WHERE THE ROAD FORKED
"Well, fellows," began Rob, "this is a place I've always wanted to see.
I've read about old Fort Benton many a time. Now, here we are!"
The little party stood curiously regarding an old and well-nigh ruined
square structure of sun-dried brick, not far from which lay yet more
dilapidated remnants of what once had been the walls and buildings of an
old abode inclosure. They were on their third day out from the mouth of
the Yellowstone River, having come by rail, and were spending the day at
Fort Benton, between the junction point of Havre and the modern city of
Great Falls.
"There's not much of it left," scoffed Jesse. "I don't call this so much
of a fort. You could pretty near push over all that's left of it."
"Not so, Jess," replied Rob, the older of the three boys. "Nothing can
push over the walls of old Fort Benton! It has foundations in history."
"Oh, history!" said Jesse. "That's all right. But I'm sore we didn't
run the river up from Buford. Just when we hit some wild stuff, we take
the cars! Besides, we might have seen some white bears or some bighorn
sheep."
John smiled at Jesse. "Not a chance, Jess," said he, "though it's true
we have jumped over what was the most interesting country we had struck
till then--castles and towers and walls and fortresses; and as you say,
plenty of game. Tell him about it, Uncle Dick. He's grouching."
Uncle Dick smiled and put his hand on Jesse's curly head. "No, he
isn't," said he. "He just isn't satisfied with jack rabbits where there
used to be grizzlies and bighorns. I don't blame him.
"Yet to the east of us, to the end of the river at Buford, to the south
along the Yellowstone, and on all the great rivers that the cowmen used
for range--along the Little Missouri and the Musselshell and the Judith
and countless other streams whose names you have heard--lay the greatest
game country the world ever saw, the best outdoor country in the world!
"This was the land of the Wild West Indian and buffalo days, so wild a
country that it never lived down its reputation. Buffalo, antelope, and
elk ranged in common in herds of hundreds of thousands, while in the
rough shores of the river lived countless bighorns, hundreds of
grizzlies, and a like proportion of buffalo and antelope as well, not to
mention the big wolves and other predatories. Yes, a great wilderness it
was!"
"And we jumped it!" said Jesse.
"Yes, because I knew we'd save time, and we have to do that, for we're
not out for two years, you see.
"Now look at your notes and at the _Journal_. It took Lewis and Clark
thirty-five days to get here from the mouth of the Yellowstone, and
we've done it in one, you might say. The railroad calls it three hundred
and sixty-seven miles."
"Well, the _Journal_ calls it more," broke in Rob, "yet it sticks right
to the river."
"And now they began to travel," added John. "They did
twenty--eighteen--twenty-five--seventeen miles a day right along, more'n
they did below Mandan, a lot.
"They make it six hundred and forty-one miles from the Yellowstone to
the Marias, which is below where we are now. That's about eighteen miles
a day. Yet they all say the river current is much stiffer."
"We'd have found it stiff in places," said their leader. "But the
reason they did so well--on paper--was that now they couldn't sail the
canoes very well, and so did a great deal of towing. The shores were
full of sharp rocks and the going was rough, and they had only
moccasins--they complained bitterly of sore feet.
"Their hardships made them overestimate the distances they did--and they
did overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the Rat
Portage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember we
figured on double what we had actually done? A man's wife corrected him
on how long they had been married. He said it was twenty years, and she
said it was ten, by the records. 'Well, it seems longer,' he said. Same
way, when they did ten miles a day stumbling on the tracking line, they
called it twenty. It seemed longer.
"Now, when the river commission measured these distances accurately,
they called it seventeen hundred and sixty miles from the mouth of the
river to the mouth of the Yellowstone, and not eighteen hundred, as the
_Journal_ has it. And from Buford to Benton, by river, is not six
hundred and forty-one miles, as the _Journal_ makes it, but only five
hundred and three. So the first white men through those canyons and
palisades below us yonder were one hundred and thirty-eight miles over
in their estimates, or more than one-fourth of the real distance.
"This tendency to overestimate distances is almost universal among
explorers who set the first distances, and it ought to be reckoned as a
factor of error, like the dip of the magnetic needle. But they did their
best. And we want to remember that they were the first white men to come
up this river, whereas we are the last!"
"Anyhow," resumed Rob, "we are at old Benton now."
"Yes, and I think even Jesse will agree, when we stop to sum up here,
that this is a central point in every way, and more worth while as a
standing place that any we would have passed in the river had we run it.
"This is the heart of the buffalo country, and the heart of the old
Blackfoot hunting range--the most dreaded of all the tribes the early
traders met. We're above the breaks of the Missouri right here. Look at
the vast Plains. This was the buffalo pasture of the Blackfeet. The
Crows lay below, on the Yellowstone.
