AT THE YELLOWSTONE
The motor-car journey of the party had not much of eventfulness, being
practically, most of the way, through a farm or range country where
roads of least passable sort led them in the general northwesterly
direction which they desired to take. All three of the young explorers
could drive, so they took turns occasionally, while the editor sat in
the back seat and conversed with Uncle Dick.
Beyond a few grouse and rabbits, with a half dozen coyotes, they saw no
game except wild fowl on the sloughs. The cabins and tepees on the Fort
Berthold Indian Reservation afforded them a change of scene, and they
were delighted to find three of the native Mandan earth lodges, one
nearly fifty feet in diameter. They learned that the remnants of the
Mandan tribe, few in number and comprising few, if any, pure blood, were
located with reservation here, and were clinging to their tribal customs
the best they could.
"Well, here's what Patrick Gass says about the old Mandan huts and how
they were built--and he was a carpenter and so ought to know." John was
always ready with his quotations:
"'A Mandane's circular hut is spacious. I measured the one I lodged
in, and found it 90 feet from the door to the opposite side. The
whole space is first dug out about 1-1/2 feet below the surface of
the earth. In the center is the square fireplace, about five feet
on each side, dug out about two feet below the surface of the
ground flat. The lower part of the hut is constructed by erecting
strong posts about six feet out of the ground, at equal distances
from each other, according to the proposed size of the hut, as they
are not all of the same dimensions. Upon these are laid logs as
large as the posts, reaching from post to post to form the circle.
On the outer side are placed pieces of split wood seven feet long,
in a slanting direction, one end resting on the ground, the other
leaning against the cross-logs or beams. Upon these beams rest
rafters about the thickness of a man's leg, and 12 to 15 feet long,
slanting enough to drain off the rain, and laid so close to each
other as to touch. The upper ends of the rafters are supported upon
stout pieces of squared timber, which last are supported by four
thick posts about five feet in circumference, 15 feet out of the
ground and 15 feet asunder, forming a square. Over these squared
timbers others of equal size are laid, crossing them at right
angles, leaving an opening about four feet square. This serves for
chimney and windows, as there are no other openings to admit light,
and when it rains even this hole is covered over with a canoe (bull
boat) to prevent the rain from injuring their gammine (sic) and
earthen pots. The whole roof is well thatched with the small
willows in which the Missourie abounds, laid on to the thickness of
six inches or more, fastened together in a very compact manner and
well secured to the rafters. Over the whole is spread about one
foot of earth, and around the wall, to the height of three or four
feet, is commonly laid up earth to the thickness of three feet, for
security in case of an attack and to keep out the cold. The door is
five feet broad and six high, with a covered way or porch on the
outside of the same height as the door, seven feet broad and ten in
length. The doors are made of raw buffalo-hide stretched upon a
frame and suspended by cords from one of the beams which form the
circle. Every night the door is barricaded with a long piece of
timber supported by two stout posts set in the ground in the inside
of the hut, one on each side of the door.'"
"Well," remarked Jesse, "that sort of a house was big enough, so it is
no wonder they could keep their horses in there with them, too, in the
wintertime. And they fed them cottonwood limbs when there wasn't any
grass to eat."
"Yes," remarked Uncle Dick, "that's what we call adjusting to an
environment. I will say these Mandans were rather efficient on the
whole, and not bad engineers and architects."
They did not tarry long, although they made their second encampment
within the lines of the old Fort Berthold Reservation, for they found
all the Indians wearing white men's clothing, and using wagons and farm
implements, and Jesse said they had more Indianish Indians in Alaska.
Now they bore rather sharply to the north, feeling for the line of the
railway, which they struck at a village about midway between the Little
Knife and the White Earth Rivers. The early afternoon of their fourth
day brought them back once more to the sight of the Missouri, at the
town of Buford, near the Montana line and opposite the mouth of the
Yellowstone.
Following their usual custom, they made camp outside the vicinity of the
town, after purchasing the supplies they needed for the day and for the
return trip of their obliging friend from Mandan, who now reluctantly
decided that he could accompany them no farther.
"I'd rather go on with you than do anything I know," said he, "but it's
going to be quite a trip, and I won't have time, even if we could get
through with a car."
