EXPEDITIONS TO THE FRONTIER OF THE FUR COUNTRY.
A disputed boundary--Sources of the Mississippi--The fur
traders push southward--Expedition up the Missouri--Lewis and
Clarke meet Nor'-Westers--Claim of United States made--Sad death of
Lewis--Lieutenant Pike's journey--Pike meets fur traders--Cautions
Dakotas--Treaty with Chippewas--Violent death--Long and Keating fix
49 deg. N.--Visit Fort Garry--Follow old fur traders' route--An
erratic Italian--Strange adventures--Almost finds source--Beltrami
County--Cass and Schoolcraft fail--Schoolcraft afterwards
succeeds--Lake Itasca--Curious origin of name--The source
determined.
The Treaty of Paris was an example of magnanimity on the part of Great
Britain to the United States, her wayward Transatlantic child, who
refused to recognize her authority. It is now clearly shown that Lord
Shelbourne, the English Premier, desired to promote good feeling between
mother and daughter as nations. Accordingly the boundary line west of
Lake Superior gave over a wide region where British traders had numerous
establishments, and where their occupation should have counted for
possession.
In the treaty of amity and commerce, eleven years afterward, it was
agreed that a line drawn from Lake of the Woods overland to the source
of Mississippi should be the boundary. But, alas! the sources of the
Mississippi for fifty years afterward proved as difficult a problem
as the source of the Nile. In the first decade of this century it was
impossible to draw the southern line of Rupert's Land. The United States
during this period evinced some anxiety in regard to this boundary, and,
as we shall see, a number of expeditions were despatched to explore the
country. The sources of the Mississippi naturally afforded much interest
to the Government at Washington, even though the convention of London
of 1818 had settled the 49 deg. N. as the boundary.
The region west of the Mississippi, which was known as Louisiana,
extended northward to the British possessions, having been transferred
by Spain to the United States in 1803. A number of expeditions to the
marches or boundary land claim a short notice from us, as being bound up
with the history and interests of the Hudson's Bay Company.
LEWIS AND CLARKE'S EXPEDITION.
Of these, a notable and interesting voyage was that of Captains
Meriwether Lewis and William Clarke, of the United States army. This
expedition consisted of nearly fifty men--soldiers, volunteers,
adventurers, and servants. Being a Government expedition, it was well
provided with stores, Indian presents, weapons, and other necessary
articles of travel. Leaving Wood River, near St. Louis, the party
started up the Missouri in three boats, and were accompanied by two
horses along the bank of the River to bring them game or to hunt in
case of scarcity. After many adventures the expedition, which began
its journey on May 14th, 1804, reached the headquarters of the Mandan
Indians on the Missouri on October 26th.
The Mandans, or, as they have been called, the White Bearded Sioux, were
at this time a large and most interesting people. Less copper-coloured
than the other Indians, agricultural in habit, pottery makers, and
dwelling in houses partly sunk in the earth, their trade was sought from
different directions. We have seen already that Verendrye first reached
them; that David Thompson, the astronomer of the North-West Company,
visited them; that Harmon and others, North-West traders, met them; that
fur traders from the Assiniboine came to them; that even the Hudson's
Bay Company had penetrated to their borders. The Mandans themselves
journeyed north to the Assiniboine and carried Indian corn, which they
grew, to Rupert's Land to exchange for merchandise. The Mandan trail can
still be pointed out in Manitoba.
A fur trader, Hugh McCracken, met Lewis and Clarke at this point, and
we read, "That he set out on November 1st on his return to the British
fort and factory on the Assiniboine River, about one hundred and fifty
miles from this place. He took a letter from Captain Lewis to the
North-West Company, enclosing a copy of the passport granted by the
British Minister in the United States."
This shows the uncertainty as to the boundary line, the leaders of the
expedition having provided themselves with this permission in case of
need.
