French Pathfinders in North America Part 17

About thirty mites below the Falls, he says, he visited a remarkable cave, called by the Indians Wakon-teebe, that is, the Dwelling of the Great Spirit. Within it he found "many Indian hieroglyphicks which appeared very ancient." Near it was a burying-place of the Sioux.

[4] Hennepin relates that at the Falls of St. Anthony two of the men, to the great indignation of Du Lhut when he learned of it, stole two buffalo-robes which were hung on trees as offerings to the Great Spirit. Striking natural objects seem to have been regarded by the Indians as special manifestations of divinity. It is an interesting confirmation, that Jonathan Carver relates that, at the same place, a young warrior who accompanied him threw into the stream his pipe, his tobacco, his bracelets, his neck ornaments, in short, everything of value about him, all the while smiting his breast and crying aloud to the Great Spirit for his blessing.

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Chapter XVI

THE VeRENDRYES DISCOVER THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

Verendrye's Experience as a Fur-trader.--As a Soldier.--He returns to the Forests.--His Plan for reaching the Pacific.--Tremendous Difficulties in his Way.--He reaches the Mandans.--His Sons discover the Rocky Mountains.--Alexander Mackenzie follows the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean.--He achieves a Pa.s.sage over the Mountains to the Pacific.--Note on Mandan Indians.--Mah-to-toh-pa's Vengeance.--Singular Dwellings of the Mandans.--Their b.l.o.o.d.y Ordeal.--Skin-boats.--Catlin's Fanciful Theory.

We have seen how the dream of a short route to China and the Indies inspired a long line of adventurous explorers. At the first it was hoped that the Mississippi afforded such a pa.s.sage. When it was known beyond all doubt that the Great River flows into the Gulf, not the "Western Sea," longing eyes were turned toward the western part of the continent, in the hope that some stream would be found flowing into the Pacific which would carry the keels of commerce Indiaward. The huge barrier of the Rocky Mountains was {314} not known, and it was only in the effort to reach the Pacific by water that they were discovered.

So important was the desired route considered that, in 1720, the French King sent out the noted historian of New France, Father Charlevoix, to explore westward and discover a way to the Pacific. He recommended two plans, either to follow the Missouri River to its head-waters or to push a chain of trading-posts gradually westward until the continent should be crossed. The former plan was the one actually carried out, eighty-three years later, by the famous Lewis and Clark expedition, which crossed the Rockies and followed the Columbia River to the ocean.

The second plan was the easier and less expensive, and it was the earlier to be tried. Still several years elapsed before the effort was made.

The hardy adventurer was Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de la Verendrye, son of the Governor of Three Rivers. Early experience as a fur-trader taught him to know the Indians and the hard life of the northern forests. Then came the war of the Spanish Succession, and, a loyal French subject, he left his fur-trade, hastened to Europe, asked to serve the King, and was given a commission as a lieutenant. The famous field of {315} Malplaquet came near to witnessing the end of his career. He lay on it for dead, gashed with the sabre and pierced with bullets. Still he recovered, returned to New France, and plunged again into the woods as a trader.

Being placed in command of the French outpost on Lake Nipigon, where he also carried on a brisk trade, he heard many a tale from Indians who came with furs. One of these stories fired his imagination. It was of a great river flowing westward out of a lake into water in which there was a tide. Then the Indian drew a rough map on birch bark, a copy of which is still in existence. Could this be the long-desired route to the Pacific? He hoped it and was resolved to ascertain the truth. But first he must get leave and an outfit. Having made the long and dangerous journey in his birch-bark canoe, that is, gone from Lake Nipigon into Lake Superior, traversed the entire length of the lakes, and then descended the St. Lawrence to Quebec, he laid before the French governor, Beauharnais, his plan for reaching the Pacific by the net-work of lakes and rivers north and west of Lake Superior. The Governor approved, but Verendrye, applying to the King for men and means, got nothing but a grant {316} of the monopoly of the fur-trade north and west of Lake Superior. He must raise the money himself.

With difficulty and at exorbitant rates of interest, he obtained advances from Quebec merchants and set out, June 8, 1731, with his three sons and a nephew, LaJemeraye. At the close of the season he built his first fort, St. Pierre, on Rainy River. The next year he established his second fort, St. Charles, on the southwest sh.o.r.e of the Lake of the Woods.

