CAPTAIN FISK’S EXPEDITION
While the little community at Bannack were snugly housed for the winter,
anxiously awaiting the return of warm weather to favor a resumption of
labor in the gulch, numerous companies were in progress of organization
in the States, intending to avail themselves of the same seasonable
change to start upon the long and adventurous journey to Salmon River.
The fame of Bannack and Deer Lodge had not yet reached them. In the
Summer of 1862 an expedition under the direction of the Government was
planned in Minnesota for the ostensible purpose of opening a wagon road
between St. Paul and Fort Benton, to connect at the latter point with
the military road opened a few years before by Captain John Mullen from
Fort Benton to Walla Walla. This route of nearly two thousand miles lay
for most of the distance through a partially explored region, filled
with numerous bands of the hostile Sioux and Blackfeet. The Government
had grudgingly appropriated the meagre sum of five thousand dollars in
aid of the enterprise, which was not sufficient to pay a competent guard
for the protection of the company. The quasi-governmental character of
the expedition, however, with the inducement superadded that it would
visit the Salmon River mines, soon caused a large number of emigrants to
join it.
The Northern Overland Expedition, as it was called, left St. Paul on the
sixteenth of June, 1862. It was confided to the leadership of Captain
James L. Fisk, whose previous frontier experience and unquestioned
personal courage admirably fitted him for the command of an expedition
which owed so much of its final success, as well as its safety during a
hazardous journey through a region occupied by hostile Indians, to the
vigilance and discipline of its commanding officer. His first assistant
was E. H. Burritt, and second assistant, N. P. Langford (the writer);
Samuel R. Bond, secretary, David Charlton, engineer, Dr. W. D. Dibb,
surgeon, and Robert C. Knox, wagon master. About forty men were selected
from the company, who agreed, for their subsistence, to serve as guards
during the journey. One hundred and twenty-five emigrants accompanied
the expedition to Prickly Pear Valley. This company was thoroughly
organized, and ready at all times for instant service while passing
through Indian country. Fort Abercrombie, Devil’s Lake, Fort Union, Fort
Benton,[2] and Milk River were designated points of the route, and it
was generally understood that the company should pursue as nearly as
possible the trail of the exploring expedition under command of Governor
Isaac I. Stevens in 1853.
Footnote 2:
Fort Union and Fort Benton were not United States military forts, but
were the old trading posts of the American Fur Company.
All the streams not fordable on the entire route were bridged by the
company and many formidable obstacles removed. The company arrived
without accident, after a tedious but not uninteresting trip, in Prickly
Pear Valley on the twenty-first day of September. It was the largest
single party that went to the northern mines in 1862. About one-half of
the number remained in the Prickly Pear Valley, locating upon the creek
where Montana City now stands. The remainder accompanied Captain Fisk to
Walla Walla. All who were officially connected with the expedition,
except Mr. Knox and the writer, returned by way of the Pacific Ocean and
the Isthmus to Washington.
Gold had been found on Prickly Pear Creek a short time before the
arrival of our company. “Tom Gold Digger,” or “Gold Tom,” had pitched
his lodge at the mouth of the cañon above our location and was “panning
out” small quantities of gold. The placer was very difficult of
development and the yield small. Winter was near at hand. Many of the
party who had left home for Salmon River, where they had been assured
profitable employment could be readily obtained, now found themselves
five hundred miles from their destination with cattle too much exhausted
to attempt the journey, in the midst of a wilderness, nearly destitute
of provisions, and with no chance of obtaining any nearer than Salt Lake
City, four hundred miles away, from which they were separated by a
region of mountainous country, rendered impassable by deep snows and
beset for the entire distance by hostile Indians. Starvation seemingly
stared them in the face. Disheartening as the prospect was, all felt
that it would not do to give way to discouragement. A few traders had
followed the tide of emigration from Colorado with a limited supply of
the bare necessaries of life, risking the dangers of Indian attack by
the way, to obtain large profits and prompt pay as a rightful reward for
their temerity. Regarding their little stock as their only resource, the
company set to work at once, each man for himself, to obtain means to
buy with. Prices were enormous. The placer was still unpromising. Frost
and snow had actually come. With a small pack supplied from the remains
of their almost exhausted larders, the men started out, some on foot,
and some bestride their worn-out animals, into the bleak mountain
wilderness in pursuit of gold. With the certainty of death in its most
horrid form if they fell into the clutches of a band of prowling
Blackfeet, and the thought uppermost in their minds that they could
scarcely escape freezing, surely the hope which sustained this little
band of wanderers lacked none of those grand elements which sustained
the early settlers of our country in their days of disaster and
suffering. Men who cavil with Providence, and attribute the escape of a
company of half-starved, destitute men from massacre, starvation, and
freezing, under circumstances like these, to luck or chance or accident,
are either destitute of gratitude or have never been overtaken by
calamity. Yet these men all survived to tell the tale of their bitter
experience.