Uncle Dick nodded. "Really the best way to do this would be to take ship
again here and follow the river up the Great Falls," he said; "but by
the time we got a boat rigged and had made the run up--best part of six
hundred miles--we'd be almost a month further into the summer--because
the river is swifter above here. They made good time, but it was mostly
cordelle work. And, using gas motors, the boys wouldn't have much chance
of any real sport and exercise, which, of course, I want them to have
every summer when possible.
"Get your map, John--the big government map--and let's have a look at
this country in west of here."
John complied. They all bent over the map, which they spread down on the
floor of the tent. Their gasoline camp lantern shed its brilliant light
over them all as they bent down in study of the map.
"You'll see now that we're almost at the farthest north point on the
Missouri River. From here it runs almost west to the Great Falls, and
then almost south. Now our new railroad (the Great Northern Railroad)
will take us to the Great Falls of the Missouri, but it by no means
follows the Missouri. On the contrary, a little over two hundred miles
from here, I'd guess, it strikes the Milk River--as Lewis and Clark
called it--and follows that river half across the state of Montana. It
would carry us out to the Blackfeet Reservation, and what is now Glacier
Park--my own hunting ground among the Blackfeet, where I knew Joe
Kipp--but that is entirely off the map for us."
"Why, sure it is!" said Jesse, following the line of the river with his
finger. "Look it! It runs away south, hundreds of miles, into the
southwest corner of the state; and the railroad goes almost to Canada.
And there's a lot of river between here and Great Falls, too--bad water,
you say?"
"And see here where the Yellowstone goes!" added Rob. "It's away below
the Missouri, a hundred, a hundred and fifty miles in places--no
railroads and no towns."
"No," remarked their leader, "but one of the real wild places of the
West in its day--as cow range or hunting range, that wild and broken
country in there had no superior, and not many men know all of it even
now. Part of it is wonderfully beautiful.
"At no part of the journey did Lewis and Clark have more exciting
adventures than in precisely this country that we've got to skip, too.
The buffalo fairly swarmed, and elk and antelope and bighorn sheep and
blacktail deer were all around them all the time. It was a wonderful new
world for them. How many of the great fighting grizzlies they met in
that strip of the river, I wouldn't like to say, but in almost every
instance it meant a fight, until half the crew would no longer go after
a grizzly, they were so scared of them. One they shot through eight
times, and it chased the whole party even then. I tell you, those bears
were bad!
"But we'd not see one now--they're all gone, every one. Nor would we see
a bighorn--besides, they are protected by a continuous closed season in
Montana. Pretty country, yes, wild and bold and risky; but better coming
down than going up. We miss some grand scenery, but save a month's time,
maybe.
"But now see here--about halfway out to the Blackfeet is Havre Junction.
There we can take a train southwest to the town of Great Falls; and
above there we can stop at the mouth of the Marias River. Between there
and the Falls is Fort Benton, and that is one of the most important
points, in a historical way, there was on the whole river, although its
glory departed long ago. From there we'd get to our pack train and be
off for the head of the Missouri. What do you think, Rob?"
Rob was silent for a time. "Well," said he, at length, "I think we'd get
pretty much a repetition of the river work, and not much sport--hard
river, too.
"Now, it would be fine to go to old Benton by river, to the head of
navigation; but we know that Fort Benton was not one of the early fur
posts--indeed, it came in when the last of the buffalo were being
killed. It was where the traveling traders got their goods, and where
the bull outfits got their freight in 1863 for the placer mines of
Montana and was the outfit place for Bozeman and all those early points.
But that was after the fur trade was over."
"That's right," said Uncle Dick. "First came the explorers; then the fur
traders; then the miners; then the cow men; then the farmers. The end of
the buffalo came in 1883--a million robes that year; and the next, none
at all--the most terrible wild-life tragedy that ever was known. After
that came the cattle and the sheep and the irrigation men."
He sat musing for the time.
"But listen now to a little more of the early stuff. You, Jesse, do you
follow up the Yellowstone with your finger till you come to the mouth of
the Big Horn River. Got it?"
"Yes, sir," replied Jesse. "Here she is."
"All right. Now, at that place, in the year 1807--the next year after
Lewis and Clark got back home--a shrewd St. Louis trader by name of
Manuel Lisa, of Spanish descent he was, heard all those beaver stories,
and he pushed up the Missouri and up the Yellowstone, and built a post
called Fort Manuel there. He wanted to trade with the Blackfeet and
Crows both, but found those tribes were enemies. He couldn't hold the
fort. He dropped back to St. Louis and formed the first of the great fur
companies, the Missouri River Company. They were the pioneers of many
later companies.
