CAMBRIDGE
PRINTED FOR JOHN B. WYETH.
1833.
A
contented mind is a continual feast; but entire satisfaction has never
been procured by wealth however enormous, or ambition however successful.
True happiness is to
no place confin'd, But still is found in a contented mind.
OREGON EXPEDITION
In order to understand this Oregon Expedition, it is necessary to say, that
thirty years ago (1803), PRESIDENT JEFFERSON recommended to Congress to
authorize competent officers to explore the river Missouri from its mouth to
its source, and by crossing the mountains to seek the best water communication
thence to the Pacific Ocean. This arduous task was undertaken by Captain M.
Lewis and Lieutenant W. Clarke of the first regiment of infantry. They were
accompanied by a select party of soldiers, and arrived at the Missouri in May,
1804, and persisted in their novel and difficult task into the year 1806, and
with such success as to draw from President Jefferson the following testimonial
of their heroic services, viz. "The expedition of Messrs. LEWIS &
CLARKE, for exploring the river Missouri, and the best communication from that
to the Pacific Ocean, has had all the success which could be expected;
and for which arduous service they deserve well of their country."
The object of
this enterprise was to confer in a friendly manner with the Indian Nations
throughout their whole journey, with a view to establish a friendly and
equitable commerce with them, on principles emulating those that marked and
dignified the settlement of Pennsylvania by William Penn. It was beyond doubt
that the President and Congress sincerely desired to treat the Indians with
kindness and justice, and to establish peace, order, and good neighbourhood
with all the savage tribes with whom they came in contact, and not to carry war
or violence among any of them who appeared peaceably disposed.
A few years
before the period of which we have spoken, our government had acquired by
purchase the vast and valuable Territory of Louisiana from the renowned
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, at that time the Chief of the French Nation. Considering
his previous intentions, and actual preparations under his famous General Bernadotte,
nothing could be more fortunate for these United States than this purchase. Our
possession of Louisiana was so grievous a sore to the very jealous Spaniards,
that they have, till lately, done all in their power to debar and mislead us
from pursuing discoveries in that quarter, or in the Arkansas, Missouri, or Oregon.
Yet few or none of them probably believed that we should, during the present
generation, or the next, attempt the exploration of the distant Oregon
Territory, which extends from the Rocky Mountains to the shores of the
Pacific Ocean, or in other words, from the Missouri and Yellow Stone rivers to
that of the river Columbia or Oregon which pours into the Ocean by a wide mouth
at the immense distance from us of about four thousand miles; yet one and
twenty men, chiefly farmers and a few mechanics, had the hardihood to undertake
it, and that too with deliberation and sober calculation. But what will not a
New-England man undertake when honor and interest are the objects before him?
Have not the people of that sand-bank, Nantucket, redeemed it from the ocean,
and sailed round Cape Horn in pursuit of whales for their oil, and seals for
their skins? A score of our farmers seeing that Nantucket and New Bedford had
acquired riches and independence by traversing the sea to the distant shores of
the Pacific, determined to do something like it by land. Their ardor seemed to
have hidden from their eyes the mighty difference between the facility of
passing in a ship with the aid of sails, progressing day and night, by skilfully
managing the winds and the helm, and that of a complicated wagon upon wheels,
their journey to be over mountains and rivers, and through hostile tribes of
savages who dreaded and hated the sight of a white man.
This novel
expedition was not however the original or spontaneous notion of Mr. Nathaniel
J. Wyeth, nor was it entirely owing to the publications of Lewis & Clarke
or Mackenzie. Nor was it entirely owing to the enterprise of Messrs. Barbell,
Hatch, and Bulfinch, who fitted out two vessels that sailed from Boston in
1787, commanded by Captains Kendrick and Gray, which vessels arrived at Nootka
in September, 1788. They were roused to it by the writings of Mr. Hall J.
Kelly, who had read all the books he could get on the voyages and travels in
Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, until he had heated his mind to a degree
little short of the valorous Knight of La Mancha, that is to say, he believed
all he read, and was firm in the opinion that an Englishman and an American, or
either, by himself, could endure and achieve any thing that any man could do
with the same help, and farther, that a New-England man or "Yankee,"
could with less. That vast region, which stretches from between the east of the
Mississippi, and south of the Lakes Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and
Ontario, was too narrow a space for the enterprise of men born and bred
within a mile or two of the oldest University in the United States. Whatever be
the true character of the natives of New England, one thing must be allowed
them, that of great and expansive ideas,-- beyond, far beyond the generality of
the inhabitants of the small Island of Britain. I say small, for if that Island
should be placed in the midst of these United States, it would hardly form more
than a single member of our extended republic. That vast rivers, enormous
mountains, tremendous cataracts, with an extent corresponding to the hugeness
of the features of America, naturally inspire men with boundless ideas, few
will doubt. This adventurous disposition, at the same time, will as naturally
banish from the mind what the newlight doctrine of Phrenology calls the
disposition bump of Inhabitiveness, or an inclination to stay at home,
and in its place give rise to a roaming, wandering inclination, which, some how
or other, may so affect the organs of vision, and of hearing, as to debar a
person from perceiving what others may see, the innumerable difficulties in the
way. Mr. Hall J. Kelly's writings operated like a match applied to the
combustible matter accumulated in the mind of the energetic Nathaniel J. Wyeth,
which reflected and multiplied the flattering glass held up to view by the
ingenious and well disposed schoolmaster.
Mr. Nathaniel J.
Wyeth had listened with peculiar delight to all the flattering accounts from
the Western regions, and that at a time when he was surrounded with apparent
advantages, and even enviable circumstances. He was born and bred near the
borders of a beautiful small Lake, as it would be called in Great Britain; but
what we in this country call a large Pond; because we generally give the name
of Lakes only to our vast inland seas, some of which almost rival in size the
Caspian and Euxine in the old world. It seems that he gave entire credit to the
stories of the wonderful fertility of the soil on the borders of the Ohio,
Missouri, the river Platte, and the Oregon, with the equally wonderful
healthfulness of the climate. We need not wonder that a mind naturally ardent
and enterprising should become too enthusiastic to pursue the laborious routine
of breaking up and harrowing the hard and stubborn soil of Massachusetts within
four miles of the sea, where the shores are bounded and fortified by stones and
rocks, which extend inland, lying just below the surface of the ground, while
the regions of the West were represented as standing in need of very little
laborious culture, such was the native vigor of its black soil. The spot where
our adventurer was born and grew up, had many peculiar and desirable advantages
over most others in the county of Middlesex. Besides rich pasturage, numerous
dairies, and profitable orchards, and other fruit trees, it possessed the
luxuries of well cultivated gardens of all sorts of culinary vegetables, and
all within three miles of the Boston Market House, and two miles of the largest
live-cattle market in New England. All this, and more too, had not sufficient
attractions to retain Mr. Wyeth in his native town and county.
Besides these
blessings, I shall add another. The Lake I spoke of, commonly called Fresh
Pond, is a body of delightful water, which seems to be the natural head or
source of all the numerous underground rivers running between it and the
National Navy Yard at Charlestown, which is so near to the city of Boston as to
be connected to it by a bridge; for wherever you sink a well, between the body
of water just mentioned, you strike a pelucid vein of it at from nineteen to
twenty-two feet depth from the surface. With the aforesaid Lake or Pond is
connected another not quite so large, but equally beautiful. Around these
bodies of inosculating waters, are well cultivated farms and a number of
gentlemen's country-seats, forming a picture of rural beauty and plenty not
easily surpassed in Spring, Summer, and Autumn; and when winter has frozen the
lakes and all the rivers, this spot has another and singular advantage; for our
adventurer sold the water of this pond; which was sent to the
West-Indian Islands, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and other places south of this;
which is so much of a singularity as to require explanation.
In our very
coldest weather, January and February, the body of water we spoke of is almost
every year frozen to the thickness of from eighteen inches to two feet,-
sometimes less, and very rarely more. It is then sawed into cubes of the size
just mentioned, and deposited in large store-houses, and carted thence every
month in the year, even through the dog-days, in heavy teams drawn by oxen and
horses to the wharves in Boston, and put on board large and properly
constructed vessels, and carried into the hot climates already mentioned. The
heavy teams five, or six, or more, close following each other, day and night,
and even through the hottest months, would appear incredible to a stranger.
Here was a traffic without any drawback, attended with no other charge than the
labor of cutting and transporting the article; for the pond belonged to no man,
any more than the air which hung above it. Both belonged to mankind. No one
claimed any personal property in it, or control over it from border to border.
A clearer profit can hardly imagined. While the farmer was ploughing his
ground, manuring and planting it, securing his well-tended crop by fencing, and
yet after all his labor, the Hessian-fly, the canker or slug worm, or some
other destructive insect, or some untimely frost, as was the case last winter,
might lay waste all his pains and cut off all his expectations. The only risk
to which the Ice-merchant was liable was a blessing to most of the community; I
mean the mildness of a winter that should prevent his native lake from freezing
a foot or two thick. Our fishermen have a great advantage over the farmer in
being exempt from fencing, walling, manuring, taxation, and dry seasons; and
only need the expence of a boat, line, and hook, and the risk of life and
health; but from all these the Ice-man is in a manner entirely exempted; and
yet the Captain of this Oregon Expedition seemed to say, All this availeth me
nothing, so long as I read books in which I find, that by only going about four
thousand miles, over land, from the shore of our Atlantic to the
shore of the Pacific, after we have there entrapped and killed the
beavers and otters, we shall be able, after building vessels for the purpose,
to carry our most valuable peltry to China and Cochin China, our seal-skins to
Japan, and our superfluous grain to various Asiatic ports, and lumber to the
Spanish settlements on the Pacific; and to become rich by underworking and
underselling the people of Hindostan; and, to crown all, to extend far and wide
the traffic in oil by killing tame whales on the spot, instead of sailing round
the stormy region of Cape Horn.
All these
advantages and more too were suggested to divers discontented and impatient
young men. Talk to them of the great labor, toil, and risk, and they would turn
a deaf ear to you: argue with them, and you might as well reason with a
snow-storm. Enterprising young men run away with the idea that the farther
they go from home, the surer they will be of making a fortune. The original
projector of this golden vision first talked himself into the visionary scheme,
and then talked twenty others into the same notion. Some of their neighbours
and well-wishers thought differently from them; and some of the oldest, and
most thoughtful, and prudent endeavoured to dissuade them from so very ardous
and hazardous an expedition. But young and single men are for tempting the
untried scene; and when either sex has got a notion of that sort, the more you
try to dissuade them, the more intent they are on their object. Nor is this
bent of mind always to be censured, or wondered at. Were every man to be
contented to remain in the town in which he was born, and to follow the trade
of his father, there would be an end to improvement, and a serious impediment
to spreading population. It is difficult to draw the exact line between
contentment, and that inactivity which approaches laziness. The disposition
either way seems stamped upon us by nature, and therefore innate. This
is certainly the case with birds and beasts - the wild geese emigrate late in
the Autumn to a southern climate, and return again in the Spring to a northern
one, while the owl and several other birds remain all their lives near where
they were hatched; whereas man is not so much confined by a natural bias to his
native home. He can live in all climates from the equator to very near the
dreary poles, which is not the case with other animals; and it would seem that
nature intended he should live anywhere; - for whereas other animals are
restricted in their articles of food, some living wholly on flesh, and others
wholly on vegetables, man is capable of feeding upon every thing that is
eatable by any creature, and of mixing every article together, and varying them
by his knowledge and art of cookery, - a knowledge and skill belonging to man
alone. Hence it appears that Providence, who directs everything for the
best, intended that man should wander over the globe, inhabit every region, and
dwell wherever the sun could shine upon him, and where water could be obtained
for his use.
So far from
deriding the disposition to explore unknown regions, we should consider
judicious travellers as so many benefactors of mankind. It is most commonly a
propensity that marks a vigorous intellect, and a benevolent heart. The conduct
of the Spaniards, when they conquered Mexico and Peru with the sole view of
robbing them of their gold and silver, and of forcing them to abandon their
native religion, has cast an odium on those first adventurers upon this
continent and their first enterprises in India have stigmatized the Dutch and
the English; nor were our own forefathers, who left England to enjoy religious
freedom, entirely free from the stain of injustice and cruelty towards the
native Indians.- Let us therefore in charity, nay, in justice, speak cautiously
of what may seem to us censurable in the first explorers of uncivilized
countries; and if we should err in judgment, let it be on the side of
commendation.
Mr. Wyeth, or as we
shall hereafter call him, Captain Wyeth, as being leader of the Band of
the Oregon adventurers, after having inspired twenty-one persons with his own
high hopes and expectations (among whom was his own brother, Dr. Jacob Wyeth,
and a gun-smith, a black-smith, two carpenters, and two fishermen, the rest
being farmers and laborers, brought up to no particular trade) was ready, with
his companions, to start off to the Pacific Ocean, the first of March, 1832, to
go from Boston to the mouth of Columbia river by land.
I was the
youngest of the company, not having attained my twentieth year; but, in the
plentitude of health and spirits, I hoped every thing, believed every thing my
kinsman, the Captain, believed and said, and all doubts and fears were
banished. The Captain used to convene us every Saturday night at his house for
many months previous to our departure, to arrange and settle the plan of our
future movements, and to make every needful preparation; and such were his
thoughtfulness and vigilance, that it seemed to us nothing was forgotten and
every thing necessary provided. Our three vehicles, or wagons, if we may call
by that name a unique contrivance, half boat, and half carriage, may be
mentioned as an instance of our Captain's talents for snug contrivance. It was
a boat of about thirteen feet long, and four feet wide, of a shape partly of a
canoe, and partly of a gondola. It was not calked with tarred oakum, and payed
with pitch, lest the rays of the sun should injure it while upon wheels; but it
was nicely jointed, and dovetailed. The boat part was firmly connected with the
lower, or axletree, or wheel part; - the whole was so constructed that the four
wheels of it were to be taken off when we came to a river, and placed in the
wagon, while the tongue or shaft was to be towed across by a rope. Every thing
was as light as could be consistent with safety. Some of the Cambridge wags
said it was a boat begot upon a wagon,- a sort of mule, neither horse nor ass,-
a mongrel, or as one of the collegians said it was a thing amphibious,
anatomically constructed like some equivocal animals, allowing it to crawl upon
the land, or to swim on the water; and he therefore thought it ought to be
denominated an amphibium. This would have gone off very well, and to the
credit of the learned collegian, had not one of the gang, who could hardly
write his own name, demurred at it; because he said that it reflected not back
the honor due to the ingenious, contriver of the commodious and truly original
vehicle; and for his part, he thought that if they meant to give it a
particular name, that should redound to the glory of the inventor, it ought to
be called a Nat-wye-thium; and this was instantaneously agreed to by
acclamation! Be that as it may, the vehicle did not disgrace the inventive
genius of New England. This good-humored raillery, shows the opinion of
indifferent people, merely lookers-on. The fact was, the generality of the
people in Cambridge considered it a hazardous enterprise, and considerably
notional. About this time there appeared some well written essays in the Boston
newspapers, to show the difficulty and impracticability of the scheme,
purporting to doubt the assertions of Mr. Hall J. Kelly respecting the value
and pleasantness of the Oregon territory. The three vehicles contained a gross
of axes, a variety of articles, or "goods" so called,
calculated for the Indian market, among which vermilion and other paints were
not forgotten, glass beads, small looking-glasses, and a number of tawdry
trinkets, cheap knives, buttons, nails, hammers, and a deal of those articles,
on which young Indians of both sexes set a high value, and white men little or
none. Such is the spirit of trade and traffic, from the London and Amsterdam
merchant, down to an Indian trader and a yankee tin-ware man in his jingling
go-cart; in which he travels through Virginia and the Carolinas to vend his
wares, and cheat the Southerners, and bring home laughable anecdotes of their
simplicity and ignorance, to the temporary disgrace of the common people of the
Northern and Eastern part of the Union, where a travelling tin-man dare hardly
show himself, - and yet is held up in the South as the real New-England
character, and this by certain white people who know the use of letters!