[Illustration:
CAPTAIN JAMES L. FISK
_Commander of Northern Overland Expedition_
]
My recollection of those gloomy days, all the more vivid, perhaps,
because I was among the indigent ones, was emphasized by a little
incident I can never recall without a devout feeling of thankfulness.
Intelligence was brought us that a company of miners was working the
bottom of a creek in Pike’s Peak Gulch, a distance of sixty miles from
the Prickly Pear camp over the Rocky Mountain range. Cornelius Bray,
Patrick Dougherty, and I started immediately on a horseback trip to the
new camp in search of employment for the winter. One pack-horse served
to transport our blankets and provisions. Our intention was to cross the
main range on the first day and camp at the head of Summit Creek, where
there was good grass and water. In following the Mullen road through the
cañon, when about two miles from the ridge, Bray’s horse gave out and
resisted all our efforts to urge him farther. There was no alternative
but to camp. The spot was unpromising enough. There was no feed for our
horses, and our camp by the roadside could not escape the notice of any
band of Indians that might chance to be crossing the range. It was the
custom in this Indian country for packers and others to seek some
secluded spot half a mile or more from the trail for camping purposes;
but here we were cooped up in a cañon not ten rods wide, and the only
practicable pass over the range running directly through it. Of course
we all mentally hoped that no Indians would appear.
I had, while at Fort Benton, held frequent conversations with Mr.
Dawson, the factor at that post, who had spent many years in the
country, and was perfectly familiar with the manners and tactics of the
Indians. He had warned me against just such an exposure as that to which
we were now liable, and when night came, knowing that the country was
full of roving bands of Bloods and Piegans, I felt no little solicitude
for a happy issue out of danger. Evening was just setting in, when snow
began to fall in damp, heavy flakes, giving promise of a most
uncomfortable night. Our only shelter was a clump of bushes on the
summit of a knoll, where we spread our blankets, first carefully
picketing the four horses with long lariats to a single pin, so that in
case of difficulty they could all be controlled by one person. Dougherty
proposed to stand guard until midnight, when I was to relieve him and
remain until we resumed our trip at early dawn. Bray and I crept into
our blankets, they and the bushes being our only protection against a
very heavy mountain snowstorm. Strange as it may seem to those
unfamiliar with border life, we soon fell asleep and slept soundly until
I was aroused by Dougherty to take my turn at the watch. I crawled from
under the blankets, which were covered to the depth of five inches with
“the beautiful snow,” and Dougherty fairly burrowed into the warm place
I had left.
About three o’clock in the morning the horses became uneasy for want of
food. Preparatory to an early departure I gathered in a large heap a
number of small, fallen pines and soon had an immense fire. It lighted
up the cañon with a lurid gloom and mantled the snow-covered trees with
a ghastly radiance. The black smoke of the burning pitch rolled in
clouds through the atmosphere, which seemed to be choked with the myriad
snowflakes. So dense was the storm I could scarcely discern the horses,
which stood but a few rods distant. Wading through the snow to the spot
where my companions slept, I roused them from their slumbers. I could
liken them to nothing but spectres as they burst through their snowy
covering and stood half-revealed in the bushes by the light of the
blazing pines. It was a scene for an artist. Despite the gloomy
forebodings which had filled my mind, at this scene I burst into a fit
of loud and irrepressible laughter.
