THE PLATTE AND THE DESERT
We were now arrived at the close of our solitary journeyings along the
St. Joseph’s trail. On the evening of the 23d of May we encamped near
its junction with the old legitimate trail of the Oregon emigrants. We
had ridden long that afternoon, trying in vain to find wood and water,
until at length we saw the sunset sky reflected from a pool encircled by
bushes and a rock or two. The water lay in the bottom of a hollow, the
smooth prairie gracefully rising in oceanlike swells on every side.
We pitched our tents by it; not however before the keen eye of Henry
Chatillon had discerned some unusual object upon the faintly-defined
outline of the distant swell. But in the moist, hazy atmosphere of the
evening, nothing could be clearly distinguished. As we lay around the
fire after supper, a low and distant sound, strange enough amid the
loneliness of the prairie, reached our ears--peals of laughter, and the
faint voices of men and women. For eight days we had not encountered a
human being, and this singular warning of their vicinity had an effect
extremely wild and impressive.
About dark a sallow-faced fellow descended the hill on horseback, and
splashing through the pool rode up to the tents. He was enveloped in a
huge cloak, and his broad felt hat was weeping about his ears with
the drizzling moisture of the evening. Another followed, a stout,
square-built, intelligent-looking man, who announced himself as leader
of an emigrant party encamped a mile in advance of us. About twenty
wagons, he said, were with him; the rest of his party were on the
other side of the Big Blue, waiting for a woman who was in the pains of
child-birth, and quarreling meanwhile among themselves.
These were the first emigrants that we had overtaken, although we had
found abundant and melancholy traces of their progress throughout the
whole course of the journey. Sometimes we passed the grave of one who
had sickened and died on the way. The earth was usually torn up, and
covered thickly with wolf-tracks. Some had escaped this violation. One
morning a piece of plank, standing upright on the summit of a grassy
hill, attracted our notice, and riding up to it we found the following
words very roughly traced upon it, apparently by a red-hot piece of
iron:
MARY ELLIS
DIED MAY 7TH, 1845.
Aged two months.
Such tokens were of common occurrence, nothing could speak more for the
hardihood, or rather infatuation, of the adventurers, or the sufferings
that await them upon the journey.
We were late in breaking up our camp on the following morning, and
scarcely had we ridden a mile when we saw, far in advance of us, drawn
against the horizon, a line of objects stretching at regular intervals
along the level edge of the prairie. An intervening swell soon hid them
from sight, until, ascending it a quarter of an hour after, we saw close
before us the emigrant caravan, with its heavy white wagons creeping on
in their slow procession, and a large drove of cattle following behind.
Half a dozen yellow-visaged Missourians, mounted on horseback, were
cursing and shouting among them; their lank angular proportions
enveloped in brown homespun, evidently cut and adjusted by the hands
of a domestic female tailor. As we approached, they greeted us with
the polished salutation: “How are ye, boys? Are ye for Oregon or
California?”
As we pushed rapidly past the wagons, children’s faces were thrust
out from the white coverings to look at us; while the care-worn,
thin-featured matron, or the buxom girl, seated in front, suspended
the knitting on which most of them were engaged to stare at us with
wondering curiosity. By the side of each wagon stalked the proprietor,
urging on his patient oxen, who shouldered heavily along, inch by
inch, on their interminable journey. It was easy to see that fear and
dissension prevailed among them; some of the men--but these, with one
exception, were bachelors--looked wistfully upon us as we rode lightly
and swiftly past, and then impatiently at their own lumbering wagons
and heavy-gaited oxen. Others were unwilling to advance at all until
the party they had left behind should have rejoined them. Many were
murmuring against the leader they had chosen, and wished to depose him;
and this discontent was fermented by some ambitious spirits, who had
hopes of succeeding in his place. The women were divided between regrets
for the homes they had left and apprehension of the deserts and the
savages before them.
We soon left them far behind, and fondly hoped that we had taken a final
leave; but unluckily our companions’ wagon stuck so long in a deep muddy
ditch that, before it was extricated, the van of the emigrant caravan
appeared again, descending a ridge close at hand. Wagon after wagon
plunged through the mud; and as it was nearly noon, and the place
promised shade and water, we saw with much gratification that they were
resolved to encamp. Soon the wagons were wheeled into a circle; the
cattle were grazing over the meadow, and the men with sour, sullen
faces, were looking about for wood and water. They seemed to meet with
but indifferent success. As we left the ground, I saw a tall slouching
fellow with the nasal accent of “down east,” contemplating the contents
of his tin cup, which he had just filled with water.
