunger, and the young and the strong feel the greatest
call for food. Every one who goes to sea may lay his account for
coming to short allowance, from violent storms, head winds, damaged
vessel, and the like; but for a band of New-England {30} men to come
to short allowance upon land, with guns, powder, and shot, was a
new idea to our Oregon adventurers, who had not prepared for it in
the article of hard bread, or flour, or potatoes, or that snug and
wholesome article, _salt fish_, so plenty at Marblehead and Cape
Ann, and so convenient to carry. When the second company shall march
from the seat of science, Cambridge, we would advise them to pack up
a few quintals of salt fish, and a few pounds of ground sago, and
salep, as a teaspoonful of it mixed with boiling water will make
three pints of good gruel, and also a competent supply of portable
soup.
[34] The Territory of Missouri was formed in 1812 of all the
Louisiana Purchase outside the limits of the newly-erected state
of Louisiana. In 1819 Arkansas Territory was cut out, and the
following year the state of Missouri. The remaining region was left
with no definite organization; but by an act of 1830 it was defined
as Indian Territory--south of a line drawn from Missouri River at
the mouth of the Ponca, and west to the Rocky Mountains. This vast
unorganized region was indefinitely called Missouri Territory,
Indian Territory, Western Territory, and even (on one map of the
period) Oregon Territory--although the latter name was usually
confined to the region west of the Rockies, and north of Mexican
bounds.--ED.
Buffaloes were plenty enough. We saw them in frightful droves, as
far as the eye could reach, appearing at a distance as if the ground
itself was moving like the sea. Such large armies of them have no
fear of man. They will travel over him and make nothing of him.
Our company after killing ten or twelve of them, never enjoyed the
benefit of more than two of them, the rest being carried off by the
wolves before morning. Beside the scarcity of meat, we suffered for
want of good and wholesome water. The La Platte is warm and muddy;
and the use of it occasioned a diarrhoea in several of our company.
Dr. Jacob Wyeth, brother of the Captain, suffered not a little from
this cause.--Should the reader wonder how we proceeded so rapidly on
our way without stopping to inquire, he must bear in mind that we
were still under the guidance of Captain Sublet, who knew every step
of the way, and had actually resided four years in different green
valleys that are here and there in the Rocky Mountains. To me it
seems that we must have perished for want of {31} sustenance in the
deserts of Missouri, had we been by ourselves. It may have been good
policy in Sublet, to attach us to him. He probably saw our rawness
in an adventure so ill provided for as ours actually was. But for
him we should hardly have provided ourselves with live stock; and
but for him we should probably never have reached the American Alps.
By this time every man began to think for himself.
We travelled six days on the south branch of the La Platte, and
then crossed over to the north branch, and on this branch of it, we
travelled eighteen days.[35] But the first three days we could not
find sufficient articles of food; and what added to our distress was
the sickness of several of our company. We noticed many trails of
the savages, but no Indians. The nearer we approached the range of
the mountains the thicker were the trees. After travelling twelve
days longer we came to the Black Hills. They are so called from
their thick growth of cedar. Here is the region of rattle snakes,
and the largest and fiercest bears,--a very formidable animal, which
it is not prudent for a man to attack alone. I have known some of
the best hunters of Sublet's company to fire five and six balls
at one before he fell. We were four days in crossing these dismal
looking hills. They would be called mountains, were they not in
the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, whose peaks overtop every
thing, and elevate themselves into the region of everlasting frost
and snow. Our sick suffered extremely in ascending these hills,
some of them slipped off the horses and mules they rode on, from
sheer weakness, brought on by the bowel complaint already mentioned;
among these was Dr. {32} Wyeth, our Captain's brother, who never
had a constitution fit to encounter such an expedition. And yet we
could not leave them under the care of a man, or two or three men,
and pass on without them, to follow us, when they were able. It
was to me particularly grievous to think that he, who was to take
care of the health of the company, was the first who was disabled
from helping himself or others, and this one a blood relation. It
required a man of a firmer make than Dr. Jacob Wyeth to go through
such a mountainous region as the one we were in: a man seldom does a
thing right the first time.
[35] The Oregon trail touched the North Platte at Ash Creek, now an
important railway junction in Deuel County, Nebraska.--ED.
From the north branch we crossed over to what was called Sweet-water
Creek.[36] This water being cool, clear, and pleasant, proved a
good remedy for our sick, as their bowel complaints were brought on
and aggravated by the warm, muddy waters of the Missouri territory
we had passed through. We came to a huge rock in the shape of a
bowl upside down. It bore the name of Independence, from, it is
said, being the resting-place of Lewis and Clarke on the 4th of
July; but according to the printed journal of those meritorious
travellers, they had not reached, or entered, the American Alps on
the day of that memorable epoch.[37] Whether we are to consider the
rock Independence as fairly in the Rocky Mountains, let others
determine. We had now certainly begun our ascent to those lofty
regions, previous to which we had to pass the chief branch of the
river La Platte; but we had no boat whatever for the purpose; and
had we not been in the company of Captain Sublet, it is hard to say
what we should have done short of going a great way round. Here I,
and others were entirely {33} convinced that we were engaged in an
expedition without being provided with the means to accomplish it.
Our boats and wagons we had disposed of at St. Louis, and here we
were on the banks of a river without even a canoe. Captain Clarke
brought his canoes to the foot of the range of mountains and there
left them. The reader will understand that not only the Missouri
river, but the Yellowstone river, the La Platte, and many other
smaller ones commence by small beginnings in the Black Hills, and in
the Rocky Mountains, and increase in size and depth as they proceed
down to join the Arkansa, or the Canadian river, and finally the
Mississippi, and so run into the vast salt ocean. Whether it was
Captain Sublet's own invention, or an invention of the Indians, we
know not, but the contrivance we used is worth mentioning. They
called it a _Bull-boat_. They first cut a number of willows (which
grow every where near the banks of all the rivers we had travelled
by from St. Louis), of about an inch and a half diameter at the
butt end, and fixed them in the ground at proper distances from
each other, and as they approached nearer one end they brought them
nearer together, so as to form something like the bow. The ends of
the whole were brought and bound firmly together, like the ribs of a
great basket; and then they took other twigs of willow and wove them
into those stuck in the ground so as to make a sort of firm, huge
basket of twelve or fourteen feet long. After this was completed,
they sewed together a number of buffalo-skins, and with them
covered the whole; and after the different parts had been trimmed
off smooth, a slow fire was made under the Bull-boat, taking care
to dry the skins moderately; and as {34} they gradually dried, and
acquired a due degree of warmth, they rubbed buffalo-tallow all over
the outside of it, so as to allow it to enter into all the seams of
the boat, now no longer a willow-basket. As the melted tallow ran
down into every seam, hole, and crevice, it cooled into a firm body
capable of resisting the water, and bearing a considerable blow
without damaging it. Then the willow-ribbed, buffalo-skin, tallowed
vehicle was carefully pulled up from the ground, and behold a boat
capable of transporting man, horse, and goods over a pretty strong
current. At the sight of it, we Yankees all burst out into a loud
laugh, whether from surprise, or pleasure, or both, I know not.
It certainly was not from ridicule; for we all acknowledged the
contrivance would have done credit to _old_ New-England.
[36] Sweetwater River, a western affluent of the North Platte, rises
in the Wind River Mountains, and for over a hundred miles flows
almost directly east. The name is supposed to be derived from the
loss at an early day of a pack-mule laden with sugar. Wyeth speaks
of "crossing over" to this stream, because the trail abandoned the
North Platte, which here flows through a formidable cañon, and
reached the Sweetwater some miles above its mouth.--ED.
[37] Lewis and Clark did not pass within hundreds of miles of
Independence Rock, having ascended the Missouri to its source.
Independence Rock is a well-known landmark on the Oregon Trail--an
isolated mass covering twenty-seven acres, and towering 155 feet
above Sweetwater River. On it were marked the names of travelers, so
that it became the "register of the desert." Frémont in 1843 says,
"Many a name famous in the history of this country, and some well
known to science are to be found mixed with those of the traders and
of travelers for pleasure and curiosity, and of missionaries to the
savages."--ED.
While Captain Sublet and his company were binding the gunwale of the
boat with buffalo-sinews, to give it strength and due hardness, our
Captain was by no means idle. He accordingly undertook to make a
raft to transport our own goods across the river. Sublet expressed
his opinion that it would not answer where the current was strong;
but Captain Wyeth is a man not easily to be diverted from any of
his notions, or liable to be influenced by the advice of others;
so that while Sublet's men were employed on their Bull-boat, Wyeth
and a chosen few were making a raft. When finished, we first placed
our blacksmith's shop upon it, that is to say, our anvil, and large
vice, and other valuable articles belonging to black-smithery,
bar-iron, and steel traps, and alas! a cask of powder, and a number
of smaller, but valuable articles. We fixed a rope to our raft, and
with some difficulty got {35} the other end of it across the river
to the opposite bank by a man swimming with a rope in his mouth,
from some distance above the spot he aimed to reach. We took a turn
of it round a tree. Captain Sublet gave it as his opinion that the
line would not be sufficient to command the raft. But our Leader
was confident that it would; but when they had pulled about half
way over, the rope broke, and the raft caught under the limbs of a
partly submerged tree, and tipped it on one side so that we lost
our iron articles, and damaged our goods and a number of percussion
caps. This was a very serious calamity and absolutely irreparable.
Almost every disaster has some benefit growing out of it. It was
even so here. Two thirds of our company were sick, and that without
any particular disorder that we can name, but from fatigue, bad
water, scanty food, and eating flesh half raw. Add to this, worry of
mind, and serious apprehensions of our fate when the worthy Captain
Sublet should leave us; for he was, under Providence, the instrument
of our preservation. Our own individual sufferings were enough for
us to bear; but Captain Wyeth had to bear the like, and more beside,
as the responsibility lay heavy upon him. Most men would have sunk
under it. At this point of our journey we were sadly tormented by
musquetoes, that prevented our sleep after the fatigues of the
day. This little contemptible insect, which they call here a gnat,
disturbed us more than bears, or wolves, or snakes.
The next day after we started from this unlucky place, we descried
a number of men on horseback, approaching us at full speed. Various
were our conjectures. Captain Sublet had an apprehension that they
might be hostile Indians who fight on {36} horseback; he therefore
ordered every man to make fast his horse as quick as possible, and
prepare for battle on foot. But on their near approach, we found
them a body of white men called _trappers_, whose occupation is
to entrap the beaver and other animals that have valuable furs.
Captain Sublet has, for several years, had about two hundred of
these trappers in his pay, in and around the Rocky Mountains, and
this troop was a party of them. His place of rendezvous for them
is at _Pierre's Hole_, by which name they call one of those deep
and verdant valleys which are to be found in the Rocky Mountains
from the eastern boundary of them to their extreme edge in the
west, where the Oregon or Columbia river commences under the name
of Clark's river, some branches of which inosculate with the mighty
Missouri on the east. It is to _Pierre's_ valley or _Hole_, that
his trappers resort to meet their employer every summer. It is here
they bring their peltry and receive their pay; and this traffic has
been kept up between them a number of years with good faith on both
sides, and to mutual satisfaction and encouragement. When Sublet
leaves St. Louis, he brings up tobacco, coffee, rice, powder, shot,
paint, beads, handkerchiefs and all those articles of finery that
please both Indian women and men; and having established that sort
of traffic with his friends, the Indians on and in the vicinity of
the Rocky Mountains, what chance was there that any small band from
Boston, or even Cambridge, could supplant him in the friendship and
confidence of his old acquaintance, the Shoshonees, the Black-feet,
or any other tribe? He must have seen this at once, and been
convinced that nothing like rivalship could {37} rise up between him
and the New-England adventurers. He therefore caressed them, and, in
a manner, incorporated them with his troop.
