by Don Berry
Shortly after this there was more bad news on the upper river. Henry received an urgent appeal for help from General Ashley; it seemed the general too was having trouble with some Indians.
III
General Ashley had spent only a short time at the mouth of the Yellowstone the previous fall (1822), returning to St. Louis almost immediately to outfit the next year’s expedition. It is highly likely he had no intention of ascending the river at all, but was forced into it by the circumstance of losing the Enterprize. (Ashley was not then, and never became, fond of the mountains. He was, remember, primarily a politician and businessman.)
Sometime in the early spring of 1823—before Blackfoot trouble materialized on the upper river—Major Henry had sent an express downriver with the young hunter Jedediah Smith. Neither the date nor the contents of this message are accurately known; students of the trade have assumed it was a request for horses to replace those stolen by the Assiniboines. This seems unlikely, because Ashley was at the Yellowstone fort after the theft and was well aware of this need.
Whatever the message, Smitih was with the party that came up the river in the spring of 1823. Outfitting had been difficult for the general; men were harder and harder to obtain as the revived trade picked up momentum. Another advertisement, this one offering the excellent salary of $200 per year, wasn’t entirely successful. Ashley appointed the Virginia mountaineer Ames Clyman as a sort of informal recruiting agent. Clyman worked the time-honored fields of the desperate recruiter, the taverns and bawdyhouses. The completed party was—to put it charitably—somewhat various in composition. Clyman’s own considered judgment: "Falstaff’s Battalion was genteel in comparison."
Ashley outfitted two keelboats, the Yellow Stone Packet and The Rocky Mountains, which left St. Louis on March 10, 1823. There was no accompanying land party. Ashley was planning to buy horses and dispatch an overland group at the Aricara villages.
The Aricaras...A man approaching the Aricaras would probably be doing a little fast figuring, in the wistful hope of being able to predict his reception. To recapitulate their record brielly: 1804 and l806—friendly to Lewis and Clark; 1807—hostile to a party under Manuel Lisa of Missouri Fur; 1811—hospitable to the Astorians; 1816—attacked a party of whites; 1820—attacked and robbed two Missouri Fur Company posts; l822—very friendly to Missouri Fur Company President, Joshua Pilcher, and to Ashley himself.
This year, 1823, "them rascally Rees" had been unfriendly again. A party had wandered down into Sioux country, beaten and robbed some Missouri Fur Company engagés who were trading there. A few days later the company’s post at Cedar Island was attacked by a strong party of about 115 Aricara warriors. Two Indians were killed, and the Rees were touchy about it. When the keelboats reached the Aricaras on May 20, General Ashley thus had a fair notion that the situation was a delicate one.
The Aricara settlements consisted at this time of an upper and a lower village on the right bank of the river, about 300 yards apart. Each village contained about seventy mud lodges. When Ashley arrived, they had been newly picketed; reinforcement against the recent harrying of the villages by the Sioux. Indian pickets were not a uniform palisade, but consisted of a variety of sticks, poles and logs stuck upright in the ground. These of the Aricara villages were, by Ashley’s report, from twelve to fifteen feet high and about six inches thick. A shallow ditch circled the village just outside the pickets, and a similar one inside.
The river channel in front of the villages was very narrow, being compressed between the bank and a sand bar. Here, too, the river made a loop, with the Indian villages on the convex point. Opposite the end of the sand bar the Rees had built a breastwork of timber which effectively commanded the passage through the narrow channel.
Ashley anchored the boats in the channel, as far away from the beach as possible. This, unfortunately, was not very far. (Chittenden says ninety feet.) He went ashore himself in a skiff, and was met on the beach by two of the Aricara chiefs, Gray Eyes and Little Soldier (Gray Eyes’ son was one of those killed at the Missouri Fur post.) The general demonstrated that his heart was good with presents, and the Rees seemed pleased. Ashley tentatively brought up the subject of the recent trouble and made it plain he was in no way connected with the Missouri Fur Company, regretted the incident profoundly, and hoped the Aricaras were not going to be unreasonable about it.