In dealing with the Mandans, Captain Lewis gave them presents, and
"told them that they had heard of the British trader, Mr. Laroche,
having attempted to distribute medals and flags among them; but that
these emblems could not be received from any other than the American
nation, without incurring the displeasure of their Great Father, 'the
President. On December 1st the party was visited by a trader, Henderson,
who came from the Hudson's Bay Company. He had been about eight days on
his route in a direction nearly south, and brought with him tobacco,
beads, and other merchandise to trade for furs, and a few guns which
were to be exchanged for horses. On December 17th Hugh Harvey and
two companions arrived at the camp, having come in six days from the
British establishment on the Assiniboine, with a letter from Mr. Charles
Chaboillez, one of the North-West Company, who, with much politeness,
offered to render us any service in his power."
With the expedition of Lewis and Clarke we have little more to do. It
successfully crossed from the sources of the Missouri, over the Rocky
Mountains to the Columbia, descended it to the mouth, and returned by
nearly the same route, reaching the mouth of the Missouri in 1806.
The expedition of Lewis and Clarke has become the most celebrated of the
American transcontinental ventures. Its early presence at the mouth of
the Columbia River gave strength to the claim of the United States for
that region; it was virtually a taking possession of the whole country
from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean; it had a picturesqueness and
an interest that appealed to the national mind, and the melancholy
death of Captain Lewis, who, in 1809, when the American Government
refused to fulfil its engagements with him, blew out his brains, lends
an impressiveness to what was really a great and successful undertaking.
PIKE'S EXPEDITION.
The source or sources of the Mississippi was, as we have seen, an
important matter in settling the boundary line between the possessions
of Great Britain and the United States. The matter having occupied the
authorities at Washington, Zebulon M. Pike, a lieutenant of the United
States army, was sent to examine the country upon the Upper Mississippi
and to maintain the interests of the Government in that quarter. Leaving
St. Louis on August 9th, 1805, he ascended the "Father of Waters," and
reached Prairie du Chien in September. Here he was met by the well-known
free-traders who carried on the fur trade in this region. Their names
were Fisher, Frazer and Woods. These men were in the habit of working
largely in harmony with the North-West Company traders, and, on account
of their British origin, were objects of suspicion to the United States
authorities. Pushing on among the Indians, by the help of French
Canadian interpreters, he came to Lake Pepin. On the shores of this
lake Pike met Murdoch Cameron, the principal British free-trader on the
upper Minnesota River. Cameron was a shrewd and daring Scotchman, noted
for his generosity and faithfulness. He was received with distinction
by Pike, and the trader as shown by his grave, pointed out many years
afterward on the banks of the Minnesota, was in every way worthy of the
attention. Shortly after this, Pike passed near where the city of St.
Paul, Minn., stands to-day, the encampment of J. B. Faribault, a French
Canadian free-trader of note, whose name is now borne by an important
town south of St. Paul. Pike held a council with the Dakota Indians, and
purchased from them a considerable amount of land for military purposes,
for which the Senate paid them the sum of two thousand dollars. Pike
seems to have cautioned the Dakotas or Sioux to beware of the influence
of the English, saying, "I think the traders who come from Canada are
bad birds among the Chippeways, and instigate them to make war upon
their red brothers, the Sioux."
About the end of October, unable to proceed further up the Mississippi
on account of ice, Pike built a blockhouse, which he enclosed with
pickets, and there spent the most severe part of the winter.
At his post early in December he was visited by Robert Dickson, a
British fur trader, described by Neill as "a red-haired Scotchman, of
strong intellect, good family, and ardent attachment to the crown
of England, who was at the head of the Indian trade in Minnesota."
Pike himself speaks of Dickson as a "gentleman of general commercial
knowledge and of open, frank manners." Explanations took place between
the Government agent and the trader as to the excessive use of spirits
by the Indians.
On December 10th Pike started on a journey northward in sleds, taking
a canoe with him for use so soon as the river should open. When Pike
arrived near Red Cedar Lake, he was met by four Chippewa Indians, a
Frenchman, and one of the North-West traders, named Grant. Going with
Grant to his establishment on the shores of the lake, Pike tells us,
"When we came in sight of the house I observed the flag of Great Britain
flying. I felt indignant, and cannot say what my feelings would have
excited me to had Grant not told me that it belonged to the Indians."