This gentleman was born in America of French parents,[38] and
partakes largely of those good-humored, polite, and accommodating
manners which distinguish the nation he sprang from. The old
French war, and wars on this continent since then, amply prove how
much better Frenchmen conciliate the natives than the English.
The English and the Americans, when they come in contact with the
untutored savage, most commonly fight. But not so the French. They
please and flatter the Indian, give him powder, and balls, and
flints, and guns, and make a Catholic of him, and make out to live
in friendship with the red man and woman of the wilderness. It is
strange that such extremes of character should meet. Some have said
that they are not so very far distant as others have imagined,--that
the refined French people love war, and the women paint their
faces, grease their hair, and wear East India blankets, called
shawls.--Captain Sublet possesses, doubtless, that conciliating
disposition so characteristic of the French, and not so frequently
found among the English or Americans; for the descendants of both
nations bear strong marks of the stock they came from. The French
have always had a stronger hold of the affections of the Indians
than any other people.
[38] Captain William Sublette was born in Kentucky. His maternal
grandfather was Captain Whitby, a noted pioneer of Irish ancestry.
The Sublettes were also of Kentucky stock; and if French originally,
came early to America. See our volume xix, p. 221, note 55
(Gregg).--ED.
The trappers kept company with us till we came to Pierre's Hole,
or valley, which is twelve miles from the spot where we first met
them. Three or four days after, we were fired on by the Indians
about ten o'clock at night. They had assembled to about the number
of three hundred. They stole {38} five horses from us, and three
from Sublet's company.[39] About the first of July we crossed the
highest part or ridge of the mountains.[40] In addition to the
mountain composed of earth, sand, and stone, including common
rocks, there were certain peaks resembling a loaf of sugar, from a
hundred to two hundred feet high; and some appeared much higher; I
cannot guess their height. They were to us surprising. Their sides
deviated but little from perpendicular. They looked at a distance
like some light-houses of a conical form, or like our Cambridge
glass manufactories; but how they acquired that form is wonderful.
Subsiding waters may have left them so, after washing away sandy
materials. But nature is altogether wonderful, in her large works
as well as small. How little do we know of the first cause of any
thing! We had to creep round the base of these steep edifices of
nature. We now more clearly understand and relish the question
of one of our Indians who was carried to England as a show, who,
on being shown that elegant pile of stone, the cathedral of St.
Paul, after viewing it in silent admiration, asked his interpreter
_whether it was made by men's hands, or whether it grew there_. We
might ask the same question respecting these conical mountains. Had
the scaffolding of St. Paul's remained, the surprise and wonder of
the sensible savage had been less.
[39] This attack was attributed to the same band of Blackfeet with
whom the Battle of Pierre's Hole occurred some days later. See
Wyeth, _Oregon Expeditions_, p. 158; Irving, _Rocky Mountains_, i,
p. 75.--ED.
[40] This is South Pass, so named in contradistinction to the
northern passes undertaken by Lewis and Clark. It is not known by
whom this mountain passage was discovered, but probably by some of
Ashley's parties in 1823. The ascent is so gradual that, although
7,500 feet above sea-level, its elevation is not perceived, and in
1843 Frémont could with difficulty tell just where he crossed the
highest point of the divide.--ED.
It was difficult to keep our feet on these highest parts of the
mountains; some of the pack-horses slipped and rolled over and
over, and yet were taken up alive. Those that did not fall were
sadly bruised and lamed in their feet and joints. Mules are best
calculated, as we experienced, for such difficult travelling. They
seem to think, and to judge {39} of the path before them, and
will sometimes put their fore feet together and slip down without
stepping. They are as sagacious in crossing a river, where there
is a current. They will not attempt to go straight over, but will
breast the tide by passing obliquely upwards. One of our horses was
killed by a fall down one of these precipices, and it was surprising
that more of them did not share the like fate. Buffaloes were so
scarce here, that we were obliged to feed on our dried meat, and
this scarcity continued till after we had gained the head sources of
the Columbia river. For the last five days we have had to travel on
the Colorado of the West, which is a very long river, and empties
into the gulph of California.[41]
[41] The upper waters of the Colorado River are now usually termed
Green River, from the "Rio Verte" of the Spaniards. This great
stream rises on the western slopes of the Wind River Mountains;
flowing nearly south, gathering many mountain streams, it next turns
abruptly east into the northwest corner of Colorado, and having
rounded the Uintah range trends to the south-southwest through Utah,
until joined by Grand River, when it becomes the Colorado proper.
The first attempt to navigate this formidable waterway was made by
Ashley's party in 1825, although Becknell is known to have visited
it the previous year. Consult Chittenden's _Fur-Trade_, ii, pp. 509,
778-781, and F. S. Dellenbaugh, _Romance of the Colorado River_ (New
York, 1902).--ED.
On the 4th of July, 1832, we arrived at Lewis's fork, one of the
largest rivers in these rocky mountains.[42] It took us all day
to cross it. It is half a mile wide, deep, and rapid. The way we
managed was this: one man unloaded his horse, and swam across with
him, leading two loaded ones, and unloading the two, brought them
back, for two more, and as Sublet's company and our own made over
a hundred and fifty, we were all day in passing the river. In
returning, my mule, by treading on a round stone, stumbled and threw
me off, and the current was so strong, that a bush which I caught
hold of only saved me from drowning.
[42] From Green River the caravan crossed the divide between the
Colorado and Columbia systems, and came upon a branch of Lewis
(or Snake) River, probably Hoback's River. They did not reach the
main Lewis until July 6, arriving at the rendezvous on the morning
of July 8, after crossing Teton Pass. Consult Wyeth, _Oregon
Expeditions_, pp. 158, 159.--ED.
This being Independence-Day, we drank the health of our friends in
Massachusetts, in good clear water, as that was the only liquor we
had to drink in remembrance of our homes and dear connexions. If
I may judge by my own feelings and by the looks of my companions,
there was more of melancholy than joy amongst us. We were almost
{40} four thousand miles from Boston, and in saying Boston we mean
at the same time our native spot Cambridge, as they are separated
by a wooden bridge only. From the north fork of Lewis's river we
passed on to an eminence called Teton mountain, where we spent
the night. The next day was pleasant, and serene. Captain Sublet
came in the evening to inquire how many of our company were sick,
as they must ride, it being impossible for them to go on foot any
farther. His kindness and attention I never can forget. Dr. Jacob
Wyeth, the Captain's brother, George More, and Stephen Burdit[43]
were too weak to walk. To accommodate them with horses, Captain
Wyeth was obliged to dig a hole in the earth, and therein bury the
goods which had been hitherto carried on horseback. In the language
of the Trappers this hiding of goods was called _cacher_ or hidden
treasure, being the French term for 'to hide.' When they dig these
hiding-holes they carefully carry the earth on a buffalo-skin to
a distance, so as to leave no marks or traces of the ground being
dug up or disturbed: and this was done to secure the _caché_ from
being stolen by the Indians or the white men. The goods so hidden
are wrapt up in buffalo-skins to keep them dry, before the earth
is put over them. Nor is this all; they make a fire over the spot,
and all this to prevent the Indians from suspecting that treasure
is caché, or hidden there, while the owner of it takes care to mark
the bearing of the spot on some tree, or rock, or some other object
that may lead him to recognise the place again. But I have my doubts
whether they who hid the goods will ever return that way to dig up
their hidden treasure. We did not meddle with it on our return with
Captain Sublet.
[43] More was killed by Indians; see _post_. Captain Wyeth found his
powder flask at Fort Union upon his return in the summer of 1833.
Burdett went on to Oregon, where he resided for some years.--ED.
{41} On the 5th of July we started afresh rather low-spirited. We
looked with sadness on the way before us. The mountain was here
pretty thickly timbered down its slopes, and wherever the ground is
level. The pines and hemlock trees were generally about eighteen
inches through. It had snowed, and we were now at a height where the
snow commonly lies all the year round. Which ever way we looked,
the region presented a dreary aspect. No one could wonder that even
some of us who were in health, were, at times, somewhat homesick. If
this was the case with us, what must have been the feelings of our
three sick fellow travellers. We passed through a snow bank three
feet deep. We well ones passed on with Captain Sublet to the top
of the mountain, and there waited until our sick men came up with
us. George More fell from his horse through weakness. He might have
maintained his seat on level ground, but ascending and descending
required more exertion than he could call forth; and this was the
case also with Dr. Wyeth. Burdit made out a little better. When
we encamped at night, we endured a snow storm. Sublet's company
encamped about two miles from us; for at best we could hardly keep
up with his veteran company. They were old and experienced trappers,
and we, compared with them, young and inexperienced soldiers, little
imagining that we should ever have to encounter such hardships, in
realizing our dreams of making a fortune. Ignorance of the future is
not always to be considered among the calamities of man.
Captain Sublet's grand rendezvous, or Head Quarters, was about
twelve miles from our encampment.[44] He had there about two hundred
{42} trappers, or beaver-hunters; or more properly speaking,
_skinners_ of entrapped animals; or _peltry_-hunters, for they
chased but few of the captured beasts. To these were added about
five hundred Indians, of the rank of warriors, all engaged in the
same pursuit and traffic of the fur-trade. They were principally
the _Flat-heads_,[45] so called from their flattening the heads
of their young children, by forcing them to wear a piece of wood,
like a bit of board, so as to cause the skull to grow flat, which
they consider a mark of beauty even among the females. They are
otherwise dandies and belles in their dress and ornaments. This
large body of horse made a fine appearance, especially their long
hair; for, as there was a pleasant breeze of wind, their hair blew
out straight all in one direction, which had the appearance of so
many black streamers. When we met they halted and fired three rounds
by way of salute, which we returned; and then followed such friendly
greetings as were natural and proper between such high contracting
powers and great and good allies. This parade was doubtless made by
Sublet for the sake of effect. It was showing us, Yankee barbarians,
_their Elephants_;--like General and Lord Howe's military display
to our commissioners of Congress on Staten Island, when the British
Brothers proposed that celebrated interview; and when Dr. Franklin,
Mr. Adams, and some others of the deputation, whose names I do not
now recollect, assumed all that careless indifference, very common
with the Indians on meeting a white embassy; for the express purpose
of conveying an idea, that we, though the weakest in discipline and
numbers, are not awe-struck by your fine dress, glittering arms, and
full-fed persons.
[44] Pierre's Hole, known more recently as Teton Basin, is a grassy
valley trending northwest and southeast, thirty miles long, and from
five to fifteen wide, in eastern Idaho, just across the Wyoming
border. Pierre (or Teton) River flows through it gathering affluents
on the way. The valley was a well-known rendezvous, taking its name
from Pierre, an Iroquois employé of the Hudson's Bay Company, who
was here murdered by the Blackfeet. The Astorian overland expedition
passed through this valley both going and returning (1811, 1812).
The most notable event in its history was the battle which Wyeth
recounts. It was not on the regular Oregon trail; see Townsend's
_Narrative_, _post._--ED.
[45] For the Flatheads, see Franchère's _Narrative_, in our volume
vi, p. 340, note 145.--ED.
{43} It was now the 6th of July,[46] 1832, being sixty-four days
since we left the settlements of the white people. Captain Sublet
encamped his forces; and then pointed out to Captain Wyeth the
ground which he thought would be most proper for us; and altogether
we looked like a little army. Not but what we felt small compared
with our great and powerful allies.
[46] According to Nathaniel Wyeth's journal, it was July 8 before
his party arrived in Pierre's Hole. They found that Drips, the
American Fur Company agent, had, with many independent trappers,
reached there before them.--ED.