Terribly embarra.s.sed by lack of money, he returned to Quebec and represented his deplorable situation. The Governor reported it to the King, but could get no more from him than the renewal of the fur-trade monopoly. Undaunted, Verendrye persisted, though obliged to suspend exploration and devote himself for a while to trading, in order to secure money. There was enough to dishearten a man of less than heroic stuff. In 1736, his eldest son, with a Jesuit priest and twenty others, was surprised and ma.s.sacred by the Sioux on an island in the Lake of the Woods. Also he was hara.s.sed by creditors and compelled repeatedly to make the long and tedious journey to Montreal. In spite of all these mishaps, he pushed his posts gradually westward and by 1738 {317} he had established six, viz., St. Pierre, on Rainy Lake; St.

Charles, on the Lake of the Woods; Maurepas at the mouth of the Winnipeg River; Bourbon on the east sh.o.r.e of Lake Winnipeg; La Reine on a.s.siniboine River; and Dauphin on Lake Manitoba.

In 1738 he made a bold push for the Pacific, with fifty persons, French and Indians. After many devious wanderings, seeking a band that could conduct him to the Western Ocean, he reached the Mandans, on the upper Missouri, the singularly interesting people among whom Lewis and Clark spent the winter sixty-six years later. But, having been robbed of the presents which he had provided, he was unable to get a guide to lead him further and was obliged to return. The journey was made in midwinter and was full of frightful hardships.

His eldest surviving son, Pierre de la Verendrye, full of his father's spirit, devoted himself to the same quest. He had with him his brother and two other men. They started from Fort La Reine, reached the Mandans, and pushed on to the West. All through the summer, autumn, and early winter they toiled on, going hither and yon, beguiled by the usual fairy-tales of tribesmen. {318} At last, on New Year's day, 1743, two hundred and fifty years after the Discovery, doubtless first of all white men, they saw the Rocky Mountains from the east. This probably was the Big Horn Range, one hundred and twenty miles east of the Yellowstone Park. Finding this tremendous obstacle across their path to the Pacific, they turned back. On July 12 they reached La Prairie, to the great joy of their father, who had given them up for lost.

A later Governor of Canada not only ignored the heroic services of the Verendryes, but seized their goods, turned over their posts to another, and reduced them to poverty.

It was a long time before their work was taken up, and it remained for a man of another race to accomplish what they had so bravely striven for. Alexander Mackenzie, a Scotch Highlander by birth, was an energetic young agent of the Montreal Company in the Athabasca region.

He determined to undertake certain explorations. In June, 1789, he set out from Fort Chippewyan, on the south sh.o.r.e of Lake Athabasca, with four birch canoes and a party of white men and several Indians, including a guide and interpreter. Going down Snake River, the explorers reached Great {319} Slave Lake, then entered a heretofore unknown river, the one which now bears the name of its discoverer, and followed it until, on July 12, they sighted the Arctic Ocean, filled with ice-floes, with spouting whales between.

In October, 1792, he set out, determined this time to reach the Pacific Ocean. He left Fort Chippewyan, skirted the lake to Slave River, then ascended its southwest tributary, Peace River. He wintered on this stream in a trading-house which he had sent an advance party to build, employed in hunting and trading. In May, having sent back a large cargo of furs to Fort Chippewyan, he started up the river with a party of seven white men and two Indians. The voyagers traveled in a birch canoe twenty-five feet long, "but so light that two men could carry her on a good road three or four miles without resting." "In this slender vessel," he says, "we shipped provisions, goods for presents, arms, ammunition, and baggage, to the weight of thirty thousand pounds, and an equipage of ten people."

The difficulties and dangers were tremendous. Paddling and pushing and poling up the rocky bed of a swift stream abounding in rapids, they made slow progress. More than once the canoe {320} was broken.

Portages were often necessary. Again and again the crew, exhausted and their clothing in tatters, sullenly insisted that there was no choice but to turn back. But Mackenzie was a man of indomitable courage and all the persistency of the Scotch race. He had already shown this quality by taking the long journey and voyage from the wilds of Athabasca to London, in order to study the use of astronomical instruments, so that he might be qualified to make scientific observations. Now he would not hear of turning back.

So the discouraged party, animated by Mackenzie, pushed on, climbed over the dividing mountains, and came upon the head-waters of a stream flowing westward, the one now called Fraser River. After following it for several days, they struck off through dense forests, sometimes on dizzy trails over snow-clad mountains, until they reached a rapid river. On this they embarked in two canoes with several natives, and thus reached the ocean--_the Pacific_!

