The Young Alaskans on the Missouri Part 16

"Now, I knew Joe Kipp very well and often met him on the Blackfeet Reservation. He lived in a big frame house there, had a bathtub and a Chinaman cook, and showed his Indians how to 'follow the path of the white man.'

"But what I want you to remember is this: Joe Kipp had his Mandan mother with him until she died. I have seen her, too, a very tall, old woman, and wild as a hawk. Joe built her a little cabin all her own, where no one else ever went. In her little cabin she spent her last years as she had lived in her earlier days among the Mandans, making moccasins for Joe, decorating tobacco pouches and fire bags with beads and porcupine quills. I have a fire bag of hers that Joe gave me, and I prize it very much. She no longer had the buffalo, but on the rafters of her lodge she had her dried meat hanging, and the interior was something no man living will see again.

"Joe Kipp's Mandan mother was the last living soul of the pure-blood Mandan tribe, one of the most curious and puzzling ones of the West--they were a light-colored people, the children with light eyes; no one knows how they came on the Missouri. But the smallpox got them almost all. They went crazy, jumped in the river--died--pa.s.sed.

"Well, Joe's mother, so he said, was the last, a very old woman, I presume nearly a hundred then. Often she would take her blanket and go out on a hilltop and sit there motionless hours at a time, with her blanket over her face--thinking, thinking, I presume, over the days that you and I are studying together now.

"And just a little while ago I heard of Joe Kipp's death, too. His mother died some years earlier. So that is some Mandan history which I presume even our Mandan friend here never has heard before--about the last of the Mandans, who came down, broken and helpless, even into our own time."

"Don't!" suddenly said Rob. "Please don't! It makes me sad."

They fell silent as presently each found his way to his blankets.

CHAPTER XVII

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 pa.s.sable 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 d.i.c.k.

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 Ga.s.s 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 s.p.a.cious. I measured the one I lodged in, and found it 90 feet from the door to the opposite side. The whole s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mference, 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 gra.s.s to eat."

"Yes," remarked Uncle d.i.c.k, "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 d.i.c.k 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 repet.i.tion 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 d.i.c.k. "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 d.i.c.k. "St. Louis is to-day the greatest fur market in the world, though now skunk and c.o.o.n 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."