The company were
uniform in their dress. Each one wore a coarse woollen jacket and pantaloons, a
striped cotton shirt, and cowhide boots: every man had a musket, most of them
rifles, all of them bayonets in a broad belt, together with a large clasped
knife for eating and common purposes. The Captain and one or two more added
pistols; but every one had in his belt a small axe. This uniformity had a
pleasing effect, which, together with their curious wagons, was noticed with
commendation in the Baltimore newspapers, as a striking contrast with the
family emigrants of husband, wife, and children, who have for thirty years and
more passed on to the Ohio, Kentucky, and other territories. - The whole bore
an aspect of energy, good contrivance, and competent means. I forgot to mention
that we carried tents, camp-kettles, and the common utensils for cooking
victuals, as our plan was to live like soldiers, and to avoid, as much as
possible, inns and taverns. The real and avowed object of this hardy-looking
enterprise was to go to the river Columbia, otherwise called the river Oregon,
or river of the West, which empties by a very wide mouth into the
Pacific Ocean, and there and thereabouts commence a fur trade by trafficking
with the Indians, as well as beaver and other hunting by ourselves. We went
upon shares, and each one paid down so much; and our association was to last
during five years. Each man paid our Leader forty dollars. Captain Wyeth was
our Treasurer, as well as Commander; and all the expenses of our travelling on
wheels, and by water in steam-boats, were defrayed by our Leader, to whom we
all promised fidelity and obedience. For twenty free-born New-England men,
brought up in a sort of Indian freedom, to be bound together to obey a leader
in all things reasonable, without something like articles of war, was,
to say the least of it, a hazardous experiment. The Captain and crew of a
Nantucket whaling ship came nearest to such an association; for in this case
each man runs that great risk of his life, in voluntarily attacking and killing
a whale, which could not be expected from men hired by the day, like soldiers;
so much stronger does association for gain operate, than ordinary wages. As
fighting Indians from behind trees and rocks is next, in point of courage, to
attacking a whale, the monarch of the main, in his own element, a common
partnership is the only scheme for achieving and securing such dangerous
purposes.
We left the city
of Boston, 1st of March, 1832, and encamped on one of the numerous islands in
its picturesque harbour, where we remained ten days, by way of inuring
ourselves to the tented field; and on the 11th of the same month we hoisted
sail for Baltimore, where we arrived after a passage of fifteen days, not
without experiencing a snow-storm, severe cold, and what the landsmen
considered a hard gale, at which I, who had been one voyage to sea, did not
wonder. It made every man on board look serious; and glad were we to be set on
shore at the fair city of Baltimore, in which are to be found a great number of
merchants, traders, and mechanics from different parts of New England, and
where of course there are none, or very few, of those ridiculous prejudices
against what they call Yankees, that are observable in Virginia and the
Carolinas.
At Baltimore our
amphibious carriages excited great attention, and I may add, our whole company
was an object of no small curiosity and respect. This, said they, is "Yankee
all over!" - bold enterprise, neatness, and good contrivance. As we
carefully avoided the expense of inns and taverns, we marched two miles out of
Baltimore, and there encamped during four days; and then we put our wagons into
the cars on the rail-road; which extends from thence sixty miles, which
brought us to the foot of the Alleghany mountains. Quitting the rail-road at
the foot of the Alleghany, we encountered that mountain. Here we experienced a
degree of inhospitality not met with among the savages. The Innkeepers, when
they found that we came from New England, betrayed an unwillingness to
accommodate Yankees, from a ridiculous idea, that the common people, so
nicknamed, were too shrewd at a bargain and trading, for a slow and
straight-forward Dutchman; for the inhabitants of this mountainous region, were
generally sons and grandsons of the Dutch and German first settlers; and it
cannot be denied and concealed, that the New England land-jobbers were in their
bargains too hard for the torpid Dutchman, who, it is true, loved money as much
as any people, yet when they, or their fathers had been the sufferers from a
set of roving sharpers, it is no wonder that an hereditary prejudice should
descend with exaggeration and aggravation from father to son, and that their
resentment should visit their innocent sons to the third and fourth generation.
No one pretends to mention any fact or deed, in which those Dutch foreigners
were defrauded of their rights and dues; and all that can be, with truth, said,
was, that the land-speculators from Connecticut and Massachusetts were to
New-England what Yorkshire men are thought to be to the rest of the people of
England, a race more sharp and quick-sighted than their neighbours,and with a
sort of constitutional good humor, called fun, they could twist that
uneducated progeny of a German stock around their fingers; - hence their
reluctance to have any thing to do with men, whose grand-fathers were too
knowing for them. You never hear the French or the English complaining of the
over-shrewdness of the New England people. They accord very well together, and
very frequently intermarry. No, it is the Dutch, and the descendants of
transported convicts, who sneer at those they call Yankees, whom their fathers
feared, and of course hated.
At one public
house on the mountains near which we halted, the master of it, learning that we
came from Boston, refused us any refreshment and lodging. He locked up his
bar-room, put the key in his pocket, went out, and came back with four or five
of his neighbours, when the disagreement ran so high, that the tavern-keeper
and the Yankee Captain each seized his rifle. The latter pointing to the
other's sign before his door, demanded both lodging and refreshment, as
the legal condition of his tavern-license; and the dispute ended in our
Captain's sleeping in the house with three of his party, well armed, determined
to defend their persons, and to insist on their rights as peaceable and
unoffending travellers, while the rest of the company bivouacked near their
wagons, and reposed themselves, like veteran soldiers, in their tents and
wagons.
We gladly departed
from the inhospitable Alleghany or Apalachian mountains, which extend from the
river St. Lawrence to the confines of Georgia, and which run nearly parallel to
the sea-shore from sixty to one hundred and thirty miles from it, and dividing
the rivers, which flow into the Atlantic on the east, from those that run into
the lakes and into the Mississippi on the west. The part we passed was in the
state of Pennsylvania. Our next stretch was for the river Monongahela, where we
took the steamboat for - Pittsburg. This town has grown in size and
wealth, in a few years, surprisingly. It is two hundred and thirty miles from
Baltimore; three hundred from Philadelphia. It is built on a point of land
jutting out towards the river Ohio, and washed on each side by the Alleghany
and Monongahela, which rivers uniting are lost in the noble Ohio. It was
originally a fortress built by the French, called Fort du Quesne; being
afterwards taken by the English in 1759, it was called fort Pitt, in
honor of the famous William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, under
whose administration it was taken from the French, together with all Canada. On
this spot a city has been reared by the Americans, bearing the name of Pittsburg,
which has thriven in a surprising manner by its numerous manufactories in
glass, as well as in all the metals in common use. To call it the Birmingham of
America is to underrate its various industry; and to call the English
Birmingham Pittsburg, would be to confer upon that town additional honor; not
but what the British Birmingham is by far the most pleasant place to live in.
Pittsburg is the region of iron and fossil coal, of furnaces, glass-works, and
a variety of such like manufactures. This town has somewhat the color of a
coal-pit, or of a black-smith's shop. The wonder is, that any gentleman of
property should ever think of building a costly dwelling-house, with
corresponding furniture, in the coal region of the western world; but there is
no disputing de gustibus - Chacun a son gout. The rivers and the surrounding
country are delightful, and the more so from the contrast between them and that
hornet's nest of bustle and dirt, the rich capital. Thousands of miserable
culprits are doomed to delve in deep mines of silver, gold, and quicksilver
among the Spaniards for their crimes; but here they are all freemen, who choose
to breathe smoke, and swallow dirt, for the sake of clean dollars and shining
eagles. Hence it is that the Pittsburgh workmen appear, when their faces are
washed, with the ruddiness of high health, the plenitude of good spirits, and
the confidence of freemen.
From the busy
city of thriving Pittsburg our next important movement was down the Ohio. We
accordingly embarked in a very large steam-boat called The Freedom; and soon
found ourselves, bag and baggage very much at our ease and satisfaction, on
board a truly wonderful floating inn, hotel, or tavern, for such are our
steam-boats. Nothing of the kind can surpass the beauty of this winding river,
with its fine back-ground of hills of all shapes,and colors, according to the
advancement of vegetation from the shrubs to the tallest trees. But the
romantic scenery on both sides of the Ohio is so various and so captivating to
a stranger, that it requires the talents of a painter to give even a faint idea
of the picture; and the effect on my mind was, not to estimate them as I ought,
but to feed my deluded imagination with the belief that we should find on the
Missouri, and on the Rocky Mountains, and Columbia river, object as much finer
than the Ohio afforded, as this matchless river exceeded our Merrimac or
Kennebeck; and so it is with the youth of both sexes; not satisfied with the
present gifts of nature, they pant after the untried scene, which
imagination is continually bodying forth, and time as constantly dissipating.
The distance from
Pittsburg to the Mississippi is about one thousand miles. Hutchins estimated it
at one thousand one hundred and eighty-eight, - Dr. Drake at only nine hundred
and forty-nine. Wheeling is a town of some importance. Here the great national
road into the interior from the city of Washington, meets that of Zanesville,
Chillicothe, Columbus, and Cincinnati. It is the best point to aim at in very
low stages of the water, and from thence boats may go at all seasons of the
year. We passed Marietta, distinguished for its remarkable remains of mounds,
and works, resembling modern fortifications, but doubtless the labor of the
ancient aboriginals, of whom there is now no existing account; but by these
works, and articles found near them, they must have belonged to a race of men
farther advanced in arts and civilization than the present Indian in that
region, - a people who, we may well suppose, were the ancestors of the
Mexicans. Yet we see at this time little more than log-houses belonging to
miserable tenants of white people. All the sugar used by the people here is
obtained from the maple tree. Fossil coal is found along the banks. There is a
creek pouring forth Petroleum, about one hundred miles from Pittsburg on
the Alleghany, called Oil Creek, which will blaze on the application of
a match. This is not uncommon in countries abounding in bituminous coal. Nitre
is found wherever there are suitable caves and caverns for its collection. The
people here are rather boisterous in their manners, and intemperate in their
habits, by what we saw and heard, more so than on the other side of the river
where slavery is prohibited. Indeed slavery carries a black moral mark with it
visible on those whose skins are naturally of a different color; and Mr.
Jefferson's opinion of the influence of slavery on the whites, justifies our
remark.
We stopped one
day and night at the flourishing town of Cincinnati, the largest city in
the Western country, although, laid out so recently as 1788. It is twenty miles
above the mouth of the Great Miami, and four hundred and sixty five miles below
Pittsburg. It appears to great advantage from the river, the ground inclining
gradually to the water. Three of us had an evidence of that by a mischievous
trick for which we deserved Punishment. We were staring about the fine city
that has risen up with a sort of rapid, mushroom growth, surprising to every
one who sees it, and who considers that it is not more than forty years old. In
the evening we went into a public house, where we treated ourselves with that
sort of refreshment which inspires fun, frolic, and mischief. We remained on
shore till so late an hour that every body appeared to have gone to bed, when
we set out to return to our steam-boat. In our way to it we passed by a store,
in the front of which stood three barrels of lamp-oil, at the head of a fine
sloping street. The evil spirit of mischief put it into our heads to set them a
rolling down the inclined plane to the river. No sooner hinted, than executed.
We set all three a running, and we ran after them; and what may have been lucky
for us, they were recovered next day whole. Had there been legal inquisition
made for them, we had determined to plead character, that we were from
Boston, the land of steady habits and good principles, and that it must have
been some gentlemen Southerners, with whose characters for nightly frolics, we,
who lived within sound of the bell of the University of Cambridge were well
acquainted. The owners of the oil came down to the steam-boat, and carried back
their property without making a rigid examination for the offenders -, without
suspecting that prudent New-England young men would indulge in a wanton piece
of fun, where so much was at stake. But John Bull and Jonathan are queer
fellows.
From Cincinnati
to St. Louis, we experienced some of those disagreeable occurrences, that
usually happen to democratical adventurers. Our Captain, to lessen the expenses
of the expedition, had bargained with the Captain of the steam-boat, that we of
his band should assist in taking on board wood from the shore, to keep our
boilers from cooling. Although every one saw the absolute necessity of the
thing, for our common benefit and safety, yet some were for demurring at it, as
not previously specified and agreed upon. Idleness engenders mutiny oftener
than want. In scarcity and in danger men cling together like gregarious
animals; but as soon as an enterprising gang can sit down, as in a steam-boat,
with nothing to do but to find fault, they are sure to become discontented, and
discontent indulged leads to mutiny. Whatever I thought then, I do not think
now that Captain Wyeth was to blame for directing his followers to aid in wooding;
nor should the men have grumbled at it. I now am of opinion that our aiding in
wooding the steam-boat was right, reasonable, and proper. Every man of us,
except the surgeon of the company, Dr. Jacob Wyeth, ought, on every principle
of justice and generosity, to have given that assistance.
