Transcriber's Note:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible.
Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
Rising Wolf
The White Blackfoot
[Illustration: I LEANED OUT AND FIRED STRAIGHT AT A BIG HEAD (p. 105)]
RISING WOLF
THE WHITE BLACKFOOT
HUGH MONROE'S STORY OF HIS
FIRST YEAR ON THE PLAINS
BY
JAMES WILLARD SCHULTZ
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY FRANK E. SCHOONOVER
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE SPRAGUE PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY JAMES WILLARD SCHULTZ
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Contents
I. WITH THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY 3
II. THE SUN-GLASS 29
III. HUNTING WITH RED CROW 56
IV. A FIGHT WITH THE RIVER PEOPLE 79
V. BUFFALO HUNTING 104
VI. CAMPING ON ARROW RIVER 129
VII. THE CROWS ATTACK THE BLACKFEET 154
VIII. IN THE YELLOW RIVER COUNTRY 179
IX. THE COMING OF COLD MAKER 205
X. MAKING PEACE WITH THE CROWS 230
Illustrations
I LEANED OUT AND FIRED STRAIGHT AT A BIG HEAD _Frontispiece_
HOW STRANGE IT SEEMED TO ME, A BOY, TO SIT IN THE PROW 10
AS THEY SWEPT PAST US THEY SHOT THEIR ARROWS 156
HUGH MONROE IN HIS OLD AGE 252
_From a photograph_
_The drawings are by Frank E. Schoonover_
Introduction
One of the greatest pleasures of my long life on the plains was my
intimate friendship with Hugh Monroe, or Rising Wolf, whose tale of his
first experiences upon the Saskatchewan-Missouri River plains is set
forth in _Rising Wolf_ just as I had it from him before the lodge fires
of the long ago.
At first an _engagé_ of the Hudson's Bay Company, then of the American
Fur Company, and finally free trapper, Hugh Monroe saw more "new
country" and had more adventures than most of the early men of the West.
During the last years of his long life he lived much with his grandson,
William Jackson, ex-Custer scout, who was my partner, and we loved to
have him with us. Slender of figure, and not tall, blue-eyed and once
brown-haired, he must have been in his time a man of fine appearance.
Honest he was and truthful. Kind of heart and brave. A good Christian,
too, and yet with no small faith in the gods of his Blackfoot people.
And he was a man of tremendous vitality. Up to the very last he went
about with his loved flintlock gun, trapping beavers and shooting an
occasional deer.
He died in his ninety-eighth year, and we buried him in the Two Medicine
Valley, under the shadow of the cliffs over which he had so many times
helped the Pi-kun-i stampede herds of buffalo to their death, and in
sight of that great, sky-piercing height of red rock on the north side
of the Two Medicine Lake, which we named Rising Wolf Mountain. It is a
fitting monument to the man who was the first of his race to see it, and
the great expanse it overlooks.
J. W. S.
Rising Wolf
The White Blackfoot
HUGH MONROE'S STORY
OF HIS FIRST YEAR ON THE PLAINS
RISING WOLF
THE WHITE BLACKFOOT
CHAPTER I
WITH THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY
You ask me for the story of my life. My friend, it would fill many
volumes, for I have lived a long life of great adventure. But I am glad!
You shall have the story. Let us set it forth in order. So! I begin:
I was born in Three Rivers Settlement, Province of Quebec, July 9, 1798.
My father was Captain Hugh Monroe, of the English Army. My mother was
Amélie de la Roche, daughter of a noble family of French _émigrés_. Her
father owned a fine mansion in Montreal, and the large estate in Three
Rivers, where my father lived with her what time he was not with his
regiment on some expedition.
My childhood days were quiet enough. I played with the children of our
peasantry; a Jesuit Father, resident with us, taught me a smattering of
reading and writing in both French and English; and presently I got a
gun, a beautiful, light smoothbore carrying thirty balls to the pound.