“Look here, you,” he said; “it’s chock full of animals!”
The cup, as he held it out, exhibited in fact an extraordinary variety
and profusion of animal and vegetable life.
Riding up the little hill and looking back on the meadow, we could
easily see that all was not right in the camp of the emigrants. The
men were crowded together, and an angry discussion seemed to be going
forward. R. was missing from his wonted place in the line, and the
captain told us that he had remained behind to get his horse shod by a
blacksmith who was attached to the emigrant party. Something whispered
in our ears that mischief was on foot; we kept on, however, and coming
soon to a stream of tolerable water, we stopped to rest and dine. Still
the absentee lingered behind. At last, at the distance of a mile, he
and his horse suddenly appeared, sharply defined against the sky on the
summit of a hill; and close behind, a huge white object rose slowly into
view.
“What is that blockhead bringing with him now?”
A moment dispelled the mystery. Slowly and solemnly one behind the
other, four long trains of oxen and four emigrant wagons rolled over the
crest of the declivity and gravely descended, while R. rode in state
in the van. It seems that, during the process of shoeing the horse,
the smothered dissensions among the emigrants suddenly broke into open
rupture. Some insisted on pushing forward, some on remaining where they
were, and some on going back. Kearsley, their captain, threw up his
command in disgust. “And now, boys,” said he, “if any of you are for
going ahead, just you come along with me.”
Four wagons, with ten men, one woman, and one small child, made up
the force of the “go-ahead” faction, and R., with his usual proclivity
toward mischief, invited them to join our party. Fear of the
Indians--for I can conceive of no other motive--must have induced him
to court so burdensome an alliance. As may well be conceived, these
repeated instances of high-handed dealing sufficiently exasperated
us. In this case, indeed, the men who joined us were all that could be
desired; rude indeed in manner, but frank, manly, and intelligent.
To tell them we could not travel with them was of course out of the
question. I merely reminded Kearsley that if his oxen could not keep up
with our mules he must expect to be left behind, as we could not consent
to be further delayed on the journey; but he immediately replied, that
his oxen “SHOULD keep up; and if they couldn’t, why he allowed that he’d
find out how to make ‘em!” Having availed myself of what satisfaction
could be derived from giving R. to understand my opinion of his conduct,
I returned to our side of the camp.
On the next day, as it chanced, our English companions broke the
axle-tree of their wagon, and down came the whole cumbrous machine
lumbering into the bed of a brook! Here was a day’s work cut out for us.
Meanwhile, our emigrant associates kept on their way, and so vigorously
did they urge forward their powerful oxen that, with the broken
axle-tree and other calamities, it was full a week before we overtook
them; when at length we discovered them, one afternoon, crawling quietly
along the sandy brink of the Platte. But meanwhile various incidents
occurred to ourselves.
It was probable that at this stage of our journey the Pawnees would
attempt to rob us. We began therefore to stand guard in turn, dividing
the night into three watches, and appointing two men for each. Delorier
and I held guard together. We did not march with military precision to
and fro before the tents; our discipline was by no means so stringent
and rigid. We wrapped ourselves in our blankets, and sat down by the
fire; and Delorier, combining his culinary functions with his duties as
sentinel, employed himself in boiling the head of an antelope for our
morning’s repast. Yet we were models of vigilance in comparison with
some of the party; for the ordinary practice of the guard was to
establish himself in the most comfortable posture he could; lay his
rifle on the ground, and enveloping his nose in the blanket, meditate
on his mistress, or whatever subject best pleased him. This is all well
enough when among Indians who do not habitually proceed further in their
hostility than robbing travelers of their horses and mules, though,
indeed, a Pawnee’s forebearance is not always to be trusted; but in
certain regions farther to the west, the guard must beware how he
exposes his person to the light of the fire, lest perchance some
keen-eyed skulking marksman should let fly a bullet or an arrow from
amid the darkness.
Among various tales that circulated around our camp fire was a rather
curious one, told by Boisverd, and not inappropriate here. Boisverd was
trapping with several companions on the skirts of the Blackfoot country.
The man on guard, well knowing that it behooved him to put forth his
utmost precaution, kept aloof from the firelight, and sat watching
intently on all sides. At length he was aware of a dark, crouching
figure, stealing noiselessly into the circle of the light. He hastily
cocked his rifle, but the sharp click of the lock caught the ear of
Blackfoot, whose senses were all on the alert. Raising his arrow,
already fitted to the string, he shot in the direction of the sound. So
sure was his aim that he drove it through the throat of the unfortunate
guard, and then, with a loud yell, bounded from the camp.