Our navigation
from Cincinnati to St. Louis was attended with circumstances new, interesting,
and very often alarming. Passing the rapids of the Ohio, or falls as
they are called, between the Indiana territory and Kentucky, was sufficiently
appalling to silence all grumbling. These falls, or rapids are in the vicinity
of Louisville, Jeffersonville, Clarksville, and Shipping-port, and are really
terrific to an inexperienced farmer or mechanic. Our Hellgate in Long-Island
Sound is a common brook compared with them; and when we had passed through them
into the Mississippi, the assemblage of trees in the river, constituting snags
and sawyers, offered themselves as a species of risk and danger, which none of
us had ever calculated on or dreamt of. We knew that there was danger in great
storms, of huge trees blowing down on one's head; and that those who took
shelter under them in a thunder-storm, risked their lives from lightning; but
to meet destruction from trees in an immense river, seemed to us a danger of
life, which we had not bargained for, and entirely out of our agreement and
calculation. We had braced ourselves up only against the danger of hostile
Indians, and enraged beasts, which we meant to war against. Beyond that, all
was smooth water to us. The truth of the matter is, - the men whom Captain
Wyeth had collected were not the sort of men for such an expedition. They were
too much on an equality to be under strict orders like soldiers. Lewis &
Clarke were very fortunate in the men they had under them. Major Long's company
was, in a great degree military, and yet three of his soldiers deserted him at
one time, and a fourth soon after.
On the 18th of
April, 1832, we arrived at St. Louis. As we had looked forward to this town, as
a temporary resting place, we entered it in high spirits, and pleased ourselves
with a notion that the rest of our way till we should come to the Rocky
Mountains would be, if not down hill, at least on a level: but we counted
without our host.
St. Louis was founded by a Frenchman named Peter la Clade
in 1764, eighty-four years after the establishment of Fort Creve-coeur on the
Illinois river; and inhabited entirely by Frenchmen and the descendants of
Frenchmen, who had carried on for the most part a friendly and lucrative trade
with the Indians. But since the vast Western country has been transferred to
the United States, its population has been rapidly increased by numerous
individuals and families from different parts of the Union; and its business
extended by enterprising mechanics and merchants from the New-England States;
and its wealth greatly augmented. The old part of St. Louis has a very
different aspect from that of Cincinnati, where every thing appears neat, and
new, and tasteful; as their public buildings, their theatre, and spacious
hotels, not forgetting Madam Trollope's bazar, or, as it is commonly called,
"Trollope's Folly," as well as its spacious streets, numerous
coaches, and other marks of rapid wealth, and growing luxury. As St. Louis has
advanced in wealth, magnitude, and importance, it has gradually changed the
French language and manners, and assumed the American. It however contains, I
am told, many of the old stock that are very respectable for their literary
acquirements and polished manners.
We shall avoid,
as we have avowed, any thing like censure of Captain Wyeth's scheme during his
absence; but when we arrived at St. Louis, we could not but lament his want of
information, respecting the best means of obtaining the great objects of our
enterprise. Here we were constrained to sell our complicated wagons for less
than half what they originally cost. We were convinced that they were not
calculated for the rough roads, and rapid streams and eddies of some of the
rivers we must necessarily pass. We here thought of the proverb, "that men
never do a thing right the first time." Captain Wyeth might have learned
at St. Louis, that there were two wealthy gentlemen who resided at or near that
place, who had long since established a regular trade with the Indians, Mr. M-,
and a young person, Mr. S-, and that a stranger could hardly compete with such
established traders. The turbulent tribe, called the Black-foot tribe,
had long been supplied with fire arms and ammunition, beads, vermilion and
other paints, tobacco and scarlet cloth, from two or three capital traders at,
or near, St. Louis, and every article most saleable with the Indians. Both
parties knew each other, and had confidence in each other; and having this
advantage over our band of adventurers, it does not appear that Mr. Mackenzie,
and Mr. Sublet felt any apprehensions or jealousy of the new comers from
Boston; but treated them with friendship, and the latter with confidence and
cordiality; the former gentleman being, in a manner, retired from business,
except through numerous agents. He owns a small steam-boat called the Yellow
Stone, the name of one of the branches of the Missouri river. Through such
means the Indians are supplied with all they want; and they appeared not to
wish to have any thing to do with any one else, especially the adventurous
Yankees. These old established traders enjoy a friendly influence, or prudent
command, over those savages, that seems to operate to the exclusion of every
one else; and this appeared from the manner in which they treated us, which was
void of every thing like jealousy, or fear of rivalship. Their policy was to
incorporate us with their own troop.
We put our goods,
and other baggage on board the steamboat Otter, and proceeded two hundred and
sixty miles up the Missouri river, which is as far as the white people have any
settlements. We were obliged to proceed very slowly and carefully on account of
the numerous snags and sawyers with which this river abounds.
They are trees that have been loosened, and washed away from the soft banks of
the river. They are detained by sandbanks, or by other trees, that have floated
down some time before. Those of them whose sharp branches point opposite the
stream are the snags, against which boats are often impelled, as they are not
visible above water, and many are sunk by the wounds these make in their bows.
The sawyers are also held fast by their roots, while the body of the tree whips
up and down, alternately visible and concealed beneath the surface. These are
the chief terrors of the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers. As to crocodiles
they are little regarded, being more afraid of man than he of them. On account
of these snags and sawyers, boatmen avoid passing in the night, and are obliged
to keep a sharp look out in the day-time. The sawyers when forced to the bottom
or near it by a strong current, or by eddies, rise again with such force that
few boats can withstand the shock. The course of the boat was so tediously
slow, that many of us concluded to get out and walk on the banks of the river.
This, while it gave us agreeable exercise, was of some service in lightening
our boat, for with other passengers from St. Louis, we amounted to a
considerable crew. The ground was level, and free from under-wood. We passed
plenty of deer, wild turkeys, and some other wild fowl unknown to us, and
expected to find it so all the way.
We arrived at a
town or settlement called Independence. This is the last white
settlement on our route to the Oregon, and this circumstance gave a different
cast to our peregrination, and operated not a little on our hopes, and our
fears, and our imaginations. Some of our company began to ask each other some
serious questions; such as, Where are we going? and what are we going for? and
sundry other questions, which would have been wiser had we asked them before we
left Cambridge, and ruminated well on the answers. But Westward ho! was our
watchword, and checked all doubts, and silenced all expressions of fear.
Just before we
started from this place, a company of sixty-two in number arrived from St.
Louis, under the command of William Sublet, Esq., an experienced Indian
trader, bound, like ourselves, to the American Alps, the Rocky Mountains, and
we joined company with him, and it was very lucky that we did. Our minds were
not entirely easy. We were about to leave our peaceable country-men, from whom
we had received many attentions and much kindness, to go into a dark region of
savages, of whose customs, manners, and language, we were entirely ignorant,-
to go we knew not whither,- to encounter we knew not what. We had already
sacrificed our amphibious wagons, the result of so much pains and cost. Here
two of our company left us, named Kilham and Weeks. Whether they had any real
cause of dissatisfaction with our Captain, or whether they only made that an
excuse to quit the expedition and return home early, it is not for me to say. I
suspect the abandonment of our travelling vehicles cooled their courage. We
rested at Independence ten days; and purchased, by Captain Sublet's advice, two
yoke of oxen, and fifteen sheep, as we learnt that we ought not to rely
entirely upon transient game from our fire-arms for sustenance, especially as
we were now going among a savage people who would regard us with suspicion and
dread, and treat us accordingly. From this place we travelled about twenty-five
miles a day.
Nothing occurred
worth recording, till we arrived at the first Indian settlement, which was
about seventy miles from Independence. They appeared to us a harmless people,
and not averse to our passing through their country. Their persons were rather
under size, and their complexion dark. As they lived near the frontier of the
whites, they were not unacquainted with their usages and customs. They have
cultivated spots or little farms, on which they raise corn and pumpkins. They
generally go out once a year to hunt, accompanied by their women; and on
killing the Buffalo, or Bison, what they do not use on the spot, they dry to
eat through the winter. To prevent a famine, however, it is their custom to keep
a large number of dogs; and they eat them as we do mutton and lamb. This tribe
have imitated the white people in having fixed and stationary houses. They
stick poles in the ground in a circular form, and cover them with buffalo
skins, and put earth over the whole, leaving at the top an aperture for the
smoke, but small enough to be covered with a buffalo-skin in case of rain or
snow.- We found here little game; but honey-bees in abundance.
We travelled on
about a hundred miles farther, when we came to a large prairie, which
name the French have given to extensive tracts of land, mostly level, destitute
of trees, and covered with tall, coarse grass. They are generally dreary
plains, void of water, and rendered more and by the Indian custom of setting fire
to the high grass once or twice a year to start the game that has taken shelter
there, which occasions a hard crust unfavorable to any vegetable more
substantial than grass. At this unpromising spot, three more of our company
took French leave of us, there being, it seems, dissatisfaction on both sides;
for each complained of the other. The names of the seceders were Livermore,
Bell, Griswell. In sixteen days more we reached the River La Platte, the
water of which is foul and muddy. We were nine days passing this dreary prairie.
We were seven and twenty days winding our way along the borders of the La
Platte, which river we could not leave on account of the scarcity of water in
the dry and comfortless plains. Here we slaughtered the last of our live stock,
and at night we came to that region where buffaloes are often to be found; but
we suffered some sharp gnawings of hunger before we obtained one, and
experienced some foretaste of difficulties to come.
The Missouri
Territory is a vast wilderness, consisting of immense plains, destitute of wood
and of water, except on the edges of streams that are found near the turbid La
Platte. This river owes its source to the Rocky mountains, and runs pretty much
through the territory, without enlivening or fructifying this desert. Some
opinion may be formed of it by saying that for the space of six hundred miles,
we may be said to have been deprived of the benefits of two of the elements, fire
and water. Here were, to be sure, buffaloes, but after we had killed
them we had no wood or vegetables of any kind wherewith to kindle a fire for
cooking. We were absolutely compelled to dry the dung of the buffalo as the
best article we could procure for cooking our coarse beef. That grumbling,
discontent, and dejection should spring up amongst us, was what no one can be
surprised at learning. We were at times very miserable, and our commander could
be no less so; but we had put our hands to the plough, and most of us were too
stuffy to flinch, and sneak off for home without reaching the Rocky Mountains;
still hunger is hunger, and the young and the strong feel the greatest call for
food. Every one who goes to sea may lay his account for coming to short
allowance, from violent storms, head winds, damaged vessel, and the like; but for
a band of New-England men to come to short allowance upon land, with guns,
powder, and shot, was a new idea to our Oregon adventurers, who had not
prepared for it in the article of hard bread, or flour, or potatoes, or that
snug and wholesome article, salt fish, so plenty at Marblehead and Cape
Ann, and so convenient to carry. When the second company shall march from the
seat of science, Cambridge, we would advise them to pack up a few quintals of
salt fish, and a few pounds of ground sago, and salep, as a teaspoonful of it
mixed with boiling water will make three pints of good gruel, and also a
competent supply of portable soup.
Buffaloes were
plenty enough. We saw them in frightful droves, as far as the eye could reach,
appearing at a distance as if the ground itself was moving like the sea. Such
large armies of them have no fear of man. They will travel over him and make
nothing of him. Our company after killing ten or twelve of them, never enjoyed
the benefit of more than two of them, the rest being carried off by the wolves
before morning. Beside the scarcity of meat, we suffered for want of good and
wholesome water. The La Platte is warm and muddy; and the use of it occasioned
a diarrhoea in several of our company. Dr. Jacob Wyeth, brother of the Captain,
suffered not a little from this cause.- Should the reader wonder how we
proceeded so rapidly on our way without stopping to inquire, he must bear in
mind that we were still under the guidance of Captain Sublet, who knew every
step of the way, and had actually resided four years in different green valleys
that are here and there in the Rocky Mountains. To me it seems that we must
have perished for want of sustenance in the deserts of Missouri, had we been by
ourselves. It may have been good policy in Sublet, to attach us to him. He
probably saw our rawness in an adventure so ill provided for as ours actually
was. But for him we should hardly have provided ourselves with live stock; and
but for him we should probably never have reached the American Alps. By this
time every man began to think for himself.
We travelled six
days on the south branch of the La Platte, and then crossed over to the north
branch, and on this branch of it, we travelled eighteen days. But the first
three days we could not find sufficient articles of food; and what added to our
distress was the sickness of several of our company. We noticed many trails of
the savages, but no Indians. The nearer we approached the range of the
mountains the thicker were the trees. After travelling twelve days longer we
came to the Black Hills. They are so called from their thick growth of cedar.
Here is the region of rattle snakes, and the largest and fiercest bears, - a
very formidable animal, which it is not prudent for a man to attack alone. I
have known some of the best hunters of Sublet's company to fire five and six
balls at one before he fell. We were four days in crossing these dismal looking
hills. They would be called mountains, were they not in the neighborhood of the
Rocky Mountains, whose peaks overtop every thing, and elevate themselves into
the region of everlasting frost and snow. Our sick suffered extremely in
ascending these hills, some of them slipped off the horses and mules they rode
on, from sheer weakness, brought on by the bowel complaint already mentioned;
among these was Dr. Wyeth, our Captain's brother, who never had a constitution
fit to encounter such an expedition. And yet we could not leave them under the
care of a man, or two or three men, and pass on without them, to follow us,
when they were able. It was to me particularly grievous to think that he, who
was to take care of the health of the company, was the first who was disabled
from helping himself or others, and this one a blood relation. It required a
man of a firmer make than Dr. Jacob Wyeth to go through such a mountainous
region as the one we were in: a man seldom does a thing right the first time.
From the north
branch we crossed over to what was called Sweet-water Creek. This water being
cool, clear, and pleasant, proved a good remedy for our sick, as their bowel
complaints were brought on and aggravated by the warm, muddy waters of the
Missouri territory we had passed through. We came to a huge rock in the shape
of a bowl upside down. It bore the name of Independence, from, it is said,
being the resting-place of Lewis and Clarke on the 4th of July; but according
to the printed journal of those meritorious travellers, they had not reached,
or entered, the American Alps on the day of that memorable epoch. Whether we are
to consider the rock Independence as fairly in the Rocky Mountains, let others
determine. We had now certainly begun our ascent to those lofty regions,
previous to which we had to pass the chief branch of the river La Platte; but
we had no boat whatever for the purpose; and had we not been in the company of
Captain Sublet, it is hard to say what we should have done short of going a
great way round. Here I, and others were entirely convinced that we were
engaged in an expedition without being provided with the means to accomplish
it. Our boats and wagons we had disposed of at St. Louis, and here we were on
the banks of a river without even a canoe. Captain Clarke brought his canoes to
the foot of the range of mountains and there left them. The reader will
understand that not only the Missouri river, but the Yellowstone river, the La
Platte, and many other smaller ones commence by small beginnings in the Black
Hills, and in the Rocky Mountains, and increase in size and depth as they
proceed down to join the Arkansa, or the Canadian river, and finally the
Mississippi, and so run into the vast salt ocean. Whether it was Captain
Sublet's own invention, or an invention of the Indians, we know not, but the
contrivance we used is worth mentioning. They called it a Bull-boat.