From that time on it was always the gun with me. I ceased playing with
the peasant children, and spent the most of my time hunting in the great
forest surrounding the settlement. In my twelfth summer I killed my
first deer. I shot two black bears when I was thirteen, and oh, how
proud I was of that! An old pensioner of my mother's, a half-breed
Montagnais Indian, too old and feeble to do much himself, taught me to
trap the beaver, the otter, and the land fur-bearers, the fox, fisher,
marten, and mink, and I caught many of them. Every spring my Grandfather
de la Roche sold the pelts for me in Montreal for a good price, one
winter catch, I remember, bringing me in thirty pounds, which was a
large sum for a boy to earn in a few months' time.
After the beginning of 1812 I saw little of my father, for then, you
know, began the war between the English and the Americans, and he was
with his regiment here and there, and took part in several battles. It
was in the autumn of that year that my grandfather sent for us to move
in to Montreal and live with him.
I did not like the town. I could neither hunt nor trap. I had little to
do with the town boys; I did not understand their ways, so different
from my ways. Mornings I attended the parish school; afternoons I rowed
on the river, or visited in the warehouses of the Hudson's Bay Company,
with which my grandfather had much to do. There I met _voyageurs_ and
trappers from far places--men dressed all in buckskin clothes, with
strangely fashioned fur caps on their heads, and beaded moccasins
encasing their feet. Some were French, and some English, the one race
having little to do with the other, but that made no difference with me;
I made friends with both factions, and passed many, many pleasant hours
listening to their tales of wild adventure, of fights with Indians,
encounters with fierce bears of the Far West, and of perilous canoe
trips on madly running rivers.
"That is the kind of life I want to lead," I said to myself, and, young
as I was, began to importune my mother to allow me to engage with the
great company. At first she but laughed at me. But as winter and summer
and winter went by, and I never ceased my entreaties, not only to her,
but to my grandfather, and to my father when he visited us, it became a
matter not to be dismissed with idle jests.
And at last I had my way. "He was born for the adventurous life, and
nothing else," said my father, "so we may as well let him begin now, and
grow up to a responsible position with the company. Who knows but he
may some day become its governor!"
It was my mother who objected to my going. Many a tear she shed over the
little traveling-kit she prepared for me, and made me promise again and
again that I would return to her, for a visit at least, at the
expiration of my apprenticeship to the company. It was a fine kit that
she got together for me, changes of underclothes, many pairs of
stockings, several pairs of boots, an awl, and needles and thread, a
comb and brush, and a razor, strop, and brush and soap. "You will need
the razor later on. Oh, just think! My boy will be a bearded man when he
returns to me!"
"Not if I can keep the razor. I despise whiskers! Mustaches! They are
unclean! I shall keep my face smooth," I told her, and I have done so to
this day.
When the time came for my going my father gave me a brace of
silver-mounted pistols in holsters for the belt, and plenty of balls
and extra flints for them. My grandfather gave me twenty pounds, and a
sun-glass. "There are times when flint and steel are useless, but as
long as the sun shines you can always make fire with this," he told me.
Little did we think what an important part it was to play in my first
adventure upon the plains.
At last the day for my departure came. We had breakfast by candlelight
and then my grandfather took us and my kit down to the wharf in his
carriage. I went into the office and signed articles of apprenticeship
to the Hudson's Bay Company for five years, at twenty pounds per year,
and found, my father and mother signing as witnesses. Whereupon the
chief clerk gave me a letter to the factor to whom I was to report
without undue delay, Factor James Hardesty, at Mountain Fort,
Saskatchewan River, foot of the Rocky Mountains, the company's new fort
built for the purpose of trade with the little-known tribes of the
Blackfeet, said to be a very numerous people, and possessors of a vast
hunting-ground teeming with beaver and other fur animals.
My mother almost fainted when she learned how very far away was my
destination. She wept over me, kissed me many times, and made me promise
again and again that I would return to her at the end of the five years.
