GETTING NORTH
"But we haven't found George Shannon yet," again insisted Jesse, at
their breakfast.
"And you haven't run your set line yet, Mr. Jess," reminded Rob; which
was enough to cause Jesse to run down to the bank with his mouth full of
bacon. He had forgotten all about his fishing at the time. At once they
heard him shout in excitement, and joined him on the bank.
"Geewhillikens!" called Jesse. "I got a whale on here now!"
He was playing a fish on his hand line, taking in and giving line as he
could, for the fish was strong. It was some time before they could get
to see it, and when Jesse at last landed it on the bank he called for
his .22 rifle and shot it through the head.
"There!" he said. "I knew I'd find some big game to shoot. Isn't he a
whale? I'll bet he'll go twelve pounds. He's a whiter cat, and a racier,
than the big yellows, down below. He looks gamier and better to eat."
"He goes in the gunny sack for supper," said Rob. "Do you suppose he'll
keep for three days, a hundred and fifty miles? I shouldn't wonder if
Shannon would enjoy a bite, for he'll be hungry by that time."
"It's a long, long way, up to the Mandans!" John began to sing again.
"Six hundred miles. And we'll have to have gas pretty soon."
They finished their breakfast, and, with the skill they had gained in
many camps together, soon were packed and on their way above the old
council camp of the Sioux.
"Buffalo and elk, every way you can look!" exclaimed John. "Elk swimming
across the river. Herds of game feeding on the bluff sides! Grouse,
foxes, prairie dogs, jack rabbits, pelicans, squirrels, deer,
wolves--the boats full of meat all the time, and two or three beaver
every night! Now there's cottonwoods. By and by the river'll begin to
take a straighter shoot north. It's a long, long way up to the Mandans!"
"And right through the country of those roaming, murdering Sioux!" added
Rob.
"Right you are, Rob," said Uncle Dick. "The Sioux used to hunt and rob
as far as Fort Laramie, six hundred miles up the Platte, and on the head
of the Jim River in Dakota, and all between. Their homes were where
their hats were--and they hadn't any hats."
For some days now they threaded their way among the countless islands
and sand bars of the great river, until at last they made camp early on
the evening of June 9th, near the point which, as closely as they could
figure it, was about where the Lewis and Clark bateau lay at the time
George Shannon was found wandering on the Plains, alone and ready to
despair. This was about thirty miles below the mouth of the White River.
"Well, we've got him," said Jesse, solemnly, "and told him never to
leave camp without matches and ammunition and an ax. And that's that!"
"Time for another catfish, Jesse," said their leader. "John, you take
the .22 and wander along the edge of the bluff. You might see a young
jack rabbit. I don't believe I'd bother the ducks, for that's against
the law and we don't break laws even when we are not watched. Rob, you
and I will make camp--we'll not need anything but the mosquito bars."
Inside the hour a shout from Jesse informed them that he had another
catfish on his throw line, and soon he had it flopping on the sand. He
killed it stone dead by thrusting a stiff straw back into the brain
through the "little hole in its face," as he called the sinus which
leads into the head cavity.
"I throw out my line," said he, "with a piece of meat or minnow on the
hook. Then I stick a stick down in the bank, two or three feet long, and
take a half hitch around the top. It acts as a sort of rod and gives
when the fish bites. He pulls down and swallows the bait, and the spring
of the stick holds him safer than a straight pull would. To skin him, I
cut around back of his front side fins and take hold of the skin with my
pliers--just slit the hide a little down the sides, and it comes off.
These channel cats aren't bad to eat."
John joined them before dark, with two half-grown jack rabbits which he
had found on the bluffs below. He spoke of the fine view and of the
splendid sunset he had seen. Rob was examining the rabbits, each of
which had been shot squarely through the eye. "Dead-shot John, the old
trapper!" said he. "That's the way!"
"You didn't think I'd shoot 'em anywhere but through the head, did you?"
John inquired. "No sir, not yet!"
So, with meat in camp, they sat down, still in "verry good sperits," as
John quoted from the _Journal_.
Now day after day, hurrying hard as they could, they still drove on
northward, along the great bends of what began to seem an interminable
waterway. One bend, they fancied, they surely identified with the one
mentioned in the _Journal_, which then was thirty miles around and not
much over a half a mile across the neck. They reflected that in more
than a hundred years the great river in all likelihood had cut through
what Clark called the "Narost part," the necks of dozens of such bends.
On the map they identified the Rosebud Indian Reservation to the west.
The great Plains country into which they now were advancing seemed wild,
lonely, and at times forbidding, and the settlements farther and farther
apart. They were in cattle country rather than farming country much of
the time.
The _Journal_ brought up the second great Sioux council of Lewis and
Clark, on the "Teton river"--near Pierre, South Dakota--on the date of
September 25th; but so faithful had the motive power of the good ship
_Adventurer_ proved, that our party pulled into the most suitable
camping spot they could find not too near by, around noon of June 13th.