They first cut a number of willows (which grow every where near the banks of
all the rivers we had travelled by from St. Louis), of about an inch and a half
diameter at the butt end, and fixed them in the ground at proper distances from
each other, and as they approached nearer one end they brought them nearer
together, so as to form something like the bow. The ends of the whole were
brought and bound firmly together, like the ribs of a great basket; and then
they took other twigs of willow and wove them into those stuck in the ground so
as to make a sort of firm, huge basket of twelve or fourteen feet long. After
this was completed, they sewed together a number of buffalo-skins, and with
them covered the whole; and after the different parts had been trimmed off
smooth, a slow fire was made under the Bull-boat, taking care to dry the skins
moderately; and as they gradually dried, and acquired a due degree of warmth,
they rubbed buffalo tallow all over the outside of it, so as to allow it to
enter into all the seams of the boat, now no longer a willowbasket. As the
melted tallow ran down into every seam, hole, and crevice, it cooled into a
firm body capable of resisting the water, and bearing a considerable blow
without damaging it. Then the willow-ribbed, buffalo-skin, tallowed vehicle was
carefully pulled up from the ground, and behold a boat capable of transporting
man, horse, and goods over a pretty strong current. At the sight of it, we
Yankees all burst out into a loud laugh, whether from surprise, or pleasure, or
both, I know not. It certainly was not from ridicule; for we all acknowledged
the contrivance would have done credit to old New-England.
While Captain
Sublet and his company were binding the gunwale of the boat with
buffalo-sinews, to give it strength and due hardness, our Captain was by no
means idle. He accordingly undertook to make a raft to transport our own goods
across the river. Sublet expressed his opinion that it would not answer where
the current was strong; but Captain Wyeth is a man not easily to be diverted
from any of his notions, or liable to be influenced by the advice of others; so
that while Sublet's men were employed on their Bull-boat, Wyeth and a chosen
few were making a raft. When finished, we first placed our blacksmith's shop
upon it, that is to say, our anvil, and large vice, and other valuable articles
belonging to blacksmithery, bar-iron, and steel traps, and alas! a cask of
powder, and a number of smaller, but valuable articles. We fixed a rope to our
raft, and with some difficulty got the other end of it across the river to the
opposite bank by a man swimming with a rope in his mouth, from some distance
above the spot he aimed to reach. We took a turn of it round a tree. Captain
Sublet gave it as his opinion that the line would not be sufficient to command
the raft. But our Leader was confident that it would; but when they had pulled
about half way over, the rope broke, and the raft caught under the limbs of a
partly submerged tree, and tipped it on one side so that we lost our iron
articles, and damaged our goods and a number of percussion caps. This was a
very serious calamity and absolutely irreparable. Almost every disaster has
some benefit growing out of it. It was even so here. Two thirds of our company were
sick, and that without any particular disorder that we can name, but from
fatigue, bad water, scanty food, and eating flesh half raw. Add to this, worry
of mind, and serious apprehensions of our fate when the worthy Captain Sublet
should leave us; for he was, under Providence, the instrument of our
preservation. Our own individual sufferings were enough for us to bear; but
Captain Wyeth had to bear the like, and more beside, as the responsibility lay
heavy upon him. Most men would have sunk under it. At this point of our journey
we were sadly tormented by musquetoes, that prevented our sleep after the
fatigues of the day. This little contemptible insect, which they call here a
gnat, disturbed us more than bears, or wolves, or snakes.
The next day
after we started from this unlucky place, we descried a number of men on
horseback, approaching us at full speed. Various were our conjectures. Captain
Sublet had an apprehension that they might be hostile Indians who fight on
horseback; he therefore ordered every man to make fast his horse as quick as
possible, and prepare for battle on foot. But on their near approach, we found
them a body of white men called trappers, whose occupation is to entrap
the beaver and other animals that have valuable furs. Captain Sublet has, for
several years, had about two hundred of these trappers in his pay, in and
around the Rocky Mountains, and this troop was a party of them. His place of
rendezvous for them is at Pierre's Hole, by which name they call one of
those deep and verdant valleys which are to be found in the Rocky Mountains
from the eastern boundary of them to their extreme edge in the west, where the
Oregon or Columbia river commences under the name of Clark's river, some
branches of which inosculate with the mighty Missouri on the east. It is to Pierre's
valley or Hole, that his trappers resort to meet their employer every
summer. It is here they bring their peltry and receive their pay; and this
traffic has been kept up between them a number of years with good faith on both
sides, and to mutual satisfaction and encouragement. When Sublet leaves St.
Louis, he brings up tobacco, coffee, rice, powder, shot, paint, beads,
handkerchiefs and all those articles of finery that please both Indian women
and men; and having established that sort of traffic with his friends, the
Indians on and in the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains, what chance was there
that any small band from Boston, or even Cambridge, could supplant him in the
friendship and confidence of his old acquaintance, the Shoshonees, the
Black-feet, or any other tribe? He must have seen this at once, and been
convinced that nothing like rivalship could rise up between him and the
New-England adventurers. He therefore caressed them, and, in a manner,
incorporated them with his troop. This gentleman was born in America of French
parents, and partakes largely of those good-humored, polite, and accommodating
manners which distinguish the nation he sprang from. The old French war, and
wars on this continent since then, amply prove how much better Frenchmen
conciliate the natives than the English. The English and the Americans, when
they come in contact with the untutored savage, most commonly fight. But not so
the French. They please and flatter the Indian, give him powder, and balls, and
flints, and guns, and make a Catholic of him, and make out to live in
friendship with the red man and woman of the wilderness. It is strange that
such extremes of character should meet. Some have said that they are not so
very far distant as others have imagined, - that the refined French people love
war and the women paint their faces, grease their hair, and wear East India
blankets, called shawls.- Captain Sublet possesses, doubtless, that
conciliating disposition so characteristic of the French, and not so frequently
found among the English or Americans; for the descendants of both nations bear
strong marks of the stock they came from. The French have always had a stronger
hold of the affections of the Indians than any other people.
The trappers kept
company with us till we came to Pierre's Hole, or valley, which is twelve miles
from the spot where we first met them. Three or four days after, we were fired
on by the Indians about ten o'clock at night. They had assembled to about the
number of three hundred. They stole five horses from us, and three from
Sublet's company. About the first of July we crossed the highest part or ridge
of the mountains. In addition to the mountain composed of earth, sand, and
stone, including common rocks, there were certain peaks resembling a loaf of
sugar, from a hundred to two hundred feet high; and some appeared much higher;
I cannot guess their height. They were to us surprising. Their sides deviated
but little from perpendicular. They looked at a distance like some light-houses
of a conical form, or like our Cambridge glass manufactories; but how they
acquired that form is wonderful. Subsiding waters may have left them so, after
washing away sandy materials. But nature is altogether wonderful, in her large
works as well as small. How little do we know of the first cause of any thing!
We had to creep round the base of these steep edifices of nature. We now more
clearly understand and relish the question of one of our Indians who was
carried to England as a show, who, on being shown that elegant pile of stone,
the cathedral of St. Paul, after viewing it in silent admiration, asked his
interpreter whether it was by men's hands, or whether it grew there. We
might ask the same question respecting these conical mountains. Had the
scaffolding of St. Paul's remained, the surprise and wonder of the sensible
savage had been less.
It was difficult
to keep our feet on these highest parts of the mountains; some of the pack-horses
slipped and rolled over and over, and yet were taken up alive. Those that did
not fall were sadly bruised and lamed in their feet and joints. Mules are best
calculated, as we experienced, for such difficult travelling. They seem to
think, and to judge of the path before them, and will sometimes put their fore
feet together and slip down without stepping. They are as sagacious in crossing
a river, where there is a current. They will not attempt to go straight over,
but will breast the tide by passing obliquely upwards. One of our horses was
killed by a fall down one of these precipices, and it was surprising that more
of them did not share the like fate. Buffaloes were so scarce here, that we
were obliged to feed on our dried meat, and this scarcity continued till after
we had gained the head sources of the Columbia river. For the last five days we
have had to travel on the Colorado of the West, which is a very long river, and
empties into the gulph of California.
On the 4th of
July, 1832, we arrived at Lewis's fork, one of the largest rivers in these
rocky mountains. It took us all day to cross it. It is half a mile wide, deep,
and rapid. The way we managed was this: one man unloaded his horse, and swam
across with him, leading two loaded ones, and unloading the two, brought them
back, for two more, and as Sublet's company and our own made over a hundred and
fifty, we were all day in passing the river. In returning, my mule, by treading
on a round stone, stumbled and threw me off, and the current was so strong,
that a bush which I caught hold of only saved me from drowning. This being
Independence-Day, we drank the health of our friends in Massachusetts, in good
clear water, as that was the only liquor we had to drink in remembrance of our
homes and dear connexions. If I may judge by my own feelings and by the looks
of my companions, there was more of melancholy than joy amongst us. We were
almost four thousand miles from Boston, and in saying Boston we mean at the
same time our native spot Cambridge, as they are separated by a wooden bridge
only. From the north fork of Lewis's river we passed on to an eminence called
Teton mountain, where we spent the night. The next day was pleasant, and
serene. Captain Sublet came in the evening to inquire how many of our company
were sick, as they must ride, it being impossible for them to go on foot any
farther. His kindness and attention I never can forget. Dr. Jacob Wyeth, the
Captain's brother, George More, and Stephen Burdit, were too weak to walk. To
accommodate them with horses, Captain Wyeth was obliged to dig a hole in the
earth, and therein bury the goods which had been hitherto carried on horseback.
In the language of the Trappers this hiding of goods was called cacher
or hidden treasure, being the French term for 'to hide.' When they dig these
hiding-holes they carefully carry the earth on a buffalo-skin to a distance, so
as to leave no marks or traces of the ground being dug up or disturbed: and
this was done to secure the cache from being stolen by the Indians or
the white men. The goods so hidden are wrapt up in buffalo-skins to keep them
dry, before the earth is put over them. Nor is this all; they make a fire over
the spot, and all this to prevent the Indians from suspecting that treasure is cache,
or hidden there, while the owner of it takes care to mark the bearing of the
spot on some tree, or rock, or some other object that may lead him to recognise
the place again. But I have my doubts whether they who hid the goods will ever
return that way to dig up their hidden treasure. We did not meddle with it on
our return with Captain Sublet.
On the 5th of
July we started afresh rather low spirited. We looked with sadness on the way
before us. The mountain was here pretty thickly timbered down its slopes, and
wherever the ground is level. The pines and hemlock trees were generally about
eighteen inches through. It had snowed, and we were now at a height where the
snow commonly lies all the year round. Which ever way we looked, the region
presented a dreary aspect. No one could wonder that even some of us who were in
health, were, at times, somewhat homesick. If this was the case with us, what
must have been the feelings of our three sick fellow travellers. We passed
through a snow bank three feet deep. We well ones passed on with Captain Sublet
to the top of the mountain, and there waited until our sick men came up with
us. George More fell from his horse through weakness. He might have maintained
his seat on level ground, but ascending and descending required more exertion
than he could call forth; and this was the case also with Dr. Wyeth. Burdit
made out a little better. When we encamped at night, we endured a snow storm.
Sublet's company encamped about two miles from us; for at best we could hardly
keep up with his veteran company. They were old and experienced trappers, and
we, compared with them, young and inexperienced soldiers, little imagining that
we should ever have to encounter such hardships, in realizing our dreams of
making a fortune. Ignorance of the future is not always to be considered among
the calamities of man.
Captain Sublet's
grand rendezvous, or Head Quarters, was about twelve miles from our encampment.
He had there about two hundred trappers, or beaver-hunters; or more properly
speaking, skinners of entrapped animals; or peltry-hunters, for
they chased but few of the captured beasts. To these were added about five
hundred Indians, of the rank of warriors, all engaged in the same pursuit and
traffic of the fur-trade. They were principally the Flat-heads, so
called from their flattening the heads of their young children, by forcing them
to wear a piece of wood, like a bit of board, so as to cause the skull to grow
flat, which they consider a mark of beauty even among the females. They are otherwise
dandies and belles in their dress and ornaments. This large body of horse made
a fine appearance, especially their long hair; for, as there was a pleasant
breeze of wind, their hair blew out straight all in one direction, which had
the appearance of so many black streamers. When we met they halted and fired
three rounds by way of salute, which we returned; and then followed such
friendly greetings as were natural and proper between such high contracting
powers and great and good allies. This parade was doubtless made by Sublet for
the sake of effect. It was showing us, Yankee barbarians, their Elephants;
- like General and Lord Howe's military display to our commissioners of
Congress on Staten Island, when the British Brothers proposed that celebrated
interview; and when Dr. Franklin, Mr. Adams, and some others of the deputation,
whose names I do not now recollect, assumed all that careless indifference,
very common with the Indians on meeting a white embassy; for the express
purpose of conveying an idea, that we, though the weakest in discipline and
numbers, are not awe-struck by your fine dress, glittering arms, and fullfed
persons.
It was now the
6th of July, 1832, being sixty-four days since we left the settlements of the
white people. Captain Sublet encamped his forces; and then pointed out to
Captain Wyeth the ground which he thought would be most proper for us; and
altogether we looked like a little army. Not but what we felt small compared
with our great and powerful allies.
We were overjoyed
to think that we had got to a resting place, where we could repose our weary
limbs, and recruit the lost strength of our sick. While Sublet was finishing
his business with his Indian trappers, they delivering their peltry, and he
remunerating them in his way with cloth, powder, ball, beads, knives,
handkerchiefs, and all that gawdy trumpery which Indians admire, together with
coffee, rice, and corn, also leather, and other articles, - we, being idle, had
time to think, to reflect, and to be uneasy. We had been dissatisfied for some
time, but we had not leisure to communicate it and systematize our grievances.
I, with others, had spoken with Captain Sublet, and him we found conversable
and communicative. Myself and some others requested Captain Wyeth to call a
meeting of his followers, to ask information, and to know what we were now to
expect, seeing we had passed over as we supposed the greatest difficulties, and
were now nearly four thousand miles from the Atlantic, and within four
hundred miles of the Pacific Ocean, the end and aim of our laborious
expedition, the field where we expected to reap our promised harvest. We wished
to have what we had been used to at home,- a town meeting,- or a parish
meeting, where every freeman has an equal right to speak his sentiments, and to
vote thereon. But Captain Wyeth was by no means inclined to this democratical
procedure. The most he seemed inclined to, was a caucus with a select few; of
whom neither his own brother, though older than himself, nor myself, was to be
of the number. After considerable altercation, he concluded to call a meeting
of the whole, on business interesting and applicable to all. We accordingly
met, Captain Wyeth in the chair, or on the stump, I forget which. Instead of
every man speaking his own mind, or asking such questions as related to matters
that lay heaviest on his mind, the Captain commenced the business by ordering
the roll to be called; and as the names were called, the clerk asked the person
if he would go on. The first name was Nathaniel J. Wyeth, whom we had dubbed
Captain, who answered - "I shall go on." - The next was William Nud,
who, before he answered, wished to know what the Captain's plan and intentions
were, whether to try to commence a small colony, or to trap and trade for beaver?