And so we went from the office to the end of the wharf, where were the
five big keel boats of the company, all loaded, and manned by the sturdy
French and English _voyageurs_, and I got into one of them with my kit,
smoothbore in hand and pistols at my belt, and the men cast off and bent
to their oars. As far as I could see them, my father and mother and
grandfather kept waving their handkerchiefs to me, and I waved mine to
them. I never saw them after that day! It was May 3, 1814, about two
months short of my sixteenth birthday.
As I have said, there were five boats in the flotilla, and each one was
loaded with four or five tons of goods for the Indian trade, everything
being done up in waterproof packages of about one hundred pounds weight.
The heavy goods were mostly guns, powder and ball and flints, tobacco,
beads, beaver traps, and brass and copper wire for making bracelets, and
ear and finger rings, and axes, and copper and brass kettles of various
size, and small hand mirrors. The lighter goods comprised blankets, red,
blue, and yellow woolen cloth, needles, awls, thread, and the many other
articles and trinkets sure to take the Red Man's fancy. Not a very
valuable cargo, you may say, nor was it there in Montreal. But at
Mountain Fort, foot of the Rocky Mountains, it would be of enormous
value. There a gun was worth sixty beaver pelts--sixty pounds' worth of
fur--and all the other articles sold in the same proportion. Why, a yard
of tobacco--it was in long twists like rope--sold there for two beaver
skins!
[Illustration: HOW STRANGE IT SEEMED TO ME, A BOY, TO SIT IN THE PROW]
I shall say little of our long journey to Mountain Fort. It was
interesting, but as nothing compared to what I saw and experienced after
arriving at my destination. We turned into the Ottawa River from the St.
Lawrence. How strange it seemed to me, a boy, to sit in the prow as
strong men drove us fast and faster toward that unknown land.
We ascended the Ottawa as far as it was navigable, and then portaged our
boats and cargoes from lake to lake across a divide, and finally, early
in September, arrived at York Factory, on the Saskatchewan River, and
close to where the stream empties into Hudson Bay. There we wintered,
and set forth again as soon as the ice went out in the spring. _En
route_ I saw, for the first time, buffaloes, elk, and one or two grizzly
bears, monstrously big bears they appeared to be, even at a distance. I
also saw some camps of Cree Indians, enemies of the Blackfeet, but
friendly to the whites, and was told that they feared to visit the fort
to trade when the Blackfeet were there.
At last, after many weary days of rowing and cordelling up the swift
Saskatchewan, we arrived at Mountain Fort. It was the 10th day of July,
1815. I had been a year and a couple of months on my way to it from
Montreal!
The fort, built of logs, the buildings roofed with poles and earth, was
in a heavily timbered bottom above the high-water mark of the river. It
was enclosed with a high, log stockade, and had a bastion at one corner,
in which were two small cannon. It was later to be known as Bow Fort, as
the stream it was upon, which was a main tributary of the Saskatchewan,
was called by the Blackfeet Bow River.
The fort bottom came suddenly into view as our boats rounded a sharp
bend of the river, and my eyes and mouth opened wide, I guess, when I
saw that its shore was crowded with Indians, actually thousands of
them. They had seen few white men, and few boats other than the round
"bull boats" which they hastily constructed when they wanted to cross a
river, and our arrival was of intense interest to them.
I noted at once that they were far different from all other Indians that
I had seen on my long trip across the country. They were much taller,
lighter of skin, and slenderly and gracefully built. I marveled at the
length of hair of some of the men; in some instances the heavy braids
touched the ground; five feet and more of hair! A very few of them wore
blankets; the rest were dressed in well-tanned leather--call it buckskin
if you will--garments, sewed with sinew thread. But these were well
made, and very picturesque, ornamented, as many of them were, with vivid
embroidery of porcupine quills, dyed all the colors of the rainbow. Men,
women, and children, they all, excepting the few possessors of our
company blankets, wore wraps, or togas, of buffalo cow leather, those
of some of the men covered with bright-painted pictographs of their
adventures, and strange animals of their dreams. I noticed that few of
the men had guns; the most of them carried bows and arrows in fur or
leather cases and quivers at their backs.
