Pathfinders of the West Part 15

To quiet their fears, Mackenzie embarked with them. Barely had they pushed out when the canoe was caught by a sucking undercurrent which the paddlers could not stem--a terrific rip told them that the canoe had struck--the rapids whirled her sideways and away she went down-stream--the men jumped out, but the current carried them to such deep water that they were clinging to the gunwales as best they could when, with another rip, the stern was torn clean out of the canoe. The blow sent her swirling--another rock battered the bow out--the keel flattened like a raft held together only by the bars. Branches hung overhead. The bowman made a frantic grab at these to stop the rush of the canoe--he was hoisted clear from his seat and dropped ash.o.r.e.

Mackenzie jumped out up to his waist in ice-water. The steersman had yelled for each to save himself; but Mackenzie shouted out a countermand for every man to hold on to the gunwales. In this fashion they were all dragged several hundred yards till a whirl sent the wreck into a shallow eddy. The men got their feet on bottom, and the wreckage was hauled ash.o.r.e. During the entire crisis the Indians sat on top of the canoe, howling with terror.

All the bullets had been lost. A few were recovered. Powder was spread out to dry; and the men flatly refused to go one foot farther.

Mackenzie listened to the revolt without a word. He got their clothes dry and their benumbed limbs warmed over a roaring fire. He fed them till their spirits had risen. Then he quietly remarked that the experience would teach them how to run rapids in the future. Men of the North--to turn back? Such a thing had never been known in the history of the Northwest Fur Company. It would disgrace them forever.

Think of the honor of conquering disaster. Then he vowed that he would go ahead, whether the men accompanied him or not. Then he set them to patching the canoe with oil-cloth and bits of bark; but large sheets of birch bark are rare in the Rockies; and the patched canoe weighed so heavily that the men could scarcely carry it. It took them fourteen hours to make the three-mile _portage_ of these rapids. The Indian from the mountain tribe had lost heart. Mackenzie and Mackay watched him by turns at night; but the fellow got away under cover of darkness, the crew conniving at the escape in order to compel Mackenzie to turn back. Finally the river wound into a large stream on the west side of the main range of the Rockies. Mackenzie had crossed the Divide.

For a week after crossing the Divide, the canoe followed the course of the river southward. This was not what Mackenzie expected. He sought a stream flowing directly westward, and was keenly alert for sign of Indian encampment where he might learn the shortest way to the Western Sea. Once the smoke of a camp-fire rose through the bordering forest; but no sooner had Mackenzie's interpreters approached than the savages fired volley after volley of arrows and swiftly decamped, leaving no trace of a trail. There was nothing to do but continue down the devious course of the uncertain river. The current was swift and the outlook cut off by the towering mountains; but in a bend of the river they came on an Indian canoe drawn ash.o.r.e. A savage was just emerging from a side stream when Mackenzie's men came in view. With a wild whoop, the fellow made off for the woods; and in a trice the narrow river was lined with naked warriors, brandishing spears and displaying the most outrageous hostility. When Mackenzie attempted to land, arrows hissed past the canoe, which they might have punctured and sunk.

Determined to learn the way westward from these Indians, Mackenzie tried strategy. He ordered his men to float some distance from the savages. Then he landed alone on the sh.o.r.e opposite the hostiles, having sent one of his interpreters by a detour through the woods to lie in ambush with fusee ready for instant action. Throwing aside weapons, Mackenzie displayed tempting trinkets. The warriors conferred, hesitated, jumped in the canoes, and came, backing stern foremost, toward Mackenzie. He threw out presents. They came ash.o.r.e and were presently sitting by his side.

From them he learned the river he was following ran for "many moons"

through the "shining mountains" before it reached the "midday sun." It was barred by fearful rapids; but by retracing the way back up the river, the white men could leave the canoe at a carrying place and go overland to the salt water in eleven days. From other tribes down the same river, Mackenzie gathered similar facts. He knew that the stream was misleading him; but a retrograde movement up such a current would discourage his men. He had only one month's provisions left. His ammunition had dwindled to one hundred and fifty bullets and thirty pounds of shot. Instead of folding his hands in despondency, Mackenzie resolved to set the future at defiance and go on. From the Indians he obtained promise of a man to guide him back. Then he frankly laid all the difficulties before his followers, declaring that he was going on alone and they need not continue unless they voluntarily decided to do so. His dogged courage was contagious. The speech was received with huzzas, and the canoe was headed upstream.