To which Captain Wyeth replied, that that was none of our business. Then
Mr. Nud said," I shall not go on;" and as the names of the rest were
called, there appeared seven persons out of the twenty one, who were determined
to return home. Of the number so determined was, besides myself, Dr. Jacob
Wyeth, the Captain's brother, whose strength had never been equal to such a
journey. His constitution forbade it. He was brought up at College. Here were
discontents on both sides; criminations and recriminations. A commander of a
band of associated adventurers has a very hard task. The commanded, whether in
a school, or in a regiment, or company, naturally combine in feeling against
their leader; and this is so natural that armies are obliged to make very strict
rules, and to pursue rigid discipline. It is so also on ship-board. Our
merchant ships cannot sail in safety without exacting prompt obedience; and
disobedience in the common seamen is mutiny, and mutiny is a high crime, and
approximates to piracy. It is pretty much so in these long and distant
exploring expeditions. The Captain cannot always with safety satisfy all the
questions put to him by those under his command; and it would lead to great
inconvenience to entrust any, even a brother, with any information concealed
from the rest. There must be secrecy, and there must be confidence. We had
travelled through a dreary wilderness, an infinitely worse country than
Palestine; yet Moses himself could not have kept together the Israelites
without the aid of miracles; and the history we have given of our boat-like
arks, and the wreck of our raft, and the loss of our heaviest articles may lead
most readers to suspect that our Leader to his Land of Promise was not an
inspired man. In saying this, we censure no one, we only lament our common
frailty. Reflect a moment, considerate reader! on our humble means, for an
expedition of FOUR THOUSAND miles, compared with the ample means, rich
and complete out-fit, letters of credit, and every thing deemed needful, given to
Captains Lewis and Clarke, under the orders of the government of
the United States; and yet they several times came very near starving for the
want of food and of fuel, even in the Oregon territory! In all
books of voyages and travels, who ever heard of the utmost distress for want of
wood, leaves, roots, coal, or turf to cook with? Yet all through the dreary
wilderness of Missouri, we were obliged to use the dung of buffaloes, or eat
raw flesh. The reader will scarcely believe that this was the case even at
mouth of the Oregon river. Clarke and Lewis had to buy wood of the Indians, who
had hardly enough for themselves. To be deprived of solid food soon ends in
death; but we were often deprived of the two elements out of four, fire
and water, and when on the Rocky mountains, of a third, I mean earth;
for everything beneath our feet and around us was stone. We had, be sure, air
enough, and too much too, sometimes enough almost to blow our hair off.
But to return to
our dismal list of grievances. Almost everyone of the company wished to go no
farther; but they found themselves too feeble and exhausted to think of
encountering the risk of a march on foot of three thousand five hundred miles
through such a country as we came. We asked Captain Wyeth to let us have our
muskets and a sufficiency of ammunition, which request he refused. Afterwards,
he collected all the guns, and after selecting such as he and his companions
preferred, he gave us the refuse; many of which were unfit for use. There were
two tents belonging to the company, of which he gave us one; which we pitched
about a quarter of a mile from his. George More expressed his determination of
returning home, and asked for a horse, which after considerable difficulty he
obtained. This was July 10th. The Captain likewise supplied his brother with a
horse and a hundred dollars.
On the 12th of
July, Captain Wyeth, after moving his tent half a mile farther from ours, put
himself under the command of Mr. Milton Sublet, brother of Captain William
Sublet so often mentioned. This Captain Milton Sublet had about twenty men
under his command, all trappers; so that hereafter as far as I know, it was
Wyeth, Sublet and Co.; so that the reader will understand, that Dr. Jacob
Wyeth, Palmer, Law, Batch, and myself concluded to retrace our steps to St.
Louis in company with Captain William Sublet, while Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth
remained with Milton Sublet, and his twenty men. I have been unreasonably
blamed for leaving my kinsman beyond the Rocky Mountains with only eleven of
his company, and that too when we were within about four hundred miles of the
mouth of the Columbia, alias Oregon river, where it pours into the boisterous
Pacific Ocean, for such Lewis and Clarke found it to their cost.
The spot where we
now were, is a valley, between two mountains, about ten miles wide, so lofty
that their tops are covered with snow, while it was warm and pleasant where we
pitched our tent. This agreeable valley is called by the trappers Pierre's-Hole,
as if it were a dismal residence; and was the most western point that I
visited, being about, we conjectured, four hundred miles short of the mouth of
the Oregon river, whence the territory derives its name, which Mr. Hall J.
Kelly has described as another paradise! O! the magic of sounds and inflated
words! Whether Captain Wyeth's expedition was wise or imprudent we are not
prepared to say; but under existing circumstances, half of his company having
left him, and among them his own brother, the surgeon of the expedition, we
cannot see what better he could have done than to ally himself to an
experienced band of hunters, as a step necessary to his own preservation. He
was three thousand and five hundred miles from the Atlantic Ocean, with only
eleven men, and half his goods lost or expended, and no resource of supply
short of St. Louis, nineteen hundred miles from them. Had not the Sublets been
with them from that place through the wilderness of Missouri and La Platte, it
is hardly probable they would have ever reached the west side of the Rocky
Mountains. In passing judgment on this strange expedition, we must take in,
beside facts, probabilities and casualties.
On the 17th of
July, Captain Wyeth and Captain Milton Sublet set out westward with their
respective men to go to Salmon river to winter. The former had eleven beside
himself: that river they computed at two hundred miles distance. Wyeth
accordingly purchased twenty-five horses from the Indians, who had a great
number, and those very fine, and high-spirited. Indeed the Western region seems
the native and congenial country for horses. They were, however, delayed till
the next day. But when they were about moving, they perceived a drove of
something, whether buffaloes or men they could not determine with the naked
eye; but when aided by the glass, they recognized them for a body of the Black-foot
tribe of Indians, a powerful and warlike nation. As this movement was evidently
hostile, Captain Milton Sublet dispatched two men to call on his brother, who
was about eight miles off, for assistance; when Captain William Sublet ordered
every man to get ready immediately. We had about five hundred friendly Indian
warriors with us, who expressed their willingness to join in our defence.
As soon as we
left Captain Wyeth we joined Captain Sublet, as he said that no white man
should be there unless he was to be under his command; and his reason for it
was that in case they had to fight the Indians, no one should flinch or sneak
out of the battle. It seems that when the Black-foot Indians saw us moving in
battle array, they appeared to hesitate; and at length they displayed a white
flag as an ensign of peace; but Sublet knew their treacherous character. The
chief of the friendly Flat-heads and Antoine rode together, and concerted this
savage arrangement; to ride up and accost them in a friendly manner; and when
the Black-foot chief should take hold of the Flat-head chief's hand in token of
friendship, then the other was to shoot him, which was instantly done! and at
that moment the Flat-head chief pulled off the Blackfoot's scarlet robe, and
returned with the Captain to our party unhurt. As soon as the Black-foot
Indians recovered from their surprise, they displayed a red flag, and
the battle began. This was Joab with a vengeance,- Art thou in health,
my brother?
The Black-foot
chief was a man of consequence in his nation. He not only wore on this occasion
a robe of scarlet cloth, probably obtained from a Christian source, but was
decorated with beads valued there at sixty dollars. The battle commenced on the
Prairie. As soon as the firing began on both sides, the squaws belonging to the
Black-foot forces, retreated about fifty yards into a small thicket of wood,
and there threw up a ridge of earth by way of entrenchment, having first piled
up a number of logs cob-fashion, to which the men at length fell back, and from
which they fired upon us, while some of their party with the women were
occupied in deepening the trench. Shallow as it was, it afforded a considerable
security to an Indian, who will often shoot a man from behind a tree near to
its root, while the white man is looking to see his head pop out at man's
height. This has taught the United States troops, to load their muskets while
lying on their backs, and firing in an almost supine posture. When the Duke of
Saxe-Weimer was in Cambridge, he noticed this, to him, novel mode of firing,
which he had never before seen, and this was in a volunteer company of
militia.- I do not mean to say that the Indians fired only in a supine posture;
when they had loaded they most commonly rose up and fired, and then down on the
ground again to re-load. In this action with the formidable Black-foot tribe,
Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth's party had no concern. He himself was in it a very
short time, but retired from the contest doubtless for good reasons. After
contesting the matter with the warlike tribe for about six hours, Captain
Sublet found it of little avail to fight them in this way. He therefore
determined to charge them at once, which was accordingly done. He led, and
ordered his men to follow him, and this proved effectual. Six beside himself
first met the savages hand to hand; of these seven, four were wounded, and one
killed. The Captain was wounded in his arm and shoulder blade. The Indians did
not, however, retreat entirely, so that we kept up a random fire until dark;
the ball and the arrows were striking the trees after we could see the effects
of one and of the other. There was something terrific to our men in their
arrows. The idea of a barbed arrow sticking in a man's body, as we had observed
it in the deer and other animals, was appalling to us all, and it is no wonder
that some of our men recoiled at it. They regarded a leaden bullet much less.
We may judge from this the terror of the savages on being met the first time by
fire arms,- a sort of thunder and lightning followed by death without seeing
the fatal shot.
In this battle
with the Indians, not one of those who had belonged to Captain Wyeth's company
received any injury. There were, however, seven white men of Sublet's company
killed, and thirteen wounded. Twenty-five of our Indians were killed and
thirty-five wounded. The next morning a number of us went back to the Indian
fort, so called, where we found one dead man and two women, and also twenty-five
dead horses, a proof that the Black-foot were brave men. The number of them was
uncertain. We calculated that they amounted to about three hundred. We guessed
that the reason the three dead bodies were left at the entrenchment was, that
they had not enough left to carry off their dead and wounded. This affair
delayed Captain Wyeth three days, and Captain Sublet ten days. The names of
those who left Captain Wyeth to return home, were Dr. Jacob Wyeth, John B.
Wyeth, his cousin, William Nud, Theophilus Beach, R. L. Wakefield, Hamilton
Law, George More, -Lane, and Walter Palmer. The names of those who remained
attached to Captain Wyeth, and who went on with him to Salmon river, are J.
Woodman, Smith, G. Argent, - Abbot, W. Breck, S. Burditt, - Ball, St. Clair, C.
Tibbits, G. Trumbull, and - Whittier.
When they had
gone three days journey from us, as they were riding securely in the middle of
the afternoon, about thirty of the Black-foot Indians, who lay in ambush about
twenty yards from them, suddenly sprang up and fired. The surprise occasioned
the horses to wheel about, which threw off George More, and mortally wounded
one of the men, Alfred K. Stevens. As the Indians knew that More could not get
away from them, they passed him, and about twenty Indians were coming up the
hill where they were. Eight or ten Indians followed up while only five trappers
had gained the hill. They were considering how to save George More, when one of
them shot him through the head, which was a better fate than if they had taken
him alive, as they would have tortured him to death.
We have said that
Captain Wyeth and the few who had concluded to go on with him, were ready to
begin their march for Salmon river. On this occasion Captain Milton Sublet
escorted them about one hundred miles, so as to protect them from the enraged
Black-feet, and then left them to take care of themselves for the winter; and
this is the last tidings we have had of Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth, and his
reduced band of adventurers. If we have been rightly informed, their chief hope
was residing on a pleasant river where there was plenty of salmon, and probably
elk and deer, and water-fowl; and we hope fuel, for to our surprise, we learnt
that wood for firing was among their great wants. I have since been well-informed
that in the valley of Oregon, so much extolled for its fertility and
pleasantness, wood to cook with is one among their scarcest and very dear
articles of necessity. From all accounts, except those given to the public by
Mr. Kelly, there is not a district at the mouth of any large river more
unproductive than that of the Columbia, and it seems that this is pretty
much the case from the tide water of that river to where it empties into the
ocean.
The Flat-head
Indians are a brave and we had reason to believe a sincere people. We had many
instances of their honesty and humanity. They do not lie, steal, nor rob any
one, unless when driven too near to starvation; and then any man black, white,
or red will seize any thing to save himself from an agonizing death. The
Flat-heads were well dressed. They wore buck-skin frocks and pantaloons, and
moccasins, with seldom any thing on their heads. They draw a piece of fresh
buffalo hide on their feet, and at night sleep with their feet not far from the
fire, and in the morning find their shoes sitting as snug to their feet as if
they had been measured by the first shoe-maker in Boston. It is probable that
no people have so little shoepinching as these savages. I never heard any one
complain of corns, or kibed-heels, severe as the weather is in winter. The
women wear moccasins also, but whether made in the same extempore method as
those of the men, I know not. I suspect they must experience some shoepinching.
They wear a petticoat, and a frock of some of leather, according to fancy, but
all decent and comfortable. In rainy weather, or when very cold, they throw a
buffalo-skin over their shoulders, with the fur inside. They have no stationary
wigwams; but have a sort of tent, which they fix down or remove with facility.
In Major Long's book may be seen an engraved representation of them. Their mode
of cooking is by roasting and boiling. They will pick a goose, or a brant, and
run a stick through its body and so roast it, without taking out its entrails.
The are, according to our notions, very nasty cooks.
I know not what
to say of their religion. I saw nothing like images, or any objects of worship
whatever, and yet they appeared to keep a sabbath; for there is a day on which
they do not hunt nor gamble, but sit moping all day and look like fools. There
certainly appeared among them an honor, or conscience, and sense of justice.
They would do what they promised, and return our strayed horses, and lost
articles. Now and then, but rarely, we found a pilferer, but not oftener than
among the frontier white people. The Indians of all tribes are disposed to give
you something to eat. It is a fact that we never found an Indian of any tribe
disposed to treat us with that degree of inhospitality that we experienced in
crossing the Alleghany Mountains, in the State of Pennsylvania.
The Black-foot
tribe are the tallest and stoutest men of any we have seen, nearly or quite six
feet in stature, and of a lighter complexion than the rest.