"Can't complain," said Rob, taking off his grease-spattered overalls and
wiping his hands on a bit of waste. "We've slipped a day on our
schedule, but from what we now know of this little old river, we are
mighty lucky to be here and not down by Council Bluffs, or maybe Kansas
City! It's only a little over three hundred miles now to the Mandans.
That's as far ahead as I can think."
"And as to rowing and paddling and poling and tracking her this
far," added John, "say, twelve hundred miles from the mouth of the
Missouri--whew! It makes my back ache. Seems to me we've skipped
along."
"Well, why shouldn't we?" demanded Jesse. "Those fellows had the finest
kind of hunting in the world; over a thousand of miles of it, to
here--over four thousand miles of it altogether--not a single day that
didn't have some sport in it, and they killed tons and tons of game.
But all that is left for us is water and sand and willows. Ducks and
grouse, yes, but we can't shoot 'em. And I've got so I don't crave to
look a catfish in the face."
Uncle Dick looked at the boys gravely and saw that the monotony of the
long voyage was beginning to wear on them.
"Stick her through to the Mandans, fellows," said he. "We'll see what
we'll see. But Jesse, how can you complain of being bored when right
now you are standing where Will Clark come pretty near being killed by
the Teton Sioux?
"Yes, sir, it was right here that they tried to stop him from going back
to the big boat. Then, for the first time, the Redhead Chief drew his
sword--they always went into uniform when they had a council on--and
Lewis and the men on the boat trained the swivel gun on the band of
Sioux who were detaining Clark.
"You see, they had the council awning stretched on a sand bar in the
mouth of the river, and the bateau was seventy yards off, anchored. They
had sent out for the Sioux to come in, had smoked with them, given them
provisions, made speeches to them, given them whisky and tobacco. The
Sioux were arrogant, wanted more whisky and tobacco, and when Clark came
ashore with only five men they tried to hold him up, grabbing the boat
painter and pulling their bows. The second chief, says Clark, was bad,
'his justures were of such a personal nature I felt Myself Compeled to
Draw my Sword.... I felt Myself Warm and Spoke in verry positive terms.'
Which is all he says of a very dangerous scrape."
"Whyn't they bust into 'em with the swivel gun?" demanded Jesse. "At
seventy yards they'd 'a' got plenty of 'em."
"Sure they would. And then maybe the Sioux would never have let them
through at all and would have shot into every boat of white men that
later came up the river. No, those young men showed courage and good
judgment both. They did not know fear, but they did not forget duty, and
they were there to make peace among all the tribes along the Missouri.
"President Jefferson knew that country would soon be visited by many of
our fur traders, and he didn't want the boats stopped. Lewis and Clark
both knew this."
"But the Sioux didn't bluff them," said Rob, "because Lewis went ashore
with only five men, in his turn, and then they all pulled off a dance,
and a big talk in a big council tent--it must have been big, for there
were seventy Sioux in it, and just those two young American officers.
The big pipe was on forked sticks in front of the chief, and under it
they had sprinkled swan's-down, and they all were dressed up to their
limit. And though they could have been killed any minute, these two
white men had that lot of Indians feeding from the hand, as the slang
goes, Uncle Dick!"
Uncle Dick nodded, and Rob went on, referring to his _Journal_. "And
then the big chief said what they had done was O.K., and asked the
white men to 'take pity on them'--which I think is an old Indian term
of asking for some more gifts. Anyhow, the upshot was they smoked the
peace pipe and ate 'some of the most Delicate parts of the Dog which
was prepared for the fiest and made a Sacrefise to the flag.' Then
they cleared away the floor, built up a fire in the lodge, and 'about
10 Musitions began playing on Tambereens'--which made a 'gingling
noise.' The women came in and danced, with staffs decorated with
scalps, and everybody sang and everybody promised to be good."
"Some party!" said Jesse, slangily; but Rob, now excited, went on with
the story:
"Poor Clark nearly got sick from lack of sleep. But the next day the
Sioux held on to the cable again and wanted to stop the boat till they
had more tobacco. Then Lewis told the chiefs they couldn't bluff him
into giving them anything. Clark did give them a little tobacco and told
the men not to fire the swivel. Then they ran up a red flag under the
white, and the next Sioux that came aboard they told that those two
flags meant peace or war, either way they wanted it, and if they wanted
peace, they'd all better go back home and stay there, and not monkey
with the buzz saw too long--well, you know, Uncle Dick, they didn't
really say that, but that was what they meant.
"The Sioux followed alongshore and begged tobacco for fifty miles, clean
up to the Ree villages, near the mouth of the Cheyenne River. Oh, they
found the Sioux, all right; and glad enough they were to get through
them, even paying tribute as they had done."
"That's a fair statement of the Teton affair," nodded the leader of the
party. "Many a white life that tribe took, in the seventy-five years
that were to follow. For the next hundred miles there were either Sioux
or Rees pestering and begging and keeping the party uneasy all the
time."
"And I'll bet they were glad to get to the Rees, too," commented John.