The Indian guide was to join Mackenzie higher upstream; but the reappearance of the white men when they had said they would not be back for "many moons" roused the suspicions of the savages. The sh.o.r.es were lined with warriors who would receive no explanation that Mackenzie tried to give in sign language. The canoe began to leak so badly that the boatmen had to spend half the time bailing out water; and the _voyageurs_ dared not venture ash.o.r.e for resin. Along the river cliff was a little three-cornered hut of thatched clay. Here Mackenzie took refuge, awaiting the return of the savage who had promised to act as guide. The three walls protected the rear, but the front of the hut was exposed to the warriors across the river; and the whites dared not kindle a fire that might serve as a target. Two nights were pa.s.sed in this hazardous shelter, Mackay and Mackenzie alternately lying in their cloaks on the wet rocks, keeping watch. At midnight of the third day's siege, a rustling came from the woods to the rear and the boatmen's dog set up a furious barking. The men were so frightened that they three times loaded the canoe to desert their leader, but something in the fearless confidence of the explorer deterred them. As daylight sifted through the forest, Mackenzie descried a vague object creeping through the underbrush. A less fearless man would have fired and lost all.

Mackenzie dashed out to find the cause of alarm an old blind man, almost in convulsions from fear. He had been driven from this river hut. Mackenzie quieted his terror with food. By signs the old man explained that the Indians had suspected treachery when the whites returned so soon; and by signs Mackenzie requested him to guide the canoe back up the river to the carrying place; but the old creature went off in such a palsy of fear that he had to be lifted bodily into the canoe. The situation was saved. The hostiles could not fire without wounding one of their own people; and the old man could explain the real reason for Mackenzie's return. Rations had been reduced to two meals a day. The men were still sulking from the perils of the siege when the canoe struck a stump that knocked a hole in the keel, "which," reports Mackenzie, laconically, "gave them all an opportunity to let loose their discontent without reserve." Camp after camp they pa.s.sed, which the old man's explanations pacified, till they at length came to the carrying place. Here, to the surprise and delight of all, the guide awaited them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Good Hope, Mackenzie River. Hudson's Bay Company Fort.]

On July 4, provisions were _cached_, the canoe abandoned, and a start made overland westward, each carrying ninety pounds of provisions besides musket and pistols. And this burden was borne on the rations of two scant meals a day. The way was ridgy, steep, and obstructed by windfalls. At cloud-line, the rocks were slippery as gla.s.s from moisture, and Mackenzie led the way, beating the drip from the branches as they marched. The record was twelve miles the first day. When it rained, the shelter was a piece of oil-cloth held up in an extemporized tent, the men crouching to sleep as best they could. The way was well beaten and camp was frequently made for the night with strange Indians, from whom fresh guides were hired; but when he did not camp with the natives, Mackenzie watched his guide by sleeping with him. Though the fellow was malodorous from fish oil and infested with vermin, Mackenzie would spread his cloak in such a way that escape was impossible without awakening himself. No sentry was kept at night. All hands were too deadly tired from the day's climb. Once, in the impenetrable gloom of the midnight forest, Mackenzie was awakened by a plaintive chant in a kind of unearthly music. A tribe was engaged in religious devotions to some woodland deity. Totem poles of cedar, carved with the heads of animals emblematic of family clans, told Mackenzie that he was nearing the coast tribes. Barefooted, with ankles swollen and clothes torn to shreds, they had crossed the last range of mountains within two weeks of leaving the inland river. They now embarked with some natives for the sea.

