It was a mellow summer evening about the first of June, when the party
arrived at the small town of Hickman in Kentucky.
Ever since they had left the upper river, their birch-bark canoe had
been an object of curiosity to all who had seen it, because the
white-birch or canoe-birch does not grow on the lower river.
At Hickman, the four travelers went into a store to replenish their
supplies. In front of the store, sitting on a cracker-box, a man greeted
Barker with, "Hello, Sam! Where on earth do you come from? Haven't seen
you since you were trapping coons and hunting wild turkeys on the
Wabash."
"And what brings you into this little river burg, Dick Banks?" the
trapper asked, equally surprised.
"Oh, I just drifted down the Wabash and the Ohio to this old river. You
know I always wanted to see the Mississippi, when we were boys. Well,
I'm working on a steamboat between New Madrid and St. Louis."
After a while Banks took Barker aside.
"Say, Sam," he spoke in a low voice, "it seems sort of strange, but I
reckon there was a fellow here looking for you just this morning. He
asked whether we ones had seen a white man with an Indian and two boys
traveling down river?
"Hadn't the faintest idea you could be the man he referred to. You
hadn't any beard and gray hair when I saw you last, but sure as I'm Dick
Banks, his story fits your party exactly. Fellow seemed to be mighty set
on finding you. Told us you had kidnapped his two nephews and stolen two
horses of him 'way up in Minnesota. Said he was going to swear out a
warrant and have you arrested."
"That dirty pup," exclaimed Barker, with his eyes flashing. "My Indian
and I saved those lads from being murdered by the Sioux. The lads rode
away on our own horses and we didn't even take a blanket of the dirty
bootlegger. The old squint-eyed scoundrel deserted the lads. Dern his
soul! I always believed he wanted them to get killed. He doesn't want
them to get back home for some reason. My Indian and I are going to take
them home to Vicksburg. I knew Hicks in Indiana. He always was a
blackguard."
Dick Banks puffed vigorously at his corncob pipe.
"Sam," he replied, "I'll tell you something. You used to be some
scrapper back in Indiana. I figure you could handle that friend of yours
all right, but you might as well go back with me to St. Louis. You can't
get into Vicksburg."
"And why can't I get in?"
"You haven't seen as much of the war as I have seen. I have been clear
down to Haynes Bluff a little way above Vicksburg. Grant and his men
have got the place bottled up. You can't get in. Gunboats, big ones,
little ones, the whole river is full of them. Guards and soldiers
everywhere. Don't try it, Sam. They might think you were a spy and hang
you. Those army courts aren't as good-natured as our old Indiana
juries."
"No, Dick," the trapper argued. "I can't go back with you. I'm going to
take those boys home. I'll either fight Hicks or give him the slip.
We're going to Vicksburg. May be I can get a pass through the lines."
"All right then, Sam; I've said my say. Get a pass? Why, man, Abe
Lincoln himself couldn't get a pass! You're as set on having your way as
you were as a kid.
"Now don't hurry that Vicksburg campaign of yours. Better paddle about
in the swamps and bayous for a few weeks. They say in about a month the
town will have to surrender. You can't get a pass into Vicksburg.
They've been shut up two weeks now."
That evening the four travelers had a good supper on board of Dick
Bank's boat and Dick also fixed beds for them on board the steamer, and
at daylight before the town was awake, they paddled their light craft
into a small winding channel which led into one of the most mysterious
lakes of North America, Reelfoot Lake, a lake made by the great
earthquake of 1811, generally known as the earthquake of New Madrid.
Tatanka was especially happy to be on this small winding stream.
"It is like the winding Minnesota River," he said, "and it is beautiful
like the small rivers that join the Mississippi above Lake Pepin. For a
long time they follow their own winding trail in the bottom woods, as if
they were afraid to go near the great Mississippi in which all big and
little rivers lose themselves."
"The trees are different here," Bill remarked. "We never saw any cypress
on the Minnesota."
They spent nearly all day on this winding channel, and it was not until
an hour before sunset that they came in sight of the strange waters and
scene of Reelfoot Lake.
"I will not go there," said Tatanka, when, at last, the Lake of the
Sunken Lands spread out before them. "It is a spook lake, a lake of bad
spirits. We must not camp on it. My brother, you told me that a bad
spirit shook the earth and trampled down the farms to make the lake.
"Look, the water is very black and very many dead trees grow out of it."
"Tatanka," exclaimed Barker, "you are forgetting what the missionaries
have taught you. Haven't they told you many times that there are no
spook lakes, no bad medicine lakes? Those dead trees didn't grow dead.
They died, when the water rose around them. There are no bad spirits in
the earth. The earth just shook and sank. You have been a scout for the
white soldiers, and you have to forget your Dakotah superstitions."