We were overjoyed to think that we had got to a resting-place, where
we could repose our weary limbs, and recruit the lost strength of
our sick. While Sublet was finishing his business with his Indian
trappers, they delivering their peltry, and he remunerating them
in his way with cloth, powder, ball, beads, knives, handkerchiefs,
and all that gawdy trumpery which Indians admire, together with
coffee, rice, and corn, also leather, and other articles,--we, being
idle, had time to think, to reflect, and to be uneasy. We had been
dissatisfied for some time, but we had not leisure to communicate
it and systematize our grievances. I, with others, had spoken with
Captain Sublet, and him we found conversable and communicative.
Myself and some others requested Captain Wyeth to call a meeting
of his followers, to ask information, and to know what we were now
to expect, seeing we had passed over as we supposed the greatest
difficulties, and were now nearly four thousand miles from the
_Atlantic_, and within four hundred miles of the _Pacific Ocean_,
the end and aim of our laborious expedition, the field where we
expected to reap our promised harvest. We wished to have what we
had been used to at home,--a town meeting,--or a parish meeting,
where every freeman has an equal right to speak his sentiments, and
to vote thereon. {44} But Captain Wyeth was by no means inclined to
this democratical procedure. The most he seemed inclined to, was a
_caucus_ with a select few; of whom neither his own brother, though
older than himself, nor myself, was to be of the number. After
considerable altercation, he concluded to call a meeting of the
whole, on business interesting and applicable to all. We accordingly
met, Captain Wyeth in the chair, or on the stump, I forget which.
Instead of every man speaking his own mind, or asking such questions
as related to matters that lay heaviest on his mind, the Captain
commenced the business by ordering the roll to be called; and as
the names were called, the clerk asked the person if he would go
on. The first name was Nathaniel J. Wyeth, whom we had dubbed
_Captain_, who answered--"I shall go on."--The next was William Nud,
who, before he answered, wished to know what the Captain's plan
and intentions were, whether to try to commence a small colony, or
to trap and trade for beaver? To which Captain Wyeth replied, that
_that_ was none of our business. Then Mr. Nud said, "I shall not
go on;" and as the names of the rest were called, there appeared
_seven_ persons out of the _twenty-one_, who were determined to
return home. Of the number so determined was, besides myself, Dr.
Jacob Wyeth, the Captain's brother, whose strength had never been
equal to such a journey. His constitution forbade it. He was brought
up at College. Here were discontents on both sides; criminations
and recriminations. A commander of a band of associated adventurers
has a very hard task. The commanded, whether in a school, or in a
regiment, or company, naturally combine in feeling against {45}
their leader; and this is so natural that armies are obliged to make
very strict rules, and to pursue rigid discipline. It is so also
on ship-board. Our merchant ships cannot sail in safety without
exacting prompt obedience; and disobedience in the common seamen is
mutiny, and mutiny is a high crime, and approximates to piracy. It
is pretty much so in these long and distant exploring expeditions.
The Captain cannot always with safety satisfy all the questions
put to him by those under his command; and it would lead to great
inconvenience to entrust any, even a brother, with any information
concealed from the rest. There must be secrecy, and there must
be confidence. We had travelled through a dreary wilderness, an
infinitely worse country than Palestine; yet Moses himself could
not have kept together the Israelites without the aid of miracles;
and the history we have given of our boat-like arks, and the wreck
of our raft, and the loss of our heaviest articles may lead most
readers to suspect that our Leader to his Land of Promise was not an
inspired man. In saying this, we censure no one, we only lament our
common frailty. Reflect a moment, considerate reader! on our humble
means, for an expedition of FOUR THOUSAND _miles_, compared with
the ample means, rich and complete out-fit, letters of credit, and
every thing deemed needful, given to _Captains Lewis_ and _Clarke_,
under the orders of the government of the United States; and yet
they several times came very near starving for the want of food, and
of _fuel_, even in the _Oregon_ territory! In all books of voyages
and travels, who ever heard of the utmost distress for want of wood,
leaves, roots, coal, or turf to cook {46} with? Yet all through
the dreary wilderness of Missouri, we were obliged to use the dung
of buffaloes, or eat raw flesh. The reader will scarcely believe
that this was the case even at mouth of the Oregon river. Clarke
and Lewis had to buy wood of the Indians, who had hardly enough
for themselves. To be deprived of solid food soon ends in death;
but we were often deprived of the two elements out of four, _fire_
and _water_, and when on the Rocky mountains, of a _third_, I mean
_earth_; for everything beneath our feet and around us was stone.
We had, be sure, _air_ enough, and too much too, sometimes enough
almost to blow our hair off.
But to return to our dismal list of grievances. Almost every one of
the company wished to go no farther; but they found themselves too
feeble and exhausted to think of encountering the risk of a march
on foot of three thousand five hundred miles through such a country
as we came. We asked Captain Wyeth to let us have our muskets and
a sufficiency of ammunition, which request he refused. Afterwards,
he collected all the guns, and after selecting such as he and his
companions preferred, he gave us the refuse; many of which were
unfit for use. There were two tents belonging to the company, of
which he gave us one; which we pitched about a quarter of a mile
from his. George More expressed his determination of returning
home, and asked for a horse, which after considerable difficulty
he obtained. This was July 10th. The Captain likewise supplied his
brother with a horse and a hundred dollars.
On the 12th of July, Captain Wyeth, after moving his tent half
a mile farther from ours, put himself under the command of Mr.
Milton Sublet,[47] {47} brother of Captain William Sublet so often
mentioned. This Captain Milton Sublet had about twenty men under his
command, all trappers; so that hereafter as far as I know, it was
Wyeth, Sublet and Co.; so that the reader will understand, that Dr.
Jacob Wyeth, Palmer, Law, Batch, and myself concluded to retrace our
steps to St. Louis in company with Captain William Sublet, while
Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth remained with Milton Sublet, and his
twenty men. I have been unreasonably blamed for leaving my kinsman
beyond the Rocky Mountains with only eleven of his company, and that
too when we were within about four hundred miles of the mouth of the
Columbia, _alias_ Oregon river, where it pours into the _boisterous_
Pacific Ocean, for such Lewis and Clarke found it to their cost.
[47] Milton G. Sublette was a younger brother of William L.--for
whom, see our volume xix, p. 221, note 55 (Gregg). He was a partner
in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and an able trader; but disease
in one of his legs obliged him to abandon the expedition of 1834.
See Townsend's _Narrative_, _post_. The ailing leg was twice
amputated, but to no avail, and he died at Fort Laramie, December
19, 1836.--ED.
The spot where we now were, is a valley, between two mountains,
about ten miles wide, so lofty that their tops are covered with
snow, while it was warm and pleasant where we pitched our tent.
This agreeable valley is called by the trappers _Pierre's-Hole_, as
if it were a dismal residence; and was the most western point that
I visited, being about, we conjectured, four hundred miles short
of the mouth of the Oregon river, whence the territory derives its
name, which Mr. Hall J. Kelly has described as another paradise!
O! the magic of sounds and inflated words! Whether Captain Wyeth's
expedition was wise or imprudent we are not prepared to say; but
under existing circumstances, half of his company having left him,
and among them his own brother, the surgeon of the expedition, we
cannot see what better he could have done than to ally himself to
an experienced band of hunters, as a step necessary {48} to his
own preservation. He was three thousand and five hundred miles from
the Atlantic Ocean, with only eleven men, and half his goods lost
or expended, and no resource of supply short of St. Louis, nineteen
hundred miles from them. Had not the Sublets been with them from
that place through the wilderness of Missouri and La Platte, it is
hardly probable they would have ever reached the west side of the
Rocky Mountains. In passing judgment on this strange expedition, we
must take in, beside facts, probabilities and casualties.
On the 17th of July, Captain Wyeth and Captain Milton Sublet set
out westward with their respective men to go to Salmon river to
winter.[48] The former had eleven beside himself: that river they
computed at two hundred miles distance. Wyeth accordingly purchased
twenty-five horses from the Indians, who had a great number, and
those very fine, and high-spirited. Indeed the Western region seems
the native and congenial country for horses. They were, however,
delayed till the next day. But when they were about moving, they
perceived a drove of something, whether buffaloes or men they could
not determine with the naked eye; but when aided by the glass, they
recognized them for a body of the _Black-foot_ tribe of Indians,
a powerful and warlike nation. As this movement was evidently
hostile, Captain Milton Sublet dispatched two men to call on his
brother, who was about eight miles off, for assistance; when Captain
William Sublet ordered every man to get ready immediately. We had
about five hundred friendly Indian warriors with us, who expressed
their willingness to join in our defence.
[48] The Salmon is entirely an Idaho River--one of the largest and
most important affluents of the Lewis (or Snake). Its sources are in
the central part of the state, nearly one hundred and fifty miles
west of Wyeth's present position. It flows north, then directly
west, and again makes a long northward sweep before losing itself in
Lewis River. It is a mountainous stream, not navigable for any great
distance. Lewis and Clark (1805) first saw Columbian waters upon
the Lemhi--an eastern affluent of the Salmon. Later, Captain Clark
made a reconnaissance some fifty miles down the Salmon, hoping to
find the way thence to the Columbia; but he was turned back by the
rocky cañons and rapids, and the expedition thenceforth took its way
by land across the mountains. On the return journey (1806) a party
of Lewis and Clark's men advanced to the lower Salmon in search of
provisions. The river has since been of note in fur-trading and
trapping annals.--ED.
{49} As soon as we left Captain Wyeth we joined Captain Sublet,
as he said that no white man should be there unless he was to be
under his command; and his reason for it was that in case they had
to fight the Indians, no one should flinch or sneak out of the
battle. It seems that when the Black-foot Indians saw us moving
in battle array, they appeared to hesitate; and at length they
displayed a white flag as an ensign of peace; but Sublet knew their
treacherous character. The chief of the friendly Flat-heads and
Antoine[49] rode together, and concerted this savage arrangement;
to ride up and accost them in a friendly manner; and when the
Black-foot chief should take hold of the Flat-head chief's hand in
token of friendship, then the other was to shoot him, which was
instantly done! and at that moment the Flat-head chief pulled off
the Black-foot's scarlet robe, and returned with the Captain to our
party unhurt. As soon as the Black-foot Indians recovered from their
surprise, they displayed a _red_ flag, and the battle began. This
was _Joab_ with a vengeance,--_Art thou in health, my brother?_
[49] Antoine Godin was a half-breed whose father, of Iroquois
origin, had been killed by Blackfeet upon a creek bearing his name.
Antoine went out with Wyeth's company, that built Fort Hall in
1834; while in camp there, he was enticed across the river, and
treacherously shot (see Townsend's _Narrative_, _post_).--ED.
The Black-foot chief was a man of consequence in his nation. He
not only wore on this occasion a robe of scarlet cloth, probably
obtained from a Christian source, but was decorated with beads
valued there at sixty dollars. The battle commenced on the Prairie.
As soon as the firing began on both sides, the squaws belonging to
the Black-foot forces, retreated about fifty yards into a small
thicket of wood, and there threw up a ridge of earth by way of
entrenchment, having first piled up a number of logs cob-fashion, to
which the men at length fell back, and from {50} which they fired
upon us, while some of their party with the women were occupied in
deepening the trench. Shallow as it was, it afforded a considerable
security to an Indian, who will often shoot a man from behind a
tree near to its root, while the white man is looking to see his
head pop out at man's height. This has taught the United States
troops, to load their muskets while lying on their backs, and firing
in an almost supine posture. When the Duke of Saxe-Weimer was in
Cambridge,[50] he noticed this, to him, novel mode of firing, which
he had never before seen; and this was in a volunteer company of
militia.--I do not mean to say that the Indians fired only in a
supine posture; when they had loaded they most commonly rose up
and fired, and then down on the ground again to re-load.--In this
action with the formidable Black-foot tribe, Captain Nathaniel J.
Wyeth's party had no concern. He himself was in it a very short
time, but retired from the contest doubtless for good reasons.