"Now as they came up through the Bad Lands and the upper breaks of the
big river, the explorers gave names to a lot of creeks and buttes, most
of which did not stick. Two of them did stick--the Judith and the
Marias. Clark called the first Judith's river, after Miss Julia Hancock,
of Virginia, the lady whom he later married. Her friends all called her
Judy, and Clark figured it ought to be Judith.
"In the same way Lewis called this river, near whose mouth we now are
standing, Maria's River, after his cousin, Miss Maria Wood. Clark's
river, famous in military days, and now famous as the wheat belt of the
Judith Basin, lost the possessive and is now plain Judith. That of
Meriwether Lewis still has all the letters, but is spelled Marias River,
without the possessive apostrophe. So these stand even to-day, the names
of two Virginia girls, and no doubt will remain there while the water
runs or the grass grows, as the Indians say."
"But even now you've forgotten something, Uncle Dick," interrupted John.
"You said this was the Forks of the Road. How do you mean?"
"Yes. This later proved one of the great strategic points of the West.
As you know, this was the head of steamboat navigation, and the
outfitting point for the bull trains that supplied all the country west
and south and north of us. No old post is more famous. But that is not
all.
"I have reference now, really, not to Fort Benton, but to the mouth of
the Marias River, below here. Now, see how nearly, even to-day, the
Marias resembles the Missouri River. Suppose you were captain, Jess, and
you had no map and nothing to go by, and you came to these two rivers
and didn't have any idea on earth which was the one coming closest to
the Columbia, and had no idea where either of them headed--now, what
would you do?"
"Huh!" answered Jesse, with no hesitation at all. "I know what I'd have
done."
"Yes? What, then?"
"Why, I'd have asked that Indian girl, Sacagawea, that's what I'd have
done. She knew all this country, you say."
"By Jove! Not a bit bad, Jess, come to think of it. But look at your
_Journal_. You'll find that at precisely the first time they needed to
ask her something they could not! The girl was very sick, from here to
above the Great Falls. They thought she was going to die, and it's a
wonder she didn't, when you read what all they gave her by way of
medicines. She was out of her head part of the time. They never asked
her a thing on the choice of these rivers!
"Well now, what did they do? They spent more than a week deciding, and
it was time well spent. They sent out small parties up each fork a
little way, and the men all thought the Marias, or right-hand fork, was
the true Missouri. Then Clark was sent up the south fork, which was
clearer than the other. He went thirty-five miles. If he had gone twenty
miles farther, he'd have been at the Great Falls; and the Minnetaree
Indians had told of those falls, and of an eagle's nest there, though
they said nothing about the river to the north. Chaboneau had never been
here. His wife was nearly dead. No one could help.
"Lewis took a few men and went up the Marias for about sixty miles. They
came back down the Marias, and decided on the left-hand fork, against
the judgment of every man but Clark.
"His reasoning is good. The men all pointed out that the right-hand fork
was roily, boiling, and rolling, exactly like the Missouri up which they
had come, whereas the other fork was clear. But Lewis said that this
showed that the Marias ran through plains country and did not lead close
to the Rockies, from which the water would run clearer; and they did
not want to skirt the mountains northerly, but to cross them, going
west.
"Lewis had an old English map, made by a man named Arrowsmith, based on
reports of a Hudson's Bay trader named Fidler, who had gone a little
south of the Saskatchewan and made some observations. Now look at your
_Journal_, and see what Lewis thought of Mr. Fidler.
"The latter marked a detached peak at forty-five degrees latitude. Yet
Lewis--who all this time has been setting down his own latitude and
longitude from his frequent observations--makes the Marias as
forty-seven degrees, twenty-four minutes, twelve and eight-tenths
seconds. He says:
"'The river must therefore turn much to the south between this and
the rocky mountain to have permitted Mr. Fidler to have passed
along the eastern border of these mountains as far south as nearly
45 deg. without even seeing it.... Capt. Clark says its course is
S. 29 W. and it still appeared to bear considerably to the W. of
South.... I think therefore that we shall find that the Missouri
enters the rocky mountains to the North of 45 deg. We did take the
liberty of placing his discoveries or at least the Southern
extremity of them about a degree farther North ... and I rather
suspect that actual observations will take him at least one other
degree further North. The general course of Marias river ... is 69
deg. W. 59'.'
"Lewis also figured that Fidler in his map showed only small streams
coming in from the west, 'and the presumption is very strong that those
little streams do not penetrate the Rocky Mountains to such distance as
would afford rational grounds for a conjecture that they had their
sources near any navigable branch of the Columbia.' He was right in
that--and he says those little creeks may run into a river the Indians
called the Medicine River. Now that is the Sun River, which does come in
at the Falls, but which Lewis had never seen!