One can guess how Mackenzie's heart thrilled as they swept down the swift river--six miles an hour--past fishing weirs and Indian camps, till at last, far out between the mountains, he descried the narrow arm of the blue, limitless sea. The canoe leaked like a sieve; but what did that matter? At eight o'clock on the morning of Sat.u.r.day, July 20, the river carried them to a wide lagoon, lapped by a tide, with the seaweed waving for miles along the sh.o.r.e. Morning fog still lay on the far-billowing ocean. Sea otters tumbled over the slimy rocks with discordant cries. Gulls darted overhead; and past the canoe dived the great floundering grampus. There was no mistaking. This was the sea--the Western Sea, that for three hundred years had baffled all search overland, and led the world's greatest explorers on a chase of a will-o'-the-wisp. What Cartier and La Salle and La Verendrye failed to do, Mackenzie had accomplished.

But Mackenzie's position was not to be envied. Ten starving men on a barbarous coast had exactly twenty pounds of pemmican, fifteen of rice, six of flour. Of ammunition there was scarcely any. Between home and their leaky canoe lay half a continent of wilderness and mountains.

The next day was spent coasting the cove for a place to take observations. Canoes of savages met the white men, and one impudent fellow kept whining out that he had once been shot at by men of Mackenzie's color. Mackenzie took refuge for the night on an isolated rock which was barely large enough for his party to gain a foothold.

The savages hung about pestering the boatmen for gifts. Two white men kept guard, while the rest slept. On Monday, when Mackenzie was setting up his instruments, his young Indian guide came, foaming at the mouth from terror, with news that the coast tribes were to attack the white men by hurling spears at the unsheltered rock. The boatmen lost their heads and were for instant flight, anywhere, everywhere, in a leaky canoe that would have foundered a mile out at sea. Mackenzie did not stir, but ordered fusees primed and the canoe gummed. Mixing up a pot of vermilion, he painted in large letters on the face of the rock where they had pa.s.sed the night:--

"Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three."

The canoe was then headed eastward for the homeward trip. Only once was the explorer in great danger on his return. It was just as the canoe was leaving tide-water for the river. The young Indian guide led him full tilt into the village of hostiles that had besieged the rock.

Mackenzie was alone, his men following with the baggage. Barely had he reached the woods when two savages sprang out, with daggers in hand ready to strike. Quick as a flash, Mackenzie quietly raised his gun.

They dropped back; but he was surrounded by a horde led by the impudent chief of the attack on the rock the first night on the sea. One warrior grasped Mackenzie from behind. In the scuffle hat and cloak came off; but Mackenzie shook himself free, got his sword out, and succeeded in holding the shouting rabble at bay till his men came.

Then such was his rage at the indignity that he ordered his followers in line with loaded fusees, marched to the village, demanded the return of the hat and cloak, and obtained a peace-offering of fish as well.

The Indians knew the power of firearms, and fell at his feet in contrition. Mackenzie named this camp Rascal Village.

At another time his men lost heart so completely over the difficulties ahead that they threw everything they were carrying into the river.

Mackenzie patiently sat on a stone till they had recovered from their panic. Then he reasoned and coaxed and dragooned them into the spirit of courage that at last brought them safely over mountain and through canon to Peace River. On August 24, a sharp bend in the river showed them the little home fort which they had left four months before. The joy of the _voyageurs_ fairly exploded. They beat their paddles on the canoe, fired off all the ammunition that remained, waved flags, and set the cliffs ringing with shouts.

Mackenzie spent the following winter at Chipewyan, despondent and lonely. "What a situation, starving and alone!" he writes to his cousin. The hard life was beginning to wear down the dauntless spirit.

"I spend the greater part of my time in vague speculations... . In fact my mind was never at ease, nor could I bend it to my wishes.

Though I am not superst.i.tious, my dreams cause me great annoyance. I scarcely close my eyes without finding myself in company with the dead."

The following winter Mackenzie left the West never to return. The story of his travels was published early in the nineteenth century, and he was knighted by the English king. The remainder of his life was spent quietly on an estate in Scotland, where he died in 1820.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Mouth of the Mackenzie by the Light of the Midnight Sun.--C. W. Mathers.]

CHAPTER XI

1803-1806

LEWIS AND CLARK

The First White Men to ascend the Missouri to its Sources and descend the Columbia to the Pacific--Exciting Adventures on the Canons of the Missouri, the Discovery of the Great Falls and the Yellowstone--Lewis'

Escape from Hostiles

The spring of 1904 witnessed the centennial celebration of an area as large as half the kingdoms of Europe, that has the unique distinction of having transferred its allegiance to three different flags within twenty-four hours.

