AMONG THE MANDANS
"Well," said Jesse, late the next afternoon, when, in accordance with
his promise, this new friend had pointed out the place where, the expert
investigators usually agreed, the explorers built their winter quarters
in the year 1804--near the plot called Elm Point, even now heavily
timbered. "I don't see much of a fort left here now. What's become of
it?"
"What becomes of any house built of cottonwood logs in ten or twenty
years?" smiled his uncle. "But the _Journal_ and other books tell us
that here or about here is where the old stockade once stood. It was
opposite to where Fort Clark later was built in 1831. You see, Fort
Clark was on the west side, on a high bluff, and in its time quite a
post, for it was one hundred and thirty-two by one hundred and
forty-seven feet in size, and well built. Fort Clark was about
fifty-five miles above the Northern Pacific Railroad bridge at Bismarck,
North Dakota. We've had a good day's run of it.
"All Clark tells us about Fort Mandan is that it was on the north bank,
that the ground was sandy, and that they cleared the timber to make
room. He says they had cottonwood and elm and some small ash, but
complains that the logs were large and heavy and they had to carry them
in on hand spikes, by man power. They used no horses in rolling up the
logs.
"But Patrick Gass tells more about the way they did. They had two rows
of cabins, in two wings, at right angles, and each cabin had four rooms
in it. I think the men slept upstairs, for when the walls were up seven
feet they laid a puncheon floor, covered with grass and clay, which Gass
says made 'a warm loft.' This projected about a foot, and a puncheon
roof was put over that.
"The outer wall was about eighteen feet high. They had several
fireplaces. They made a couple of storerooms in the angle of the two
wings, and then put up their stockade in front, to complete their
square. This stockade was made of upright logs, and had a gate, like
most of the frontier posts, so that, what with their swivel gun and all
their rifles, they could have made quite a fight against any sort of an
attack, although they had no trouble of any kind.
"They were not very far from the Mandan villages. Quite a settlement
this was, in these parts--not mentioning nine deserted villages inside
of sixty miles below--two Mandan villages, built with the Mandan
dirt-covered lodges, like those of the Rees; and besides that, villages
of Sioux and Gros Ventres, and of a band they called the Watasoons, and
seventy lodges of Crees and Assiniboines who came in later and the
fierce Minnetarees--plenty of savages to warrant the expedition in
taking no chances."
"I've read that the Indians at first were not so friendly," said Rob.
"There were British traders among them, weren't there?"
"Oh yes, the Northwest Fur Company was in there, and an Irishman by
the name of McCracken was on the ground at the time. Alexander Henry
got there in 1806, you know. Now, Lewis sent out a note by McCracken
to the agent at Fort Assiniboine. Those traders were none too friendly,
and tried to stir up trouble. Two more of the Nor'westers, Larocque
and McKenzie, came in, with an interpreter and four men, and the
interpreter, LaFrance, took it on him to speak sneeringly of the
Americans. It did not take Captain Lewis long to call him to account."
"Well, our fellows were up in there all alone, weren't they?" exclaimed
Jesse.
"They certainly were, but they held their fort; and they held all the
Northwestern country for us. As soon as the Northwest Fur Company found
out that Lewis and Clark intended to cross the Rockies to the Columbia,
they sent word East, and that company sent one of their best men, Simon
Fraser, to ascend the Saskatchewan and beat the Americans in on the
Columbia. But he himself was beaten in that great race by about a couple
of years! So we forged the chain that was to hold the Oregon country to
the United States afterward. Oh yes, our young captains had a big game
to play, and they played it beautifully.
"They always talked peace among these Mandans and others, because they
wanted the Missouri River opened to the American fur trade. They waited
around, and held talks, and swapped tobacco for corn, and the American
blacksmiths made for them any number of axes and hatchets and other
things. By and by the Indians began to figure that they were more apt to
get plenty of goods up the Missouri from the Americans than overland
from the British traders. Do you see how that began to work out? Oh, our
boys knew what they were about, all right. And the result was that our
fur trade swept up that river like an army with banners as soon as Lewis
and Clark got back home. In a few years we had a hundred and forty fur
trading posts on the Missouri and its upper tributaries, and from these
our bold traders pushed out by pack train into every corner of the Rocky
Mountains."
"Gee!" said Jesse, in his frequent and not elegant slang. "Gee! Those
were the days!"
"Right you are--those were the days! Those were the great days of
adventure and romance and exploration. It was through the fur trade that
we explored the Rocky Mountains. Can't you see our men of the fur posts,
paddling, rowing, sailing, tracking--getting up the Missouri? Great
days, yes, Jesse--great days indeed."
"I wish we had a picture of that old stockade!" sighed John.
"None exists. Not a splinter of it remains; it was burned down in 1805,
and the ruins later engulfed by the river. But I fancy we can see it,
from the description. So there our party spent that first winter, and
long and cold enough it was.