After contesting the matter with the warlike tribe about six hours,
Captain Sublet found it of little avail to fight them in this
way. He therefore determined to charge them at once, which was
accordingly done. He led, and ordered his men to follow him, and
this proved effectual. Six beside himself first met the savages
hand to hand; of these seven, four were wounded, and one killed.
The Captain was wounded in his arm and shoulder-blade. The Indians
did not, however, retreat entirely, so that we kept up a random
fire until dark; the ball and the arrows were striking the trees
after we could see the effects of one and of the other. There was
something terrific to our men in their arrows. The idea of a barbed
arrow sticking {51} in a man's body, as we had observed it in the
deer and other animals, was appalling to us all, and it is no wonder
that some of our men recoiled at it. They regarded a leaden bullet
much less. We may judge from this the terror of the savages on being
met the first time by fire arms,--a sort of thunder and lightning
followed by death without seeing the fatal shot.
[50] Carl Bernhard, duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1792-1862),
visited America, and published _Travels in North America in the
years 1825 and 1826_ (Philadelphia, 1828).--ED.
In this battle with the Indians, not one of those who had belonged
to Captain Wyeth's company received any injury. There were, however,
seven white men of Sublet's company killed, and thirteen wounded.
Twenty-five of our Indians were killed and thirty-five wounded. The
next morning a number of us went back to the Indian fort, so called,
where we found one dead man and two women, and also twenty-five dead
horses, a proof that the Black-foot were brave men.[51] The number
of them was uncertain. We calculated that they amounted to about
three hundred. We guessed that the reason the three dead bodies
were left at the entrenchment was, that they had not enough left to
carry off their dead and wounded. This affair delayed Captain Wyeth
three days, and Captain Sublet ten days. The names of those who left
Captain Wyeth to return home, were Dr. Jacob Wyeth, John B. Wyeth,
his cousin, William Nud, Theophilus Beach, R. L. Wakefield, Hamilton
Law, George More, ---- Lane, and Walter Palmer.[52] The names of
those who remained attached to Captain Wyeth, and who went on with
him to Salmon river, are J. Woodman, Smith, G. Sargent, ---- Abbot,
W. Breck, S. Burditt, ---- Ball, St. Clair, C. Tibbits, G. Trumbull,
and ---- Whittier.[53]
[51] According to Irving (_Rocky Mountains_, i, p. 85), who had
conversed with several of the participants, the Blackfeet left ten
dead in the fort, and reported their loss as twenty-six. Irving
also makes the number of dead and wounded whites and allied Indians
smaller than Wyeth's estimate.--ED.
[52] Of this company William Nudd and George More were afterwards
killed in the mountains; the others reached the settlements.--ED.
[53] Three of this number--Solomon Howard Smith, John Ball, and
Calvin Tibbitts--became prominent in Oregon life. Trumbull died
at Fort Vancouver during the winter of 1832-33. Wiggin Abbot
accompanied Nathaniel Wyeth on his return (1833) and aided in
preparing for the latter's second expedition. He was later murdered
by the Bannock--see Townsend's _Narrative_, _post_.
Solomon H. Smith, from New Hampshire, was employed as school-teacher
at Fort Vancouver, and afterwards settled in the Willamette Valley.
Having married Celiast, daughter of a Clatsop chief, he made his
home at Clatsop Plains with the missionaries, and there lived until
his death. His son, Silas B. Smith, was an attorney at Warrenton,
Oregon.
John Ball came from Troy, New York, and remained in Oregon until the
autumn of 1833, teaching at Fort Vancouver, and raising grain on the
Willamette. After returning to the United States, he contributed an
article on the geology and geography of the region, through which he
had travelled, to _Silliman's Journal_, xxviii, pp. 1-16. Ball left
Troy in 1836, and removed to Grand Rapids, Michigan. See his letter
in Montana Historical Society _Collections_, i, (1876), pp. 111, 112.
Calvin Tibbitts was a stone-cutter from Maine. He settled at
Chemyway and later removed to Clatsop Plains, where he lived with a
native wife, and aided missionary enterprise. He made two successful
journeys to California for cattle, and later was the judge of
Clatsop County.--ED.
When they had gone three days journey from us, {52} as they were
riding securely in the middle of the afternoon, about thirty of
the Black-foot Indians, who lay in ambush about twenty yards from
them, suddenly sprang up and fired. The surprise occasioned the
horses to wheel about, which threw off George More, and mortally
wounded one of the men, Alfred K. Stevens.[54] As the Indians knew
that More could not get away from them, they passed him, and about
twenty Indians were coming up the hill where they were. Eight or ten
Indians followed up while only five trappers had gained the hill.
They were considering how to save George More, when one of them shot
him through the head, which was a better fate than if they had taken
him alive, as they would have tortured him to death.
[54] Alfred K. Stephens had participated in the Santa Fé trade,
and had in the summer of 1831 led a party of twenty-one men in a
free trapping excursion along the Laramie River. Discouraged by ill
success, he made an agreement with Fitzpatrick to serve under the
Rocky Mountain Fur Company. After this attack in Jackson's Hole,
Stephens returned to Pierre's Hole, and rejoined Sublette, only to
fall victim to his wound, dying July 30, 1832.
It would appear from John Wyeth's narrative at this point, that he
remained with William Sublette at Pierre's Hole, while More and
those more eager to set forth had gone on under the leadership of
Alfred Stephens.--ED.
We have said that Captain Wyeth and the few who had concluded to go
on with him, were ready to begin their march for Salmon river. On
this occasion Captain Milton Sublet escorted them about one hundred
miles, so as to protect them from the enraged Black-feet, and then
left them to take care of themselves for the winter; and this is
the last tidings we have had of Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth, and his
reduced band of adventurers.[55] If we have been rightly informed,
their chief hope was residing on a pleasant river where there was
plenty of salmon, and probably elk and deer, and water-fowl; and
we hope fuel, for to our surprise, we learnt that wood for firing
was among their great wants. I have since been well-informed that
in the valley of Oregon, so much extolled for its fertility and
pleasantness, wood to cook with is one among their scarcest and
very dear articles of necessity. From all accounts, except those
given {53} to the public by Mr. Kelly, there is not a district at
the mouth of any large river more unproductive than that of the
_Columbia_, and it seems that this is pretty much the case from the
tide water of that river to where it empties into the ocean.
[55] Nathaniel Wyeth crossed to the Columbia, arriving at the
Hudson's Bay Company post of Walla Walla, October 14, and at Fort
Vancouver later in the same month. Here the remainder of his men
left his service.--ED.
The Flat-head Indians are a brave and we had reason to believe a
sincere people. We had many instances of their honesty and humanity.
They do not lie, steal, nor rob any one, unless when driven too
near to starvation; and then any man black, white, or red will seize
any thing to save himself from an agonizing death. The Flat-heads
were well dressed. They wore buck-skin frocks and pantaloons,
and moccasins, with seldom any thing on their heads. They draw a
piece of fresh buffalo hide on their feet, and at night sleep with
their feet not far from the fire, and in the morning find their
shoes sitting as snug to their feet as if they had been measured
by the first shoe-maker in Boston. It is probable that no people
have so little shoe-pinching as these savages. I never heard any
one complain of corns, or kibed-heels, severe as the weather is in
winter. The women wear moccasins also, but whether made in the same
extempore method as those of the men, I know not. I suspect they
must experience some shoe-pinching. They wear a petticoat, and a
frock of some sort of leather, according to fancy, but all decent
and comfortable. In rainy weather, or when very cold, they throw a
buffalo-skin over their shoulders, with the fur inside. They have no
stationary wigwams; but have a sort of tent, which they fix down or
remove with facility. In Major Long's book may be seen an engraved
representation of them.[56] Their mode of cooking is by roasting and
boiling. They {54} will pick a goose, or a brant, and run a stick
through its body and so roast it, without taking out its entrails.
They are, according to our notions, very nasty cooks.
[56] The reference is to James's _Long's Expedition_, reprinted as
volumes xiv-xvii of our series. The illustration here referred to is
in our volume xvi, p. 107.--ED.
I know not what to say of their religion. I saw nothing like images,
or any objects of worship whatever, and yet they appeared to keep a
sabbath; for there is a day on which they do not hunt nor gamble,
but sit moping all day and look like fools. There certainly appeared
among them an honor, or conscience, and sense of justice. They
would do what they promised, and return our strayed horses, and
lost articles. Now and then, but rarely, we found a pilferer, but
not oftener than among the frontier white people. The Indians of
all tribes are disposed to give you something to eat. It is a fact
that we never found an Indian of any tribe disposed to treat us with
that degree of inhospitality that we experienced in crossing the
Alleghany Mountains, in the State of Pennsylvania.
The Black-foot tribe are the tallest and stoutest men of any we
have seen, nearly or quite six feet in stature, and of a lighter
complexion than the rest.
The Indian warriors carry muskets, bows, and arrows, the last in
a quiver. The bows are made of walnut, about three feet long, and
the string of the sinews of the buffalo, all calculated for great
elasticity, and will reach an object at a surprising distance. It
was to us a much more terrific weapon of war than a musket. We had
one man wounded in the thigh by an arrow; he was obliged to ford
a river in his hasty retreat, and probably took a chill, which
occasioned a mortification, of {55} which he died. The arrows are
headed with flint as sharp as broken glass; the other end of the
arrow is furnished with an eagle's feather to steady its flight.
Some of these aboriginals, as we learn from Lewis, Clarke, and
Major Long, especially the last, have shields or targets; some so
long as to reach from the head to the ancle. Now the question is
how came our North American Indians with bows and arrows? It is not
likely that they invented them, seeing they so exactly resemble
the bows and arrows of the old world, the Greeks and Romans. They
are the same weapon to a feather. This is a fresh proof that our
savage tribes of this continent emigrated from the old one; and
I have learned from a friend to whom I am indebted for several
ideas, which no one could suppose to have originated with myself,
that the Indian's bow goes a great way to settle a disputed point
respecting what part of the old world the ancestors of our Indians
came from,--whether Asia or Europe. Now the Asiatic bow and our
Indian bow are of a different form. The first has a straight
piece in the middle, like the crossbow, being such an one as is
commonly depicted in the hands of Cupid; whereas our Indian bow is
a section of a circle, while the Persian or Asiatic bow has two
wings extending from a straight piece in the middle. Hence we have
reason to conclude that the first comers from the old world to the
new, came not from those regions renowned for their cultivation of
the arts and sciences. The idea that our North American Indians
came over from Scythia, that is, the northern part, so called, of
Europe and Asia, whether it is correct to call them Scythians,
Tartars, or Russians, I leave others to determine. We {56} have many
evidences that our Northern Indians have a striking resemblance
in countenance, color, and person to the most northern tribes of
Tartars, who inhabit Siberia, or Asiatic Russia. The Black-foot
Indians who inhabit small rivers that empty into the Missouri,
resemble in mode of living, manners, and character, the Calmuc
Tartars. Both fight on horseback, both are very brave, and both
inured to what we should consider a very hard life as it regards
food. Both avoid as much as they can stationary dwellings, and use
tents made with skins.
On this subject we ought not to omit mentioning that the Indians on
all sides of the Rocky mountains have several customs both among
men and the _women_, which might lead some to conclude that our
Northern and Western Indians descended from the Israelites; and
this similarity is certainly very remarkable; yet there is one very
strong fact against that hypothesis, namely, there is not the least
trace amongst our Indians of the _eight-day rite_ of the Jewish
males, which sore, and, to us, strange ceremony would hardly have
been forgotten, had it been practiced by our Indians. If our idea be
well-founded on this subject, the custom could have originated only
in warm and redundant climates, so that had Moses marched first from
the shores of the Baltic, as did the Goths, instead of the shores
of the Red sea, the Jews never would have been subjected to the
operation of circumcision.
