The Shoshone rider took one look at this group of armed men coming toward him shouting “White man!” He turned his horse and raced away.
The Americans spent the next few days desperately searching for the Shoshone camp. Lewis kept spotting single Shoshone at a distance and then calling out, “Tab-ba-bone! Tab-ba-bone!” And they kept riding away.
Finally the Corps found the camp. Standing there waiting for them were sixty Shoshone warriors. Lewis did a smart thing—he set his rifle on the ground.
The Shoshone then strode toward Lewis, saying, “Ah-hi-e, ah-hi-e.” Lewis was quite confused, until the chief put his arm around Lewis’s shoulder and touched his cheek to Lewis’s cheek. That seemed like a good sign. (Lewis learned later that “Ah-hi-e” means “I am much pleased.”)
Sacagawea began to interpret between Lewis and the chief. But she kept stopping to stare at the chief’s familiar face. She suddenly realized that this was Cameahwait, her long-lost big brother! “She jumped up and ran and embraced him,” Lewis wrote. Sacagawea had not shown the tiniest bit of emotion in the months Lewis had known her. Now, as she interpreted between her brother and Lewis, she kept bursting out in tears of joy.
Step 7: Bring Back the News
Thanks largely to Sacagawea, the Shoshone gave Lewis and Clark advice about how to cross the mountains, and horses to carry their goods. The Corps continued west, making it all the way to the Pacific coast by November 1805. Here Clark wrote his famous line:
“Ocian in View! O! the joy.”
William Clark
That was Clark: good explorer, bad speller.
Lewis and Clark headed home the following year. They made it back without any major disasters, unless you count the time Lewis and the nearsighted Corps member Pierre Cruzatte went hunting for elk. Lewis spotted an animal and was aiming his gun when he felt a sudden and terrible pain in his butt. He turned around and saw blood running down his thigh.
“You have shot me,” he said to Cruzatte.
Cruzatte denied it, which was silly since the bullet from his gun was clearly lodged in Lewis’s leather pants.
So for a few weeks Lewis had to ride in the canoe lying on his stomach. Still, the Corps made it safely back to St. Louis in September 1806. In two and a half years, Lewis and Clark had zigzagged more than eight thousand miles across the West, met with about fifty Indian groups, and found hundreds of species of plants and animals. Reports of their adventures got Americans excited about exploring the West.
Step 8: Become a Mountain Man
One of the things Lewis and Clark reported was that the rivers and streams of the West were filled with beaver. This caught people’s attention, because hats made of beaver fur were currently in fashion in European cities (rich folks simply had to have their beaver hats). There was big money in the beaver pelt business. The only hard part: someone had to go get the pelts.
James Beckwourth decided to give it a try. After being freed from slavery as a boy, Beckwourth had moved with his family to St. Louis. When he was twenty-four he heard that companies were looking for daring young men to head west into the unmapped mountains to trap beaver. Beckwourth rushed to sign up.
James Beckwourth
“Being possessed with a strong desire to see the celebrated Rocky Mountains, and the great western wilderness so much talked about, I engaged in General Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Fur Company.”
Beckwourth was one of a few hundred adventurers who became known as “mountain men.” Exploring the mountains and trapping beaver in icy streams, mountain men were often freezing, starving, and lonely. And they were always on the lookout for mountain lions and grizzly bears. Mountain man Jedediah Smith was searching for a route through the Rockies when he was attacked by a grizzly. The bear smacked Smith around like a doll, smashing several of his ribs. Then it took Smith’s head in its teeth and shook him back and forth.
Fellow mountain man James Clyman found Smith lying in the bloody dirt. Smith somehow managed to say, “If you have a needle and thread, get it out and sew up my wounds around my head.”
Clyman crouched down to have a look. The scalp had been ripped from Smith’s skull. One ear was hanging on by a twisted strip of skin.
“I told him I could do nothing for his ear,” Clyman said.
“Oh, you must try to stitch it up some way or other,” pleaded Smith.
Clyman took out the tools he used to mend his socks and went to work. “I put in my needle and stitched it through and through and over and over,” he said, “nice as I could.”
Incredibly, Smith’s ear stayed on. And he was back on his horse in less than two weeks.
