Peter believed that the Omaha woman spoke the truth. The captains ought
to be told at once. But the dancing was still in progress in the lodge
of Chief Black Buffalo, where sat the two captains and the chiefs,
watching. A boy would not be admitted. So Peter sought out Sergeant
John Ordway, who was in charge of the shore guard. John Ordway was
not from Kentucky; he was from a place called New Hampshire, in the
northeast of the United States.
“You don’t say!” replied John Ordway, when Peter had told him of the
warning from the Omaha woman. “Well, anybody might suspect as much.
I’ll get word to the captains, first chance.”
The dancing continued until late, again. Peter curled in the bows of
the waiting pirogue, and went to sleep. He had done his duty and could
trust to John Ordway. By the stars it was midnight when he awakened at
the approach of the captains. They and two Indian guests and the guard
clambered in, and the pirogue was rowed for the barge.
The shore was silent and dark――but how alert were those Sioux! The
pirogue ran against the anchor cable of the barge, in the darkness, and
broke it. The barge was adrift. The captains cried loudly, ordering
the oars to be manned and the barge held until a cable could be passed
ashore――and instantly the two Indians in the pirogue shouted excitedly,
in the Sioux tongue, summoning the village.
“Here! Quick!” they called. “To the boats! Come!”
The whole village burst into an uproar; the warriors poured forth to
the water’s edge. It was very plain that they feared the white men were
leaving. The captains could pay little attention until a cable had been
carried from the barge and fastened to a tree on the bank, and the
barge pulled in out of the current. Then――――
“Ask Tor-to-hon-ga what’s the meaning of all this alarm,” bade Captain
Lewis, tersely, of Drouillard. Tor-to-hon-ga was one of the two guests.
“He say de Tetons ’fraid de ’Maha warriors haf come up an’ attack de
boats of de great white father,” interpreted Drouillard.
“Nonsense!” muttered Captain Lewis.
And anybody might see how foolish was this excuse of the Tetons: that
the Omahas would attack boats defended by guns, when the Sioux were the
real enemies. After the village was quiet again, at least sixty Teton
warriors remained there on the bank, all night, ready for action.
“I t’ink,” commented Drouillard, “mebbe we have leetle trouble, in
mornin’.”
“We’re in a bad box,” quoth Sergeant Ordway. “Now we’re tied up close
to the bank, under direct fire. We may have a hard time casting off.”
Strong guards were kept under arms, on all the boats. There was
little sleep. Both captains were constantly about, peering through
the darkness, and listening. Early in the morning the Tetons were
assembled; and while Patrick Gass and a detail were dragging from a
pirogue, trying to find the barge’s anchor, several chiefs and warriors
waded out to the barge and climbed aboard.
The anchor could not be found.
“Never mind,” said Captain Lewis. “We’ll go on without it. Send those
fellows ashore, Will. Sergeant Pryor, take a squad with you and cast
off that rope.”
The Indian visitors did not wish to go ashore, but Captain Clark
ordered them pushed into the pirogue which was to bear Sergeant Pryor
and squad. Chief Black Buffalo still refused to go. Sergeant Pryor
released the rope from the tree on the bank and returned. The sail on
the barge was being hoisted――and at the instant laughter and shouts
mingled, both ashore and from the boats.
A number of the Sioux had sat upon the rope, holding it!
Captain Lewis flared into hot rage.
“Take charge of the pirogues, Will,” he ordered. “Down behind the
gunwale, men. Advance your rifles. See that the priming’s fresh,
Ordway and Gass. Stand to your swivel, Willard!” And, to Chief Black
Buffalo: “My young men are ready for battle. If your young men do not
release the rope we will fire.”
“He say de young men want leetle more tobac’,” translated Drouillard.
“Tell him we have given all the presents that we’re going to give,”
crisply answered Captain Lewis. “No――wait. Here!” And snatching a roll
of tobacco, Captain Lewis threw it at Black Buffalo’s feet. “Tell him
there is his tobacco, on the prairie. He says he is a great chief.
Among the white men great chiefs are obeyed. If he is a great chief let
him order his young men to release that rope and they will obey him.
But we do not believe he is a great chief. He is a squaw, and the young
men laugh at him.”
“Wah!” grunted Chief Black Buffalo, when he heard. He seized the
tobacco and leaped from the boat, to surge for the shore. There he
tumbled his young men right and left, snatched the rope and hurled it
out into the water.
“Go,” he bawled. Thus he proved himself to be the great chief.
The soldiers cheered. The barge’s sail caught the breeze, the barge
moved. Just in time Captain Clark leaped from the pirogue, into which
he had transferred, and gained the gunwale, and the deck.
“Well done, Merne,” he panted.
“Golly!” babbled York. “Dat chief mighty brash when he get started.”
The barge and the pirogues gained the middle of the river. Rapidly the
Teton village was left behind. Patrick Gass waved his hat derisively.
“Bad luck to yez,” he said. “Sure, an’ if we’d stayed a minute longer
we’d ha’ put your town into mournin’. We’re not so paceful as we
look.” And he added: “The ’Rikaras nixt. We’ll hope they be gintlemen.
Annyhow, we’ve no horses left for ’em to stale.”
Just what was to be expected from the Arikaras nobody might say, but
although they were warlike they were thought to be not so mean as the
Teton Sioux. The boats forged on, and the month changed to that of
October.
“How far to the ’Rikara villages, sir?” asked Captain Lewis, of a
trader named Valle who came aboard the barge for a talk.
“By river about 100 miles, captain.”
From an excursion ashore with Captain Clark and squad, York returned
tremendously excited.
“We done found one o’ dem white b’ars,” proclaimed York. “Yessuh, me
an’ Marse Will. Oof!”
“Where’bouts, York?”