"They had to hunt or starve, but soon their buffalo and elk and deer
and antelope got very thin, mere skin and bones. It was bitter cold, and
the hunters came in frozen time and again--a hard, bare, bitter fight it
was. From all accounts, it was an old-fashioned winter, for the
mercury--they spelled it 'merkery'--froze solid in a few minutes one day
when they set the thermometer out of doors!"
"And it must have been cool inside the houses, too," ventured John. "But
of course they had to do their writing and fix up their things."
"Quite so--they had to get their specimens ready to ship down the river
in the spring. Then they had to make six canoes for use the next year,
and as they found the timber unsuitable near the river, the men had to
camp out where they found the trees, and then they carried the canoes by
hand over to the river, a mile and a half.
"They sent the big flatboat, or bateau, down the river, and thirteen men
went with it. The two perogues and the six new cottonwood dugouts they
took on west, up the river, when they started, on March 7, 1805, to
finish their journey across the continent. Of these men, the party who
went through, there were thirty-one; and there was one woman."
"I know!" said Jesse. "Sacagawea!"
"Right! Sacagawea. Make it two words. 'Wea' means 'woman.' 'Bird Woman'
was her name--Sacaga Wea. And of the entire party, that Indian girl--she
was only a girl, though lately married and though she started west with
a very young baby--was worth more than any man. If it had not been for
her they never would have got across.
"You see, up to this place, the Mandan towns, they had some idea of the
country, and so also they had beyond here as far as the mouth of the
Yellowstone--that's two hundred and eighty-eight miles above here. But
beyond the mouth of the Ro' Jaune--it even then was called Roche Jaune,
or Yellow Stone, by the early French _voyageurs_--it was said the foot
of white man never then had passed. There was no map, no report or rumor
to help them. If they had a guide, it couldn't be a white man.
"Now among the Mandans they found a man called Chaboneau, or Charboneau,
a Frenchman, married to two Indian women, one of whom was Sacagawea. He
had bought her from the Minnetarees, where she was a captive.
"Just think how the natives traveled in those days! You know the
Sioux hunted on the upper Platte, as far as the Rockies. Well, this
Minnetaree war party had been west of the Rockies, or in the big bend
of the Rockies, at the very head of the Missouri River, among the
Shoshonis. They took Sacagawea prisoner when she was a little girl,
and brought her east, all the way over to Dakota, here. But she was
Indian--she did not forget what she saw. She knew about the
Yellowstone, and the Three Forks of the Missouri.
"Well now, whether it was because Chaboneau, the new interpreter, wanted
her along, or whether Lewis and Clark figured she might be useful,
Sacagawea went along, all the way to the Pacific--and all the way back
to the Mandans again. Be sure, her husband did not beat her any more,
while they were with the white captains. In fact, I rather think they
made a pet of her. They found they could rely on her memory and her
judgment.
"So the real guide they had in the nameless and unknown country was a
Shoshoni Indian girl. It looked almost like something providential, the
way they found her here, ready and waiting for them--the only possible
guide in all that country. And to-day, such was the chivalry and justice
of those two captains of our Army--and such the chivalry and justice of
the men of Oregon and the enthusiasm of the women of Oregon--you may see
in Portland, near the sea to which she helped lead our flag, the bronze
statue of Sacagawea, the Indian girl. That, at least, is one fine thing
we have done in memory of the Indian.
"And within the last two or three years a bronze statue of Meriwether
Lewis and William Clark has been erected at Charlotteville, Virginia,
near the home of Meriwether Lewis--that was at Ivy station, to-day only
a scattered settlement. And away down in Tennessee, in the forest of
Lewis County, named after him, I have stood by the monument that state
erected over the little-known and tragic grave of Captain Meriwether
Lewis--far enough from the grave of the poor Indian girl who worshiped
him more than she could her worthless husband.
"No one knows where Sacagawea was buried, though her history was traced
a little way after the return to this country. She was buried perhaps in
the air, on a scaffold, and left forgotten, as Indian women were, and we
no more can stand by her grave than we can be sure we stand on the exact
spot where Will Clark built his winter quarters among the Mandans.
"Great days, boys--yes, great days, and good people in them, too. So now
I want you to study a little here.
"Look back down the river, which has seemed so long for you. To-morrow
will be the Fourth of July. It was Christmas that Lewis and Clark
celebrated with their men in their stockade."
Their new friend had for the most part been silent as he listened to
this counselor of the party. He now spoke.
"Then I take it that you are going on up the river soon, sir?" said he.
"I wish you good journey through the cow country. You'll find the river
narrower, with fewer islands, so I hear; and I should think it became
swifter, but--I don't know."
"I was going to come to that," said Uncle Dick, turning to Rob, John,
and Jesse. "What do you think? I'd like you to get an idea of the river
and all it meant, but we have only the summer and early fall to use. I
don't doubt we could plug on up with the motors, and get a long way
above Great Falls, but about the time we got to where we could have some
fun fishing or maybe shooting, we'd have to start east by rail. So I'd
planned that we might make a big jump here."
"How do you mean, sir?" Rob asked.
"Change our transportation."