As we swept past the great crowd of people toward the landing, my heart
went out to every one of them. I wanted to know them, these people of
the plains, as yet unaffected and unspoiled by intercourse with the
whites. Little did I think how very soon I was to know them, and know
them intimately!
At the landing the factor, Hardesty, and some of his employees, backed
by a half-circle of chiefs, awaited our coming. Little attention was
paid to me, just a boy. The factor greeted the head _voyageur_ of our
flotilla, then the men, and then seemed suddenly to discover me: "And
you--" he stopped and stared at me, and said impatiently to one whom I
afterward learned was his clerk: "I asked for men, and they send me a
boy!"
Then he turned again to me and asked: "Well, young man, what brings you
here to this wild land?"
"I came to work, sir!" I answered, and handed him the letter which the
company clerk had given me in Montreal. He read it and his manner toward
me instantly changed.
"Ah, ha! So you are Hugh Monroe, Junior!" he exclaimed. "And you have
come out to grow up with the company! I know your father well, young
sir. And your Grandfather de la Roche as well. Fine gentlemen they are.
Well! Well! We shall find some use for you, I am sure." And he shook
hands with me, and then, after a time, told me to accompany him to his
quarters.
We went up the broad beaten path in the timber to the fort, and the big,
hewn timber gate swung open for us, and its keeper bowed low as he let
us in. "We keep a guard here night and day, and two men up there with
the cannon. We have many Indians hereabout, and as yet do not know them
well," the factor told me.
We went into his quarters, a big room with an enormous fireplace at one
end. It had windows of thin, oiled rawhide, which let in a yellowish
light. Its furniture was home-made and comprised a desk, several chairs,
a bunk, piled high with buffalo robes and blankets, and an elkhorn rack
supporting several guns. I was told to put my gun and pistols on the
rack, that another bunk should be put up, and that this was to be my
home for the present.
We soon went out, for a long line of employees was bringing in the
cargoes from the boats, and the factor had to inspect them. I made my
way to the upper floor of the bastion and entered into conversation with
the two men on guard there with the cannon, and looked down now and then
at the great crowd of Indians out in front of the stockade. Many of
them had bundles of beaver and other fur which they were waiting to
trade for the newly arrived goods. The watch told me that they had been
encamped at the fort for two months awaiting the coming of the boats,
and that they had more fur than the cargoes of the five boats could buy,
unless the factor more than doubled the price of the goods. That didn't
seem possible to me.
"Why, how many Indians do you think are here?" asked one of the watch.
"Three or four thousand?" I hazarded.
He laughed. "Make it thirty thousand, and you will come nearer hitting
it," he told me, and I gasped.
"There are a lot more than that," said the other watch, confidently.
"Yes, I guess there are," the first went on. "You see, young fellow, we
have here right now all three tribes of the Blackfeet, and their allies,
the Gros Ventres, and Sak-sis. Yes, there's probably between thirty and
forty thousand of them, all told."
Again I gasped.
"Why, if they wanted to, they could take this fort without any trouble!"
I exclaimed.
"Take it! Huh! In just two minutes all would be over with us if they
started in. These are the boys that keep them from doing it," he said,
and patted the cannon beside him.
"You see that cottonwood tree out there, how its limbs are all
splintered and dead?" said the other watch. "Well, we fired a four-pound
charge of trade balls into it just to show them what it would do. There
was a big crowd out there before the gate, as big as there is now, and
when we touched her off you should have heard the women and children
yell, and seen 'em run for cover. The men, most of them, jumped when the
old gun boomed, but they stood their ground and stared and stared at the
shower of leaves and twigs coming down. We then fired the other one,
and down came about all of the rest of the tree-top. I bet you they said
to one another: 'It's no use trying to take that fort; those big guns
would cut us all down just as they did the tree-top!'"