Step 9: Learn from the Locals
Fights with Native Americans were another danger, since some tribes did not welcome the sight of outsiders trapping animals in their territory. But more often, mountain men traded with Native Americans, learning from them how to hunt, travel, and survive in the snowy mountains. Mountain men began dressing like Indians, and they considered it a great compliment to be mistaken for one of them.
James Beckwourth did more than dress like an Indian—he moved in with them. Invited to join a group of Crow Indians, Beckwourth learned the Crow language, got married, and even fought in the Crow’s battles against rival tribes.
When Beckwourth’s mountain men friends didn’t see him for a few years, they figured he must have died somewhere in the wilderness. This led to a strange scene at Fort Clark, a trading post in what is now North Dakota.
Beckwourth and some Crow friends showed up with a stack of beaver pelts to trade. Of course, they were dressed as Crows and speaking the Crow language. One of the Crow men stepped up to the counter and asked the American clerks for “be-has-i-pe-hish-a.”
The puzzled clerks just stood there.
“Be-has-i-pe-hish-a,” said the Crow.
More confused silence.
Then Beckwourth stepped up and said, “Gentlemen, that Indian wants scarlet cloth.”
“If a bombshell had exploded in the fort they could not have been more astonished,” Beckwourth remembered. This dialogue followed:
Clerk: Ah, you speak English! Where did you learn it?
Beckwourth: With the white man.
Clerk: How long were you with the whites?
Beckwourth: More than twenty years.
Clerk: Where did you live with them?
Beckwourth: In St. Louis.
Clerk: If you have lived twenty years in St. Louis, I’ll swear you are no Crow.
Beckwourth: No, I am not.
Clerk: Then what may be your name?
Beckwourth: My name in English is James Beckwourth.
Clerk: Good heavens! Why, I have heard your name mentioned a thousand times. You were supposed to be dead.
Beckwourth: I am not dead, as you see.
James Beckwourth spent another six years with the Crows, becoming a high-ranking chief. And all the while, stories about Beckwourth and other mountain men continued to excite Americans about new opportunities in the West.
Step 10: Stumble to Santa Fe
This interest in the West gave a nineteen-year-old named David Meriwether what seemed like a good idea. He would set up a trading route connecting American towns in Missouri with settlements in northern Mexico, hundreds of miles to the southwest.
“I had learned from the Indians that there was a good country from Missouri to the Mexican settlements for a road,” Meriwether said. The key would be to find a route that wagons could use to transport goods back and forth. In June 1820, Meriwether set out to find the route.
Traveling with him was an African American teenager named Alfred. (Was Alfred his friend? His slave? Both? Meriwether doesn’t say.) The problem was, Mexico was Spanish territory, and Spanish leaders didn’t allow Americans on their land. Soon after crossing into Mexico, Meriwether and Alfred were arrested by Spanish soldiers.
The soldiers forced the Americans to march through the scorching desert toward the town of Santa Fe. Meriwether’s f
eet were soon sliced open by rocks and cactus needles. “This was the most miserable day of my life,” he remembered, “for I felt as though I would as soon die as live.”
Unable to bear the pain of another step, Meriwether dropped to the sand and refused to move. A Spanish soldier raised his sword over Meriwether’s head.
“Davy, get up and come along or they will kill you,” Alfred urged.
“Let them kill me; I will not walk another step farther.”
David Meriwether Alfred
Alfred somehow talked the soldiers into letting Meriwether ride a mule. When they finally arrived in Santa Fe, the Americans were thrown into separate flea-filled jail cells. Meriwether was starving by now, so when a guard finally brought in some food he was thrilled—until he tasted it. “About night my jailor came with a small earthen bowl with boiled frijoles, or red beans,” he said “I found it so strongly seasoned with pepper that I could not eat it.”
Boy, when things go wrong … . Anyway, after swearing to go back to American territory and stay there, Meriwether and Alfred were let out of jail.
“I never expected to see you again,” Alfred said when they met in the street outside the prison. They quickly headed back to Missouri.
Just a year later, in 1821, Mexicans kicked out the Spanish rulers and declared themselves independent. This changed everything, because Mexican leaders welcomed American travelers and traders. And the route that Alfred and Meriwether had traveled soon became a busy trading route known as the Santa Fe Trail.