On February 1st Pike reached Leech Lake, which he considered to be the
main source of the Mississippi. He crossed the lake twelve miles to
the establishment of the North-West Company, which was in charge of a
well-known North-West trader, Hugh McGillies. While he was treated with
civility, it is plain from his cautions to McGillies and his bearing to
him, that he was jealous of the influence which British traders were
then exercising in Minnesota.
Having made a treaty with the Chippewa Indians of Red Lake, Pike's work
was largely accomplished, and in April he departed from this region,
where he had shown great energy and tact, to give in his report after a
voyage of some nine months.
A most melancholy interest attaches to this gentlemanly and
much-respected officer of the United States. In the war of 1812-15,
Pike, then made a general, was killed at the taking of York (Toronto),
in Upper Canada, by the explosion of the magazine of the fort evacuated
by General Sheaffe. Pike, as leader on this Mississippi expedition, as
commanding an expedition on the Rio Grande, where he was captured by the
Spaniards, and as a brave soldier, has handed down an honourable name
and fame.
LONG AND KEATING.
The successful journey of Lewis and Clarke, as well as the somewhat
useful expedition of Lieutenant Pike, led the United States Government
to send in 1823 an expedition to the northern boundary line 49 deg. N.,
which had been settled a few years before. In charge of this was Major
Stephen H. Long. He was accompanied by a scientific corps consisting of
Thomas Say, zoologist and antiquary; Samuel Seymour, landscape painter
and designer; and William H. Keating, mineralogist and geologist, who
also acted as historian of the expedition.
Leaving Philadelphia in April, the company passed overland to Prairie
du Chien on the Mississippi, ascended this river, and going up its
branch, the Minnesota, reached the town of Mendota in the month of
July. A well-known French half-breed, Joseph Renville, acted as guide,
and several others joined the party at this point. After journeying up
the Minnesota River, partly by canoe, and partly by the use of horses,
they reached in thirteen days Big Stone Lake, which is considered to
be the source of the river. Following up the bed of a dried-up stream
for three miles, they found Lake Traverse, the source of the Red River,
and reached Pembina Village, a collection of fifty or sixty log huts
inhabited by half-breeds, numbering about three hundred and fifty. We
have already seen how the North-West and Hudson's Bay Companies had
posts at this place, and that it had been visited regularly by the
Selkirk settlers as being in proximity to the open plains where buffalo
could be obtained. On the day after Long's arrival he saw the return
of the buffalo hunters from the chase. The procession consisted of
one hundred and fifteen carts, each loaded with about eight hundred
pounds of the pressed buffalo meat. There were three hundred persons,
including the women. The number of horses was about two hundred. Twenty
hunters, mounted on their best steeds, rode abreast, giving a salute as
they passed the encampment of the expedition.
One of Major Long's objects in making his Journey was to ascertain the
point where the parallel of 49 deg. N. crossed the Red River. For four
days observations were taken and a flag-staff planted a short distance
south of the 49th parallel. The space to the boundary line was measured
off, and an oak post fixed on it, having on the north side the letters
G. B., and on the south side U. S. This post was kept up and was seen by
the writer in 1871. In 1872, a joint expedition of British and American
engineers took observations and found Long's point virtually correct.
They surveyed the line of 49 deg. eastward to Lake of the Woods and
westward to the Rocky Mountains. Posts were erected at short distances
along the boundary line, many of them of iron, with the words on them,
"Convention of London, 1818."
His work at Pembina having been accomplished, Major Long gave up, on
account of the low country to be passed, the thought of following the
boundary line eastward to the Lake of the Woods. He sold his horses and
took canoes down the river to the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Garry,
where he was much interested in the northern civilization as well as in
the settlers who had Fort Douglas as their centre.
It was August 17th when Long's expedition left Fort Douglas and went
down the Red River. It took but two days to reach the mouth of the river
and cross Lake Winnipeg to Fort Alexander at the mouth of the Winnipeg
River. Six days more brought the swift canoe-men up the river to Lake
of the Woods. At the falls of Rainy River was the Hudson's Bay Company
establishment, then under the charge of fur trader McGillivray. On the
opposite side of the river was the fort of the American Fur Company.