"But we are taking no chances," said the other. "You see that little
gate in the big gate? Well, when the Indians come to trade we let them
in through it, a few at a time, making them leave their weapons outside,
and just as long as the trade lasts we keep one of the cannon pointed to
the door of the trade-room."
"And do you never leave the fort and the protection of the guns?" I
asked, thinking how hard it would be for me to remain shut up in the
fort, never to visit in the camps of the Indians, or hunt the game with
which the country teemed.
"Oh, we go out whenever we want to," said one. "You see, they wouldn't
pot just a few of us, for fear that they couldn't trade here any more,
and they are crazy for our goods. No, unless they can kill us all and
take the fort at one swoop, we shall never be harmed by them, and it is
only at a time like this, when the trade-room is full of goods, that
there is any danger. Anyhow, that is the way I look at it."
"And right you are," the other watch agreed.
Just then the factor called to me that it was dinner-time, and I left
the bastion and followed him into a room where the cook, a French-Huron
woman, wife of one of the employees, served us our simple meal. It
consisted solely of buffalo meat and strong black tea, and the factor
explained that he, as well as the employees, lived upon meat and the
various fruits of the country, fresh and dried, the year around.
Christmas was the one exception; on that day every one had a generous
portion of plum pudding with his meat dinner! You can see how it was in
those days. Freight was a year _en route_ to that far place from
Montreal, and every pound of it had to be merchandise for the Indian
trade. At a rough guess I should say that every pound laid down at the
fort was worth from three to twenty guineas per pound in fur. Copper
wire made into bracelets and other jewelry, for instance, was worth a
hundred guineas, a hundred beaver skins, per pound. Naturally, the
orders from London were that factors and employees alike must be
satisfied with the one big treat, plum pudding for the Christmas dinner!
Well, it didn't matter. We became so accustomed to a meat diet that we
gave little thought to other food. In summer, when in turn the service
berries, choke-cherries, and bull berries ripened, we feasted upon them,
and the women dried some for winter use, not enough, however, for more
than an occasional dish, stewed, and without sugar, rather flavorless.
We finished our meal and some of the employees took our place at the
table after we went out. Factors of the company did not eat with the
men. In fact they did not associate with them. They held themselves
aloof, and ruled their forts with stern justice. They generally issued
their orders through their clerks.
After the men had finished their dinner, the great occasion of the year,
the trade, was opened by a feast to the chiefs of the different tribes.
They came into the fort followed by their women, staggering under loads
of fur, and the factor sat with them while they ate, and smoked with
them afterward. After the pipe had gone the rounds, the chiefs one by
one made speeches, very badly interpreted by a man named Antoine
Bissette, a French-Iroquois half-breed who had married a Cree woman who
had some knowledge of the Blackfoot language, and through her had
acquired a few words of it. Each chief made a long speech, and at the
end of it the interpreter would say: "He says dat he is friend to
whites. He say dat you his brudder. He say dat he give you hees pack of
furs what hees woman she has dere!"
"And what else did he say?" the factor would ask.
"An' dat is all."
"And that is all! Huh!" the factor exclaimed. "Here we have had long
speeches, matters of importance to the trade may have been touched upon,
and you can't tell me what has been said! I told you a year ago,
Antoine, to study this language, but you do not improve in it. If
anything, your interpreting is worse than it was last spring!"
"But what can I do? My woman, he is mad all the time. He say Blackfoot
language no good; no will talk it. So, me, I no can learn."
"Huh!" the factor again sputtered, and with a shrug of the shoulders and
a wave of the hand, led the way to the trade-room. There he gave the
chiefs good value for their furs, and presents besides, and they
retired, well satisfied, to make room for their people.