"Those half-Pawnees raised squashes, corn, and beans. But by now, if
they had had a good shotgun or so along, they could have killed all
sorts of swans, brant and other geese, and ducks, for they were running
into the fall migration of the wild fowl. Grouse, too, were mentioned
as very numerous. They stuck to big game--it was easy to get meat when
you could see a 'gang of goats'--antelope--swimming the river, and the
hills covered with game."
"Uncle Dick," resumed Rob, as they again gathered around the map and
_Journal_ spread down on the tent floor, "those men must have had some
notion of the country, even had some map of it."
"Yes, they had a map--made by one Evans, the best then to be had, and I
suppose made up from the fur traders' stories. But it was incomplete.
Even to-day few maps are anywhere near exactly accurate. For instance,
when they came to the Cheyenne River--which, of course, the traders
called the Chien, or Dog, River--Clark said that nothing was known of it
till a certain Jean Valle told them that it headed in the Black Hills.
"Of course, it's all easy now. We know the Black Hills are in the
southwest corner of South Dakota, and that the Belle Fourche River of
the old cow country runs into the Cheyenne, which flows almost east,
into the Missouri. But if Mr. Valle had not been out to the Black Hills,
Lewis and Clark would not have been able to give this information. Then,
again, while they were at the Ree village, on October 10th, two more
Frenchmen came to breakfast, 'Mr. Tabo and Mr. Gravolin,' who were
already in this country.
"To me, one of the most interesting things is to see the overlapping and
blending of all these things--how the turkey once overlapped the
antelope and prairie dog; how the Rees, who were only scattered branches
of the Pawnees, properly at home away down in Kansas--overlapped the
Sioux, who sometimes raided the Pawnees below the Platte.
"And these French traders said the Spaniards sometimes came to the mouth
of the Kaw River, and even on the Platte. So there we were, overlapping
Spain to the west. And up above, Great Britain was overlapping our
claims to the valley of the Columbia and even part of this Missouri
Valley. You can see how important this journey was.
"You'll remember the lower Brule Sioux Reservation, below us and west
of the river. The Cheyenne Reservation is in above here, below the
mouth of the Cheyenne River. From there the river takes a pretty
straight shoot up into North Dakota. A great game country, a wild cow
country, and now a quiet farming country. A bleak, snow-covered,
wind-swept waste it then was. And it was winter that first stopped
that long, slow, steady, tireless advance of the 'Corps of
Vollenteers.'"
"I see they broke one more private before they got to the Mandans,"
said John, running ahead in the pages of the book.
"Yes, that was Newman, who had been found guilty of mutinous
expressions. Seventy-five lashes and expulsion from the Volunteers was
what the court of nine men gave him. They always were dignified, and
they enforced respect from whites and Indians alike."
"Well," grumbled Jesse, "it looks to me like there had been a whole lot
of people wandering around across this country long before Lewis and
Clark got here."
"Right you are, my boy. The truth is that right across these Plains
there went west the first American exploring expedition that ever saw
the Rockies. The French nobleman Verendrye, his three sons, and a
nephew, not to mention quite a band of Indians, started west across from
the Mandan country in 1742. On January 1, 1743, he records his first
sight of the Rocky Mountains, which he calls the Shining Mountains--a
fine name it is for them, too.
"The Verendrye expedition was the first to cross Wyoming or the Dakotas
so far in the west. They came back through the Bad Lands, above here,
and Verendrye records in his journal that near a fort of the Arikara
Indians he buried a plate of lead, with the arms and inscription of the
king. He did this in March, 1743. It always was supposed that this was
at or near Fort Pierre, South Dakota. That suspicion was absolutely
correct.
"In a little railway pamphlet put out by the Northern Pacific Railway it
is stated that on Sunday, February 16, 1913--one hundred and seventy
years after Verendrye got back that far east--a school girl playing with
some others at the top of a hill scraped the dirt from the end of a
plate, which then was exposed about an inch above the ground. She pulled
it out. The story said it looked like a range-stove lining. It was eight
and a half inches long by six and a half inches wide and an eighth of an
inch in thickness. Well, it was discovered to be the old Verendrye lead
plate--that's all!"
"That's a most extraordinary thing!" said Rob. "Well, anyhow, it shows
the value of leaving exploring records. So you couldn't blame William
Clark for writing his name at least twice on the rocks."
"No, the story of the Verendrye plate is, I think, one of the most
curious things I have ever read in regard to early Western history. You
never can tell about such things. Well, in any case Verendrye, the first
white man who ever saw the Shining Mountains, died in 1749. That was
fifty-five years before Lewis and Clark started up the river.
"There is not a hundred miles, or ten miles, or one mile, along all
these shores which has not historical value if you and I only knew the
story."
"But it's a long, long way up to the Mandans still," began John once
more.
His Uncle Dick gayly chided him.
"It'll not be so long--only a little over three hundred miles from
here."
"If only there were the buffalo!" said Jesse.
"Yes, if only there were the buffalo, and the antelope and the Indians!
I'd give a good deal to have lived in those days, my own self. Good
night, Jess. Good night, Rob and Frank."