Tatanka was silent a while, and stopped paddling.
"The missionaries," he admitted, "are our friends and I believe they
tell us the truth. They do not want our land and they do not cheat us as
some of the traders do. They say our beliefs in spook lakes and bad
medicine are superstition, but it is hard to forget our beliefs, because
our fathers have taught them to us for many generations.
"My father once took me along on a buffalo hunt far west and he showed
me a spook lake. The hunters camped on the shore of the lake, but none
of them would have been brave enough to paddle a canoe on its waters.
Some of them would not even gather the dead wood on its shore, but my
father told us boys to gather the wood and we did. Our women used the
wood to smoke and dry the buffalo meat, and we boys watched for the bad
spirits to fly out of the wood.
"I did not see the spirits, but some of the boys told me that they heard
the spirits whistle and howl and rise with the smoke after the sun had
gone down, and they said that Katinka, the medicine man, saw them, too."
"Where is that spook lake?" the boys asked, also forgetting to paddle.
"That spook lake," Tatanka continued, "lies far west on the plains,
which the white men call Dakotah. No trees grow on the plains, but trees
and bushes grow on the lake shore and many dead trees and stumps grow in
the water. Our people call it the Lake of the Stumps. The water was so
bitter that we could not drink it, but our horses drank it."
Bill and Tim dipped a handful of the brown water from Reelfoot Lake.
"It isn't bitter," both exclaimed at once. "This isn't a spook lake."
"Did your horses die, after they drank out of Stump Lake?"
"No, they liked the water."
"Then it wasn't a haunted lake," both of them argued.
"But why did the trees die?" Tatanka objected.
"May be the outlet became choked and the trees were drowned," Barker
explained. "You know that white trappers always catch plenty of mink and
muskrats and find good fish in the lakes which the Indians say are
haunted."
Tatanka began to paddle again, but looked as if he were not convinced
but had given up arguing against all three of his friends.
The scene spread out before them looked indeed weird and almost
forbidding. A dead forest of tall straight cypress spires arose like
tree specters from the dark waters of the lake. The gray trunks had long
ago been stripped of bark and branches; a few bald eagles and fish-hawks
sailed in spirals over the dead pointed poles and uttered a shrill,
piercing cry at the intruders of their solitude.
"It is a forest of ghost trees," Tatanka murmured. "We should not stay
here."
[Illustration: "It is a forest of ghost trees," Tatanka murmured.]
"Ghost trees nothing," the old trapper exploded impatiently. "Those
trees were drowned forty years ago. The bark and branches have rotted
away. It is a wonder the trees are still standing.
"Tatanka, you're a hopeless old heathen. If you don't quit scaring the
boys with your spook lakes and ghost trees, I'm going to send you home
on a gunboat, and I'll hire a coal-black negro to help us paddle the
canoe. Here, fill your red calumet pipe and don't be afraid of harmless
dead trees."
A row of turtles plunged into the water from a log, a pair of ducks
arose out of some rushes and a large fish jumped out of the water and
fell back with a loud splash. Then the channel wound about amongst white
water-lilies and patches of the large, beautiful wild lotus or wankapin
lilies.
Tatanka had lit his pipe and looked about him in silence.
"There," Barker encouraged him. "Doesn't that look like a Minnesota
lake? Ducks and turtles and fish and acres of water-lilies. Just like
the marshes on your wonderful Minnesota, only the lotus doesn't grow
there."
"Yes it does," Tatanka claimed. "My mother and I gathered the big seeds
on a lake below the mouth of the Minnesota and in a few other places
where wankapin grows in our country."
"Well, at last you are convinced that we are not on a bewitched lake.
But now it is high time we look for a camping-place.
"Bill, steer straight for shore. We'll make a good soft bed in that
cane-brake."
There are two kinds of cane growing in the South, the small and the
large. The small cane, in which the travelers were camping now, grows
about a dozen feet high and forms vast thickets on waste lands as far
north as Kentucky. These cane-brakes were the home of deer and bear and
other wild animals, but large areas have now been made into
cotton-fields.
The big cane grows only on wet lands near the rivers from the White
River southward. It reaches a height of thirty feet. At the age of about
thirty or forty years, the big cane flowers and produces an abundance of
rich nourishing grains for stock and game. After flowering, the old
canes die and new plants spring up from the seed. The young shoots are
known as mutton cane, because deer and bear and stock grow fat on them.
"This cane," said Tatanka, after they had eaten their supper, "is like
the pipe-stem reeds of the Sioux Country. The Indian boys called them
spear-grass, and we threw the reeds at each other when we played war."
The campers remained a week on Reelfoot Lake, and they still found much
evidence of the great earthquake half a century before.
