THE MOUNTAIN THAT WAS GOD
So far on our journey the obstacles thrown in our path by hostile men
had outweighed those opposed by nature. From now on the reverse was
true. The men we met were feeble savages, ignorant, superstitious,
easily put to flight. But nature loomed as a foe of overawing
strength. Each day brought its tests of endurance, daring, brawn or
skill. Time meant nothing in face of the difficulties we must
conquer. A month passed after our escape from the wolf pack before
we even sighted the gigantic barrier of the Sky Mountains, and the
passage of their snowy summits required additional months of effort.
But this is to gallop in advance of my story. Yet I scarce know how
to set down in sober language the magnitude of the forces we
encountered, the supreme majesty of that unknown country, the Godlike
splendor of the Winter scenery, the awful, silent loneliness. And of
all the wonders that lent emphasis to our own puny might I think the
one that affected us most was the absence of man from the plains and
forests that intervened betwixt the Teton villages and the mountains.
For months we were companied only by the myriads of beasts that had
fled the intense cold of the heights for the milder temperature below
the timber-line.
The great deer which Tawannears called Wapiti, red deer, antelope,
buffalo, wild goats and wild sheep we saw in millions. We killed
fresh meat with our hatchets, and had it always at need. They moved
about the low-lands--which, of themselves, were sufficiently high,
inasmuch as the country shelved upward, mile after mile--in search of
such food as could be afforded by tree-bark and the herbage left
beneath the snow; and in their sore want and innocence of man they
did no more than step aside from our path and stare after us. Of
wolves we saw many and heard some, but they never again came near
us--explain it as you choose. For myself, I have no more to say,
being convinced by marvels I was yet to behold that Corlaer was right
past disputation when he said, "der white man does not know
eferything."
That was a Winter of unprecedented cold. Late in coming, it
developed protracted periods of severe frost, linked by tumultuous
storms, after which the forest would be scattered with wild things
frozen in their tracks. Taught by experience, we became apt at
seeking shelter with the first hint that the Wind Spirits were
plucking the wild geese in the North, careful not to move across open
country unless the weather signs were favorable; and whilst this
delayed us, 'tis beyond question it preserved our lives. With a
roof, four walls and fire, men may defy nature's worst attacks, no
matter how make-shift the covering.
I said it was a month before we sighted the Sky Mountains--but they
were still many miles away. We had followed a fork of the river
which flowed through the Teton country. It carried us northwest, and
after several weeks brought us within view of a range of ragged
peaks, which, at first, we took to be our immediate goal. But the
river banded the broken country at their base, and we came presently
into a wide upland somewhat like the savannahs that lined the
Missouri.* The ragged peaks dwindled behind us; the horizon was
empty ahead--until a day of unusually brilliant sunshine with a
cloudless sky revealed a serrated glory in the west, cones and
saddlebacks and hulking ridges, square and round and oblong and
eccentrically-shaped rock-masses, all draped in snow.
* It seems probable that Ormerod refers here to the Medicine Bow
range and the Laramie Plains.--A.D.H.S.
A storm delayed us another week, but we picked up the trail with
light hearts, and each sunset was an inspiration to faster progress.
It was as if a giant's paint-pots had been upset and splashed
harmoniously over the mountain-wall--soft reds, purples, yellow, and
the half-tones that run between. Or the Painter's mood would be
different, and they would be slung on in harsh, contrasting belts of
color that jarred your eyes. Amazing! And it continued after we
were at the very foot of the towering wall, poking this way and that
to find a gateway to the mystery land beyond. The heights close by
might lose their potent spells, but in the hazy distance, North or
South, the Painter worked his will at random.
In my youth I marched with the Duke of Berwick into the Pyrenees.
That was child's play compared to the undertaking we confronted. For
we had no knowledge whatsoever of the secret of this jumbled
prospect. Forests cloaked the mountains' lower flanks, and under the
trees the snow was heaped so deep we must have been swallowed to
suffocation but for our snowshoes. Above the timberline began the
dominion of the rocks, and here all was snow and ice, either smoothly
slippery or treacherously loose. Upon our first attempt to gain a
height we precipitated a slide which carried us into the tree-tops of
a forest. We were cripples for days.
Again and again we probed ravines and valleys in hopes they would
lead up to a practicable pass, but we passed no more than time. We
wasted weeks on protracted journeys which led to the brinks of
precipices or dead-walls--dangerous work as well as tiresome, for the
snow-slides were frequent and impossible to forecast. Enough sun on
a certain spot to start a thaw, and a whole hillside might go.