As I looked at the partner of my watch, puffing and blowing over his
fire, it occurred to me that he might not prove the most efficient
auxiliary in time of trouble.
“Delorier,” said I, “would you run away if the Pawnees should fire at
us?”
“Ah! oui, oui, monsieur!” he replied very decisively.
I did not doubt the fact, but was a little surprised at the frankness of
the confession.
At this instant a most whimsical variety of voices--barks, howls, yelps,
and whines--all mingled as it were together, sounded from the prairie,
not far off, as if a whole conclave of wolves of every age and sex were
assembled there. Delorier looked up from his work with a laugh, and
began to imitate this curious medley of sounds with a most ludicrous
accuracy. At this they were repeated with redoubled emphasis, the
musician being apparently indignant at the successful efforts of a
rival. They all proceeded from the throat of one little wolf, not
larger than a spaniel, seated by himself at some distance. He was of
the species called the prairie wolf; a grim-visaged, but harmless little
brute, whose worst propensity is creeping among horses and gnawing the
ropes of raw hide by which they are picketed around the camp. But
other beasts roam the prairies, far more formidable in aspect and in
character. These are the large white and gray wolves, whose deep howl we
heard at intervals from far and near.
At last I fell into a doze, and, awakening from it, found Delorier
fast asleep. Scandalized by this breach of discipline, I was about to
stimulate his vigilance by stirring him with the stock of my rifle; but
compassion prevailing, I determined to let him sleep awhile, and then to
arouse him, and administer a suitable reproof for such a forgetfulness
of duty. Now and then I walked the rounds among the silent horses, to
see that all was right. The night was chill, damp, and dark, the dank
grass bending under the icy dewdrops. At the distance of a rod or two
the tents were invisible, and nothing could be seen but the obscure
figures of the horses, deeply breathing, and restlessly starting as they
slept, or still slowly champing the grass. Far off, beyond the black
outline of the prairie, there was a ruddy light, gradually increasing,
like the glow of a conflagration; until at length the broad disk of the
moon, blood-red, and vastly magnified by the vapors, rose slowly upon
the darkness, flecked by one or two little clouds, and as the light
poured over the gloomy plain, a fierce and stern howl, close at hand,
seemed to greet it as an unwelcome intruder. There was something
impressive and awful in the place and the hour; for I and the beasts
were all that had consciousness for many a league around.
Some days elapsed, and brought us near the Platte. Two men on horseback
approached us one morning, and we watched them with the curiosity and
interest that, upon the solitude of the plains, such an encounter always
excites. They were evidently whites, from their mode of riding, though,
contrary to the usage of that region, neither of them carried a rifle.
“Fools!” remarked Henry Chatillon, “to ride that way on the prairie;
Pawnee find them--then they catch it!”
Pawnee HAD found them, and they had come very near “catching it”;
indeed, nothing saved them from trouble but the approach of our party.
Shaw and I knew one of them; a man named Turner, whom we had seen at
Westport. He and his companion belonged to an emigrant party encamped
a few miles in advance, and had returned to look for some stray oxen,
leaving their rifles, with characteristic rashness or ignorance behind
them. Their neglect had nearly cost them dear; for just before we
came up, half a dozen Indians approached, and seeing them apparently
defenseless, one of the rascals seized the bridle of Turner’s fine
horse, and ordered him to dismount. Turner was wholly unarmed; but the
other jerked a little revolving pistol out of his pocket, at which
the Pawnee recoiled; and just then some of our men appearing in the
distance, the whole party whipped their rugged little horses, and made
off. In no way daunted, Turner foolishly persisted in going forward.
Long after leaving him, and late this afternoon, in the midst of a
gloomy and barren prairie, we came suddenly upon the great Pawnee trail,
leading from their villages on the Platte to their war and hunting
grounds to the southward. Here every summer pass the motley concourse;
thousands of savages, men, women, and children, horses and mules, laden
with their weapons and implements, and an innumerable multitude of
unruly wolfish dogs, who have not acquired the civilized accomplishment
of barking, but howl like their wild cousins of the prairie.
