Rainy Lake House

by Theodore Catton

  They suffered most from heat and thirst. Due to their belated start in late spring, they had to traverse the southern plains on their homeward march in August. By that month, the Arkansas River flowed below ground and all that was left in the riverbed was an occasional stagnant, fetid waterhole. Marching mostly down the dry bed of the river, they saw no running water except for a trickle here and there following a thunderstorm. As daytime temperatures soared to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, they halted each midday, desperately seeking out even the smallest shade tree for relief from the scorching sun. When none was to be found, they pitched their one remaining tent. Because the tent did not afford everyone complete shade, they resorted to lying in a circle with their heads together and their legs protruding out in every direction into the hot sunshine.15

  In spite of these trying conditions, the scientific members of the 1820 expedition compiled some of the fullest descriptions of Indian tribes produced in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Thomas Say, Titian Peale, and Samuel Seymour visited with the Otoes, Missouris, Ioways, Kansas, Pawnees, and Omahas near Council Bluffs during the winter of 1819–20 and made the first significant studies of those tribes. Although the scientists had much less time for ethnographic investigations as they made their way to the Rocky Mountains and back, Long did allow visits of a day or two at some Indian encampments en route, and on more than one occasion the expedition traveled with or alongside hunting parties, giving the scientists an opportunity to observe the tribesmen on the move. As these observations were subsequently published and widely disseminated, the ethnographic studies should be reckoned as one of the expedition’s most valuable contributions.16

  Long set down his own observations on Indians in a handwritten report of 109 pages entitled “Report of the Western River Expedition.” Directed to the War Department and the army, the section of the report entitled “Indians” was an unvarnished, hard-headed, mostly negative appraisal. It was not ethnographic description so much as a distillation of his overall impressions. In this piece, there was a strain of contempt toward Indians that was not present in his earlier writings. It betokened a change of attitude, a rising racial prejudice. Where the racial prejudice came from cannot be known. It may have arisen as a result of his actual experiences with Indians, and the uncomfortableness of encountering strange cultures; or, from time spent in the western territory, with its surfeit of Indian haters whose attitudes rubbed off on others; or, from longer-held values connected to his religious upbringing, now brought into sharper relief by his Christian marriage. Perhaps it was some of each. What is clear is that he was not alone in experiencing a change of attitude. Sadly, in the coming decade a wide swath of the American people would join him in turning to a more racist and pessimistic view of the western tribes and their likely future.

  Long began his remarks in his 1820 report by noting how hard it was to obtain accurate knowledge of Indian cultures without actually living among the Indians. Based on his own experience in talking with Indians, he was skeptical about the “delicate trains of thought and reflections” sometimes attributed to them by other writers. Indians, he said, generally spoke only of immediate concerns, whereas “in regard to matters of an abstract or metaphysical nature their ideas appear to be very limited.” Most Indians believed in a Supreme Being whom they referred to as the “Master of Life” or “Great Spirit.” But when asked to describe the Creator’s attributes, they could only express “vague and confused” ideas. They had some general notion of the immortality of the soul, but they had no conception of Heaven or Hell. Indeed, they were much more concerned with supernatural powers in the here and now. They were highly superstitious and believed in magic. He discussed the role of the “crier,” a holy man who would go through the village exhorting his followers. The holy man’s claim to “medicine” amounted to nothing more than magic tricks, yet it formed the whole foundation of his influence.17

  The Indians were almost universally “addicted to habits of extreme indolence,” Long continued. Little besides hunting, war, and recreation stirred them to action. The white man’s way of life, with its emphasis on work, a private home, and accumulation of personal property, held almost no appeal for them. Yet they were hardly free from want, either, for living by the hunt they could never be sure of their food supply. Not only was their subsistence “precarious,” they lived in constant dread of attack from enemy tribes. These elemental concerns produced in their minds a highly developed sense of intrigue, cunning, and artifice, and a conviction that ends always justify the means. They used their stratagems, Long wrote, “not just in warfare but in the management of domestic concerns.” As a result, the life of the tribe was fraught with rivalries, factions, and the rise of pretenders.18

  Long’s remarks on the Indians’ character paralleled those of many of his fellow officers. Although army officers tended to attribute to the Indians such unflattering qualities as indolence, superstition, treachery, and brutality, they were not racist in the sense of believing in immutable, racial differences between Indian and white man. Rather, they tended to assume that the Indians’ “savage” nature stemmed from environmental factors. Indian cultures were what they were because Indian peoples had lived so long in primitive isolation under harsh conditions. These historical circumstances placed them far down the scale among the world’s civilized and savage peoples.19

  One of the most common observations that military men made about Indians was that they were vengeful. Long agreed with that assessment. “Their reluctance to forgive an injury is proverbial,” he wrote. “Injuries are revenged by the injured, and blood for blood is always demanded if the deceased had friends who dare to retaliate upon the destroyer.” Long heard of instances where the revenge had become hereditary and quarrels were finally settled after the original parties to the quarrel were long dead.20