The great cracks in the earth, formed at that time, could still be seen
in many places. Some of the fissures were filled with sand, which had
come up from below; in others, young trees had grown up, while many of
the old trees, still alive, were leaning over the partly filled
fissures.
It was a strange lake indeed on which the travelers found themselves.
Most of the lake, about ten miles long and two miles wide, was covered
with water-lilies, lotus, and many other kinds of water plants. Along
the margin and on half a dozen low islands grew the sombre cypress, its
odd, fantastic, knee-like roots projecting above the water. On the
higher lands also, many trees not growing on the upper river had
appeared. Sycamores, or buttonwood, mulberry, gum-trees, and catalpas.
The campers met an old man, who had lived near Reelfoot all his life and
who told many stories of the great earthquake.
"I was born the year of the earthquake," the old man related, "and my
father told me many stories about it.
"The first shock came a little after midnight on December 16th. My
father and two other men were on the river at the time. They were going
to New Madrid and were going to start very early, so they could return
the same day. Their boat was tied near a very big sycamore. All at once
they heard a great thundering underground. The big tree began to sway
like the tow-head willows in the storm. Then the whole bank broke loose
and crashed into the river. First the water in the river seemed to rise
like a big wall, the next moment it rushed down stream with a roaring
current.
"My father was thrown out of the boat and would have drowned if he had
not gotten hold of the branches of the big sycamore. How he did it, he
did not remember. He yelled for help, and after a long time the men came
back with the boat and took him off.
"They were all so scared they couldn't talk; they thought the world was
coming to an end.
"They hurried to the highest land they could find to spend the night,
but none of them expected to see the sun rise. Again and again the earth
rolled and shook as if it were a blanket. Big trees crashed and snapped
like bean-poles, and whole acres of forest crashed into the river. The
air smelled of burning sulphur, or some such gases as come out of a
sulphur spring.
"Father and the two men crept into a thicket of small brush because they
were afraid to stay in the big timber, and father always claimed that in
a few minutes it grew as dark as if they had been sitting in a cellar at
night.
"Every little while, a dozen times or more, they felt the earth shaking
and heard the deep rambling underground and the roaring and rushing of
the river.
"When daylight came they hurried home and when they found that father's
family had not been injured they decided to go on to New Madrid,
thinking that they might be of some help to sufferers or to shipwrecked
boatmen.
"They hardly recognized the river. It was full of landslides, trees, and
all kinds of debris, and one good-sized island and its tow-head had
entirely disappeared. They found the town of New Madrid in ruins. The
land had sunk ten feet or more. About thirty boats in the harbor had
been wrecked or carried down stream.. One large barge loaded with five
hundred barrels of flour was split from stern to bow and left high and
dry on the bank.
"The people had all fled and were camping on high land away from the
river."
The old man paused as if for breath.
"Did the people ever go back?" asked Tim.
"No, they didn't. The fact is they couldn't. The river washed the whole
town away. The present town is built a little farther up the river.
"The whole country, my father said, was changed by the earthquake. Many
good farms sank and many others were covered with sand. Where the lake
is now, Bayou de Chien and Reelfoot Creek used to run through a dense
forest of cypress trees. You can follow their channels in your bark
boat, because there are no stumps or dead trees in the old channels.
"Some of our neighbors were so frightened that they moved away. Father
was also going to leave. He was going into Arkansas, but mother would
not move. She said she had traveled in an ox-wagon from Pennsylvania to
Indiana and from Indiana to Tennessee and that was enough. If the end of
the world was coming, Arkansas wouldn't last any longer than Tennessee."
Thus ran the story of the old farmer of Reelfoot Lake. He spoke in a
quaint Southern dialect, in which Bill and Tim were quite at home, but
which compelled Barker to pay very close attention, while Tatanka lost
most of the tale.
The story of the old pioneer has been corroborated by the testimony of
many reliable men.
At the time of this great catastrophe, Captain Nicholas Roosevelt was
taking the pioneer steamer _New Orleans_ from Pittsburgh to New Orleans.
The steamer was on the Ohio when the earthquake occurred, but when the
boat reached the Mississippi, the pilot became much alarmed and said he
was lost. The shores had changed and large islands had disappeared.
The naturalist, Audubon, felt the earthquake in Kentucky and wrote an
account of it in his journal.
The shocks were most severe over a distance of about one hundred miles
from Cairo to Memphis and over a width of about fifty miles. They were
felt at St. Louis and New Orleans, Detroit, Washington, and Boston. They
were undoubtedly felt as far up the great river as St. Paul and
Minneapolis, but that region was at the time still an unsettled Indian
country.
Although the earthquake was one of the most severe in the United States,
few lives were lost. The country around New Madrid was at that time
thinly settled and most of the houses were small and built of wood. It
is, however, not surprising that many settlers left the country, for the
shocks continued from time to time until the early part of May, 1812.