Verendrye's dream was realized at last. The continent had been spanned from East to West.

Twelve years later the same thing was done within the territory of the United States by Lewis {321} and Clark, at the head of an expedition sent out by President Jefferson. They spent the winter among the Mandan Indians, the interesting people with whom the Verendryes had come in contact. A note is added in which some information is given about them.

NOTE ON THE MANDANS

These Indians first became known to white men through the expedition of the elder Verendrye. They showed themselves hospitable and friendly to him, as they always have been to our race, and they aided his sons in their efforts to reach the Western Sea. Next we have quite full references to them in the journals of Lewis and Clark. These explorers were sent out by President Jefferson in 1803, immediately on the completion of the Louisiana Purchase, to get a better knowledge of the northern portion of the vast territory recently acquired, with a particular view to developing the fur-trade and to opening a route to the Pacific. All these ends were accomplished with a degree of success that made the enterprise one of the greatest achievements in our history. The explorers, having ascended the Missouri in their boats, and finding themselves, as winter came on, near the Mandan villages, {322} decided to remain there until the spring. Accordingly they pa.s.sed the winter, 1803-4, among these interesting tribesmen. It being a part of their prescribed duty to keep full journals of all that they experienced or saw, they have left extended accounts of the people and their customs.

Thirty-four years later George Catlin, a famous artist and student of Indian life, who spent many years in traveling among the wild tribes of the West and in describing them with pen, pencil, and brush, came among the Mandans. He was so much impressed with them as a singular and superior people that he remained among them a considerable time, painted many of their men and women, studied and made drawings of some of their singular ceremonies, and devoted a large part of his two volumes to a highly interesting account of what he saw among them.

Catlin certainly was wholly free from the silly prejudice expressed in the familiar saying, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." His two volumes, "The North American Indians," furnish "mighty interesting reading." As we accompany him in his long journeys by canoe and on horseback and read his descriptions of the tribes he visited and the warriors and chiefs he learned to know, and of whom he has left us pictures, it is a satisfaction to feel that we are traveling with a man who looked on the Indian as a human being. Sometimes we are inclined to suspect that, in the enthusiasm of his artistic nature, he idealized his subject and viewed him with a degree of sentiment as remote from the truth in one direction as {323} was the hostile prejudice of the average white man in the other. We know that he either did not see or purposely ignored certain aspects of Indian life, notably the physical dirt and the moral degradation.

When he comes to the Mandans, this disposition to make heroes of his subjects fairly runs away with him. No language is strong enough to do justice to his admiration of some of them. We easily let pa.s.s such phrases as the "wild and gentlemanly Mandans," for many observers have reported that there is a native dignity and courtesy about the true Indian. But there are other things which make it plain that Catlin, in his extravagant admiration, where his Indian friends were concerned was incapable of discriminating between the n.o.ble and the base. Here is an instance:

A certain chief of the Mandans, Mah-to-toh-pa (the Four Bears), was very friendly to Catlin, who painted his portrait, and who speaks of him in terms of unbounded admiration. He gave his artist friend a handsomely embroidered deerskin shirt on which he had depicted in Indian fashion his various achievements. One, of which he was especially proud, he recounted at length to Catlin, acting it out before him, and he in turn relates it to his readers.

Mah-to-toh-pa had a brother slain--in open fight, let us remember--by a Rickaree, who left his lance sticking in the dead man. Mah-to-toh-pa found the body, drew out the lance, and carried it to his village, where it was recognized as the property of a famous warrior named Won-ga-tap. He kept the bloodstained weapon, {324} vowing that some day he would with it avenge his brother's death. Four years pa.s.sed by, and still he nursed his wrath. Then one day he worked himself up to a frenzy and went through the village crying that the day of vengeance had come.

Off he started across the prairie alone, with a little parched corn in his pouch, went two hundred miles, traveling by night and hiding by day, until he reached the Rickaree village. Knowing it and the location of Won-ga-tap's lodge--which suggests that he had visited the place in some friendly relation--he entered at dusk and loitered about for a time, and then through rents in the covering watched Won-ga-tap smoke his last pipe and go to bed by the side of his wife. Then Mah-to-toh-pah went in, coolly seated himself by the smouldering fire, and, using the privilege of Indian hospitality, helped himself to meat that was in a kettle over the embers, and ate a hearty meal.

"Who is that man who is eating in our lodge?" asked the wife several times.