After all, it is very likely that the Persians came from a different
stock from that which peopled the Western and Northern parts
of America,--I mean from the warmer regions of Asia. They seem
possessed of more delicate marks of person and of mind {57} than the
fighting savages of the North. There appears to be a strong line of
separation between them, as far as our information goes.
To return to our own story. After the battle at Pierre's Valley,
I had an opportunity of seeing a specimen of Indian surgery in
treating a wound. An Indian squaw first sucked the wound perfectly
dry, so that it appeared white as chalk; and then she bound it up
with a piece of dry buck-skin as soft as woollen cloth, and by this
treatment the wound began to heal, and soon closed up, and the part
became sound again. The sucking of it so effectually may have been
from an apprehension of a poisoned arrow. But who taught the savage
Indian that a person may take poison into his mouth without any
risk, as the poison of a rattlesnake without harm, provided there be
no scratch or wound in the mouth, so as to admit it into the blood?
Three of the men that left Captain Wyeth when I did, enlisted with
Captain Sublet to follow the trapping business for the period of one
year, namely, Wakefield, Nud, and Lane, leaving Dr. Jacob Wyeth,
H. Law, T. Beach, W. Palmer, and myself. We accordingly set out on
the twenty-eighth day of July, 1832, with Captain William Sublet,
for home; and thus ended all my fine prospects and flattering
expectations of acquiring fortune, independence, and ease, and all
my hopes that the time had now come in the order of Providence, when
that uncultivated tract, denominated the _Oregon Territory_, was
to be changed into a fruitful field, and the haunt of savages and
wild beasts made the happy abode of refined and dignified man.--Mr.
Hall J. Kelly published about two {58} years since a most inflated
and extravagant account of that western tract which extends from
the Rocky Mountains to the shore of the Pacific Ocean.[57] He
says of it that no portion of the globe presents a more fruitful
soil, or a milder climate, or equal facilities for carrying into
effect the great purposes of a free and enlightened nation;--that
a country so full of those natural means which best contribute to
the comforts and conveniences of life, is worthy the occupancy of
a people disposed to support a free representative government, and
to establish civil, scientific, and religious institutions,--and
all this and much more to the same effect after Lewis and Clarke's
history of their expedition had been published, and very generally
read;[58] yet this extravagant and fallacious account of the Oregon
was read and believed by some people not destitute of a general
information of things, nor unused to reading; but there were circles
of people, chiefly among young farmers and journeymen mechanics, who
were so thoroughly imbued with these extravagant notions of making a
fortune by only going over land to the other side of the globe, to
the Pacific Ocean, that a person who expressed a doubt of it was
in danger of being either affronted, or, at least, accused of being
moved by envious feelings. After a score of people had been enlisted
in this Oregon expedition, they met together to feed and to magnify
each other's hopes and visionary notions, which were wrought up to
a high degree of extravagance, so that it was hardly safe to advise
or give an opinion adverse to the scheme. When young people are so
affected, it is in vain to reason with them; and when such sanguine
persons are determined to fight, or to marry, it is dangerous to
{59} attempt to part them; and when they have their own way and get
their belly full of fight, and of matrimony, there comes a time of
cool reflection. The first stage of our reflection began at St.
Louis, when we parted with our amphibious wagons, in which we all
more or less took a pride. Every one there praised the ingenuity
of the contrivance and construction of them for roads and rivers
such as at Cambridge, and other places near to Boston; but we were
assured at St. Louis, that they were by no means calculated for our
far distant journey. We were reminded that Lewis and Clarke carried
canoes almost to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, by the route of
Missouri river, but were obliged to leave them there, and ascend
mountains so very steep, that sometimes their loaded horses slipped
and rolled over and over, down into lower ground sixty or seventy
feet. This may serve to show, among other things, how ill-informed
Captain Wyeth and his company were of the true condition of the
country through which they had to pass. We expected to support
ourselves with game by our firearms, and therefore powder and shot
were the articles we took the most care to be provided with. Nor
were we followers undeceived before we were informed at St. Louis,
that it would be necessary to take oxen and sheep to be slaughtered
on the route for our support. We also found it advisable to sell at
that place the large number of axes, great and small, with which we
had encumbered our wagons. All these occurrences, following close
after one another, operated to damp our ardor; and it was this
probably that operated so powerfully on W. Bell, Livermore, and
Griswold, that they _cut_ {60} and ran away before we entered upon
the difficulties and hardships of our expedition.
[57] Referring to Kelley's _Geographical Sketch of that part of
North America called Oregon_ (Boston, 1830). Subsequent information
has justified most of Kelley's statements, here derided by
Wyeth.--ED.
[58] What is known as the Biddle version of the Lewis and Clark
journals was issued at Philadelphia in 1814. For the history of this
version consult Thwaites, _Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition_ (New York, 1904-05), i, introduction.--ED.
Nothing of importance occurred for the first ten days after we
left Pierre's Valley. Our huntsmen were abroad in pursuit of
buffaloes, when they were alarmed at the sight of a large body of
the Black-foot tribe who had been watching our movements. Captain
Sublet was not a little alarmed, for he had with him his whole stock
of furs, very large in quantity and valuable in quality, which we
were told would be worth eighty thousand dollars in St. Louis. But
all the world exaggerates; nor even were we of the Oregon expedition
entirely free from it, although not to be compared with Hall Jackson
Kelly, who never stops short of superlatives, if we may judge by his
publications. But he says, by way of apology, that it is needful
that the friends of the contemplated Oregon colony should possess a
little of the active and vital principle of enthusiasm, that shields
against disappointments, and against the presumptious opinions and
insults of others. Now the fact is, the sanguine and enthusiastic
Mr. Kelly was never in that country, nor nearer to it than Boston;
and his zeal in the colonization of that dreary territory led him to
believe what he wished, and to disbelieve every thing adverse to his
favorite enterprise. He had a right to enjoy his opinion; but when
he took unweary pains to make ignorant people believe as he did, he
was the remote cause of much misery and lasting regret in more than
half the adventurers from Cambridge. If the blind lead the blind,
we know what will be the consequence. But our business is not to
censure from a disposition to find fault, {61} but to warn others
from falling into the errors and difficulties which attended me and
my companions, and chiefly through the misinformation of persons who
never saw the country.
Each man, when he left St. Louis, was allowed to carry but ten
pounds' weight of his own private baggage, and not every one to
encumber his march with whatever he chose; and we adhered to that
order on our return. We were ten days in passing over the Rocky
Mountains in going, and nine in returning; and I repeat it as my
fixed opinion, that we never should have reached the western foot
of the mountains had we not been under the guard and guidance of
Captain Sublet, and his experienced company. He was acquainted
with the best way, and the best mode of travelling. He knew the
Indian chiefs and they knew him, and each confided in the other.
An anecdote will illustrate this. There was a hunters' fort
or temporary place of defence occupied by about a dozen white
beaver-trappers from St. Louis, where were deposited furs, and goods
belonging to the troop of trappers, and that to a considerable
amount. One day this small garrison was alarmed at the sight of
about six hundred warriors approaching on horseback. Upon this they
barred their gate, and closed every door and window against the
Indians, but with faint hopes of repelling such a powerful host of
well-armed savages; for they had no other idea but that they had
come for their destruction. But when the Indians saw them shutting
themselves up, they displayed the white flag, and made signs to
the white men to open their fort, for they came to trade and not
to fight. And the little garrison thought it better to trust to
Indian honor {62} than risk savage slaughter or captivity; and
accordingly they unbarred their doors and let the chiefs in with
every expression of cordiality and confidence. After remaining
nine days, they departed in peace. And what ought to be recorded
to their honor, the white people did not miss a single article,
although axes, and utensils, and many other things were lying about,
desirable to Indians. The savages did not consider, as white men too
often do,--that "_might is right_." When I expressed my surprise
at it, one of the white trappers replied, "Why, the word of these
trading Indians is _as good as the Bible_."
We were surprised to find the Indians in the vicinity of the
mountains, and all round Pierre's Valley, and the Black-foot tribe,
and the Shoshonees, or Snake-tribe, so well provided with muskets,
powder and ball, woollen cloth, and many other articles, until we
were informed that Mr. Mackenzie, an established and wealthy Indian
trader, had long supplied them with every article they desired. Had
the Captain of our band been acquainted with this fact, and also
been informed of the trading connexion between the Indians and the
two brothers, William and Milton Sublet, before he started from
home, we should have avoided a great deal of trouble, and he escaped
a great deal of expense, and for aught I know, suffering; for the
last we heard of him, he was to pass the winter at the Salmon river.
From all I could learn, St. Louis was the depot, or headquarters
of the commerce with the Indians. Mackenzie, I was informed has a
steam-boat called the Yellow-stone, by which he keeps up a trade
with the natives inhabiting the region watered by {63} the river of
that name. The _Yellow-stone_ is a noble river, being eight hundred
and thirty-seven miles from the point where Captain Clarke reached
it to the Missouri, and is so far navigable for batteaux; and eight
hundred and fifty feet wide at its confluence with the river just
named. By all accounts, the superiority of the Yellow-stone river
over the Columbia, or Oregon, for a settlement of New-England
adventurers, in point of fertility, climate, and pleasantness,
is such as to impress one with regret that ever we extended our
views beyond it; for the lamentable fact is, that the trade with
the Indians all round the Rocky Mountains, and beyond it to the
Oregon territory and Columbia river, is actually forestalled, or
pre-occupied by wealthy, established, and experienced traders
residing at, or near St. Louis, while we are more than twelve
hundred miles in their rear, and very far behind them in time.
Besides all these considerations, we may add another of great
importance; I mean the fact, that Mackenzie's and Sublet's white
trappers, or hunters, are a sort of half Indians in their manners
and habits, and could assimilate with them, while we are strangers
to the savages, and they to us, with all the dislikes natural to
both sides. Captain Sublet, who appears to be a worthy character,
and of sound judgment, perceived this, and must have seen, at
once, that he had nothing to fear from us, and therefore he paid
us great attention, conciliated and made use of us, and while he
aided us, he benefited his own concern, and all without the least
spice of jealousy, well knowing the impossibility, under existing
circumstances, that we could supplant him in the affection of the
red men of Missouri and Oregon.
{64} The white traders, and the Indians have, if we may so term it,
an annual _Fair_, that has been found by experience profitable to
both sides.[59] It is true the white trader barters a tawdry bauble
of a few cents' value, for a skin worth fifty of it. And so have
we in our India shawls, and, a few years since, in Leghorn hats,
in which we were taxed as high as the white merchant taxes the
equally silly Indian. Coffee was sold at two dollars a pound, and so
was tobacco. Indeed some of us gave that price to Mr. Nathaniel J.
Wyeth for the latter article, a luxury more coveted by men in our
situation, anxious and fatigued as we were, than whisky or brandy.
This was the case under Lewis and Clarke. When deprived of tobacco,
they cut up the old handles of tomahawks, which had been used as
pipes, and chewed the wood for the sake of its smell and smack. It
is not a singular case. It has been experienced among sailors at
sea. They have pined more for the lulling effects of that nauseous
weed than for ardent spirits; and it has been known that men will
mutiny sooner when deprived of their tobacco, than when deprived
of their usual food and rum. There was no small grumbling on being
obliged to buy tobacco out of what we thought common stock, at
the rate above mentioned, being, as we thought, all members of a
commonwealth.
[59] This was the well-known mountain rendezvous instituted to take
the place of established forts, by General Ashley of the Rocky
Mountain Fur Company. Each year a caravan went up from St. Louis,
carrying articles for trade, while parties of trappers and their
Indian allies gathered at the appointed place. The first of these
gatherings was in 1824; the institution flourished only for about a
decade.--ED.