In the beginning we worked north along the base of the range, in
accordance with a theory advanced by Tawannears that possibly the
fork of the river we had followed might break through the Sky
Mountains, and when we demonstrated this was not so he suggested that
the other, or southern fork, might do so. Neither Corlaer nor I had
a better plan to offer, and we retraced our steps to the south, and
presently struck into a likely valley that ended in a ramp of
precipices. So we tried again, and a third time, always without
success.
It was after this third try that we were snowed up in a hut we threw
together in a rock-hollow. There was nothing to do, except eat,
sleep and keep the fire going. None of us was talkative. We were
too disappointed, too tired. But some time in the afternoon of the
second day Corlaer woke up Tawannears and me.
"I hafe foundt der way," he announced.
"What way?" I yawned.
"Ofer der mountains."
Tawannears looked interested, but I was resentful at being disturbed.
"Oh, it starts here in the hut?" I jeered.
"Perhaps," he answered, unmoved.
"What is in Corlaer's mind?" asked the Seneca eagerly.
Peter made up the fire before replying. Talking was an effort for
him, and he usually required time to sort out his words.
"We follow der animals," he said at length.
"What?" I exclaimed.
But Tawannears nodded.
"True. Corlaer is right, Otetiani. If there is a pass, the wild
things must know of it. We have only to watch them."
"But it is quite probable that in this weather no pass will be
practicable, especially for animals," I objected.
"Spbring is coming soon," replied the Dutchman.
"We have only to wait and watch," added Tawannears.
I had to admit that they were right. And when the storm blew itself
out two days later, having doubled the mountains' snow blanket, we
abandoned our frontal attack upon the barrier in favor of a
reconnaissance of its approaches. For a week we pushed on south
through the foothills, and were finally forced to a halt by a
spur-range, which ran eastward. Manifestly, 'twas a waste of time to
envelop this, and we retraced our steps again, by no means so
confident that Corlaer's suggestion had been as canny as we first
supposed, for we had seen not a single indication that the animals
were entering or leaving the higher altitudes.
But at the end of this week a thaw set in which continued from day to
day. The hillsides were soon running with tiny rivulets. The snow
underfoot was soggy, and packed hard. The avalanches were worse than
ever. Every hour or two there would be a rip and a roar and a swish
of breaking trees, and bowlders and pebbles would rain down upon us.
It was one of these slides which was instrumental in showing us a way
across the barrier. We had abandoned our set path, and hugged the
protecting face of a high cliff, knowing any slide that topped it
would over-shoot us, when a mountain sheep came bounding out of a
little gulley we had passed without paying it any special notice.
Corlaer raised his arm, and pointed.
"'Tis the first animal we've seen as high as this," I admitted.
"If we go in there we shall need more meat," said Tawannears.
And he quickly strung his bow, notched an arrow and loosed. The
animal dropped a scant fifty yards away, and I ran to pick it up.
But Corlaer was close on my heels, and he hoisted the carcass on his
broad shoulders.
"_Oof_," he squeaked. "Der is still light. We don't wait to cut up
der sheep. We go on, eh? _Ja_, we go on."
I nodded, and Tawannears was equally willing. We made no attempt to
persuade the Dutchman to let us carry the dead sheep, for neither of
us could have handled it and our equipment at the same time,
especially on the tricky footing of the snow-covered rocks, with
snowshoes to manage. But it was no effort at all to Peter. He
strode along after us as easily as though he had been carrying a
rabbit.
The entrance of the gulley was perhaps twenty feet wide. It threaded
back into the hills, widening gradually, until it turned an elbow of
rock and became a respectable defile. The bed was strewn with
bowlders of all sizes, and with the melting snow and a trickle of
water that in time would become a fair-sized stream it was anything
but a pleasant place for walking. The one satisfaction we had was
that the side-walls were so steep as to assure us some protection
from the eternal avalanches, our most dangerous foes.
The ascent was easy, and toward evening we rounded another elbow and
found ourselves in the throat of a lovely rock-bound valley, locked
away in the heart of the hills. Above it lifted peaks that pierced
the clouds, their lower flanks garbed in jade-green pine forests.
Its floor was similarly tree-covered, but at intervals the forest
yielded to open parks, where herds of mountain goat and sheep and
antelope rooted for food beneath the snow. In the center was a
little lake, its frozen surface glinting like a scarlet eye under the
sunset glow.