It was but for a moment, for, as if in answer to it, the counterfeited
neigh of a horse a few rods below and of another just above me, warned
me that the danger I had feared was already upon us. It was the signal
and reply of the Indians. Bray and Dougherty grasped their guns, while I
rushed to the picket pin, and, seizing the four lariats, pulled in the
horses. A moment afterwards, and from behind a thicket of willows just
above our camp, there dashed down the cañon in full gallop forty or more
of the dreaded Blackfeet. In the light of that dismal fire their
appearance was horribly picturesque. Their faces hideous with war paint,
their long ebon hair floating to the wind, their heads adorned with
bald-eagle feathers, and their knees and elbows daintily tricked out
with strips of antelope skin and white feathery skunks’ tails, they
seemed like a troop of demons which had just sprung out of the earth,
rather than beings of flesh and blood. Each man held a gun in his right
hand, guiding his horse with the left. Well-filled quivers and bows were
fastened to their shoulders, and close behind the main troop, driven by
five or six outriders, followed a herd of fifty or more horses they had
just stolen from a company of miners on their way to the Bannack mines,
who had encamped for the night at Deer Lodge. These animals were driven
hurriedly by our camp, down the cañon, the main troop, meantime, forming
into line on the other side of them so as to present an unbroken front
of horsemen after they had passed, drawn up for attack. This critical
moment we improved by rapidly looping the lariats into the mouths of our
horses and bringing our guns to an aim from behind them over their
fore-shoulders. As we stood thus, not twenty yards asunder, confronting
each other, the chief, evidently surprised that the onslaught lingered,
rode hurriedly along the front of his men and with violent
gesticulations and much vehement jargon urged them to an instant
assault. They strongly expostulated, and by numerous antics and
utterances, which I afterwards ascertained meant that their guns were
wet and their caps useless, finally persuaded him to resort to the bows
and arrows. The chief was very angry, and from the violence of his
gestures and threatening manner I expected to see several of the Indians
knocked off their horses. When the Indians, in obedience to his command,
hung their guns on the pommels of their saddles, and drew their bows,
the attack seemed inevitable. Our guns were dry, and we knew that they
were good for twenty-four shots and the revolvers in our belts for as
many more.
Satisfied that an open attack would eventuate in death to some of their
number, nearly one-half of the Indians left the ranks and passed from
our sight down the cañon, but soon reappeared, emerging from the thicket
on the opposite side of our camp. We wheeled our four horses into a
hollow square, and, standing in the centre, presented our guns at each
assaulting party. As our horses were the booty they most wished to
obtain, they were now restrained lest they should kill them instead of
us. A few moments of painful suspense—moments into which days of anxiety
were crowded—supervened. A brief consultation followed, and the chief
gave orders for them to withdraw. They all wheeled into rapid line, and
with the military precision of a troop of cavalry dashed down the cañon
and we saw them no more.
Thankful for an escape attributable to the snow which had unfitted their
guns for use, and to the successful raid they had made upon our
neighbors, we saddled our horses and hurried over the mountain range
with all possible speed. While crossing, we found two horses which,
jaded with travel, had been abandoned by the Indians. We took them with
us, and on our arrival at Grasshopper some days after, restored one to
Dr. Glick, its rightful owner.
“I have had seven horses stolen from me by these prowlers,” said he,
“but this is the first one that was ever returned.”
The little gulch at Pike’s Peak was fully occupied when we arrived, and
after remaining a few days, we mounted our horses and made a tedious but
unadventurous journey to Bannack, then, and for nearly a year
afterwards, the most important gold placer east of the Rocky Mountains.
The fame of this locality had reached Salmon River late in the Fall of
1862, and many of the people left the Florence mines for the east side.
Among them came the first irruption of robbers, gamblers, and
horse-thieves, and the settlement was filled with gambling houses and
saloons, where bad men and worse women held constant vigil, and
initiated that reign of infamy which nothing but the strong hand could
extirpate.