The following may serve to show the knowledge or instinct of horses.
When marching on our return home in the troop of Captain Sublet,
not far from the eastern declivity of the Rocky Mountains, we were
met by a large body of Indians on horseback. Sublet generally kept
seven videts about two miles ahead {65} of his main body. The
horses of this advance guard suddenly refused to go on, and turned
round, and appeared alarmed, but the riders knew not the cause of
it. Captain Sublet rode up, and said, that he knew by the behaviour
of the horses that there was an enemy ahead. He said there was a
valley several miles off where he apprehended we might be attacked.
He therefore ordered every man to examine his arms, and be ready
for action. After riding a few miles we discovered a large moving
body of a living something. Some of us thought it was a drove of
buffaloes; but the Captain said no, because they were of different
colors, whereas bisons, or buffaloes appear all of one color. After
viewing them through his glass, he said they were a body of the
Black-foot tribe, who had on their war dresses, with their faces
painted, bare heads, and other signs of hostility.
Their appearance was very singular, and, to some of us, terrible.
There was a pretty fresh breeze of wind, so as to blow the long
manes and tails of their horses out straight. Nor was this all: the
wind had the same effect on the long black hair of the warriors,
which gave them not only a grotesque but a terrific appearance.
Added to all this, they kept up a most horrid yell or war-hoop.
They rode up and completely surrounded us; and then all was silent.
Captain Sublet rode up to the chief, and expressed his hope that
all was peace. The savage replied that there should be peace on
their part, on condition that Sublet should give them _twenty-five
pounds of tobacco_, which was soon complied with, when the Indian
army remounted their horses, and rode off at full speed as they came
on: and we {66} pushed off with like speed, lest they should repent
their bargain and return upon us to mend it.
Who will say that this gallant body of cavalry were not wiser than
the common run of white soldiers, to make peace for a _quid_? and
thereby save their horses and their own skins? Out of what book did
this corps of savage dragoons learn that discretion was the better
part of valor?--We answer, From out of that book of Nature which
taught the videts' horses that an enemy was in the wind. The horse
is the dumbest of all beasts. He is silent under torture. He never
groans but once, and that is his _last_. Did they roar like bulls,
or squeal like hogs, they would be useless in an army. That noble
animal suffers from man a shameful weight of cruel usage in town and
country.
The wild horses are a great curiosity. They traverse the country,
and stroll about in droves from a dozen to twenty or thirty; and
always appear to have a leader, like a gander to a flock of geese.
When our own horses were feeding fettered around our encampments,
the wild horses would come down to them, and seem to examine them,
as if counting them; and would sometimes come quite up to them if we
kept out of sight; but when they discovered us, they would one and
all give a jump off and fly like the wind.
There is a method of catching a wild horse, that may appear to many
"a traveller's story." It is called _creasing_ a horse. The meaning
of the term is unknown to me.[60] It consists in shooting a {67}
horse in the neck with a single ball so as to graze his neck bone,
and not to cut the pith of it. This stuns the horse and he falls
to the ground, but he recovers again, and is as well as ever, all
but a little soreness in the neck, which soon gets well. But in his
short state of stupefaction, the hunter runs up, and twists a noose
around the skin of his nose, and then secures him with a thong of
buffalo-hide. I do not give it merely as a story related; but I
believe it, however improbable it may appear, because I saw it done.
I saw an admirable marksman, young Andrew Sublet,[61] fire at a fine
horse, and after he fell, treat him in the way I have mentioned; and
he brought the horse into camp, and it turned out to be a very fine
one. The marvel of the story is, that the dextrous marksman shall
shoot so precisely as only to graze the vital part; and yet those
who know these matters better than I do, say, that they conceive it
possible.
[60] _Creasing_ may be derived from _craze_, or the French
_ecraser_, or the Teutonic _krossa_, or the English _crush_, to
bruise, overwhelm, or subdue without killing. It may be Spanish; for
it is said that the modern South Americans practice the same device.
It would seem as if it jarred the vertebræ, or bony channel of the
neck, without cutting any important vessel or nerve. But let the
fact be established before we reason upon it.--WYETH.
[61] Andrew Sublette, younger brother of William and Milton, was
born in Kentucky, but early removed to the frontier. After the
discovery of gold he emigrated to California, settling finally near
Los Angeles, where he died from wounds received in an encounter with
grizzly bears.--ED.
After we had made peace with the large body of the Black-foot
Indians, for, as we may say, a _quid_ of tobacco, nothing occurred
worth relating until we arrived at the town of Independence, being
the first white settlement in our way homewards. I would, however,
here remark, that the warlike body just mentioned, though of the
fierce Black-foot tribe, hunted and fought independently of that
troop with which we had a battle in the Rocky Mountains; and
were most probably ignorant of that affair, in which a chief was
treacherously shot by one Antoine, who was half Indian and half
French, when bearing a white flag, and with which {68} nefarious
deed I believe Captain Sublet had no concern. But of all this I
cannot speak with certainty, as I myself was half a mile distant,
when the Black-foot chief was shot, and his scarlet robe torn off of
him by the mongrel Indian, as a trophy instead of his scalp; for the
Indians returned their fire so promptly, and continued fighting so
long, even after dark, that there was no time nor opportunity of his
securing that evidence of his savage blood and mode of warfare.
When we arrived at the town of Independence, Dr. Jacob Wyeth,
Palmer, Styles, and myself bought a canoe, being tired of travelling
by land, and impatient to get on, and this was the last of my money
except a single six-cent piece. A thick fog prevented our early
departure, as it would be dangerous to proceed on account of the
snags and sawyers in the river. To pass away the tedious time, I
strolled out around the town, and lost my direct way back. At length
the fog cleared off, and after my companions had waited for me an
hour, they pushed off and left me behind! They, be sure, left word
that they would wait for me at the next town, Boonsville,[62]
twenty miles' distance. I hurried, however, as fast I could five
miles down the banks of the river; when, finding that I could not
overtake them, and being fatigued by running, I gave over the chase
in despair. I was sadly perplexed, and vexed, at what I conceived
worse than savage usage. In this state of mind, I saw a small skiff,
with a pair of oars, when an heroic idea came into my half-crazed
brain, and feeling my absolute necessities, I acted like certain
ancient and some modern heroes, and jumped into the boat, cast off
her painter, and pulled away for dear life down the stream. {69} The
owner of the boat discovered me when not much more than a quarter
of a mile on my way. He and another man got into a canoe and rowed
after me, and gained upon me; on perceiving which, I laid out all
my strength, and although two to one, I distanced them, and they
soon saw they could not overtake me. When I started it was twelve
o'clock, and I got to the next town, Boonsville, the sun half an
hour high,--the distance about twenty miles. When my skiff struck
the shore my pursuers were about twenty rods behind me. I ran into
the first barn of a tavern I could reach. They soon raised the
neighbors, and placed a watch around the barn, one side of which
opened into a cornfield. In searching for me they more than once
trod over me, but the thickness of the hay prevented them from
feeling me. I knew the severe effects of their laws, by which those
who were too poor to pay the fine were to atone for their poverty by
stripes, which were reckoned to be worth a dollar a stripe in that
cheap country; and hence I lay snug in the hay two nights and one
day without any thing to eat. Hunger at length forced me from my
hiding-place, when I went into the tavern, where I found Dr. Jacob
Wyeth, Walter Palmer, and Styles. I told the landlord I was starving
for want of food, and he gave me supper; and then I went back into
the barn again, where I slept that night.
[62] Boonville was the successor of Franklin as the metropolis of
central Missouri. The site was first settled by the Cole family
in 1810, laid out as a town in 1817, and made the seat of Cooper
County upon the latter's erection in 1818. Its period of greatest
prosperity was before the building of the railroad (1830-40), when
it was the shipping point for northern Arkansas and southwest
Missouri. It had a population in 1900 of 4,377.--ED.
The next morning I went into the tavern again, and there I found my
pursuers, and they found their prisoner, whom they soon put under
the custody of two constables, who ordered me breakfast, which
having eaten with a good relish, I watched my opportunity, while
they were standing thick {70} around the bar, and crept unobserved
out of the back-door into the extensive cornfield, and thence into
the barn window out of which they threw manure, and regained my
snug hiding-hole, where I remained one day and one night more. I
now and then could see the constables and their _posse_ prowling
about the barn, through a crevice in the boards. In the midst of my
fears, I was amused with the solemn, and concernful phizes of the
two constables, and one or two others. In the morning very early, I
ventured out again, and ran down to the river; and there spying a
boat, and feeling heroic, I jumped into her and pushed across the
river, and landed on the opposite bank, so as to elude the pursuit
of the authorities, who I knew would be after me on the right bank
of the river, while I marched on the left. When I came to the ferry
near St. Louis, I had only a six-cent piece, which the ferryman took
for his full fare which was twelve cents, and so I got safe to St.
Louis, but with scarcely clothing enough for decency, not to mention
comfort: and yet I kept up a good heart, and never once despaired.
My companions arrived a day before me; they on Thursday, I on
Friday, at four o'clock in the afternoon; they in the steam-boat,
like gentlemen, while I, the youngest in the whole Oregon company,
like a runaway. But I do not regret the difference, seeing I have a
story worth telling, and worth hearing.
Where to get a lodging that night I did not know, nor where to
obtain a morsel of bread. I went up to a large tavern, and asked
permission of the keeper to lodge in his barn that night, but he
sternly refused. I then went to the other tavern, and made the like
request, when the landlord {71} granted it, saying that he never
refused a man sleeping in his barn who was too poor to pay for a
lodging in his house. I wish I knew his name. I turned in and had a
very good night's rest. Should any one enquire how I came to leave
my old companions, and they me, I need only say that I had a very
serious quarrel with one of them, even to blows; and with that one
too who ought to have been the last to treat me with neglect; "and
further the deponent saith not."
The next morning I went round in search of work, but no one seemed
disposed to hire me; nor do I much wonder at it; for in truth I
was so ragged and dirty, that I had nothing to recommend me; and
I suffered more depression of spirits during the following six
days of my sojourn at St. Louis, than in any part of my route. The
steam-boats refused me and Dr. Wyeth started off for New Orleans
before I could see him. Palmer let himself by the month on board a
steam-boat running between St. Louis and Independence, while I was
left alone at the former place six days without employ, victuals,
or decent clothing. I could not bear to go to people's doors to
beg; but I went on board steam-boats and begged for food. I was
such a picture of wretchedness that I did not wonder they refused
to hire me. My dress was buck-skin moccasins, and pantaloons; the
remains of a shirt I put on in the Rocky Mountains, the remnants of
a kersey waistcoat which I had worn ever since I left Cambridge, and
a hat I had worn all the time from Boston, but without any coat
whatever, or socks, or stockings; and to add to the wretchedness of
my appearance, I was very dirty, and I could not help it. My looks
drew the attention of a great many spectators. I thought {72} very
hard of it then, but I have since reflected, and must say that when
people saw a strong young man of eighteen in high health, and yet
so miserable in appearance, it was natural in them to conclude that
he must be some criminal escaped from justice, or some vagabond
suffering under the just effects of his own crimes.
At length, wearied out by my ill fortune, I plucked up courage, and
went to the Constitution steam-boat, Captain Tufts, of Charlestown,
near Boston, and told him my name and family; and detailed to him my
sufferings, and said that he _must_ give me a passage, and I would
work for it. To my great joy he consented, and he gave me shirt,
pantaloons, &c.; and I acted at a _fireman_, or one who feeds the
fire with pine wood under the steam-boilers. I forbear narrating the
particulars of my sufferings for want of food during the six days I
tarried at St. Louis. Suffice it to say, that I was in a condition
of starvation, and all owing to my wretched appearance. When I at
times went on board the steam-boats, I was glad to scrape up any
thing after the sailors and firemen had done eating. At length I
obtained employ in the steam-boat Constitution, and a passage to
New-Orleans, on the condition of acting as one of the firemen, there
being twelve in all, with five men as sailors, and two hundred and
forty passengers, party emigrants, but chiefly men belonging to
the settlements on the Mississippi, going down to Natchez, and to
New-Orleans to work. We tarried one night at the Natchez; but soon
after we left it the _cholera_ broke out among the passengers,
eighty of whom died before we reached New-Orleans, and two of our
own firemen. A most shocking scene followed.