The permanent winter villages of the Pawnees stand on the lower Platte,
but throughout the summer the greater part of the inhabitants are
wandering over the plains, a treacherous cowardly banditti, who by a
thousand acts of pillage and murder have deserved summary chastisement
at the hands of government. Last year a Dakota warrior performed a
signal exploit at one of these villages. He approached it alone in the
middle of a dark night, and clambering up the outside of one of the
lodges which are in the form of a half-sphere, he looked in at the round
hole made at the top for the escape of smoke. The dusky light from the
smoldering embers showed him the forms of the sleeping inmates; and
dropping lightly through the opening, he unsheathed his knife, and
stirring the fire coolly selected his victims. One by one he stabbed and
scalped them, when a child suddenly awoke and screamed. He rushed from
the lodge, yelled a Sioux war-cry, shouted his name in triumph and
defiance, and in a moment had darted out upon the dark prairie, leaving
the whole village behind him in a tumult, with the howling and baying of
dogs, the screams of women and the yells of the enraged warriors.
Our friend Kearsley, as we learned on rejoining him, signalized himself
by a less bloody achievement. He and his men were good woodsmen, and
well skilled in the use of the rifle, but found themselves wholly out of
their element on the prairie. None of them had ever seen a buffalo and
they had very vague conceptions of his nature and appearance. On the
day after they reached the Platte, looking toward a distant swell, they
beheld a multitude of little black specks in motion upon its surface.
“Take your rifles, boys,” said Kearslcy, “and we’ll have fresh meat for
supper.” This inducement was quite sufficient. The ten men left their
wagons and set out in hot haste, some on horseback and some on foot, in
pursuit of the supposed buffalo. Meanwhile a high grassy ridge shut the
game from view; but mounting it after half an hour’s running and riding,
they found themselves suddenly confronted by about thirty mounted
Pawnees! The amazement and consternation were mutual. Having nothing but
their bows and arrows, the Indians thought their hour was come, and
the fate that they were no doubt conscious of richly deserving about
to overtake them. So they began, one and all, to shout forth the most
cordial salutations of friendship, running up with extreme earnestness
to shake hands with the Missourians, who were as much rejoiced as they
were to escape the expected conflict.
A low undulating line of sand-hills bounded the horizon before us. That
day we rode ten consecutive hours, and it was dusk before we entered the
hollows and gorges of these gloomy little hills. At length we gained the
summit, and the long expected valley of the Platte lay before us. We
all drew rein, and, gathering in a knot on the crest of the hill, sat
joyfully looking down upon the prospect. It was right welcome; strange
too, and striking to the imagination, and yet it had not one picturesque
or beautiful feature; nor had it any of the features of grandeur, other
than its vast extent, its solitude, and its wilderness. For league after
league a plain as level as a frozen lake was outspread beneath us;
here and there the Platte, divided into a dozen threadlike sluices, was
traversing it, and an occasional clump of wood, rising in the midst like
a shadowy island, relieved the monotony of the waste. No living thing
was moving throughout the vast landscape, except the lizards that darted
over the sand and through the rank grass and prickly-pear just at our
feet. And yet stern and wild associations gave a singular interest to
the view; for here each man lives by the strength of his arm and the
valor of his heart. Here society is reduced to its original elements,
the whole fabric of art and conventionality is struck rudely to pieces,
and men find themselves suddenly brought back to the wants and resources
of their original natures.
We had passed the more toilsome and monotonous part of the journey; but
four hundred miles still intervened between us and Fort Laramie; and to
reach that point cost us the travel of three additional weeks. During
the whole of this time we were passing up the center of a long narrow
sandy plain, reaching like an outstretched belt nearly to the Rocky
Mountains. Two lines of sand-hills, broken often into the wildest and
most fantastic forms, flanked the valley at the distance of a mile or
two on the right and left; while beyond them lay a barren, trackless
waste--The Great American Desert--extending for hundreds of miles to the
Arkansas on the one side, and the Missouri on the other. Before us and
behind us, the level monotony of the plain was unbroken as far as the
eye could reach. Sometimes it glared in the sun, an expanse of hot,
bare sand; sometimes it was veiled by long coarse grass. Huge skulls
and whitening bones of buffalo were scattered everywhere; the ground
was tracked by myriads of them, and often covered with the circular
indentations where the bulls had wallowed in the hot weather. From every
gorge and ravine, opening from the hills, descended deep, well-worn
paths, where the buffalo issue twice a day in regular procession down
to drink in the Platte. The river itself runs through the midst, a thin
sheet of rapid, turbid water, half a mile wide, and scarce two feet
deep. Its low banks for the most part without a bush or a tree, are of
loose sand, with which the stream is so charged that it grates on
the teeth in drinking. The naked landscape is, of itself, dreary and
monotonous enough, and yet the wild beasts and wild men that frequent
the valley of the Platte make it a scene of interest and excitement to
the traveler. Of those who have journeyed there, scarce one, perhaps,
fails to look back with fond regret to his horse and his rifle.