The Indian
warriors carry muskets, bows, and arrows, the last in a quiver. The bows are
made of walnut, about three feet long, and the string of the sinews of the
buffalo, all calculated for great elasticity, and will reach an object at a
surprising distance. It was to us a much more terrific weapon of war than a
musket. We had one man wounded in the thigh by an arrow; he was obliged to ford
a river in his hasty retreat, and probably took a chill, which occasioned a
mortification, of which he died. The arrows are headed with flint as sharp as broken
glass; the other end of the arrow is furnished with an eagle's feather to
steady its flight. Some of these aboriginals, as we learn from Lewis, Clarke,
and Major Long, especially the last, have shields or targets; some so long as
to reach from the head to the ancle. Now the question is how came our North
American Indians with bows and arrows? It is not likely that they invented
them, seeing they so exactly resemble the bows and arrows of the old world, the
Greeks and Romans. They are the same weapon to a feather. This is a fresh proof
that our savage tribes of this continent emigrated from the old one; and I have
learned from friend to whom I am indebted for several ideas, which no one could
suppose to have originated with myself, that the Indian's bow goes a great way
to settle a disputed point respecting what part of the old world the ancestors
of our Indians came from,- whether Asia or Europe. Now the Asiatic bow and our
Indian bow are of a different form. The first has a straight piece in the
middle, like the crossbow, being such an one as is commonly depicted in the
hands of Cupid; whereas our Indian bow is a section of a circle, while the
Persian or Asiatic bow has two wings extending from a straight piece in the
middle. Hence we have reason to conclude that the first comers from the old
world to the new, came not from those regions renowned for their cultivation of
the arts and sciences. The idea that our North American Indians came over from
Scythia, that is, the northern part, so called, of Europe and Asia, whether it
is correct to call them Scythians, Tartars, or Russians, I leave others to
determine. We have many evidences that our Northern Indians have a striking
resemblance in countenance, color, and person to the most northern tribes of
Tartars, who inhabit Siberia, or Asiatic Russia. The Black-foot Indians who
inhabit small rivers that empty into the Missouri, resemble in mode of living,
manners, and character, the Calmuc Tartars. Both fight on horseback, both are
very brave, and both inured to what we should consider a very hard life as it
regards food. Both avoid as much as they can stationary dwellings, and use
tents made with skins.
On this subject
we ought not to omit mentioning that the Indians on all sides of the Rocky
mountains have several customs both among men and the women, which might
lead some to conclude that our Northern and Western Indians descended from the
Israelites; and this similarity is certainly very remarkable; yet there is one
very strong fact against that hypothesis, namely, there is not the least trace
amongst our Indians of the eight-day rite of the Jewish males, which
sore, and, to us, strange ceremony would hardly have been forgotten, had it
been practiced by our Indians. If our idea be well-founded on this subject, the
custom could have originated only in warm and redundant climates, so that had
Moses marched first from the shores of the Baltic, as did the Goths, instead of
the shores of the Red sea, the Jews never would have been subjected to the
operation of circumcision.
After all, it is
very likely that the Persians came from a different stock from that which
peopled the Western and Northern parts of America,- I mean from the warmer
regions of Asia. They seem possessed of more delicate marks of person,and of
mind than the fighting savages of the North. There appears to be a strong line
of separation between them, as far as our information goes.
To return to our
own story. After the battle at Pierre's Valley, I had an opportunity of seeing
a specimen of Indian surgery in treating a wound. An Indian squaw first sucked
the wound perfectly dry, so that it appeared white as chalk; and then she bound
it up with a piece of dry buck-skin as soft as woollen cloth, and by this
treatment the wound began to heal, and soon closed up, and the part became
sound again. The sucking of it so effectually may have been from an
apprehension of a poisoned arrow. But who taught the savage Indian that a
person may take poison into his mouth without any risk, as the poison of a
rattlesnake without harm, provided there be no scratch or wound in the mouth,
so as to admit it into the blood?
Three of the men
that left Captain Wyeth when I did, enlisted with Captain Sublet to follow the
trapping business for the period of one year, namely, Wakefield, Nud, and Lane,
leaving Dr. Jacob Wyeth, H. Law, T. Beach, W. Palmer, and myself. We
accordingly set out on the twenty-eighth day of July, 1832 with Captain William
Sublet, for home; and thus ended all my fine prospects and flattering
expectations of acquiring fortune, independence, and ease, and all my hopes
that the time had now come in the order of Providence, when that uncultivated
tract, denominated the Oregon Territory, was to be changed into a
fruitful field, and the haunt of savages and wild beasts made the happy abode
of refined and dignified man. Mr. Hall J. Kelly published about two years since
a most inflated and extravagant account of that western tract which extends
from the Rocky Mountains to the shore of the Pacific Ocean. He says of it that
no portion of the globe presents a more fruitful soil, or a milder climate, or
equal facilities for carrying into effect the great purpose of a free and
enlightened nation; - that a country so full of those natural means which best
contribute to the comfort and conveniences of life, is worthy the occupancy of
a people disposed to support a free representative government, and to establish
civil, scientific, and religious institutions, and all this and much more to
the same effect after Lewis and Clarke's history of their expedition had been
published, and very generally read; yet this extravagant and fallacious account
of the Oregon was read and believed by some people not destitute of a general
information of things, nor unused to reading; but there were circles of people,
chiefly among young farmers and journeymen mechanics, who were so thoroughly
imbued with these extravagant notions of making a fortune by only going over
land to the other side of the globe, to the Pacific Ocean, that a person who expressed
a doubt of it was in danger of being either affronted, or, at least, accused of
being moved by envious feelings. After a score of people had been enlisted in
this Oregon expedition, they met together to feed and to magnify each other's
hopes and visionary notions, which were wrought up to a high degree of
extravagance, so that it was hardly safe to advise or give an opinion adverse
to the scheme. When young people are so affected, it is in vain to reason with
them; and when such sanguine persons are determined to fight, or to marry, it
is dangerous to attempt to part them; and when they have their own way and get
their belly full of fight, and of matrimony, there comes a time of cool
reflection. The first stage of our reflection began at St. Louis, when we
parted with our amphibious wagons, in which we all more or less took a pride.
Every one there praised the ingenuity of the contrivance and construction of
them for roads and rivers such as at Cambridge, and other places near to
Boston; but we were assured at St. Louis, that they were by no means calculated
for our far distant journey. We were reminded that Lewis and Clarke carried
canoes almost to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, by the route of Missouri
river, but were obliged to leave them there, and ascend mountains so very
steep, that sometimes their loaded horses slipped and rolled over and over,
down into lower ground sixty or seventy feet. This may serve to show, among
other things, how ill-informed Captain Wyeth and his company were of the true
condition of the country through which they had to pass. We expected to support
ourselves with game by our firearms, and therefore powder and shot were the
articles we took the most care to be provided with. Nor were we followers
undeceived before we were informed at St. Louis, that it would be necessary to
take oxen and sheep to be slaughtered on the route for our support. We also
found it advisable to sell at that place the large number of axes, great and
small, with which we had encumbered our wagons. All these occurrences,
following close after one another, operated to damp our ardor; and it was this
probably that operated so powerfully on W. Bell, Livermore, and Griswold, that
they cut and ran away before we entered upon the difficulties and
hardships of our expedition.
Nothing of
importance occurred for the first ten days after we left Pierre's Valley. Our
huntsmen were abroad in pursuit of buffaloes, when they were alarmed at the
sight of a large body of the Black-foot tribe who had been watching our
movements. Captain Sublet was not a little alarmed, for he had with him his
whole stock of furs, very large in quantity and valuable in quality, which we
were told would be worth eighty thousand dollars in St. Louis. But all the
world exaggerates; nor even were we of the Oregon expedition entirely free of
it, although not to be compared with Hall Jackson Kelly, who never stops short
of superlatives, if we may judge by his publications. But he says, by way of
apology, that it is needful that the friends of the contemplated Oregon colony
should possess a little of the active and vital principle of enthusiasm, that
shields against disappointments, and against the presumptions opinions and
insults of others. Now the fact is, the sanguine and enthusiastic Mr. Kelly was
never in that country, nor nearer to it than Boston; and his zeal in the
colonization of that dreary territory led him to believe what he wished, and to
disbelieve every thing adverse to his favorite enterprise. He had a right to
enjoy his opinion; but when he took unweary pains to make ignorant people
believe as he did, he was the remote cause of much misery and lasting regret in
more than half the adventurers from Cambridge. If the blind lead the blind, we
know what will be the consequence. But our business is not to censure from a
disposition to find fault, but to warn others from falling into the errors and
difficulties which attended me and my companions, and chiefly through the
misinformation of persons who never saw the country.
Each man, when he
left St. Louis, was allowed to carry but ten pounds' weight of his own private
baggage, and not every one to encumber his march with whatever he chose; and we
adhered to that order on our return. We were ten days in passing over the Rocky
Mountains in going, and nine in returning; and I repeat it as my fixed opinion,
that we never should have reached the western foot of the mountains had we not
been under the guard and guidance of Captain Sublet, and his experienced
company. He was acquainted with the best way, and the best mode of travelling.
He knew the Indian chiefs and they knew him, and each confided in the other. An
anecdote will illustrate this. There was a hunters' fort or temporary place of
defence occupied by about a dozen white beaver-trappers from St. Louis, where
were deposited furs, and goods belonging to the troop of trappers, and that to
a considerable amount. One day this small garrison was alarmed at the sight of
about six hundred warriors approaching on horseback. Upon this they barred
their gate, and closed every door and window against the Indians, but with
faint hopes of repelling such a powerful host of well-armed savages; for they
had no other idea but that they had come for their destruction. But when the
Indians saw them shutting themselves up, they displayed the white flag, and
made signs to the white men to open their fort, for they came to trade and not
to fight. And the little garrison thought it better to trust to Indian honor
than risk savage slaughter or captivity; and accordingly they unbarred their
doors and let the chiefs in with every expression of cordiality and confidence.
After remaining nine days, they departed in peace. And what ought to be
recorded to their honor, the white people did not miss a single article, although
axes, and utensils, and many other things were lying about, desirable to
Indians. The savages did not consider, as white men too often do,- that "might
is right." When I expressed my surprise at it, one of the white
trappers replied, "Why, the word of these trading Indians is as good as
the Bible."
We were surprised
to find the Indians in the vicinity of the mountains, and all round Pierre's
Valley, and the Black-foot tribe, and the Shoshonees, or Snake-tribe, so well
provided with muskets, powder and ball, woollen cloth, and many other articles,
until we were informed that Mr. Mackenzie, an established and wealthy Indian
trader, had long supplied them with every article they desired. Had the Captain
of our band been acquainted with this fact, and also been informed of the
trading connexion between the Indians and the two brothers, William and Milton
Sublet, before he started from home, we should have avoided a great deal of
trouble, and he escaped a great deal of expense, and for aught I know, suffering;
for the last we heard of him, he was to pass the winter at the Salmon river.
From all I could
learn, St. Louis was the depot, or headquarters of the commerce with the
Indians. Mackenzie, I was informed has a steam-boat called the Yellow-stone, by
which he keeps up a trade with the natives inhabiting the region watered by the
river of that name. The Yellow-stone is a noble river, being eight
hundred and thirty seven miles from the point where Captain Clarke reached it
to the Missouri, and is so far navigable for batteaux; and eight hundred and
fifty feet wide at its confluence with the river just named. By all accounts,
the superiority of the Yellow-stone river over the Columbia, or Oregon, for a
settlement of New-England adventurers in point of fertility, climate, and
pleasantness, is such as to impress one with regret that ever we extended our
views beyond it; for the lamentable fact is, that the trade with the Indians
all round the Rocky Mountains, and beyond it to the Oregon territory and
Columbia river, is actually forestalled, or pre-occupied by wealthy,
established, and experienced traders residing at, or near St. Louis, while we
are more than twelve hundred miles in their rear, and very far behind them in
time. Besides all these considerations, we may add another of great importance;
I mean the fact, that Mackenzie's and Sublet's white trappers, or hunters, are
a sort of half Indians in their manners and habits, and could assimilate with
them, while we are strangers to the savages, and they to us, with all the
dislikes natural to both sides. Captain Sublet, who appears to be a worthy
character, and of sound judgment, perceived this, and must have seen, at once,
that he had nothing to fear from us, and therefore he paid us great attention,
conciliated and made use of us, and while he aided us, he benefited his own
concern, and all without the least spice of jealousy, when knowing the
impossibility, under existing circumstances, that we could supplant him in the
affection of the red men of Missouri and Oregon.
The white
traders, and the Indians have, if we may so term it, an annual Fair, that has
been found by experience profitable to both sides. It is true the white trader
barters a tawdry bauble of a few cents value, for a skin worth fifty of it. And
so have we in our India shawls, and, a few years since, in Leghorn hats, in
which we were taxed as high as the white merchant taxes the equally silly
Indian. Coffee was sold at two dollars a pound, and so was tobacco. Indeed some
of us gave that price to Mr. Nathaniel J. Wyeth for the latter article, a
luxury more coveted by men in our situation, anxious and fatigued as we were,
than whisky or brandy. This was the case under Lewis and Clarke. When deprived
of tobacco, they cut up the old handles of tomahawks, which had been used as
pipes, and chewed the wood for the sake of its smell and smack. It is not a
singular case. It has been experienced among sailors at sea. They have pined
more for the lulling effects of that nauseous weed than for ardent spirits; and
it has been known that men will mutiny sooner when deprived of their tobacco,
than when deprived of their usual food and rum. There was no small grumbling on
being obliged to buy tobacco out of what we thought common stock, at the rate
above mentioned, being, as we thought, all members of a commonwealth.
The following may
serve to show the knowledge or instinct of horses.
When marching on
our return home in the troop of Captain Sublet, not far from the eastern declivity
of the Rocky Mountains, we were met by a large body of Indians on horseback.
Sublet generally kept seven videts about two miles ahead of his main body. The
horses of this advance guard suddenly refused to go on, and turned round, and
appeared alarmed, but the riders knew not the cause of it. Captain Sublet rode
up, and said, that he knew by the behaviour of the horses that there was an
enemy ahead. He said there was a valley several miles off where he apprehended
we might be attacked. He therefore ordered every man to examine his arms, and
be ready for action. After riding a few miles we discovered a large moving body
of a living something. Some of us thought it was a drove of buffaloes; but the
Captain said no, because they were of different colors, whereas bisons, or
buffaloes appear all of one color. After viewing them through his glass, he
said they were a body of the Black-foot tribe, who had on their war dresses,
with their faces painted, bare heads, and other signs of hostility.
Their appearance
was very singular, and, to some of us, terrible. There was a pretty fresh
breeze of wind, so as to blow the long manes and tails of their horses out
straight. Nor was this all: the wind had the same effect on the long black hair
of the warriors, which gave them not only a grotesque but a terrific
appearance. Added to all this, they kept up a most horrid yell or war-hoop.