At the opening of the nineteenth century Spain had ceded all the region vaguely known as Louisiana back to France, and France had sold the territory, to the United States; but post-horse and stage of those old days travelled slowly. News of Spain's cession and France's sale reached Louisiana almost simultaneously. On March 9, 1804, the Spanish grandees of St. Louis took down their flag and, to the delight of Louisiana, for form's sake erected French colors. On March 10, the French flag was lowered for the emblem that has floated over the Great West ever since--the stars and stripes. How vast was the new territory acquired, the eastern states had not the slightest conception. As early as 1792 Captain Gray, of the ship _Columbia_, from Boston, had blundered into the harbor of a vast river flowing into the Pacific. What lay between this river and that other great river on the eastern side of the mountains--the Missouri? Jefferson had arranged with John Ledyard of Connecticut, who had been with Captain Cook on the Pacific, to explore the northwest coast of America by crossing Russia overland; but Russia had similar designs for herself, and stopped Ledyard on the way. In 1803 President Jefferson asked Congress for an appropriation to explore the Northwest by way of the Missouri. Now that the wealth of the West is beyond the estimate of any figure, it seems almost inconceivable that there were people little-minded enough to haggle over the price paid for Louisiana--$15,000,000--and to object to the appropriation required for its exploration--$2500; but fortunately the world goes ahead in spite of hagglers.

May of 1804 saw Captain Meriwether Lewis, formerly secretary to President Jefferson, and Captain William Clark of Virginia launch out from Wood River opposite St. Louis, where they had kept their men encamped all winter on the east side of the Mississippi, waiting until the formal transfer of Louisiana for the long journey of exploration to the sources of the Missouri and the Columbia. Their escort consisted of twenty soldiers, eleven _voyageurs_, and nine frontiersmen. The main craft was a keel boat fifty-five feet long, of light draft, with square-rigged sail and twenty-two oars, and tow-line fastened to the mast pole to track the boat upstream through rapids. An American flag floated from the prow, and behind the flag the universal types of progress everywhere--goods for trade and a swivel-gun. Horses were led alongsh.o.r.e for hunting, and two pirogues--sharp at prow, broad at stern, like a flat-iron or a turtle--glided to the fore of the keel boat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Captain Meriwether Lewis.]

The Missouri was at flood tide, turbid with crumbling clay banks and great trees torn out by the roots, from which keel boat and pirogues sheered safely off. For the first time in history the Missouri resounded to the Fourth of July guns; and round camp-fire the men danced to the strains of a _voyageur's_ fiddle. Usually, among forty men is one traitor, and Liberte must desert on pretence of running back for a knife; but perhaps the fellow took fright from the wild yarns told by the lonely-eyed, s.h.a.ggy-browed, ragged trappers who came floating down the Platte, down the Osage, down the Missouri, with canoe loads of furs for St. Louis. These men foregathered with the _voyageurs_ and told only too true stories of the dangers ahead. Fires kindled on the banks of the river called neighboring Indians to council. Council Bluffs commemorates one conference, of which there were many with Iowas and Omahas and Ricarees and Sioux. Pause was made on the south side of the Missouri to visit the high mound where Blackbird, chief of the Omahas, was buried astride his war horse that his spirit might forever watch the French _voyageurs_ pa.s.sing up and down the river.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Captain William Clark.]