Early in the morning after we reached the Platte, a long procession of
squalid savages approached our camp. Each was on foot, leading his horse
by a rope of bull-hide. His attire consisted merely of a scanty cincture
and an old buffalo robe, tattered and begrimed by use, which hung
over his shoulders. His head was close shaven, except a ridge of hair
reaching over the crown from the center of the forehead, very much like
the long bristles on the back of a hyena, and he carried his bow and
arrows in his hand, while his meager little horse was laden with dried
buffalo meat, the produce of his hunting. Such were the first specimens
that we met--and very indifferent ones they were--of the genuine savages
of the prairie.
They were the Pawnees whom Kearsley had encountered the day before, and
belonged to a large hunting party known to be ranging the prairie in the
vicinity. They strode rapidly past, within a furlong of our tents,
not pausing or looking toward us, after the manner of Indians when
meditating mischief or conscious of ill-desert. I went out and met them;
and had an amicable conference with the chief, presenting him with
half a pound of tobacco, at which unmerited bounty he expressed much
gratification. These fellows, or some of their companions had committed
a dastardly outrage upon an emigrant party in advance of us. Two men,
out on horseback at a distance, were seized by them, but lashing their
horses, they broke loose and fled. At this the Pawnees raised the yell
and shot at them, transfixing the hindermost through the back with
several arrows, while his companion galloped away and brought in the
news to his party. The panic-stricken emigrants remained for several
days in camp, not daring even to send out in quest of the dead body.
The reader will recollect Turner, the man whose narrow escape was
mentioned not long since. We heard that the men, whom the entreaties
of his wife induced to go in search of him, found him leisurely driving
along his recovered oxen, and whistling in utter contempt of the Pawnee
nation. His party was encamped within two miles of us; but we passed
them that morning, while the men were driving in the oxen, and the women
packing their domestic utensils and their numerous offspring in the
spacious patriarchal wagons. As we looked back we saw their caravan
dragging its slow length along the plain; wearily toiling on its way, to
found new empires in the West.
Our New England climate is mild and equable compared with that of the
Platte. This very morning, for instance, was close and sultry, the sun
rising with a faint oppressive heat; when suddenly darkness gathered in
the west, and a furious blast of sleet and hail drove full in our faces,
icy cold, and urged with such demoniac vehemence that it felt like a
storm of needles. It was curious to see the horses; they faced about
in extreme displeasure, holding their tails like whipped dogs, and
shivering as the angry gusts, howling louder than a concert of wolves,
swept over us. Wright’s long train of mules came sweeping round before
the storm like a flight of brown snowbirds driven by a winter tempest.
Thus we all remained stationary for some minutes, crouching close to our
horses’ necks, much too surly to speak, though once the captain looked
up from between the collars of his coat, his face blood-red, and the
muscles of his mouth contracted by the cold into a most ludicrous grin
of agony. He grumbled something that sounded like a curse, directed
as we believed, against the unhappy hour when he had first thought of
leaving home. The thing was too good to last long; and the instant the
puffs of wind subsided we erected our tents, and remained in camp for
the rest of a gloomy and lowering day. The emigrants also encamped near
at hand. We, being first on the ground, had appropriated all the wood
within reach; so that our fire alone blazed cheerfully. Around it soon
gathered a group of uncouth figures, shivering in the drizzling rain.
Conspicuous among them were two or three of the half-savage men who
spend their reckless lives in trapping among the Rocky Mountains, or
in trading for the Fur Company in the Indian villages. They were all
of Canadian extraction; their hard, weather-beaten faces and bushy
mustaches looked out from beneath the hoods of their white capotes with
a bad and brutish expression, as if their owner might be the willing
agent of any villainy. And such in fact is the character of many of
these men.
On the day following we overtook Kearsley’s wagons, and thenceforward,
for a week or two, we were fellow-travelers. One good effect, at least,
resulted from the alliance; it materially diminished the serious fatigue
of standing guard; for the party being now more numerous, there were
longer intervals between each man’s turns of duty.