Nothing could have been further from their minds. As far as the Aricaras were concerned, Ashley was told, all white men (particularly Ashley) were the good friends of all Indians (particularly Aricaras). Everybody’s heart was very good indeed, and what did the general have in mind in the way of trade?
So far so good. Trading began with the lower village on the next day. Ashley secured, by his own account, forty or so horses, though other accounts say the number was closer to twenty. Late in the afternoon Ashley was invited to the lodge of Bear, one of the principal chiefs. He went, accompanied, by the experienced interpreter Edward Rose. When they arrived at Bear's lodge they found several other Aricara chiefs waiting for them. All were markedly friendly, and whatever suspicions Ashley may have had were apparently dispelled by their actions. The conference was short, and the general returned to his boat in the evening.
Somewhere about this time Rose advised Ashley that the Aricara, despite peaceful appearances, were drumming up trouble. The general, however, chose to disregard the interpreter’s advice. He retired for the night leaving all the horses and forty men camped on the beach below the Aricara villages.
It was an expensive choice. About 3 A.M. Ashley was wakened by the bad news; one of his men had been killed in the village. The details are not accurately known; presumably the man, one Aaron Stephens, had gone into the village to take advantage of the Aricara hospitality. Like the Mandans above, the Rees were not averse to turning a bit of clear profit on the intangible qualities of their wives and daughters.
Confusion ensued, undisciplined preparations for defense were begun and a demand was made by some of the men for the return of Stephens’ body. One of the Aricaras shouted an offer to do so, if he could be given a horse. Unfortunately, he came back to report, Stephens' eyes had been put out, the body decapitated and "otherwise mangled" so badly it was not worth the effort. This news doubtless did little to improve the morale of the party isolated on the beach.
By now it was almost dawn. The Aricaras opened intensive fire from behind the palisades as the sun rose. They raked the exposed beach, and in a few minutes most of the horses had been killed and many of the men, The remainder found what shelter they could behind the corpses of the animals, and tried to return the fire.
Ashley, seeing the almost-instantaneous devastation of the party, ordered the keelboats to shore to take them off. The boatmen refused, "being," says Clyman, "completely Parylized." In desperation Ashley dispatched the skiffs. By the time they arrived, however, the beach party had changed its mind; they stubbornly refused to retreat, and continued to throw what they could at the picketed village. Only seven men, two of them wounded, returned to the keelboats. The larger of the two skiffs returned again, but the oarsman was shot as he approached the beach and the boat swirled downstream in the swift current.
Now the Aricaras piled out of the village and worked down to the end of the sandy beach. The shore party was forced back into the river. Some were picked off as they entered the water, others sank as they attempted to swim to the tantalizingly near keelboats. Still others were caught by the current and swept past the boats, leaving them no choice but to take to the shore again a little downstream. Getting aboard what men he could, Ashley weighed anchor and I began to drift downstream. The cable of the other boat was cut, and it followed.
They dropped back down the river as far as the first grove of timber (probably the head of Ashley Island, a short distance below) and made a landing. Now Ashley tried to restore things to order and make sense of the confusion. The final score was thirteen dead and eleven wounded. The boatmen were completely demorali
zed and refused to do anything.
Ashley’s apparent intention was to get the party back into some semblance of coherent organization and make another attempt to pass the villages, probably at night. This was flatly rejected. They made camp and bedded down for the night. In the morning Ashley appealed again for a reorganization and another attempt, and was "told by the men (with a few exceptions) that under no circumstances would they make a second attempt to pass without a large reinforcement?
Many of them, the boatmen in particular,. would not even try again with a larger party; only a total of thirty were even willing to wait for reinforcements, and the remainder intended to get back downriver any way they could. Seven of those who volunteered to stay were wounded, and could be of only limited use.