  He closed his remarks by saying that the great variety of western tribes should not distract from their essential sameness. There were certain traits and characteristics common to all. The western Indians were a “race of barbarians.”21

  Long’s commentary added to the army’s internal discourse about Indians, but it did not reach beyond that to the general public. What it reveals is that Long’s personal attitudes toward Indians had turned quite negative, even by the standards of his peers, and probably grew more so the longer he served in the West.22

  27

  Mapmaker

  When Long returned to Washington in November 1820, he still thought of his expedition to the Rocky Mountains as only the first in a series of explorations that would come to embrace the entire region. On reporting to Calhoun, he immediately offered suggestions as to what they might undertake in the coming year.1 But his great reconnaissance of the West was not to be. Nearly two and a half years would elapse before Long set out on his next and last expedition in May 1823. This was the journey that would take him to Rainy Lake House and his encounter with John Tanner.

  There were two reasons why his ambitious plan of exploration never unfolded as he envisioned. The first was political. Long’s explorations piggybacked on the expansionist impulse that drove US diplomatic and military policy following the War of 1812. About the same time that Calhoun announced plans for the army to build fortifications on the upper Missouri, the United States and Britain resolved a number of issues left hanging after the Treaty of Ghent, the foremost of which was the boundary between US and British territory from the Great Lakes to the Continental Divide. In an instrument known as the Convention of 1818, this boundary was demarcated by the forty-ninth parallel. Adjusting the frontier to conform to this latitude, Britain ceded to the United States the southernmost reach of the Hudson Bay watershed, that being the upper Red River valley in what is now Minnesota and North Dakota, while the United States ceded to Britain the northern tip of the Louisiana Purchase, it being the northern edge of the Milk River valley in present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan. One year later, the Adams-Onís Treaty settled the boundary between the United S
tates and Spanish territory in the Southwest. After the two treaties were concluded, the United States had less need to buttress its territorial claims by right of discovery. It also had less need for extensive military fortifications to protect its western frontier. When the nation’s economy slumped in 1819 and Congress looked for ways to reduce government expenditures, the War Department presented an obvious target. All through 1820 and 1821, Calhoun tussled with Congress over how to reduce the size of the army. Thus, Long’s ambitious plan for army exploration of the West fizzled.2

  The second reason is to be found in Long’s personal life. On his return to Philadelphia at the end of 1820, he found that he was now a father as well as a husband. Martha gave birth to their first child on October 11 while he was at Cape Girardeau on the Mississippi River. By the following summer, she was pregnant with their second child, who was born in February 1822. Family life was rewarding for Long, but it also brought him no small amount of anxiety, as Martha and the children were often sick. Martha was sometimes confined to her bed for weeks. Her health was always precarious, never more so than in late summer and early fall when yellow fever stalked the city.3

  Long suffered a protracted illness himself that put him out of commission through much of the first year after his expedition to the Rocky Mountains. He had no doubt that he had contracted the illness in the West. The onset of the illness occurred as the expedition was preparing to disband at Cape Girardeau. While the rest of the party waited there, lacking funds to complete the journey home, Long rode a horse to St. Genevieve, half the distance from Cape Girardeau to St. Louis, in order to visit the Bank of Missouri and negotiate the US Treasury note that was supposed to have reached him at St. Louis the previous May. At St. Genevieve he fell violently ill. Although he soon recovered enough strength to travel, he had recurring bouts of fever and vomiting over the next twelve months. His physician in Philadelphia eventually diagnosed the illness as an infection of the liver.4

  Through 1821, he struggled between the demands of his work and the need to tend to his health. Convalescing at home, he thought he was sufficiently recovered in the spring to make a brief visit to Washington. But as soon as he was back home he relapsed. His physician prescribed bed rest, and when that failed to cure him, a course of mercury. The latter treatment was a strong purgative aimed at flushing excess bile out of his body. The chemical acted on him so powerfully that he was soon limited to a diet of skim milk and tea. After three weeks of this drastic regimen, he became emaciated, his normally spare frame “reduced to a skeleton.” He was so weak and dehydrated that he could barely talk above a whisper. The doctor assured him, however, that the purgative had removed the cause of his disorder and he would now begin to recover. By October he was shuffling about on his feet but still thin and weak. A persistent pain in his right side prevented him from riding horseback. At the end of the year he described his health as “tolerably good though not perfectly re-established.”5