"Again, the Minnetaree Indians had told him, in their long map-making
talks at the Mandan winter quarters, that the river near the Falls was
clear, as he now saw this stream. The Minnetarees told him the Missouri
River interlocked with the Columbia. And as he was now straight west of
the Minnetarees, he figured that when they went hunting to the head of
the Missouri, as they had, they couldn't have passed a river big as this
south fork without mentioning it. And the Indians said that the Falls
were a 'little south of the sunset' from the Mandans--and Lewis had his
latitude to show he was still on that line and ought to hold to it.
"Lastly, he reasoned that so large a river must penetrate deeply into
the Rockies--and that was what he wanted. He knew it could not rise in
dry plains. So, relying on his Minnetarees and his horse sense, and not
on Mr. Fidler, Lewis refused to go any farther north, because he could
not figure out there a big river penetrating into the Rockies. He was
absolutely right, as well as very shrewd and wise.
"Now, reasoning at first shot, the _voyageurs_ would have gone up the
Marias. Cruzatte especially, their best riverman, was certain the Marias
was the true Missouri. They would then maybe have met the Blackfeet and
would never have crossed the Rockies; which would have meant failure, if
not death; whereas this cold-headed, careful young man, Meriwether
Lewis, by a chain of exact reasoning on actual data, went against the
judgment of the entire party and chose the left-hand fork, which we know
is the true Missouri; and which we'll find hard enough to follow to its
head, even to-day.
"Think over that, boys. Do you begin to see what a man must be, to be a
leader? We have had plenty of Army men in Western exploration since
then, plenty of engineers who could spell. But in all the records you'll
not find one example of responsibility handled as quietly and
decisively as that. You must remember the pressure he was under. It
would have been so easy to take the united conviction of all these old,
grizzled, experienced _voyageurs_ and hunters.
"Well, if Clark and he argued over it, at least that is not known. But
all the men took the decision of the two leaders without a whimper. I
think the personnel of that party must have been extraordinary. And
their leaders proved their judgment later.
"Now, with poor Sacagawea expected to die, and with all the
responsibility on their shoulders, our captains acted as though they had
no doubts. If they did have, Lewis solved it all when he ascended the
Marias on his way home next year.
"Now the water was getting swift. They knew nothing of what was ahead,
but their load was heavy. So now they hid their biggest boat in the
willows on an island, at the mouth of the Marias, and dug a _cache_ for
a great deal of their outfit--axes, ammunition, casks of provisions, and
much superfluous stuff. They dug this bottle shaped, as the old fur
traders did, lined it with boughs and grass and hides, filled it in and
put back the cap sod--all the dirt had been piled on skins, so as not to
show. Stores would keep for years when buried carefully in this way.
"So now, lighter of load, but still game--with Cruzatte playing the
fiddle for the men to dance of evenings--on June 12th they 'set out and
proceeded on,' leaving this great and historical fork of the water road
on the morning of June 12th, with Sacagawea so very sick that the
captains took tender care of her all the trip, though they speak
slightingly of Chaboneau, her husband, who seems to have been a bit of a
mutt. One of the men has a felon on his hand; another with toothache has
taken cold in his jaw; another has a tumor and another a fever. Three
canoes came near being lost; and it rained. But they 'proceeded on,' and
on that day they first saw the Rockies, full and fair! And three days
later Lewis found the Great Falls, hearing the noise miles away, and
seeing the great cloud of mist arising above the main fall.
"And then they found the eagle's nest on the cottonwood island, of which
the Minnetarees had told them. And then Sacagawea got well, and gave the
O.K. after her delirium had gone! And then every man, woman, and child
in that party agreed that their leaders were safe to follow!
"It took them one month to get over that eighteen miles portage. That
made five weeks they had lost here out of direct travel. But they never
did lose courage, never did reason wrong, and never did go back one
foot. Leadership, my boys! And both those captains, Lewis especially,
had a dozen close calls for death, with bears, floods, rattlesnakes,
gun-shot, and accidents of all kinds. Their poor men also were in bad
case many a time, but they held through. No more floggings now, this
side of Mandan--maybe both men and captains had learned something about
discipline."
Their leader ceased for the time, and turned, hat in hand, to the ruined
quadrangle of adobe, the remnants of old Fort Benton. The boys also for
a moment remained silent. Jesse approached and touched the sleeve of his
Uncle Dick.
"I wouldn't have missed this for anything," said he. "I can see how they
all must have felt when they got here, where they could see out over the
country once more. Do you suppose it was right here that they stood?"
John was ready with his copy of the _Journal_, which now the boys all
began to prize more and more.