{73} I felt discouraged. My miseries seemed endless. After trying
day after day in vain to get a passage in a steam-boat, I was
made happy in procuring one, though I paid for it, by working as
a fireman, the hardest and most disagreeable occupation on board;
still I was contented, as I had victuals enough to eat; and yet,
after all, I saw men perishing every minute about me, and thrown
into the river like so many dead hogs. It is an unexaggerated fact
that I witnessed more misery in the space of eight months than most
old men experience in a long life.
On arriving at New-Orleans, Captain Tufts sent off every man of the
passengers, leaving those only who belonged to the boat. He gave me
shirts and other clothing, and offered me twenty dollars a month,
if I would go back to St. Louis with him. I remained on board about
a week; and so desirous was I to get home, that I preferred going
ashore, although I knew that the yellow fever and black vomit, as
well as cholera were committing great havoc in the city. The shops,
stores, taverns, and even the _gambling-houses_, were shut up, and
people were dying in-doors, and out of doors, much faster than they
could be buried. More white people were seized with it than black;
but when the latter were attacked, more died than the former. The
negroes sunk under the disorder at once. When a negro gets very
sick, he loses all his spirits, and refuses all remedies. He wishes
to die, and it is no wonder, if he believes that he shall go into a
pleasant country where there are no white men or women.
I soon got full employ as a grave-digger, at two dollars a day, and
could have got twice that sum had I been informed of the true state
of things. In {74} the first three days we dug a separate grave for
each person; but we soon found that we could not clear the hearses
and carts. I counted eighty-seven dead bodies uninterred on the
ground. Yet where I worked, was only one of the three grave-yards
belonging to the city, and the other two were larger. We therefore
began on a new plan. There were twenty-five of us grave-diggers.
We dug a trench fifty-seven feet long, eight feet wide, and four
feet deep, and laid them as compactly as we could, and filled up
the vacant spaces with children. It was an awful piece of business.
In this large trench we buried about, perhaps, three hundred; and
this business we carried on about a month. During this time, you
might traverse the streets of New-Orleans, without meeting a single
person, except those belonging to the hearses, and carts, loaded
with the dead. Men were picked up in the morning who died after dark
before they could reach their own houses. If you ask me if they died
with yellow fever, or cholera, I must answer that I cannot tell.
Some said the one, and some the other. Every thing was confusion. If
a negro was sent by his master to a carpenter, for what they called
a coffin, which was only a rough board box, he was commonly robbed
of it before he got home. I myself saw an assault of this kind, when
the poor black slave was knocked down and the rude coffin taken from
him. New-Orleans is a dreadful place in the eyes of a New-England
man. They keep Sunday as we in Boston keep the 4th of July, or any
other day of merriment and frolic. It is also a training day every
other Sunday for their military companies.
I was in part witness to a shocking sight at the marine hospital,
where had been many patients {75} with the yellow fever. When the
doctors, and those who had the care of that establishment had
deserted the house, between twenty-five and thirty dead bodies were
left in it; and these were so offensive from putrefaction, that when
the city corporation heard of it, they ordered the house, together
with the bodies to be burnt up; but this was not strictly complied
with. A number of negro slaves were employed to remove the bodies,
which being covered with wood and other combustibles, were all
consumed together.
At length I was attacked myself with symptoms of the yellow
fever,--violent pain in my head, back, and stomach. I lived at
that time in the family of a Frenchman, who, among his various
occupations, pretended to skill in physic. He fed me on castor oil.
I took in one day four wineglasses of it, which required as much
resolution as I was master of: but my doctor assured me that he had
repeatedly scared away the yellow fever at the beginning of it, by
large and often repeated doses of that medicine. Its operation was
not one way, but every way. I thought I should have no insides left
to go home with. Yet it is a fact, and I record it with pleasure,
that it carried off all my dreadful symptoms, and in a very few
days, I had nothing to complain of but weakness, which a good
appetite soon cured. I therefore recommend a man in the first stage
of yellow fever to take down a gill of castor oil, made as hot as he
can swallow it; and repeat the dose in eight hours.
I remained nine weeks in New-Orleans, a city so unlike Boston, in
point of neatness, order, and good government, that I do not wonder
at its character for unhealthiness. Stagnant water remains in the
streets as {76} green as grass, with a steam rising out of it that
may be smelt at the distance of half a mile. Besides this, their
population is so mixed, that they appear running against each other
in the streets, every one having a different object and a different
complexion. In one thing they seem to be agreed, and to concur in
the same object, namely, _gaming_. In that delirous pursuit, they
all speak the same language, and appear to run down the same road to
ruin.
I am glad that it is in my power to support what I have said
respecting the Marine Hospital, by the following public testimony,
published by authority, taken from one of their newspapers.
"NEW-ORLEANS.--The following report from a committee appointed to
examine one of the hospitals, will account, in some degree, for the
unprecedented mortality which has afflicted New-Orleans. The report
is addressed to the mayor.
"The undersigned, standing committee named by the city council
during the prevalence of the epidemic now desolating the city, have
the honor to report, that, in consequence of information given
by sundry respectable persons, relative to the condition of the
hospital kept by Dr. M'Farlane, they repaired to-day, at half-past
one o'clock, to said hospital; that in all the apartments they found
the most disgusting filth; that all the night _vessels_ were full,
and that the patients have all declared that for a long time they
had received no kind of succour; that in many of the apartments of
the building they found corpses, several of which had been a number
of days in putrefaction; that thence they repaired to a chamber
adjoining the kitchen, where they found the body of a negro, which
had been a long time dead, in a most offensive state. They finally
went to another apartment opposite the kitchen, {77} which was
equally filthy with the other rooms, and that they there found many
corpses of persons a long time dead; that in a bed, between others,
they found a man dying, stretched upon the body of a man many days
dead.
"Finally, they declare that it is impossible for one to form an idea
of what they have witnessed, without he had himself seen it; that
it is indispensably necessary for the patients to evacuate this
hospital, and above all, to watch lest the corpses in a state of
putrefaction occasion pestilence in that quarter, and perhaps in
the whole city.
"_November 7._ The standing committee has the honor to present the
following additional report.
"In one of the apartments where were many living and dead bodies,
they found under a bed a dead body partly eaten, whose belly and
entrails lay upon the floor. It exhaled a most pestiferous odor.
In a little closet upon the gallery there were two dead bodies,
one of which lay flat upon the floor, and the other had his feet
upon the floor and his back upon the bed forming a curve; the belly
prodigiously swelled and the thighs green. Under a shed in the yard
was the dead body of a negro, off which a fowl was picking worms.
The number of corpses amounted to twelve or fourteen.
"Signed, E. A. CANNON, _Chairman_.
FELIX LABATUT,
_Alderman_, _Second Ward_.
CHARLES LEE,
_Alderman_, _First Ward_."
I took passage in the ship Henry Thomson, Captain Williams, and
arrived in Boston, January 2d, 1833, after an absence of ten months,
having experienced in that time a variety of hardships.
{78} CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
The lesson to be collected from this short history is the great
danger in _making haste to be rich_, instead of relying upon patient
industry, which never fails to give a man his just deserts. Making
haste to become rich is the most fruitful source of the calamities
of life; for here cunning, contrivance, and circumvention, take the
place of diligence. After the schemer's plans have all failed,
there seems only one tempting means left to obtain riches in a
hurry, and that is by gaming, the most prosperous invention ever
devised by the arch enemy of mankind; and when that fails, the next
downward step to destruction, excepting drunkenness, is robbery,
many instances of which we find recorded in the annals of Newgate
and the records of the Old Bailey in London. Such atrocities have
never, or very rarely, occurred in our own country, and never will
so long as we are wisely contented with the fruits of patient
industry, and so long as we believe that the diligent hand maketh
rich. These reflections refer to extreme cases, and are not
applicable, or meant to be personally applicable, to the unfortunate
expedition in which we have been concerned. It is not meant to
reprehend those enormous vices and crimes which are known in the old
countries, but only to correct a spirit of discontent in men well
situated and circumstanced. "_If you stand well, stand still_," says
the Italian proverb.
Some may say this doctrine, if put in practice, would check all
enterprise. Not entirely so, provided the means and the end were
cautiously adjusted. Christopher Columbus ran a great risk; {79}
yet he knew, from the reasonings of his capacious mind, that there
must be "another and a better world" than that he was born in;
and under that strong and irrestistible impression he tempted the
trackless ocean and found it. But what shall we say of our Oregon
adventurers, who set out to pass over the Rocky Mountains, and
thence down the Columbia river to the Pacific ocean, in boats upon
wheels? and that too with a heavy load of goods, and those chiefly
of iron. What renders the project more surprising is, that they
should take with them the most ponderous articles of a blacksmith's
shop,--anvils, and a large vice. It is more than probable that
the old and long established wholesale Indian traders at St. Louis
laughed in their sleeves, when they saw such a cargo fresh from the
city of "_notions_," paraded with all the characteristic confidence
of the unwavering Yankee spirit. After assuring them that their
ingenious and well-constructed amphibious vehicles would not answer
for travelling in such a rough country as they must go through, they
purchased all three of them, and advised our leader to buy sheep and
oxen to live on between the white settlements and the country of
the savages, and not to trust to their guns for food. This turned
out very wholesome advice, as they must have starved without that
provision.
The party under Captains Lewis and Clarke, sent out by the
government of the United States, consisted of nine young men
from Kentucky, fourteen soldiers of the United States army who
volunteered their services, two French watermen,--an interpreter
and hunter,--and a black servant belonging to Captain Clarke. All
these, except the last, were enlisted to serve as privates during
the expedition, {80} and three sergeants were appointed from amongst
them by the captains. In addition to these, were engaged a corporal
and six soldiers, and nine watermen, to accompany the expedition as
far as the Mandan nation, in order to assist in carrying the stores,
or repelling an attack, which was most to be apprehended between
Wood river and that tribe. This select party embarked on board three
boats. One was a keel-boat fifty-five feet long, drawing three feet
of water, with a large square sail, and twenty-two oars, with a
forecastle and cabin, while the middle was covered by lockers, which
might be raised so as to form a breast-work. There were beside two
_periogues_, or open boats of seven oars each. They had two horses,
for any purpose, which they led along the banks; and fourteen bales
of goods, with a variety of clothing, working utensils, locks,
flints, ammunition, and richly-laced coats, and other gay dresses,
and a variety of ornaments suited to the taste of the Indians,
together with knives, flags, tomahawks, and medals.[63] Yet all
these articles were exhausted, without any accident or particular
loss. The party was led by two experienced military officers, and
the men were under military regulations; which was not the case with
the Cambridge adventurers, who were upon shares, and all on a level.
[63] These statements in regard to the Lewis and Clark expedition
are taken verbatim from the published edition (Biddle's, 1814)
of the journals. For recent light on the personnel of the party,
consult O. D. Wheeler, _On the Trail of Lewis and Clark_ (New York,
1904).--ED.
We are unwilling that our readers should rely entirely on our
opinion of the inadequacy of the outfits for such a formidable
undertaking as that of going from the Atlantic shore of New-England
to the shore of the Pacific by land. We shall therefore subjoin
the opinion of a sensible gentleman, who had spent some time in
the Missouri territory, and traversed its dreary prairies, where
no tree {81} appears, and where there is, during the greater part
of the year, no fuel for cooking, nor water fit to drink. He says:
"Do the Oregon emigrants seek a fine country on the Oregon river?