  Throughout his prolonged illness Long’s arrangement with the War Department amounted to a mix of light duty and paid sick leave—a de facto healthcare benefit when no such thing existed officially. If ever there was a time when Long was thankful for the relative job security he had found with the army, this was it. Upon returning to Washington in November 1820, he received orders from Calhoun to go to Philadelphia and prepare his report of the expedition; thus, he continued to work under special orders from the secretary of war, answering to no army officer other than his friend Isaac Roberdeau, who was now chief of the Topographical Engineers. For the next year, he worked mostly at home. Although he finished the report in February, the map project dragged on. At least twice he apprised Calhoun that due to illness he was behind in his work. But he never requested any relief from his duties and continued to draw his officer’s pay throughout the period of his convalescence. This was in contrast to the two junior officers assigned to the expedition, Lieutenants William H. Swift and James Duncan Graham, both of whom became ill also and requested sick leave. In June 1821, Swift asked for a three-month furlough for the sake of his health, which had been “considerably impaired in consequence of his exposure in an unhealthy country,” and the following month Graham requested sick leave through the end of the year, likewise on account of illness incurred as a result of the expedition.6 When Long gave an account of his life many years later to a biographer, he frankly admitted that his illness “rendered him unfit for service for nearly an entire year.”7 But at the time of the illness he made no such admission.

  In the summer of 1821, Long considered applying for an assistant professorship at the military academy at West Point, a move he would not have countenanced had he been firmly committed to completing his reconnaissance of the West.8 In an unguarded moment, he confided to Roberdeau that he had begun to fear that four years of exploring the West had permanently broken his health.9

  So, understandably, Long put concerns for his family’s financial security and his own health ahead of his ambition to continue the great work he had begun. The choice was not only a personal disappointment but awkward for him as well, since it was only by virtue of his special orders from Calhoun that he was able to get by with such light duty on an officer’s pay for so many months following the expedition.

  Not that his work life was free of pressures. Soon after he was home in Philadelphia, a letter from the War Department brought the request that he provide a recapitulation of the several orders he had received over the past year, a source of his authorization for employing scientists on the expedition, and a detailed accounting for expenses. Long duly provided an accounting down to the last half-penny. Total costs incurred through January 1, 1821, amounted to $19,778.67½. He collected affidavits from military personnel to address the question of per diem expenditures. As for his authorization to employ scientists, he informed the War Department that the authority had never been put in writing but had come from none other than the secretary of war. If this verbal authorization had come from anyone else, he stated, he would feel “alarmed” that the War Department was now requiring him to identify the source.10 Long’s statements did not satisfy the clerks at the War Department, who kept after him with more niggling questions all through the year.

  As Long’s health improved in the fall of 1821, he focused his energies on bringing out a popular account of the expedition. Preparation of the manuscript was to be a collaborative effort by the leading civilian members of the expedition, Thomas Say, Samuel Seymour, and Edwin James, while publication of the book was to be placed in the hands of Philadelphia’s leading publisher, Henry Carey. Calhoun committed the War Department to this project to the extent of paying per diem wages for the three gentlemen’s efforts, providing them office space, and subscribing to a dozen copies of the book. In November 1821, Calhoun instructed Long to have the quartermaster in Philadelphia supply him with a room and heating fuel for the coming winter so the men would have a place to meet and work. In due time, Long appeared in the Philadelphia city directory as “Stephen H. Long, U.S. Major Artillery” (this was in error, as he was with the Engineers) with an office at 240 Filbert Street.11

  By the beginning of 1822, he had reassembled the three civilian members of the expedition. James took the lead in writing the narrative while Say worked up his notes on natural history and ethnography and Seymour developed illustrations from his many sketches. Long’s role was mainly administrative, as he saw the project through a series of difficulties with the publisher. When Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains finally appeared in 1823, James was credited as the compiler while Long’s name was included as commander of the expedition.12

  In addition to overseeing this publication, Long launched into his own cartographic project. He wanted to make the most accurate map of the United States to date based on latitudes and longitudes established by astronomical survey. Using a scale of ten miles to one inch, it would measure fifteen feet by thirteen feet. He envisioned it mounting on the wall of the secretary
of war’s office or Roberdeau’s office when completed.13 To get started, he built a fifteen-foot-square drawing table, together with a giant “beam compass” with a thirty-three-foot adjustable arm. Sweeping this beam across the full length of the room and over his tabletop, he etched a series of concentric curving lines on his blank canvas to mark the twenty-five degrees of latitude from Maine to Florida. Then, with notebooks, measurements, and drawing utensils, he set to work mapping the nation’s coasts, rivers, and cities. Crawling back and forth over the giant tabletop, working on hands and knees, he labored hour after hour, sometimes day after day. He worked on “the big map” intermittently through the winter and spring of 1822. He was still working on it one year later when he left Philadelphia on his last expedition.14

  Long produced a smaller map of the western territories during this time as well. In preparing this map the matter of the western boundary with Spanish territory soon arose. Having failed to locate the source of the Arkansas River on his expedition, Long was uncertain where to mark the western boundary line through the Rocky Mountains. He finally resolved the issue by taking the map only as far westward as the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. He depicted the Spanish boundary as running along the Red and Arkansas rivers and exiting the western edge of the map short of the river’s source. This was the map on which Long wrote the words “Great Desert.” The Philadelphia publishing house of Carey and Lea made an engraving of it and printed the map in its American atlas of 1822.15