"The Missouri River Company had their post at the Three Forks of the
Missouri--away up yonder, eight hundred miles from here--as early as
1810; that was crowding Lewis and Clark pretty fairly close, eh? Well,
then came the Rocky Mountain Company, and the American Fur Company, and
the Pacific Fur Company, and the Columbia Fur Company, and I don't know
how many other St. Louis partnerships up-river--not mentioning the
pack-train outfits under many names--and so all at once, as though by
magic, there were posts strung clear to the head of the river--one
hundred and forty of them, as I have told you. And of them all you could
hardly find a trace of one of them to-day.
"There's dispute even as to the site of Fort Union, which was just above
here and up the river a little above the Yellowstone. That was built in
1828.
"Long before that, and for twenty years after that, the fur traders kept
on building, until the mouth of every good-sized river running into the
Missouri had not only one, but sometimes three or four posts, all
competing all or part of the time! Risky business it was. Some made
fortunes; most of them died broke. Well, I reckon they had a good run
for their money, eh?"
"And when did it end?" asked the Mandan friend, who had sat an absorbed
listener to a story, the most of which was new to him.
"It has not ended yet," answered Uncle Dick. "St. Louis is to-day the
greatest fur market in the world, though now skunk and coon and rat have
taken the place of beaver and buffalo and wolf. But within the past four
years a muskrat pelt has sold for five dollars. In 1832 the average
price for the previous fifteen years had been twenty cents for a
rat-hide--many a boy in my time thought he was rich if he got ten cents.
A buffalo robe averaged three dollars; a beaver pelt, four dollars; an
otter, three dollars. Think of what they bring now! Well, the demand
combs the country, that's all.
"But in 1836 beaver slumped--because that was the year the silk hat was
invented. Did you know that? And in 1883 the buffalo robes ended. I'd
say that 1850 really was about the end of the big days of the early fur
trade--what we call the upper-river trade."
Rob put his hand down over the map. "And here it was," said he, "in this
country west of here, up the Yellowstone, up the Missouri, all over and
in between!"
"Quite right, yes," his companion nodded. "Of all the days of romance
and adventure in the Far West, those were the times and this was the
place--from here west, up the great waterway and its branches.
"No one can estimate the value of the Missouri River to the United
States. It made more history for us than the Mississippi itself. It made
our first maps--the fur trade did that. It led us across and got us
Oregon. It led us to the placers which settled Montana. It took the
first horses and wagons and plows into the upper country in its day, as
well as the first rifles and steel traps. It brought us into war with
the Indians, and helped us win the war. It carried our hunters up to the
buffalo, and carried all the buffalo down, off from the face of the
earth. And it rolls and boils and tumbles on its way now as it did when
the great bateaux swept down its flood, over a hundred miles a day,
loaded with robes and furs."
"I wish we could see it all!" grumbled Jesse, again.
"You can see it all now, Jess," said his uncle, "better than you could
if you plugged up its stream without looking at a map or book. And even
if you did look at both, you've got to see the many different periods
the old Missouri has had in its history, and balance one against the
other.
"Dates are not of so much importance, but reasons for great changes are
important. If I had to select just one date in Western history, do you
know what that would be?"
"Eighteen hundred and four, when our men started up with the flag!" said
Rob.
Uncle Dick shook his head.
"Eighteen hundred and six, when they got back," ventured Jesse.
"No."
"Eighteen hundred and forty-eight, when they found gold in California!"
said John.
"No! Great years, yes, and the discovery of gold was a great event in
changing all the country. But to the man who really has studied all the
story of the Missouri River, I believe that the year 1836 was about the
pivotal date. And it only marks the invention of the silk hat! But that
year the plow began to take the place of the steel trap in the way of
making a living in the West. That was the year, I might say, when the
mystery and romance of the unknown West found their end, and the day
began of what we call business and civilization.
"That's all. Go to bed, fellows. Our friend has been most kind to us,
and we have to get him a good breakfast in the morning, since he must
leave us then."
The Mandan friend rose and put out his hand. "I want to thank you, sir,"
he said. "I'm in your debt. I wish my own boys were along with this
party."
The next day they parted and the young Alaskans were speeding west by
rail, making the great jump of about six hundred miles, between the
mouth of the Yellowstone and the Great Falls of the Missouri.