By October the explorers were sixteen hundred miles north of St. Louis, at the Mandan villages near where Bismarck stands to-day. The Mandans welcomed the white men; but the neighboring tribes of Ricarees were insolent. "Had I these white warriors on the upper plains," boasted a chief to Charles Mackenzie, one of the Northwest Fur Company men from Canada, "my young men on horseback would finish them as they would so many wolves; for there are only two sensible men among them, the worker of iron [blacksmith] and the mender of guns." Four Canadian traders had already been ma.s.sacred by this chief. Captain Lewis knew that his company must winter on the east side of the mountains, and there were a dozen traders--Hudson Bay and Nor'westers--on the ground practising all the unscrupulous tricks of rivals, Nor'westers driving off Hudson Bay horses, Hudson Bay men driving off Nor'-westers', to defeat trade; so Captain Lewis at once had a fort constructed. It was triangular in shape, the two converging walls consisting of barracks with a loopholed bastion at the apex, the base being a high wall of strong pickets where sentry kept constant guard. Hitherto Captain Lewis had been able to secure the services of French trappers as interpreters with the Indians; but the next year he was going where there were no trappers; and now he luckily engaged an old Nor'wester, Chaboneau, whose Indian wife, Sacajawea, was a captive from the Snake tribe of the Rockies.[1] On Christmas morning, the stars and stripes were hoisted above Fort Mandan; and all that night the men danced hilariously. On New Years of 1805, the white men visited the Mandan lodges, and one _voyageur_ danced "on his head" to the uproarious applause of the savages. All winter the men joined in the buffalo hunts, laying up store of pemmican. In February, work was begun on the small boats for the ascent of the Missouri. By the end of March, the river had cleared of ice, and a dozen men were sent back to St. Louis.

At five, in the afternoon of April 7, six canoes and two pirogues were pushed out on the Missouri. Sails were hoisted; a cheer from the Canadian traders and Indians standing on the sh.o.r.e--and the boats glided up the Missouri with flags flying from foremost prow. Hitherto Lewis and Clark had pa.s.sed over travelled ground. Now they had set sail for the Unknown. Within a week they had pa.s.sed the Little Missouri, the height of land that divides the waters of the Missouri from those of the Saskatchewan, and the great Yellowstone River, first found by wandering French trappers and now for the first time explored. The current of the Missouri grew swifter, the banks steeper, and the use of the tow-line more frequent. The voyage was no more the holiday trip that it had been all the way from St. Louis. Hunters were kept on the banks to forage for game, and once four of them came so suddenly on an open-mouthed, ferocious old bear that he had turned hunter and they hunted before guns could be loaded; and the men saved themselves only by jumping twenty feet over the bank into the river.

For miles the boats had to be tracked up-stream by the tow-line. The sh.o.r.e was so steep that it offered no foothold. Men and stones slithered heterogeneously down the sliding gravel into the water. Moccasins wore out faster than they could be sewed; and the men's feet were cut by p.r.i.c.kly-pear and rock as if by knives. On Sunday, May 26, when Captain Lewis was marching to lighten the canoes, he had just climbed to the summit of a high, broken cliff when there burst on his glad eyes a first glimpse of the far, white "Shining Mountains" of which the Indians told, the Rockies, snowy and dazzling in the morning sun. One can guess how the weather-bronzed, ragged man paused to gaze on the glimmering summits.

Only one other explorer had ever been so far west in this region--young De la Verendrye, fifty years before; but the Frenchman had been compelled to turn back without crossing the mountains, and the two Americans were to a.s.sail and conquer what had proved an impa.s.sable barrier. The Missouri had become too deep for poles, too swift for paddles; and the banks were so precipitous that the men were often poised at dizzy heights above the river, dragging the tow-line round the edge of rock and crumbly cliff. Captain Lewis was leading the way one day, crawling along the face of a rock wall, when he slipped. Only a quick thrust of his spontoon into the cliff saved him from falling almost a hundred feet. He had just struck it with terrific force into the rock, where it gave him firm handhold, when he heard a voice cry, "Good G.o.d, Captain, what shall I do?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tracking Up-stream.]

Windsor, a frontiersman, had slipped to the very verge of the rock, where he lay face down with right arm and leg completely over the precipice, his left hand vainly grabbing empty air for grip of anything that would hold him back. Captain Lewis was horrified, but kept his presence of mind; for the man's life hung by a thread. A move, a turn, the slightest start of alarm to disturb Windsor's balance--and he was lost. Steadying his voice, Captain Lewis shouted back, "You're in little danger. Stick your knife in the cliff to hoist yourself up."

With the leverage of the knife, Windsor succeeded in lifting himself back to the narrow ledge. Then taking off his moccasins, he crawled along the cliff to broader foothold. Lewis sent word for the crews to wade the margin of the river instead of attempting this pa.s.s--which they did, though sh.o.r.e water was breast high and ice cold.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Typical Mountain Trapper.]