Following the old route, they reached Grand Portage, September 12th,
and thence the expedition returned to the East. Major Long's expedition
was a well-conducted and successful enterprise. Its members were of
the highest respectability, and the two volumes written by Secretary
Keating have the charm of real adventure about them.
BELTRAMI'S DASH.
When Major Long was leaving Fort Snelling, on the Mississippi, to go
upon the expedition we have just described, an erratic but energetic and
clever Italian, named J. C. Beltrami, asked to be allowed to accompany
him. This aspiring but wayward man has left us a book, consisting of
letters addressed to Madame la Comtesse Compagoni, a lady of rank
in Florence, which is very interesting. On starting he wrote, "My
first intention, that of going in search of the real source of the
Mississippi, was always before my eyes."
Beltrami, while clever, seems to have been a man of insufferable
conceit. On the journey to Big Stone Lake and thence along the river, in
the buffalo hunts, in conferences with the Sioux, the Italian adventurer
awakened the resentment of the commander of the expedition, who refused
to allow him to accompany his party further. This proved rather
favourable to the purpose of Beltrami, who, with a half-breed guide and
Chippewa Indians, started to go eastward, having a mule and a dog train
as means of transport. After a few days' journey the guide left him,
returning with the mule and dog train to Pembina. Next his Indian guide
deserted him, fearing the Sioux, and Beltrami was left to make his way
in a canoe up the river to Red Lake. Inexperienced in the management of
a birch bark canoe, Beltrami was upset, but he at length proceeded along
the bank and shallows of the river, dragging the canoe with a tow line
after him, and arrived in miserable plight at Red Lake.
Here he engaged a guide and interpreter, and writes that he went "where
no white man had previously travelled." He was now on the highway to
renown. He was taken from point to point on the many lakes of Northern
Minnesota, and affixed names to them. On August 20th, 1823, he went over
several portages, led by his guide to Turtle Lake, which was to him a
source of wonder, as he saw it from the flow of waters south to the
Gulf of Mexico, north to the Frozen Sea, east to the Atlantic, and west
toward the Pacific Ocean.
His own words are: "A vast platform crosses this distinguished supreme
elevation, and, what is more astonishing, in the midst of it rises a
lake. How is this lake formed? Whence do its waters proceed? This lake
has no issue! And my eyes, which are not deficient in sharpness, cannot
discover in the whole extent of the clearest and widest horizon any
land which rises above it. All places around it are, on the contrary,
considerably lower."
Beltrami then went to examine the surrounding country, and found the
lake, to which he gave the name of Lake Julia, to be bottomless.
This lake he pronounces to be the source of the Mississippi River.
This opinion was published abroad and accepted by some, but later
explorations proved him to be wrong. A small lake to the south-west,
afterwards found to be the true source, was described to him by his
guide as Lac La Biche, and he placed this on his chart as "Doe Lake,"
the west source of the Mississippi. It is a curious fact that Lake
Julia was the same lake surveyed twenty-five years before by astronomer
Thompson.
After further explorations, Beltrami returned to Fort Snelling, near St.
Paul, Minn., being clothed in Indian garments, with a piece of bark for
a hat.
The intrepid explorer found his way to New Orleans, where he published
"La Découverte des Sources du Mississippi." Though the work was
criticized with some severity, yet Beltrami, on his arrival at London
in 1827, published "A Pilgrimage in Europe and America" in two volumes,
which are the source of our information. The county in Minnesota, which
includes both Julia and Doe Lakes, is appropriately called Beltrami
County.
CASS AND SCHOOLCRAFT.
Lewis Cass, of New Hampshire was appointed Governor of Michigan in 1813.