Ashley was left with very little choice. He kept one of the keelboats, The Rocky Mountains, and took his small crew of volunteers on board. The other he dispatched downriver with the unneeded goods and the men who would not stay with him. He sent with this boat a letter describing the attack, dated "25 miles below Aricara towns, 4th June, 1823." This was to be delivered at Fort Atkinson, in the almost-forlorn hope that the military might take action. He ended up by stating his intention to "remain between this place and the Aricara towns, not remaining any length of time in one place, as my force is small, not more than twenty-three effective."
Ashley had little confidence that he could expect help from the military establishments. He had to rely for reinforcements on his own men, and they were at the mouth of the Yellowstone. He sent Jedediah Smith and a French-Canadian—both volunteers—to Major Henry with an appeal for help.
Shortly after this he apparently decided he was still too close to the Aricaras and retreated another seventy-five miles down the river to the mouth of the Cheyenne, where he settled in to wait for help.
IV
As news of the various events on the upper river trickled down to civilization, it began to form an alarming picture. Within a two-week period every major trapping party on the upper river had been assaulted—and worse, overwhelmingly defeated—by the Indians.
The seriousness of this sequence went far beyond the twenty-four white men killed, the many wounded. If this could happen, the fur trade itself was finished; the economy of the western frontier completely destroyed; and the only point of peaceful contact with the Indian nations obliterated. This was not the sporadic skirmishing that occurred from time to time; things were assuming the proportions of a full-scale uprising among the Indians—the tribes involved were a thousand miles apart.
The importance of Ashley’s defeat was, of course, immediately realized by every man involved with the fur trade; and there were few on the western frontier whose lives did not to some extent revolve around it. The need for decisive, effective action was clearly apprehended by whites and Indians alike. I emphasize this in order to point out that this was a critical juncture in Indian relations and that both sides were completely aware of it at the time.
After Ash1ey‘s defeat, Major General Gaines wrote an urgent letter to Secretary of War Calhoun, emphasizing the extreme importance of disciplinary action and pointing out the "evils that must inevitably result from our being forced to recede from the position we have taken." He further pointed out that "the trade forms rein and curb by which the turbulent and towering spirit of these lords of the forest can alone be governed." He went on to explain the unique position of the trade with respect to intemational affairs: "To suffer outrages such as have been perpetrated by the Ricaras . . .to go unpunished, would be to surrender the trade, and, with it, our strong hold upon the Indians, to the British."
And the lords of the forest? The tattered remnants of the Immel-Jones expedition, coming downriver, stopped off with the traditionally friendly Mandans. They noted there was no other topic of conversation among the Mandans, Minnetarees, and other upriver groups. The Mandan chiefs held a council on July 10. The result was to offer the protection of the Mandan villages to their traditional enemies, the Aricaras. There was "reason to apprehend," wrote Gaines, that the other Upper Missouri tribes would unite with the Aricaras if they succeeded in pushing back the whites. Reason indeed, when Mandans offer sanctuary to Rees.
In the early summer of 1823 most of the men of the western United States—brown or white—were watching the two mud villages near the mouth of the Grand River.
***
The summer of 1823 . . . Why then? What was causing this enormous wave of Indian hostility?
The British, of course, came in for their share of blame. There were——then and later—many men who considered everything that went wrong part of the British plot. These were not only the hotheads, either. Many individuals of considered opinion resented the influence of the British traders on the northern tribes. It had been a serious matter during the War of 1812, and the specter of British intrigue still hung heavy over the upper Missouri. Gaines, in the same letter of July 28, 1823, estimates that without British competition America would not need "1/ 10 of the force and expense" to preserve the peace effectively. (But under later direct questioning by a Congressional committee, even inveterate Britain-hater Joshua Pilcher admitted he had no reason to believe the Aricara attack was sponsored by them.)
There was another view, but the blame it placed was not acceptable to as many people as the "British intrigue" theory. Backtracking a year, to the spring of 1822: Major Benjamin O’Fallon, Indian agent at St. Louis, wrote a deeply concerned letter to the Secretary of War. O’Fallon understands a license has been issued to Ashley and Henry to trade, trap, and hunt on the upper Missouri. He "expresses a hope that limits have been prescribed to their trapping and hunting on Indian Lands, as . . . nothing is better calculated to alarm and disturb the harmony so happily existing between us and the Indians."