The Missouri had now become so narrow that it was hard to tell which was the main river and which a tributary; so Captain Lewis and four men went in advance to find the true course. Leaving camp at sunrise, Captain Lewis was crossing a high, bare plain, when he heard the most musical of all wilderness sounds--the far rushing that is the voice of many waters.

Far above the prairie there shimmered in the morning sun a gigantic plume of spray. Surely this was the Great Falls of which the Indians told.

Lewis and his men broke into a run across the open for seven miles, the rush of waters increasing to a deafening roar, the plume of spray to clouds of foam. Cliffs two hundred feet high shut off the view. Down these scrambled Lewis, not daring to look away from his feet till safely at bottom, when he faced about to see the river compressed by sheer cliffs over which hurled a white cataract in one smooth sheet eighty feet high. The spray tossed up in a thousand bizarre shapes of wind-driven clouds. Captain Lewis drew the long sigh of the thing accomplished. He had found the Great Falls of the Missouri.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Discovery of the Great Falls.]

Seating himself on the rock, he awaited his hunters. That night they camped under a tree near the falls. Morning showed that the river was one succession of falls and rapids for eighteen miles. Here was indeed a stoppage to the progress of the boats. Sending back word to Captain Clark of the discovery of the falls, Lewis had ascended the course of the cascades to a high hill when he suddenly encountered a herd of a thousand buffalo. It was near supper-time. Quick as thought, Lewis fired. What was his amazement to see a huge bear leap from the furze to pounce on the wounded quarry; and what was Bruin's amazement to see the unusual spectacle of a thing as small as a man marching out to contest possession of that quarry? Man and bear reared up to look at each other. Bear had been master in these regions from time immemorial. Man or beast--which was to be master now? Lewis had aimed his weapon to fire again, when he recollected that it was not loaded; and the bear was coming on too fast for time to recharge. Captain Lewis was a brave man and a dignified man; but the plain was bare of tree or brush, and the only safety was inglorious flight. But if he had to retreat, the captain determined that he _would_ retreat only at a walk. The rip of tearing claws sounded from behind, and Lewis looked over his shoulder to see the bear at a hulking gallop, open-mouthed,--and off they went, explorer and exploited, in a sprinting match of eighty yards, when the grunting roar of pursuer told pursued that the bear was gaining. Turning short, Lewis plunged into the river to mid-waist and faced about with his spontoon at the bear's nose.

A sudden turn is an old trick with all Indian hunters; the bear floundered back on his haunches, reconsidered the sport of hunting this new animal, man, and whirled right about for the dead buffalo.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fighting a Grizzly.]

It took the crews from the 15th to the 25th of June to _portage_ past the Great Falls. Cottonwood trees yielded carriage wheels two feet in diameter, and the masts of the pirogues made axletrees. On these wagonettes the canoes were dragged across the _portage_. It was hard, hot work. Grizzlies prowled round the camp at night, wakening the exhausted workers. The men actually fell asleep on their feet as they toiled, and spent half the night double-soling their torn moccasins, for the cactus already had most of the men limping from festered feet. Yet not one word of complaint was uttered; and once, when the men were camped on a green along the _portage_, a _voyageur_ got out his fiddle, and the sore feet danced, which was more wholesome than moping or poulticing.

The boldness of the grizzlies was now explained. Antelope and buffalo were carried over the falls. The bears prowled below for the carrion.

After failure to construct good hide boats, two other craft, twenty-five and thirty-three feet long, were knocked together, and the crews launched above the rapids for the far Shining Mountains that lured like a mariner's beacon. Night and day, when the sun was hot, came the boom-boom as of artillery from the mountains. The _voyageurs_ thought this the explosion of stones, but soon learned to recognize the sound of avalanche and land-slide. The river became narrower, deeper, swifter, as the explorers approached the mountains. For five miles rocks rose on each side twelve hundred feet high, sheer as a wall. Into this shadowy canon, silent as death, crept the boats of the white men, vainly straining their eyes for glimpse of egress from the watery defile. A word, a laugh, the s.n.a.t.c.h of a _voyageur's_ ditty, came back with elfin echo, as if spirits hung above the dizzy heights spying on the intruders.