They rode up and completely surrounded us; and then all was silent. Captain
Sublet rode up to the chief, and expressed his hope that all was peace. The
savage replied that there should be peace on their part, on condition that
Sublet should give them twenty-five pounds of tobacco, which was soon
complied with, when the Indian army remounted their horses, and rode off at
full speed as they came on: and we pushed off with like speed, lest they should
repent their bargain and return upon us, to mend it.
Who will say that
this gallant body of cavalry were not wiser than the common run of white
soldiers, to make peace for a quid? and thereby save their horses and
their own skins? Out of what book did this corps of savage dragoons learn that
discretion was the better part of valor? We answer, From out of that book of
Nature which taught the videts' horses that an enemy was in the wind. The horse
is the dumbest of all beasts. He is silent under torture. He never groans but
once, and that is his last. Did they roar like bulls, or squeal like
hogs, they would be useless in an army. That noble animal suffers from man a
shameful weight of cruel usage in town and country.
The wild horses
are a great curiosity. They traverse the country, and stroll about in droves
from a dozen to twenty or thirty; and always appear to have a leader, like a
gander to a flock of geese. When our own horses we feeding fettered around our
encampments, the wild horse would come down to them, and seem to examine them,
as if counting them; and would sometimes come quite up to them if we kept out
of sight; but when they discovered us they would one and all give a jump off
and fly like the wind.
There is a method
of catching a wild horse, that may appear to many "a traveller's
story." It is called creasing a horse. The meaning of the term is
unknown to me. It consists in shooting a horse in the neck with a single ball
so as to graze his neck bone, and not to cut the pith of it. This stuns the
horse and he falls to the ground, but he recovers again, and is as well as
ever, all but a little soreness in the neck, which soon gets well. But in his
short state of stupefaction, the hunter runs up, and twists a noose around the
skin of his nose, and then secures him with thong of buffalo-hide. I do not
give it merely as a story related; but I believe it, however improbable it may
appear, because I saw it done. I saw an admirable marksman, young Andrew
Sublet, fire at a fine horse, and after he fell, treat him in the way I have
mentioned; and he brought the horse into camp, and it turned out to be a very
fine one. The marvel of the story is, that the dextrous marksman shall shoot so
precisely as only to graze the vital part; and yet those who know these matters
better than I do, say, that they conceive it possible.
After we had made
peace with the large body of the Blackfoot Indians, for, as we may say, a quid
of tobacco, nothing occurred worth relating until we arrived at the town of
Independence, being the first white settlement in our way homewards. I would,
however, here remark, that the warlike body just mentioned, though of the
fierce Blackfoot tribe, hunted and fought independently of that troop with
which we had a battle in the Rocky Mountains; and were most probably ignorant
of that affair, in which a chief was treacherously shot by one Antoine, who was
half Indian and half French, when bearing a white flag, and with which nefarious
deed I believe Captain Sublet had no concern. But of all this I cannot speak
with certainty, as I myself was half a mile distant, when the Black-foot chief
was shot, and his scarlet robe tom off of him by the mongrel Indian, as a
trophy instead of his scalp; for the Indians returned their fire so promptly,
and continued fighting so long, even after dark, that there was no time nor
opportunity of his securing that evidence of his savage blood and mode of
warfare.
When we arrived
at the town of Independence, Dr. Jacob Wyeth, Palmer, Styles, and myself bought
a canoe, being tired of travelling by land, and impatient to get on, and this
was the last of my money except a single six-cent piece. A thick fog prevented
our early departure, as it would be dangerous to proceed on account of the
snags and sawyers in the river. To pass away the tedious time, I strolled out
around the town, and lost my direct way back. At length the fog cleared off,
and after my companions had waited for me an hour, they pushed off and left me
behind! They, be sure, left word that they would wait for me at the next town,
Boonsville, twenty miles' distance. I hurried, however, as fast I could five
miles down the banks of the river; when, finding that I could not overtake
them, and being fatigued by running, I gave over the chase in despair. I was
sadly perplexed, and vexed, at what I conceived worse than savage usage. In
this state of mind, I saw a small skiff, with a pair of oars, when an heroic
idea came into my half-crazed brain, and feeling my absolute necessities, I
acted like certain ancient and some modem heroes, and jumped into the boat,
cast off her painter, and pulled away for dear life down the stream. The owner
of the boat discovered me when not much more than a quarter of a mile on my
way. He and another man got into a canoe and rowed after me, and gained upon
me; on perceiving which, I laid out all my strength, and although two to one, I
distanced them, and they soon saw they could not overtake me. When I started it
was twelve o'clock, and I got to the next town, Boonsville, the sun half an
hour high,- the distance about twenty miles. When my skiff struck the shore my
pursuers were about twenty rods behind me. I ran into the first barn of a
tavern I could reach. They soon raised the neighbors, and placed a watch around
the barn, one side of which opened into a cornfield. In searching for me they
more than once trod over me, but the thickness of the hay prevented them from
feeling me. I knew the severe effects of their laws, by which those who were
too poor to pay the fine were to atone for their poverty by stripes, which were
reckoned to be worth a dollar a stripe in that cheap country; and hence I lay
snug in the hay two nights and one day without any thing to eat. Hunger at length
forced me from my hiding-place, when I went into the tavern, where I found Dr.
Jacob Wyeth, Walter Palmer, and Styles. I told the landlord I was starving for
want of food, and he gave me supper; and then I went back into the barn again,
where I slept that night.
The next morning
I went into the tavern again, and there I found my pursuers, and they found
their prisoner, whom they soon put under the custody of two constables, who
ordered me breakfast, which having eaten with a good relish, I watched my opportunity,
while they were standing thick around the bar, and crept unobserved out of the
back-door into the extensive cornfield, and thence into the barn window out of
which they threw manure, and regained my snug hiding-hole, where I remained one
day and one night more. I now and then could see the constables and their posse
prowling about the barn, through a crevice in the boards. In the midst of my
fears, I was amused with the solemn, and concernful phizes of the two
constables, and one or two others. In the morning very early, I ventured out
again, and ran down to the river; and there spying a boat, and feeling heroic,
I jumped into her and pushed across the river, and landed on the opposite bank,
so as to elude the pursuit of the authorities, who I knew would be after me on
the right bank of the river, while I marched on the left. When I came to the
ferry near St. Louis, I had only a six-cent piece, which the ferryman took for
his full fare which was twelve cents, and so I got safe to St. Louis, but with scarcely
clothing enough for decency, not to mention comfort: and yet I kept up a good
heart, and never once despaired. My companions arrived a day before me; they on
Thursday, I on Friday, at four o'clock in the afternoon; they in the
steam-boat, like gentlemen, while I, the youngest in the whole Oregon company,
like a runaway. But I do not regret the difference, seeing I have a story worth
telling, and worth hearing.
Where to get a
lodging that night I did not know, nor where to obtain a morsel of bread. I
went up to a large tavern, and asked permission of the keeper to lodge in his
barn that night, but he sternly refused. I then went to the other tavern, and
made the like request, when the landlord granted it, saying that he never
refused a man sleeping in his barn who was too poor to pay for a lodging in his
house. I wish I knew his name. I turned in and had a very good night's rest.
Should any one enquire how I came to leave my old companions, and they me, I
need only say that I had a very serious quarrel with one of them, even to
blows; and with that one too who ought to have been the last to treat me with
neglect; "and further the deponent saith not."
The next morning
I went round in search of work, but no one seemed disposed to hire me; nor do I
much Wonder at it; for in truth I was so ragged and dirty, that I had nothing
to recommend me; and I suffered more depression of spirits during the following
six days of my sojourn at St. Louis, than in any part of my route. The
steam-boats refused me and Dr. Wyeth started off for New Orleans before I could
see him. Palmer let himself by the month on board a steamboat running between
St. Louis and Independence, while I was left alone at the former place six days
without employ, victuals, or decent clothing. I could not bear to go to
people's doors to beg; but I went on board steam-boats and begged for food. I
was such a picture of wretchedness that I did not wonder they refused to hire
me. My dress was buck-skin moccasins, and pantaloons; the remains of a shirt I
put on in the Rocky Mountains, the remnants of a kersey waistcoat which I had
worn ever since I left Cambridge, and a hat I had worn all the time from
Boston, but without any coat whatever, or socks, or stockings; and to add to
the wretchedness of my appearance, I was very dirty, and I could not help it.
My looks drew the attention of a great many spectators. I thought very hard of
it then, but I have since reflected, and must say that when people saw a strong
young man of eighteen in high health, and yet so miserable in appearance, it
was natural in them to conclude that he must be some criminal escaped from
justice, or some vagabond suffering under the just effects of his own crimes.
At length,
wearied out by my ill fortune, I plucked up courage, and went to the
Constitution steam-boat, Captain Tufts, of Charlestown, near Boston, and told
him my name and family; and detailed to him my sufferings, and said that he
must give me a passage, and I would work for it. To my great joy he consented,
and he gave me shirt, pantaloons, &c.; and I acted at a fireman, or
one who feeds the fire with pine wood under the steam-boilers. I forbear
narrating the particulars of my sufferings for want of food during the six days
I tarried at St. Louis. Suffice it to say, that I was in a condition of
starvation, and all owing to my wretched appearance. When I at times went on
board the steam-boats, I was glad to scrape up any thing after the sailors and
firemen had done eating. At length I obtained employ in the steam-boat Constitution,
and a passage to New-Orleans, on the condition of acting as one of the firemen,
there being twelve in all, with five men as sailors, and two hundred and forty
passengers, party emigrants, but chiefly men belonging to the settlements on
the Mississippi, going down to Natchez, and to New-Orleans to work. We tarried
one night at the Natchez; but soon after we left it the cholera broke
out among the passengers, eighty of whom died before we reached New Orleans,
and two of our own firemen. A most shocking scene followed.
I felt
discouraged. My miseries seemed endless. After trying day after day in vain to
get a passage in a steam-boat, I was made happy in procuring one, though I paid
for it, by working as a fireman, the hardest and most disagreeable occupation
on board; still I was contented, as I had victuals enough to eat; and yet,
after all, I saw men perishing every minute about me, and thrown into the river
like so many dead hogs. It is an unexaggerated fact that I witnessed more
misery in the space of eight months than most old men experience in a long
life.
On arriving at
New-Orleans, Captain Tufts sent off every man of the passengers, leaving those
only who belonged to the boat. He gave me shirts and other clothing, and
offered me twenty dollars a month, if I would go back to St. Louis with him. I
remained on board about a week; and so desirous was I to get home, that I
preferred going ashore, although I knew that the yellow fever and black vomit,
as well as cholera were committing great havoc in the city. The shops, stores,
taverns, and even the gambling houses, were shut up, and people were dying
in-doors, and out of doors, much faster than they could be buried. More white
people were seized with it than black; but when the latter were attacked, more
died than the former. The negroes sunk under the disorder at once. When a negro
gets very sick, he loses all his spirits, and refuses all remedies. He wishes
to die, and it is no wonder, ff he believes that he shall go into a pleasant
country where there are no white men or women.
I soon got full
employ as a grave-digger, at two dollars a day, and could have got twice that
sum had I been informed of the true state of things. In the first three days we
dug a separate grave for each person; but we soon found that we could not clear
the hearses and carts. I counted eighty-seven dead bodies uninterred on the
ground. Yet where I worked, was only one of the three grave-yards belonging to
the city, and the other two were larger. We therefore began on a new plan.
There were twenty-five of us grave-diggers. We dug a trench fifty-seven feet
long, eight feet wide, and four feet deep, and laid them as compactly as we
could, and filled up the vacant spaces with children. It was an awful piece of
business. In this large trench we buried about, perhaps, three hundred; and
this business we carried on about a month. During this time, you might traverse
the streets of New-Orleans, without meeting a single person, except those
belonging to the hearses, and carts, loaded with the dead. Men were picked up
in the morning who died after dark before they could reach their own houses. If
you ask me ff they died with yellow fever, or cholera, I must answer that I
cannot tell. Some said the one, and some the other. Every thing was confusion.
If a negro was sent by his master to a carpenter, for what they called a
coffin, which was only a rough board box, he was commonly robbed of it before
he got home. I myself saw an assault of this kind, when the poor black slave
was knocked down and the rude coffin taken from him. New-Orleans is a dreadful
place in the eyes of a New-England man. They keep Sunday as we in Boston keep
the 4th of July, or any other day of merriment and frolic. It is also a
training day every other Sunday for their military companies.
I was in part
witness to a shocking sight at the marine hospital, where had been many
patients with the yellow fever. When the doctors, and those who had the care of
that establishment had deserted the house, between twenty-five and thirty dead
bodies were left in it; and these were so offensive from putrefaction, that
when the city corporation heard of it, they ordered the house, together with
the bodies to be burnt up; but this was not strictly complied with. A number of
negro slaves were employed to remove the bodies, which being covered with wood
and other combustibles, were all consumed together.
At length I was
attacked myself with symptoms of the yellow fever,- violent pain in my head,
back, and stomach. I lived at that time in the family of a Frenchman, who,
among his various occupations, pretended to skill in physic. He fed me on
castor oil. I took in one day four wine glasses of it, which required as much
resolution as I was master of: but my doctor assured me that he had repeatedly
scared away the yellow fever at the beginning of it, by large and often
repeated doses of that medicine. Its operation was not one way, but every way.
I thought I should have no insides left to go home with. Yet it is a fact, and
I record it with pleasure, that it carried off all my dreadful symptoms, and in
a very few days, I had nothing to complain of but weakness, which a good
appetite soon cured. I therefore recommend a man in the first stage of yellow
fever to take down a gill of castor oil, made as hot as he can swallow it; and
repeat the dose in eight hours.
I remained nine
weeks in New-Orleans, a city so unlike Boston, in point of neatness, order, and
good government, that I do not wonder at its character for unhealthiness.
Stagnant water remains in the streets as green as grass, with a steam rising
out of it that may be smelt at the distance of half a mile. Besides this, their
population is so mixed, that they appear running against each other in the
streets, every one having a different object and a different complexion. In one
thing they seem to be agreed, and to concur in the same object, namely, gaming.
In that delirous pursuit, they all speak the same language, and appear to run
down the same road to ruin.
I am glad that it
is in my power to support what I have said respecting the Marine Hospital, by
the following public testimony, published by authority, taken from one of their
newspapers.
"
NEW-ORLEANS.- The following report from a committee appointed to examine one of
the hospitals, will account, in some degree, for the unprecedented mortality
which has afflicted New-Orleans. The report is addressed to the mayor.