Six years after this he addressed the Secretary of War in Washington,
proposing an expedition to and through Lake Superior, and to the
sources of the Mississippi. It was planned for an examination of the
principal features of the North-West tributary to Lake Superior and
the Mississippi River. This was sanctioned in 1820, and the expedition
embarked in May of that year at Detroit, Michigan, Henry Schoolcraft
being mineralogist, and Captain D. B. Douglas topographer and astronomer.
The expedition, after much contrary weather, reached Sault Ste. Marie,
and the Governor, after much difficulty, here negotiated a treaty with
the Indians. Going by way of the Fond du Lac, the party entered the
St. Louis River, and made a tiresome portage to Sandy Lake station.
This fur-trading post the party left in July, and ascended the Upper
Mississippi to the Upper Cedar Lake, the name of which was changed
to Lake Cassina, and afterwards Cass Lake. From the Indians Governor
Cass learned that Lac La Biche--some fifty miles further on--was the
true source of the river, but he was deterred by their accounts of the
lowness of the water and the fierceness of the current from attempting
the journey any further. The expedition ingloriously retired from the
project, going down to St. Anthony Falls, ascending the Wisconsin River,
and thence down Fox River. The Governor himself in September arrived in
Detroit, having crossed the Southern Peninsula of Michigan on horseback.
Hon. J. W. Brown says: "When Governor Cass abandoned his purpose to
ascend the Mississippi to its source, he was within an easy distance,
comparatively speaking, of the goal sought for. Less timidity had often
been displayed in canoe voyages, even in the face of low water, and an
O-z-a-win-dib or a Keg-wed-zis-sag, Indian guides, would have easily won
the battle of the day for Governor Cass."
SCHOOLCRAFT AT LENGTH SUCCEEDS.
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, of good family, was born in New York State, and
was educated in that State and in Vermont. His first expedition was in
company with De Witt Clinton in a journey to Missouri and Arkansas. On
his return he published two treatises which gave him some reputation
as an explorer and scientist. We have already spoken of the part taken
by him in the expedition of Governor Cass. He received after this the
appointment of "Superintendent of Indian Affairs" at Sault Ste. Marie,
and to this we are indebted for the treasury of Indian lore published in
four large quarto volumes, from which Longfellow obtained his tale of
"Hiawatha."
In 1830 Schoolcraft received orders from Washington, ostensibly for
conference with the Indians, but in reality to determine the source
of the Mississippi. The Rev. W. T. Boutwell, representing a Board of
Missions, accompanied the expedition.
Lac La Biche was already known to exist, and to this Schoolcraft pointed
his expedition. On their journey outward Schoolcraft suddenly one day
asked Boutwell the Greek and Latin names for the headwaters or true
source of a river. Mr. Boutwell could not recall the Greek, but gave
the two Latin words--_veritas_ (truth) and _caput_ (head). These were
written on a slip of paper, and Mr. Schoolcraft struck out the first and
last three letters, and announced to Boutwell that "Itasca shall be the
name." It is true that Schoolcraft wrote a stanza in which he says, "By
fair Itasca shed," seemingly referring to an Indian maiden. Boutwell,
however, always maintained his story of the name, and this is supported
by the fact that the word was never heard in the Ojibway mythology.
The party followed the same route as that taken by Governor Cass on his
journey, reaching Cass Lake on July 10th, 1832. Taking the advice of
Ozawinder, a Chippewa Indian, they followed up their journey in birch
bark canoes, went up the smaller fork of the Mississippi, and then by
portage reached the eastern extremity of La Biche or Itasca Lake.
The party landed on the island in the lake which has since been known
as Schoolcraft Island, and here raised their flag. After exploring the
shores of the lake, he returned to Cass Lake, and, full of pride of
his discovery, journeyed home to Sault Ste. Marie. On the map drawn
to illustrate Schoolcraft's inland journey occurs, beside the lake of
his discovery, the legend, "Itasca Lake, the source of the Mississippi
River; length from Gulf of Mexico, 3,160 miles; elevation, 1,500 ft.
Reached July 13th, 1832."
[Illustration: FORT EDMONTON, ON THE NORTH SASKATCHEWAN.]
[Illustration: JASPER HOUSE, ROCKY MOUNTAINS.]