Through William Clark, Secretary Calhoun assured Major O’Fallon that the license granted "confers the privilege of trading with Indians only, as the laws . . . do not contain any authority to issue licenses for any other purpose."
But, as we have seen, both Henry’s party and the Immel-Jones party fully intended to trap the country for themselves, licenses or no. Thus, even the dubious benefits of trading were to be taken away from the tribes and their lands hunted without compensation. The government factory system having been overthrown in the spring of '22, actual trade would dwindle to nothing. The fur hunters had figured out a more efficient way; go in with self-sufficient parties.
So at least a year before the Aricara affair, the Indian agent at St. Louis was upset by the possibility of trapping and hunting on Indian lands, realizing the probable reaction of the tribes.
The Indians themselves were perfectly aware of the shift of techniques; their communications were excellent and their information somehow flawless. For example, the thirty·eight Piegans who spent the night with Immel’s party were quite familiar with the company’s intention to set up a post. They also knew the approximate size, and the exact position, of Henry’s party, which they had never seen.
It is my contention, based on the above reasoning, that the much-debated "wave of hostility" in the spring of 1823 was the direct result of the change in technique which the trade was undergoing; that is, the abandonment of trading in favor of independent trapping.2
There is no evidence that the British Hudson’s Bay traders directly instigated any of the attacks; on the other hand, it is morally certain they sdidn’t actively discourage what hostility to Americans they found among the Indians. And they were no whit reluctant to provide guns and ammunition as per usual; as long as the furs came in, the inventory of the British posts was for trading. What the Indians did with the guns was their own business, unless it reinvolved the Hudson’s Bay Company.
The above digression from our narrative was for the purpose of setting the stage; because what follows deserves to be seen in its clear historical significance. The Aricara campaign of 1823 was undertaken as a direct result of Ashley’s defeat at the villages. Conducted by Colonel Henry L
eavenworth, it was the first military campaign ever mounted by the United States Army against Indians west of the Mississippi. As such, it was invested with dignity and significance and importance to the nation. A slapstick comedy was not called for.
CHAPTER 3
'The honor of American arms”
WHEN Ashley dispatched Jedediah Smith to bring help from Henry, he expected to receive it in "twelve or fifteen days." Considering the length of the necessary journey—the exact route is not known, but must have been 300-400 miles—this is a most unrealistic estimate, explainable only through Ashley’s inexperience. He was out of his element in the field; his handling of the Aricara trading venture was marked by uncertainty, vacillation, and imprudence. He had lost control of his men at the critical point and was thus unable to redeem his previous error of judgment.
When Smith arrived at the Yellowstone with the news of Ash1ey’s defeat, Andrew Henry took action immediately. He was still smarting from the Blackfoot victory over his trapping party, and the spring hunt had not been good. If Ashley were delayed too long, the necessary supplies for the fall hunt would be too late and the whole year’s take jeopardized. Their St. Louis creditors would not view such a situation optimistically, and it began to look as if the whole Ashley-Henry enterprise were on the verge of cracking.
Leaving a crew of twenty to man the fort, Henry immediately embarked the rest of his men, numbering about fifty, in canoes. When passing the Aricara villages, they were greeted with a friendly waving of buffalo robes, the customary invitation to a parley; a hospitable gesture which impressed Henry not at all. He sailed by, and joined Ashley’s waiting party at the mouth of the Cheyenne.
Now a conference was held and their position evaluated. Henry probably gave his opinion that it would be foolish to attempt to pass the Aricaras again, even with the addition of his men. Only one keelboat was available, The Rocky Mountains, and many of their supplies had been sent back down the river on the Yellow Stone Packet. If they did reach their fort they would still be short of supplies for the fall hunt and winter camp.