"The
undersigned, standing committee named by the city council during the prevalence
of the epidemic now desolating the city, have the honor to report, that, in
consequence of information given by sundry respectable persons, relative to the
condition of the hospital kept by Dr. M'Farlane, they repaired to-day, at
half-past one o'clock, to said hospital; that in all the apartments they found
the most disgusting filth; that all the night vessels were full, and that the
patients have all declared that for a long time they had received no kind of
succour; that in many of the apartments of the building they found corpses,
several of which had been a number of days in putrefaction; that thence they
repaired to a chamber adjoining the kitchen, where they found the body of a
negro, which had been a long time dead, in a most offensive state. They finally
went to another apartment opposite the kitchen, which was equally filthy with
the other rooms, and that they there found many corpses of persons a long time
dead; that in a bed, between others, they found a man dying, stretched upon the
body of a man many days dead.
"Finally,
they declare that it is impossible for one to form an idea of what they have
witnessed, without he had himself seen it; that it is indispensably necessary
for the patients to evacuate this hospital, and above all, to watch lest the
corpses in a state of putrefaction occasion pestilence in that quarter, and
perhaps in the whole city.
"November 7.
The standing committee has the honor to present the following additional
report.
"In one of
the apartments where were many living and dead bodies, they found under a bed a
dead body partly eaten, whose belly and entrails lay upon the floor. It exhaled
a most pestiferous odor. In a little closet upon the gallery there were two
dead bodies, one of which lay flat upon the floor, and the other had his feet
upon the floor and his back upon the bed forming a curve; the belly
prodigiously swelled and the thighs green. Under a shed in the yard was the
dead body of a negro, off which a fowl was picking worms. The number of corpses
amounted to twelve or fourteen.
Signed,
E. A. CANNON, Chairman.
FELIX LABATUT, Alderman, Second Ward.
CHARLES LEE, Alderman, First Ward."
I took passage in
the ship Henry Thomson, Captain Williams, and arrived in Boston, January 2d,
1833, after an absence of ten months, having experienced in that time a variety
of hardships.
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
The lesson to be
collected from this short-history is the great danger in making haste to be
rich, instead of relying upon patient industry, which never fails to give a man
his just deserts. Making haste to become rich is the most "fruitful source
of the calamities of life; for here cunning, contrivance, and circumvention,
take the place of diligence. After the schemer's plans have all failed, there
seems only one tempting means left to obtain riches in a hurry, and that is by
gaming, the most prosperous invention ever devised by the arch enemy of
mankind; and when that fails, the next downward step to destruction, excepting
drunkenness, is robbery, many instances of which we find recorded in the annals
of Newgate and the records of the Old Bailey in London. Such atrocities have
never, or very rarely, occurred in our own country, and never will so long as
we are wisely contented with the fruits of patient industry, and so long as we
believe that the diligent hand maketh rich. These reflections refer to extreme
cases, and are not applicable, or meant to be personally applicable, to the
unfortunate expedition in which we have been concerned. It is not meant to
reprehend those enormous vices and crimes which are known in the old countries,
but only to correct a spirit of discontent in men well situated and
circumstanced. "If you stand well, stand still," says the
Italian proverb.
Some may say this
doctrine, if put in practice, would check all enterprise. Not entirely so, provided
the means and the end were cautiously adjusted. Christopher Columbus ran a
great risk; yet he knew, from the reasonings of his capacious mind, that there
must be " another and a better world " than that he was born in; and
under that strong and irrestistible impression he tempted the trackless ocean
and found it. But what shall we say of our Oregon adventurers, who set out to
pass over the Rocky Mountains, and thence down the Columbia river to the
Pacific ocean, in boats upon wheels? and that too with a heavy load of goods,
and those chiefly of iron. What renders the project more surprising is, that
they should take with them the most ponderous articles of a blacksmith's shop,
-anvils, and a large vice. It is more than probable that the old and long established
wholesale Indian traders at St. Louis laughed in their sleeves, when they saw
such a cargo fresh from the city of "notions," paraded with
all the characteristic confidence of the unwavering Yankee spirit. After
assuring them that their ingenious and well-constructed amphibious vehicles
would not answer for travelling in such a rough country as they must go
through, they purchased all three of them, and advised our leader to buy sheep
and oxen to live on between the white settlements and the country of the
savages, and not to trust to their guns for food. This turned out very
wholesome advice, as they must have starved without that provision.
The party under
Captains Lewis and Clarke, sent out by the government of the United States, consisted
of nine young men from Kentucky, fourteen soldiers of the United States army
who volunteered their services, two French watermen,- an interpreter and
hunter,- and a black servant belonging to Captain Clarke. All these, except the
last, were enlisted to serve as privates during the expedition, and three
sergeants were appointed from amongst them by the captains. In addition to
these, were engaged a corporal and six soldiers, and nine watermen, to
accompany the expedition as far as the Mandan nation, in order to assist in
carrying the stores, or repelling an attack, which was most to be apprehended
between Wood river and that tribe. This select party embarked on board three
boats. One was a keel-boat fifty-five feet long, drawing three feet of water,
with a large square sail, and twenty-two oars, with a forecastle and cabin,
while the middle was covered by lockers, which might be raised so as to form a
breast-work. There were beside two periogues, or open boats of seven
oars each. They had two horses, for any purpose, which they led along the
banks; and fourteen bales of goods, with a variety of clothing, working
utensils, locks, flints, ammunition, and richly-laced coats, and other gay
dresses, and a variety of ornaments suited to the taste of the Indians,
together with knives, flags, tomahawks, and medals. Yet all these articles were
exhausted, without any accident or particular loss. The party was led by two
experienced military officers, and the men were under military regulations;
which was not the case with the Cambridge adventurers, who were upon shares,
and all on a level.
We are unwilling
that our readers should rely entirely on our opinion of the inadequacy of the
outfits for such a formidable undertaking as that of going from the Atlantic
shore of New-England to the shore of the Pacific by land. We shall therefore
subjoin the opinion of a sensible gentleman, who had spent some time in the
Missouri territory, and traversed its dreary prairies, where no tree appears,
and where there is, during the greater part of the year, no fuel for cooking,
nor water fit to drink. He says: " Do the Oregon emigrants seek a fine
country on the Oregon river? They will pass through lands [to get to it] of
which they may buy two hundred acres for less than the farther expenses of
their journey." He tells us that a gentleman (Mr. Kelly) has been
employing his leisure in advising schemes to better the condition of his fellow
countrymen, and has issued advertisements, inviting the good people of
New-England to leave their homes, their connexions, and the comforts of
civilized society, and follow him across the continent to the shores of the
Pacific. He tells those who may reach St. Louis, that they will find there many
who have been to Oregon, and found no temptation to remain there; - that they
may possibly charter a steamboat from St. Louis to the mouth of the river
Platte, but no farther, as that stream is not navigable for steamboats unless
during freshets. And after they reach the mouth of the Platte, they will have a
thousand miles to go before they reach the Rocky Mountains; and the
country through which the adventurers must pass is a level plain, where the eye
seeks in vain for a tree or a shrub,- that in some places they must travel days
and nights without finding wood or water, for that the streams only are
scantily fringed with wood. Our Cambridge emigrants actually found this to be
the case, as they had no other fuel for cooking their live stock than
buffalo-dung. The writer says, (and he had been there), that the ground is
covered with herbage for a few weeks in the year only, and that this is owing
to the Indians burning the Prairies regularly twice a year, which occasions
them to be as bare of vegetation as the deserts of Arabia. The same experienced
traveller assures them that they could not take provisions with them sufficient
for their wants, and that a dependence on their guns for support was
fallacious, and the same uncertainty as to the buffaloes; - that sometimes
those animals were plenty enough, and sometimes more than enough, so as to be
dangerous. When they trot smartly off, ten thousand and more in a drove, they
are as irresistible as a mountain torrent, and would tread into nothing a
larger body than the Cambridge fortune-hunters. Their flesh is coarse beef, and
the grisly bear's, coarse pork; but this kind of bear, called the horrible
from his strength and ferocity, is a most terrific beast, and more disposed and
able to feed on the hunter than the huntsman upon him. We can assure the
emigrants, says the writer already quoted, from our own experience, that not
one horse in five can perform a journey of a thousand miles, without a constant
supply of something better than prairie-grass.
The journal of
Lewis and Clarke to the Pacific ocean, over the Rocky Mountains, was a popular
book in the hands of every body; and the Expedition of Major Long and company
was as much read; and both of-these works detail events and facts enough, one
would suppose, to deter men from such an arduous enterprise; not to mention the
hostile tribes of Indians through which they must pass. It seems strange, but
it is true, that a theoretical man need not despair of making the multitude
believe any thing but truth. They believed the enthusiastic Mr. Hall J. Kelley,
who had never been in the Oregon territory, or seen the Rocky Mountains, or a
prairie-dog, or a drove of buffaloes, and who in fact knew nothing of the
country beyond some guess-work maps; yet they would not read, consider, or
trust to the faithful records of those officers who had been sent by the
government to explore the country and make report of it.
There is a
passage in the essay written by W. J. S. which we shall insert here on his
authority, as it cannot be supposed that we, at this distance, should be so
well acquainted with the affairs in Missouri, as one who had resided on the
spot. We assume not to keep pace with the professed eulogist of Oregon, of its
river, and its territory, its mild climate, its exuberant soil, and its
boisterous Pacific, so inviting to the distressed poor in the neighbourhood of
Boston; who are exhorted by him to pluck up stakes and courage, and march over
the Rocky Mountains to wealth, ease, and independence. The passage we allude to
reads thus: - "About twelve years since, it was discovered by a
public-spirited citizen of St. Louis, that the supply of furs was not equal to
the demand. To remedy this evil, he raised a corps of sharp-shooters, equipped
them with guns, ammunition, steel-traps, and horses, and sent them into the
wilderness to teach the Indians that their right was only a right of occupancy.
They did the savages irreparable injury. They frightened the buffaloes from
their usual haunts, -destroyed the fur-clad animals, and did more mischief than
we have room to relate." He adds, sarcastically, that "the Indians
were wont to hunt in a slovenly manner, leaving a few animals yearly for
breeding. But that the white hunters were more thorough-spirited, and made
root-and-branch work of it. When they settled on a district, they destroyed the
old and young alike; and when they left it, they left no living thing behind
them. The first party proving successful, more were fitted out, and every
successive year has seen several armed and mounted bands of hunters, from
twenty to a hundred men and more in each, pouring into the Indian hunting
grounds; and all this has been done in open and direct violation of a law of
the United States, which expressly forbids trapping and hunting on Indian lands.
The consequence has been that there are now few fur-clad animals this side the
mountains."
Lewis and Clarke,
and some other travellers, speak of friendly Indians,- of their kindness and
hospitality, and expatiate on their amiable disposition, and relate instances
of it. Yet after all, this Indian friendship is very like the affection of the
negroes in the Southern States for their masters and mistresses, and for their
children,- the offspring merely of fear. There can be no friendship where there
is such a disparity of condition. As to their presents, an Indian gift is
proverbial. They never give without expecting double in return.
What right have
we to fit out armed expeditions, and enter the long occupied country of the
natives, to destroy their game, not for subsistence, but for their skins? They
are a contented people, and do not want our aid to make them happier. We prate
of civilizing and Christianizing the savages. What have we done for their
benefit? We have carried among them rum, powder and ball,
smallpox, starvation, and misery. What is the reason that Congress, -the great
council of the nation, - the collected wisdom of these United States, has
turned a deaf ear to all applications for establishing a colony on the Oregon
river? Some of the members of that honorable house of legislation know that the
district in question is a boisterous and inclement region, with less to eat,
less to warm the traveller, and to cook with, than at the mouth of any other
known river in the United States. We deem the mouth of the river St. Lawrence
as eligible a spot for a settlement of peltry merchants as the mouth of the
Columbia. When Lewis and Clarke were on that river, they had not a single fair
day in two months. They were drenched with rain day and night; and what added
to their comfortless condition was the incessant high winds, which drove the
waves furiously into the Columbia river with the tide; and on its ebb, raised
such commotion, and such a chopping sea, that the travellers dared not venture
upon it in their boats; yet the Indians did, and managed their canoes with a
dexterity which the explorers greatly admired, but could not imitate. The
boisterous Pacific was among the new discoveries of our American adventurers.
Had their expedition been to the warm climate of Africa, or to South America,
they would have been sure of plenty to eat; but in the western region, between
the Rocky Mountains and the great river of the West, the case is far otherwise.
It is devoutly to
be wished that truth may prevail respecting those distant regions. Indeed the
sacred cause of humanity calls loudly on its votaries to disabuse the people
dwelling on these Atlantic shores respecting the Oregon paradise, lest our
farmers' sons and young mechanics should, in every sense of the phrase, stray
from home, and go they know not whither,- to seek they know not what. Or must
Truth wait on the Rocky Mountains until some Indian historian,- some future Clavigero
shall publish his annals, and separate facts from fiction? We esteem the "History
of the Expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clarke to the Sources
of the Missouri, thence across The Rocky Mountains, and down to the Pacific
Ocean," substantially correct. Their conduct towards the Indians was
marked throughout with justice and humanity; and the journal of that expedition
will be a lasting monument of their judicious perseverance, and of the wisdom
of the government of the United States.
Reader! The book
you have in your hands is not written for your amusement merely, or to fill up
an idle hour, but for your instruction,- particularly to warn young farmers and
mechanics not to leave a certainty for an uncertainty, and straggle away over a
sixth part of the globe in search of what they leave behind them at home. It is
hoped that it may correct that too common opinion that the farther you go from
home the surer you are of making your fortune. Agriculture gives to the
industrious farmer the riches which he can call his own; while the
indefatigable mechanic is sure to acquire a sufficiency, provided he "
build not his house too high."
Industry
conducted by Prudence is a virtue of so diffusive a nature that it mixes with
all our concerns. No business can be managed and accomplished without it.
Whatever be a man's calling or way of life, he must, to be happy, be actuated
by a spirit of industry, and that will keep him from want, from dishonesty, and
from the vice of gambling and lottery-dealing, and its long train of miseries.
The first and
most common deviation from sober industry is a desire to roam abroad, or in one
word, a feeling of discontent,- a making haste to be rich, without the
patient means of it. These are reflections general and not particular, as it
regards all such high hopes and expectations, as lead to our Oregon expedition
and to its disappointments. The most that we shall say of it is,- that it was
an injudicious scheme arising from want of due information, and the whole
conducted by means inadequate to the end in view.
Oh happy - if he knew
his happy state,
The man, who, free from turmoil and debate,
Receives his wholesome food from Nature's hand,
The just return of cultivated land.
THE END