"Here it is," said he, "all set down in the finest story book I ever
read in all my life. Captain Lewis and Captain Clark say they
"'stroled out to the top of the hights in the fork of these rivers,
from whence we had an extensive and most inchanting view. The
country in every direction about was one vast plain in which
innumerable herds of Buffalow were seen attended by their shepperds
the wolves; the solatary antalope which now had there young were
distributed over its face, some herds of Elk were also seen; the
verdure perfectly cloathed the ground, the wether was plesent and
fair; to the South we saw a range of lofty mountains which we
supposed to be a continuation of the Snow Mountains stretching
themselves from S.E. to N.W. terminating abruptly about S.West from
us, these were partially covered with snow; behind these Mountains
and at a great distance a second and more lofty range of mountains
appeared to strech across the country in the same direction with
the others, reaching from West, to the N. of N.W.--where their
snowy tops lost themselves beneath the horizon, the last range was
perfectly covered with snow.'"
"Does it check up, boys?" Uncle Dick smiled. "I think it does, except
that our old ruins are not right where they then stood on the Missouri.
The river mouth is below here. There is a high tongue of land between
the Teton River, just over there, where it runs close along the
Missouri, two or three hundred yards away, but I hardly think that was
where they stood.
"But though the works of man have changed many times, and themselves
been changed by time, the works of God are here, as they were in June of
1805--except that the wild game is gone forever.
"Lewis or Clark could not dream that in 1812 a steamboat would go down
the Ohio and the Mississippi; nor that some day a steamboat would land
here, close to the Marias River.
"But after Lewis and Clark the fur traders poured up here. Then came the
skin hunters and their Mackinaws, following the bull boats which took
some _voyageurs_ downstream. Then the river led the trails west, and the
bull outfits followed the pack trains. So when the adventurers found
gold at the head of the Missouri they had a lane well blazed, surely.
"Fort Benton was not by any means the first post to be located at or
near this great point, the mouth of the Marias. In 1831 James Kipp, the
father of my friend, Joe Kipp, put up a post here, but he did not try to
hold it. The next year D. D. Mitchell built Fort McKenzie, about six
miles above the Marias, on the left bank--quite a stiff fort, one
hundred and twenty by one hundred and forty feet, stockaded--and this
stuck till 1843. Then their continual troubles with the Blackfeet drove
them out. Then there was Fort Lewis, in the neighborhood, somewhere, in
1845.
"Fort Benton was put up in 1850. And as the early stockades of
Booneville and Harrodsburg and Nashville in Kentucky were on 'Dark and
bloody ground,' so ought the place where we now are standing be called
the dark and bloody ground of the Missouri River, for this indeed was a
focus of trouble and danger, even before the river trade made Benton a
tough town."
"Well, the glory of old Benton is gone!" said Rob, at last. "Just the
same, I am glad we came here. So this is all there is left of it!"
"Yes, all there is left of the one remaining bastion, or corner tower.
It was not built of timber, but of adobe, which lasted better and was as
good a defense and better. Many a time the men of Benton have flocked
down to meet the boat, wherever she was able to land; and many a wild
time was here--for in steamboat days alcohol was a large part of every
cargo. The last of the robes were traded for in alcohol, very largely.
And by 1883, after the rails had come below, the last of the hides were
stripped from the last of the innumerable herds of buffalo that Lewis
and Clark saw here, at the great fork of the road into the Rockies; and
soon the last pelt was baled from the beaver. If you go to the Blackfeet
now you find them a thinned and broken people, and the highest ambition
of their best men is to dress up in modern beef-hide finery and play
circus Indian around the park hotels.
"Well, this was their range, young excellencies, and this was the head
of the disputed ground between the Crows, Nez Perces, Flatheads, and
Shoshonis, all of whom knew good buffalo country when they saw it.
"And yet, what luck our first explorers had! They surely did have luck,
for they had good guidance of the Minnetarees among the Mandans, and
then, from the time they left the Mandans until the next fall, beyond
the Three Forks of the Missouri, they never saw an Indian of any sort!
At the Great Falls, a great hunting place, they found encampments not
more than ten days or so old, but not a soul.
"Thus endeth the lesson for to-day! I'm sorry we haven't a camp to go to
to-night instead of a hotel, but I promise to mend that matter for you
in a day or so, if Billy Williams is up from Bozeman with his pack
train, as I wired him. I said the fifteenth, and this is the thirteenth,
so we've two days for the Falls. I wish we didn't know where they were!
I wish I didn't know the Marias isn't the Missouri. I wish--well, at
least I can wish that old Fort Benton was here and the whistle of the
steamboat was blowing around the bend!"
"Don't, sir!" said Rob. "Please don't!"
"No," said John. "To-day is to-day."
"All the same," said Jesse, "all the same----"