The Young Alaskans on the Missouri Part 14

"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 pa.s.sed. 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 d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k. "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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k. "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 d.i.c.k, "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," a.s.sented 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 d.i.c.k. 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 d.i.c.k.

"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."