They will pass through lands [to get to it] of which they may buy
two hundred acres for less than the farther expenses of their
journey."[64] He tells us that a gentleman (Mr. Kelly) has been
employing his leisure in advising schemes to better the condition of
his fellow countrymen, and has issued advertisements, inviting the
good people of New-England to leave their homes, their connexions,
and the comforts of civilized society, and follow him across the
continent to the shores of the Pacific. He tells those who may reach
St. Louis, that they will find there many who have been to Oregon,
and found no temptation to remain there;--that they may possibly
charter a steamboat from St. Louis to the mouth of the river Platte,
but no farther, as that stream is not navigable for steamboats
unless during freshets. And after they reach the mouth of the
Platte, they will have a _thousand_ miles to go before they reach
the Rocky Mountains; and the country through which the adventurers
must pass is a level plain, where the eye seeks in vain for a
tree or a shrub,--that in some places they must travel days and
nights without finding wood or water, for that the streams only are
scantily fringed with wood. Our Cambridge emigrants actually found
this to be the case, as they had no other fuel for cooking their
live stock than buffalo-dung. The writer says, (and he had been
there), that the ground is covered with {82} herbage for a few weeks
in the year only, and that this is owing to the Indians burning
the Prairies regularly twice a year, which occasions them to be as
bare of vegetation as the deserts of Arabia. The same experienced
traveller assures them that they could not take provisions with
them sufficient for their wants, and that a dependence on their
guns for support was fallacious, and the same uncertainty as to
the buffaloes;--that sometimes those animals were plenty enough,
and sometimes more than enough, so as to be dangerous. When they
trot smartly off, ten thousand and more in a drove, they are as
irresistible as a mountain-torrent, and would tread into nothing
a larger body than the Cambridge fortune-hunters. Their flesh is
coarse beef, and the grisly bear's, coarse pork; but this kind of
bear, called the _horrible_ from his strength and ferocity, is a
most terrific beast, and more disposed and able to feed on the
hunter than the huntsman upon him. We can assure the emigrants,
says the writer already quoted, from our own experience, that not
one horse in five can perform a journey of a thousand miles, without
a constant supply of something better than prairie-grass.
[64] See New-England Magazine for February and April, 1832, under
the signature of W. J. S.--WYETH.
_Comment by Ed._ The _New England Magazine_ was published monthly
(1831-35) by J. T. and E. Buckingham, Boston.
The journal of Lewis and Clarke to the Pacific ocean, over the Rocky
Mountains, was a popular book in the hands of every body; and the
Expedition of Major Long and company was as much read; and both
of these works detail events and facts enough, one would suppose,
to deter men from such an arduous enterprise; not to mention the
hostile tribes of Indians through which they must pass. It seems
strange, but it is true, that a theoretical man need not despair
of making the multitude believe any thing but truth. They believed
the enthusiastic {83} Mr. Hall J. Kelley, who had never been in the
Oregon territory, or seen the Rocky Mountains, or a prairie-dog, or
a drove of buffaloes, and who in fact knew nothing of the country
beyond some guess-work maps; yet they would not read, consider, or
trust to the faithful records of those officers who had been sent by
the government to explore the country and make report of it.
There is a passage in the essay written by W. J. S. which we shall
insert here on his authority, as it cannot be supposed that we,
at this distance, should be so well acquainted with the affairs
in Missouri, as one who had resided on the spot. We assume not to
keep pace with the professed eulogist of Oregon, of its river,
and its territory, its mild climate, its exuberant soil, and its
boisterous Pacific, so inviting to the distressed poor in the
neighbourhood of Boston; who are exhorted by him to pluck up stakes
and courage, and march over the Rocky Mountains to wealth, ease,
and independence. The passage we allude to reads thus:--"About
twelve years since, it was discovered by a public-spirited citizen
of St. Louis, that the supply of furs was not equal to the demand.
To remedy this evil, he raised a corps of sharp-shooters, equipped
them with guns, ammunition, steel-traps, and horses, and sent them
into the wilderness to teach the Indians that their right was only
a right of occupancy. They did the savages irreparable injury.
They frightened the buffaloes from their usual haunts,--destroyed
the fur-clad animals, and did more mischief than we have room to
relate." He adds, sarcastically, that "the Indians were wont to hunt
in a slovenly manner, leaving a few animals yearly for breeding. But
that the white hunters were more thorough-spirited, {84} and made
root-and-branch work of it. When they settled on a district, they
destroyed the old and young alike; and when they left it, they left
no living thing behind them. The first party proving successful,
more were fitted out, and every successive year has seen several
armed and mounted bands of hunters, from twenty to a hundred men and
more in each, pouring into the Indian hunting grounds; and _all this
has been done in open and direct violation of a law of the United
States, which expressly forbids trapping and hunting on Indian
lands_. The consequence has been that there are now few fur-clad
animals this side the mountains."
Lewis and Clarke, and some other travellers, speak of friendly
Indians,--of their kindness and hospitality, and expatiate on their
amiable disposition, and relate instances of it. Yet after all,
this Indian friendship is very like the affection of the negroes in
the Southern States for their masters and mistresses, and for their
children,--the offspring merely of fear. There can be no friendship
where there is such a disparity of condition. As to their presents,
an Indian gift is proverbial. They never give without expecting
double in return.
What right have we to fit out armed expeditions, and enter the long
occupied country of the natives, to destroy their game, not for
subsistence, but for their skins? They are a contented people, and
do not want our aid to make them happier. We prate of civilizing and
Christianizing the savages. What have we done for their benefit?
We have carried among them _rum_, _powder_ and _ball_, small-pox,
starvation, and misery. What is the reason that Congress,--the great
council of the nation,--the collected wisdom of these United States,
has turned a deaf {85} ear to all applications for establishing a
colony on the Oregon river? Some of the members of that honorable
house of legislation know that the district in question is a
boisterous and inclement region, with less to eat, less to warm the
traveller, and to cook with, than at the mouth of any other known
river in the United States. We deem the mouth of the river St.
Lawrence as eligible a spot for a settlement of peltry merchants as
the mouth of the Columbia. When Lewis and Clarke were on that river,
they had not a single fair day in two months. They were drenched
with rain day and night; and what added to their comfortless
condition was the incessant high winds, which drove the waves
furiously into the Columbia river with the tide; and on its ebb,
raised such commotion, and such a chopping sea, that the travellers
dared not venture upon it in their boats; yet the Indians did, and
managed their canoes with a dexterity which the explorers greatly
admired, but could not imitate. The boisterous Pacific was among the
new discoveries of our American adventurers. Had their expedition
been to the warm climate of Africa, or to South America, they would
have been sure of plenty to eat; but in the western region, between
the Rocky Mountains and the great river of the West, the case is far
otherwise.
It is devoutly to be wished that truth may prevail respecting those
distant regions. Indeed the sacred cause of humanity calls loudly
on its votaries to disabuse the people dwelling on these Atlantic
shores respecting the Oregon paradise, lest our farmers' sons and
young mechanics should, in every sense of the phrase, stray from
home, and go they know not whither,--to seek they know not what.
{86} Or must Truth wait on the Rocky Mountains until some Indian
historian,--some future _Clavigero_[65] shall publish his annals,
and separate facts from fiction? We esteem the "_History of the
Expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clarke to the
Sources of the Missouri, thence across the Rocky Mountains, and down
to the Pacific Ocean_," substantially correct. Their conduct towards
the Indians was marked throughout with justice and humanity; and
the journal of that expedition will be a lasting monument of their
judicious perseverance, and of the wisdom of the government of the
United States.
[65] The Abbé Clavigero, a native of Vera Cruz, who resided forty
years in the Provinces of New Spain, spoke the language of the
natives, and has written the History of Mexico.--WYETH.
Reader! The book you have in your hands is not written for your
amusement merely, or to fill up an idle hour, but for your
instruction,--particularly to warn young farmers and mechanics not
to leave a certainty for an uncertainty, and straggle away over a
sixth part of the globe in search of what they leave behind them
at home. It is hoped that it may correct that too common opinion
that the farther you go from home the surer you are of making your
fortune. Agriculture gives to the industrious farmer the riches
which he can call his own; while the indefatigable mechanic is sure
to acquire a sufficiency, provided he "build not his house too high."
Industry conducted by Prudence is a virtue of so diffusive a nature
that it mixes with all our concerns. No business can be managed and
accomplished without it. Whatever be a man's calling or way of life,
he must, to be happy, be actuated by {87} a spirit of industry, and
that will keep him from want, from dishonesty, and from the vice of
gambling and lottery-dealing, and its long train of miseries.
The first and most common deviation from sober industry is a desire
to roam abroad, or in one word, a feeling of _discontent_,--a
making haste to be rich, without the patient means of it. These are
reflections general and not particular, as it regards all such high
hopes and expectations, as lead to our Oregon expedition and to its
disappointments. The most that we shall say of it is,--that it was
an injudicious scheme arising from want of due information, and the
whole conducted by means inadequate to the end in view.
Oh happy--if he knew his happy state,
The man, who, free from turmoil and debate,
Receives his wholesome food from Nature's hand,
The just return of _cultivated_ land.
THE END
TOWNSEND'S NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, TO THE
COLUMBIA RIVER
Reprint of pp. 1-186, 217-264, of original edition: Philadelphia,
1839. "A Visit to the Sandwich Islands, Chili, &c., with a
Scientific Appendix," also contained in this edition, is here
omitted as irrelevant to the scope of the present series.
[Illustration: Hunting the Buffalo]
[Illustration: title page]
NARRATIVE
OF A
JOURNEY ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS,
TO
THE COLUMBIA RIVER,
AND
A VISIT TO THE SANDWICH ISLANDS, CHILI, &c.
WITH
A SCIENTIFIC APPENDIX.
BY JOHN K. TOWNSEND,
Member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
PHILADELPHIA:
HENRY PERKINS, 134 CHESTNUT STREET.
BOSTON: PERKINS & MARVIN.
1839.
ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1839, by
JOHN K. TOWNSEND,
in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company was formed in 1834,
by several individuals in New York and Boston. Capt. WYETH, having
an interest in the enterprise, collected a party of men to cross the
continent to the Pacific, with the purpose chiefly of establishing
trading posts beyond the Rocky Mountains and on the coast.
The idea of making one of Capt. Wyeth's party was suggested to
the author by the eminent botanist, Mr. NUTTALL, who had himself
determined to join the expedition across the North American
wilderness. Being fond of Natural History, particularly the
science of Ornithology, the temptation to visit a country hitherto
unexplored by naturalists was irresistible; and the following pages,
originally penned for the family-circle, and without the slightest
thought of publication, will furnish some account of his travels.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
Arrival at St. Louis--Preparations for the journey--Sâque
Indians--Their appearance, dress, and manners--Squaws--
Commencement of a pedestrian tour--Sandhill cranes--
Prairie settlers--Their hospitality--Wild pigeons,
golden plovers and prairie hens--Mr. P. and his
daughters--An abundant repast--Simplicity of the prairie
maidens--A deer and turkey hunt--Loutre Lick hotel--A
colored charon--Comfortable quarters--Young men of the
west--Reflections on leaving home--Loquacity of the
inhabitants--Gray squirrels--Boonville--Parroquets--
Embarkation in a steamboat--Large catfish--Accident on
board the boat--Arrival at Independence--Description of
the town--Encampment of the Rocky Mountain company--
Character of the men--Preparation for departure--Requisites
of a leader--Backwoods familiarity--Milton Sublette and his
band--Rev. Jason Lee, the missionary--A letter from home--
Mormonites--Military discipline and its consequences, 121