Not a sound marred the magic stillness. It was like a picture
painted on a screen, a highland solitude, which, so far as we could
determine, had never before been visited by men. Certes, the wild
creatures were tamer than the stags and hinds I remember to have
chased as a new-breeched younker in the deer-park of Foxcroft in
Dorset, where first I saw the light. The blows of our axes felling
trees for a hut and the crackling of the campfire were bait to lure
them closer.
The valley was miles in length, and we reached the opposite exit too
late to pass through the next day; but the second morning we dived
into a replica of the defile by which we had passed the eastern
barrier range. And that night we shivered around a scanty fire in a
small area we cleared of snow amongst the rocks, fearful lest the
constricted crevice become an impasse like those that had baffled us
for months. But fortune stood our friend, and we emerged at high
noon of the fourth day of our wanderings upon a land of rambling
foothills. Behind us reared the snowy peaks of the Sky Mountains,
seemingly more impassable than ever.
We had done what no man I have ever met could fairly claim to have
done. I know there are those who pretend to have traversed the
Western Wilderness, and would prate of marvels done and seen; but
show me the man who can make good his boast. There are Jesuit
missioners and _couriers du bois_ who have beheld the Sky Mountains
afar, but I have the word of Charles Le Moyne, himself, that none
hath come to him or his people with such a tale as we can tell.
But again I wander from my story. Patience, prithee!
The inanimate ferocity of nature lacks the dramatic quality of men's
individual hates and struggles, but no achievement of my comrades and
I can compare with the battles we fought against mountain, forest and
stream. Mark you, a living opponent, man or animal, you can touch,
hurt, visibly overcome. But what satisfaction can you wring from
nature after beating her? None, I say, unless it be the right to
live. You do not even know for sure that the victory is yours until
the zest of combat is long forgotten.
A day's journey from the Western base of the Sky Mountains we saw men
again for the first time in near five months. They were a stunted,
long-haired people, dressed in stinking skins, who beset us with
arrows as we lay in a valley, but fled in panic at the first
discharge of our muskets, leaving one of their number with a wounded
leg. Him we caught, but no sign of intelligence showed on his brutal
face as Tawannears put question after question in the Dakota tongue,
except when he was asked where lay the seat of Wakanda, the Great
Spirit. Whether he caught the meaning of the word or was cunning
enough to perceive that we were seeking a certain place, I cannot
say, but he lifted his arm and pointed to the Northwest, with a
chatter of gibberish that meant nothing to us. So we left him with
his wound bound up and enough meat for a day, and departed in the
direction he had indicated.
I should pursue no useful purpose if I recounted in detail our
ensuing wanderings. This country beyond the Sky Mountains was more
savage and desolate than the Great Plains which stretched westward
from the Mississippi, and more varied in character. We found many
minor mountain ranges, some of them not lightly to be surmounted. We
near died of thirst on deserts of parched grass. We hungered amongst
a weird world of jumbled sun-baked rocks. But always we advanced in
a direction north of west.
Usually game was easy to find. The Indians were more scattered than
on the plains, and for the most part they were a debased race,
leading a hand-to-mouth existence, Occasionally we were attacked, but
they always ran at the reports of our guns, and those we captured
refused even to show intelligence at the word Wakanda, so that after
a while we became discouraged, and decided that our first prisoner
had pretended recognition of it simply as a device to be rid of us.
But we had no better course to follow, and continued toward the
northwest until we came to a considerable river that flowed due
north, with a line of hills showing dimly in the blue distance a long
way to the west.* We decided to make use of the river to save time
and ease our weary bodies, and repeated our expedient for crossing
the Mississippi, constructing a raft of tree-trunks bound together
with withes; but this came to pieces in the first rough water it
traversed--rough enough in all conscience--and we went on afoot as
far as a village of fishing Indians, who possessed canoes hollowed
with fire and stone hatchets out of logs. At my suggestion, we
traded an extra knife with these people for a small craft barely
large enough to hold us all, evaded by bare luck an attempt they made
to trap us in our sleep, and again took to the river.
* Probably the Snake River, the border line between Idaho and
Oregon.--A.D.H.S.
As we expected, this stream, after flowing north for several hundred
miles, turned the flank of the distant mountains we had seen and
headed west. A week later it joined a larger stream flowing from the
north, which, holding south for a day's paddling, likewise was
diverted to the westward.* But what interested us most was the sight
of another snowy barrier, incomparably higher than the Sky Mountains,
which gleamed in early morning or late afternoon across the western
horizon north of the river.