"Oh--because Lewis and Clark changed here?"
"Natural place for us to change, if we do at all," said Uncle Dick. "We
ought to stick as close to the river as we can, and as a matter of fact
we have covered the most monotonous part of it. But we had to do that,
for there was no other way to get here and still hang anywhere near to
the river. And until we got here we struck no westbound railroad that
would advance us on our journey.
"Here we could get up the Yellowstone by rail, but we are working on
the Missouri. If we run on by motor car up to Buford, there we can get
by rail over to the Great Falls, and still hang closer to the river;
although, of course, we'll not be following it."
"But what'll we do with our boat?" began Jesse, ruefully. "Hate to leave
the little old _Adventurer_."
"Well, now," answered his uncle. "We couldn't so well take her along,
could we?"
"I'd like mighty well to buy her," interrupted the editor. "That is, if
you care to sell her."
"I never knew my boys to sell any of their sporting equipment," said the
other. "But I expect they'd give it to you, right enough. Eh, boys?"
They looked from one to another. "If the gentleman wanted her," began
Rob, at last, "and if we've done with her, I don't see why we couldn't.
But I think we ought to take the motors along as far as we can, because
we might need them."
"Good idea," Uncle Dick nodded. "We can get a trailer here, can't we?"
he asked of their friend.
"Sure; and a good car; too. I'll drive you up to Buford, myself, for the
fun of it--and the value of it to me. I'll get a car at Bismarck. We can
pack your outfit in the trailer and the motors, too, easily. You can
check and express stuff through to Great Falls from Buford--and there
you are. How'll you go from there--boat?"
"I don't believe so," replied Uncle Dick. "I believe we'd have more
freedom if we took a pack train above Great Falls, and cut across lots
now and then, checking up in our _Journal_ all the way."
"That's the stuff!" exclaimed John. "Horses!"
"Lewis and Clark used horses for some distance, at the crossing," said
Uncle Dick, "so I think we may dare do so. We want all the variety we
can get, and all the fun we can get, too. What do you say, young
gentlemen?"
"It sounds good to me," said Rob. "I'd like to see the mountains pretty
well. You see, a great part of our lives has been spent in Alaska and
the northern country, and we're just getting acquainted with our own
country, you might say. The Rockies this far south must be fine in the
early fall."
"It suits me," assented John. "I'd like to take the _Adventurer_ along,
but Lewis and Clark didn't take their boats through all the way,
either."
"And if we had time," added Jesse, "we could run some river late in the
fall, say from Great Falls down to here."
"All good," nodded Uncle Dick. Then turning to their new friend,
"Suppose we cross our camp to Bismarck the morning of July 5th, tie up
our boat there for you, and then go on in the way you suggest--motor and
trailer?"
"Agreed," said the other. "I'll be there early that day."
"Which way shall we go?" asked Rob. "If we took the road along the
Northern Pacific west, we could see the Bad Lands, and go through
Medora, Theodore Roosevelt's old town."
The editor shook his head. "Bad, if there's rain," he said. "Besides,
that takes you below the Missouri. I think we'd best go on the east side
the river, north of Bismarck. We could swing out toward the Turtle
Lakes, and then make more west, toward the Fort Berthold Reservation.
From there we could maybe get through till we struck the Great Northern
Railroad; and then we could get west to Buford, on the line, and on the
river again. If we got lost we could find ourselves again some time."
"How long would it take?" inquired Rob.
"If it's two hundred and eighty-eight miles by the river, it would be
maybe two hundred and fifty by trail. We could do it in a day, on a
straightaway good road like one of the motor highways, but we'll have
nothing of the sort. I'll say two days, three, maybe four--we'd know
better when we got there."
"That sounds more adventurish," said Jesse. And what the youngest of
them thought appealed to the others also.
"Very well. All set for the morning after the Fourth," said Uncle Dick.
"And when we go back to Mandan be sure not to eat too much ice cream,
for we're not apt to run across very many doctors on the way. And now
we'd better get ready to camp here to-night. We can make Mandan by noon
to-morrow--it's faster, downstream."
"On the way," said their friend, "I want you to go around to the coulee
below town, where there's three or four tepees of Sioux in camp. What do
they do? Oh, make little things to sell in town--and not above begging a
little. There's one squaw we call Mary, who has been coming here a good
many years. She makes about the finest moccasins we ever get. She made
my wife a pair, out of buckskin white as snow. I don't know where she
got it."
"The Sioux had parfleche soles to all their moccasins," said John,
wisely. "All the buffalo and Plains Indians did. The forest Indians had
soft soles."
"You're right, son," said the editor. "For modern bedroom moccasins, to
sell to white women, Mary makes them all soft, with a shallow ankle
flap. Most of the Indian men wear shoes now, but when she makes a pair
of men's moccasins she always puts on the raw-hide soles. You can see
the hair on the bottoms, sometimes."
"Buffalo hair?" smiled Jesse.
"Well, no. The Indians use beef-hide now. But they don't like it."
"Neither do I," said Jesse.