I spent all of the afternoon in the trade-room watching them, and saw
much to interest and amuse me. The men, almost without exception, bought
guns and ammunition, traps, and tobacco, and the women bought the
finery. I saw one young woman pay twenty beavers for a white blanket,
and proudly drape it around the stalwart form of her man. He wore it for
a few minutes, and then put it over her shoulders, and when his turn
came to trade he bought for her several skins' worth of copper jewelry.
I saw many such instances during the trade of the next few days, and one
idea of the Indians that I had--that the men took everything and merely
tolerated their women, used them as mere slaves--went glimmering.
The next morning the factor told me that he would give me the day off,
and advised that I spend it in visiting the camps of the different
tribes, located in the river bottoms above the post. He assured me that
I should be perfectly safe in doing so, and said that I had best leave
my gun at home, so as to show the Indians that we regarded them as the
friends that they professed to be. I did, however, thrust one of my
pistols under my shirt-bosom and, upon Antoine's advice, wore a blanket
Indian fashion, so the camp dogs would not bother me.
Thus equipped, I set forth.
I had a wonderful day, a day of a thousand surprises and intense
interest. The trail to the next bottom above the fort ran over a point
of the plain ending in a bank at the river, and looking out from it I
saw that the plain for several miles was covered with the horses of the
different tribes, actually thousands and thousands of them, all in bands
of from sixty or seventy to two or three hundred head. I afterward found
that each owner so herded his horses that they became attached to one
another, and would not mix with other herds.
From the point I looked down upon the camp in the next bottom, the camp
of the Pi-kun-i, or so-called Piegans, the largest tribe of the
Blackfoot Nation, and tried to count the lodges. I actually counted
fourteen hundred and thirty, and afterwards estimated that there were
four hundred more pitched in the timber bordering the river. Well, say
that there were eighteen hundred lodges, and five persons to the lodge;
that made a tribe of nine thousand people!
I went down into the camp, keeping an eye upon the great wolf-like dogs
lying around each lodge. Children were playing everywhere around, and
the river was full of them, swimming. Women were busy with their daily
tasks, cooking meat, tanning leather, or removing the hair from hides
with oddly shaped elkhorn hoes tipped with steel or flint, or else
sitting in the shade of the lodges gossiping, and sewing garments with
awl and sinew thread, or embroidering them with colored porcupine
quills. Men were also gathered in little groups, chatting and passing
great stone-bowled, long-stemmed pipes from hand to hand. It was all a
peaceful and interesting scene.
I did not go through the whole camp; I somehow felt bashful before so
many people; but as far as I went all smiled at me pleasantly as I
passed, and spoke to me in kindly tones. How I wished that I could know
what they said! How I wanted to know the meaning of the strange symbols
with which some of the lodges were painted! On some were paintings of
animals; buffalo, otter, beaver, deer, all with a red line running from
the mouth back to a triangular figure in red in the center of the body.
No two lodges, with one exception, were painted alike. On many of them,
perhaps most, was painted, close up to the smoke-hole and at the rear, a
symbol shaped much like a Maltese cross. I determined to ask Antoine
what all the paintings signified.
From this camp I went on up the river to the others, those of the
Sik-si-kah, or Blackfeet proper, and the Kai-na, or Bloods; these two
and the Pi-kun-i comprising the three tribes of the Blackfoot Nation.
And beyond them I looked down from the edge of the plain at the big camp
of the Ut-se-na, or Gros Ventres, and last, that of the Sak-sis, or
Heavy Talkers, a small Athabaskan tribe which had long been under the
protection of the Blackfeet, as I learned later.
That evening I asked Antoine many questions about what I had seen, only
to find that he could not answer them. Nor could any of the employees.
Through the open doorway between the cook-room and his quarters the
factor heard my futile questioning and called to me. I went in. He had
me close the door, and then asked me a question that made me gasp.