"Oh, let him alone. No doubt he is hungry," the easy-going Won-ga-tap answered.

His meal finished, the intruder helped himself to his host's pipe, filled and lighted it, and began to smoke. When he had finished, he gently pushed the coals together with his toes, so that he got a better light and was able to discern the outline of his intended victim's body. Then he rose softly, plunged his lance into Won-ga-tap's heart, s.n.a.t.c.hed off his scalp, and ran away with it and with the dripping lance.

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In a moment the Rickaree camp was in an uproar. But before pursuers were started the a.s.sa.s.sin was far out on the plains. The darkness protected him, he successfully eluded pursuit, returned safely to his home, and entered the village, triumphantly exhibiting Won-ga-tap's scalp and the fresh blood dried on his lance.

This story, which Catlin says is attested by white men who were in the Mandan village at the time, may stand as a notable instance of savage vengefulness and daring, cunning and treachery, but it will scarcely serve to make us believe in Catlin's "n.o.ble Mandan gentlemen," of whom he puts forward Mah-to-toh-pa as a conspicuous example.

When we read Lewis and Clark's account of the Mandans, we are in quite another atmosphere, not that of romance but of simple reality. They spent several months among them, on the friendliest terms, and they speak kindly of them, but do not disguise the brutality of savage life.

Between these two authorities we have ample information, from opposite points of view.

The first thing that would impress a visitor with the fact that he had come among a peculiar people, is the character of their dwellings, absolutely unlike any used by any other tribe, either of the woods or plains, except their near neighbors and friends, the Minitarees. The lodge is a circular structure, set in an excavation about two feet deep. A framework of stout posts supports a roof of poles converging toward the centre, where an opening is left for the entrance of light and the escape of smoke. On these poles brush is spread, and over this {326} earth is laid to the depth of about two feet. In this earth gra.s.s grows abundantly, and thus a Mandan village presents the appearance of an a.s.semblage of green mounds.

Lewis and Clark were much impressed with the fearlessness of the Mandan women in crossing the Missouri, even when it was quite rough, in a tub-like boat consisting of a single buffalo-hide stretched under a frame-work of wicker.[1] Catlin saw the same boat in use, and it afforded him confirmation for a peculiar theory which he advanced.

He was much surprised at the light complexion of the Mandans generally and at the fact that he actually saw some blue eyes and gray eyes among them and some whitish hair. These circ.u.mstances seemed to him to point clearly to an admixture of European blood. He wrote at a time when fanciful theories about the native Americans were much in vogue. He had read somewhere that a Welsh prince, Madoc, more than two hundred years before the time of Columbus, sailed away from his country with ten ships. By some unexplained process, he traced him to America.

Then he supposed him to ascend the Mississippi as far as the mouth of the Ohio and there to found a colony. This, being entirely cut off from communication with the mother country, was compelled to ally itself with the nearest Indians and took wives among them. From these unions sprang a mixed race, the Mandans, who eventually formed a {327} separate tribe and were gradually driven up the Missouri to the point where he found them.

There is not any doubt of the large admixture of European blood among the Mandans, and it is easily accounted for. Catlin does not seem to have known of any white visitors before Lewis and Clark. But we have seen that the Verendryes reached these people a full hundred years before Catlin's day. There is every reason for believing that, from that time, white hunters and traders never ceased to visit them. These Indians being, from the first, very hospitable and friendly, their villages were favorite resorts for fur-traders, who took up their abode among them for several years at a time and married there. One can easily see that, in the course of a hundred years, there would be several generations of mixed blood, and that, through inter-marriages, there would probably be few families whose color would not be lighter in consequence. The persons whose peculiar whitish hair Catlin noticed, undoubtedly were albinos, a cla.s.s of persons in whom the natural coloring of the hair is wanting and the eyes are red or pink.

The Mandans probably are nothing more than an interesting tribe of Indians who, through long intermingling with the white race, have undergone considerable lightening of their original color.

A year after Catlin's visit his Mandan friends experienced a frightful calamity. A trading steamboat brought the small-pox to them, and, as happened in the case of many other tribes in the West, its ravages were fearful. Not being protected by vaccination, and knowing nothing {328} of the treatment of the disease, the poor creatures died horribly. Not a few, in the height of their fever, threw themselves into the Missouri and so found a quicker and easier death. Nearly the whole tribe perished.

The remnant, along with that of their long-time friends and neighbors, the Minitarees, may be found to-day at Fort Berthold, in North Dakota.