“Whar’s his scalp?”
“Did you get a shot at him?”
Questions were volleyed thick and fast. York wagged his woolly head and
rolled his eyes.
“Nossuh. Didn’t get no shot at him. We des seen his track, in dem
bushes yonduh near de mout’ ob de ribber. Oof! Marse Will he set his
moccasin cl’ar inside, an’ dat track it stuck out all ’round. ’Spec’
dis chile ain’t got bus’ness wif dem critters. Oof!”
“Yes,” agreed George Shannon. “According to Drouillard even the Indians
won’t tackle one of those white bears, except in a crowd of six or
eight. And if they don’t shoot him through the head or heart he’s
liable to out-fight them all. Before they go after him they make big
medicine, same as if they were going to war with a whole nation.”
“He’s ’special fond of black meat, too, I hear tell,” slyly remarked
John Thompson.
York rolled his eyes, and muttered. But the Kentuckians, some of
whom had hunted with Daniel Boone, fingered their rifles eagerly and
surveyed the low country at the mouth of the river, as if hoping to see
York’s monster stirring.
The next day the first Arikara Indians came aboard, from their lower
village. Captain Lewis went with some of them to return the visit.
He was accompanied back by Mr. Tabeau and Mr. Gravelines, two French
traders who lived with the Arikaras. Mr. Gravelines spoke the Arikara
language.
There were three Arikara villages, so that the captains ordered camp
made on the north side of the river, across from the villages.
The Arikaras were tall, handsome people――much superior, thought
Patrick Gass and the rest of the men, to the Sioux. Chiefs
Ka-ka-wis-sas-sa or Lighting Crow, Fo-cas-se or Hay, and Pi-a-he-to or
Eagle’s Feather, were introduced by Mr. Gravelines, and the camp soon
filled with the Arikara warriors, and even squaws who rowed across in
little skin boats of a single buffalo hide stretched over basket-work.
York held a regular reception, for he appeared to astonish the Arikaras
as much as he had astonished the Sioux.
“Hey, Marse Tabeau,” he called, to the French trader. “Des tell dese
people I’se bohn wil’, an’ my young marster done ketched me when I was
runnin’ in de timber an’ tamed me. Tell ’em I used to eat peoples bones
an’ all. I’se a sorter g’riller.” And thereupon York seized a thick
stick, and snapped it in his two hands, and howled and gritted his
teeth. He was very strong, was York.
“Huh!” grunted the Arikaras, respectfully falling back from him.
“That will do, York,” cautioned Captain Clark, trying not to laugh.
But York, of much importance, thoroughly enjoyed himself.
The Arikaras were splendid entertainers and exceedingly hospitable――“’Mos’
like white folks,” asserted York. They did not beg, as the Sioux had
begged; they gave lavishly out of their store of corn and beans and dried
squashes, and accepted thankfully the gifts from the great father; they
would not drink any whisky――“We are surprised that the great father
should send us liquor to make fools of us,” said Chief Lighting Crow.
Their houses were built close together, of a willow frame plastered with
mud, and were entered through a covered passage-way that kept out the
wind. Around each village was a fence of close upright pickets, for
defense. They were well armed, too, with guns.
When it came time, after the councils had been held, to leave the
friendly Arikaras, all the men of the expedition hated to go. John
Newman, who had enlisted at St. Louis, was the most out-spoken.
“Look here,” he uttered, boldly, among his comrades at the last camp
fire. “Why should we go on, up to those Mandans? Why can’t we spend the
winter where we are? The Mandan village is nigh on 200 miles yet, and
I’m tired of working my hands raw in this cold weather, hauling the
boats over sand-bars.”
“Orders be orders,” reminded Patrick Gass. “An’ up to the Mandans we
go, I’m thinkin’.”
“Not if we show a little spunk and say we want to stay,” retorted John.
“Whisht, now!” cautioned Patrick. “Would ye spoil a good record?
Faith,” he added, “if the captain heard ye he’ll have ye on the carpet
for mutiny, b’gorry.” Captain Clark had strode hastily by, wrapped in
his cloak. “It’s mutiny ye’re talkin’,” scolded Patrick Gass. “An’ I
want no more of it.”
Captain Clark had heard, for at breaking camp in the morning, John was
placed under arrest and confined in the forecastle aboard the barge.
That night, at camp, twenty-five miles above the Arikara villages, a
court-martial was held on the case of John Newman. He was found guilty
of mutinous speech and sentenced to received seventy-five lashes, and
be suspended from the company. The next noon the boats stopped in the
rain, at a sand-bar in the middle of the river, everybody was ordered
out, and John was roundly whipped on the naked back with ramrods and
switches.
Chief Ah-ke-tah-na-sha of the Arikaras, who was going with the
expedition up to the Mandans, to make peace between the Mandans and
the Arikaras, squatted on the sand-bar, to watch. Evidently he did not
understand, for he began to weep.
“Why does Ah-ke-tah-na-sha cry?” asked Captain Clark.
Ah-ke-tah-na-sha, who could speak some Sioux, explained to Drouillard,
and Drouillard explained to the captains.
“He say de ’Rikara dey punish by death, but dey never whip even de
children. He weep for Newman.”
“Tell him what the matter is, and that this is the white man’s way of
punishing disobedience,” directed Captain Clark, to Drouillard.
Drouillard did; and reported.
“He say mebbe so, but ’mong Injuns to whip men make women of dem. If
dees is white man way, all right. Men ought to obey deir chiefs.”
“Now aren’t ye ’shamed o’ yourself, when even an Injun cries over ye?”
reproved Patrick Gass, of John Newman, who was painfully donning his
shirt and coat.
“Well, I am,” admitted John. “I guess I deserved what I got. I don’t
harbor any grudge, and I’ll do my duty.”