* Undoubtedly, the Columbia.--A.D.H.S.
Another two days' paddling down-stream, and we came abreast of an
Indian village which drew an exclamation of excitement from
Tawannears. The houses were long, oblong structures of wood, with
the smokes of many fires rising above their roofs, buildings almost
identical with those long houses which furnished the Iroquois their
distinctive name; and a fleet of canoes put off from shore to
intercept us. With the odds so heavy against us it seemed foolish to
fight unless we were compelled, and we put by our paddles and waited
with muskets ready to abide the issue. But our fears were
immediately set at rest. These Indians were the handsomest, most
straightforward race we had seen since leaving the Dakota. They were
eager in their signs of peaceful intent, and as eagerly beckoned us
ashore.
"Shall we go?" I asked doubtfully.
"Why not?" returned Tawannears, shrugging his shoulders. "We have
come far with little success. If these people are kind perhaps they
will set our feet on the true path."
"If they are kind," I repeated.
Peter, in the stern, swept his paddle in a curve that steered us
toward the bank.
"_Ja_," he grunted. "Andt berhaps we get something different to eat."
We had no cause to regret the decision. These people, who called
themselves Tsutpeli,* were both kind and considerate, and much
impressed by the white skins that Corlaer and I still possessed,
despite thick coats of grease and sunburn. They were likewise very
intelligent. After we had been escorted to the house of a chief, in
which dwelt the families of all his sons, and had eaten of several
different foods, in particular a large fish which I suspect to have
been a kind of salmon, besides berries and a stew of roots, leaves
and twigs--much to Peter's enjoyment--our hosts began a humorous
attempt to strike a common ground of intercourse with us.
*Nez Percés--although it is difficult to understand how they got so
far West.--A.D.H.S.
They would point to various objects, and give their names for them,
then question us for ours; and we, or rather, Tawannears, who was
spokesman for us, would reply with the Seneca terms. In this way, in
the course of the weeks we spent in this village, we came to acquire
a working vocabulary, and were able, with the help of signs and
guess-work, to engage in simple conversations.
They told us that they had not always held the river to the point
they now occupied, but had recently conquered it from a tribe they
called the Chinook, who were notably fine sailors and who still
controlled the lower reaches where were the best fisheries. With
some difficulty, Tawannears made them understand the general purpose
of his quest, but all the principal men disowned any knowledge of a
Land of Lost Souls. Very different, however, was their reception of
the legend Nadoweiswe had recounted of the abiding-place of the Great
Spirit. Their faces lighted at once, and Apaiopa, the leading chief,
signed to us to follow him from the lodge.
It was sunset, and the mountain wall we had discerned to the north of
the river appeared as a string of isolated peaks, three or four of
them towering in lordly majesty above the indefinite blue outline of
the lesser ridges. The farthest one we could see was the mightiest.
It bulked across the horizon with the effect of a monstrous
personality, dazzling white, its crest ripping the clouds apart. At
that distance it had the look of sitting in the heavens, detached,
not earthbound.
"Tamanoas,"* said Apaiopa, pointing. "The Great Spirit! The Chinook
told us about Him when we came here. Sometimes He is angry--Bang!
Like this." He touched my musket. "Sometimes He goes away into the
sky. He is the Great Spirit!"
* Obviously, Mt. Rainier.--A.D.H.S.
Tawannears expelled his breath with a sigh of contentment, and I
rushed into hurried speech to restrain the certain disappointment I
felt he was laying up for himself.
"Nonsense, 'tis only a mountain, bigger than others," I said.
"Think, brother! You will--"
"It may be a mountain," returned Tawannears quietly. "But is that a
reason why it may not be the Great Spirit Himself?"
"_Ja_," affirmed Corlaer, "if der Greadt Spbirit come to earth, I
guess he come as a mountain, eh? _Ja_, dot's it."
I remembered the wolf brothers, and desisted in an attempt which I
knew could not succeed. And for the remainder of the evening
Tawannears was occupied in securing information on the route to the
base of Tamanoas. In the morning, our hosts loaded us with food and
saw us on our way. They made no endeavor to restrain us. Indeed,
they seemed to think we could accomplish anything. A Great Spirit,
which was white, they reasoned, ought to be glad to see two white
men. Tawannears, they considered, would be accepted on our
guarantee. We bade them farewell with sorrow. They were the noblest
Indians we found beyond the Sky Mountains.