Even without angry soldiers to deal with, this was a dangerous eight-hundred-mile trip. One of the first groups to travel the trail found this out when they decided to take a shortcut through the Cimarron Desert. They soon ran out of water and were close to dying of thirst when they saw a buffalo walking toward them. They shot the animal, cut it open—and shouted with joy to find its stomach filled with water. The men gulped down the warm liquid and got back on the trail to Santa Fe.
What’s that you say? You like the idea of moving west, but you don’t feel like wrestling grizzly bears or drinking buffalo puke? Then you might consider settling on a plot of fertile land in the northern region of Mexico called Tejas.
Step 11: Move to Texas
When Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, the new nation looked like this:
Look at that large area in northern Mexico marked Tejas, or Texas, as Americans called it. Very few people lived there, and the Mexican government was looking for settlers. So they were pleased when a twenty-nine-year-old man from Missouri named Stephen Austin led about three hundred American families to Texas in 1822.
Stories about sunny Texas soon spread. You could buy huge chunks of good land for a small fraction of the price of farmland in the United States. Thousands of Americans packed up their stuff and scratched “G.T.T.” on the doors of their cabins. Everyone knew what that meant: “Gone to Texas.”
Settlers in Texas were supposed to promise loyalty to the Mexican government and obey Mexican laws, including a ban on slavery. But the Mexican capital, Mexico City, was 1,200 miles to the south. Mexican officials simply had no way of controlling what people did in Texas. As a result, American settlers basically governed themselves. They liked it that way.
By 1830 there were more than 20,000 Americans in Texas. This was beginning to worry Mexican leaders—they felt they were losing control of their land to the Americans (or, as they called them, “los Yanquis”). The Mexican president, Antonio López de Santa Anna, decided to get tough with the Americans. He declared he would cut immigration, collect taxes, and enforce Mexican law. And he’d use force to do it, if necessary.
But by now Texans were used to independence. They reacted angrily to Santa Anna’s threats. “Every man in Texas is called upon to take up arms in defense of his country and his rights,” declared Stephen Austin.
True, Texans weren’t actually in their country. But they felt like it was their home. They were ready to fight for it.
Step 12: Meet Me in San Antonio
In 1835 Santa Anna sent his brother-in-law to Texas to teach the Americans a lesson by seizing control of the town of San Antonio. The brother-in-law didn’t really know how to seize towns. He ended up surrendering San Antonio to the Texans.
Now Santa Anna was furious. Pronouncing himself a military genius (he called himself “the Napoleon of the West”), Santa Anna vowed to personally crush the rebels.
“The great problem I had to solve was to reconquer Texas and to accomplish this in the shortest time possible.”
He even threatened to march all the way to the White House while he was at it. But first things first: Santa Anna headed toward Texas, his personal wagons loaded with silverware, china plates, and a silver chamber pot. He seemed less worried about the comfort of his four thousand soldiers. Short on food, tents, and medicine, many of the men starved or froze to death in blizzards as the army stumbled north.
Antonio López de Santa Anna
In San Antonio, meanwhile, Texas soldiers gathered in an old Spanish mission known as the Alamo. This was a crumbling church, with a courtyard of about two and a half acres, all surrounded by tall stone walls.
When Santa Anna and his soldiers finally made it to San Antonio in February 1836, they quickly surrounded the Alamo. Trapped inside were about 180 volunteer soldiers, both Americans and Tejanos, or Mexicans from Texas. Many of the soldiers’ families were stuck in there too.
William Travis, one of the leaders of the Texas army, dashed off a desperate note addressed “To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World”:
“FELLOW CITIZENS AND COMPATRIOTS—I am besieged, by a thousand or more Mexicans under Santa Anna … . The enemy has demanded a surrender … . I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls—I shall never surrender or retreat.”
Just a few days later, before sunrise on the chilly morning of March 6, a Texan named John Baugh looked over the walls and saw Mexican soldiers charging toward the Alamo.
Baugh broke the morning silence with the shout: “Colonel Travis! The Mexicans are coming!”
Did Someone Say “Manifest Destiny”?
Eight-year-old Enrique Esparza was sleeping in a small room in the church at the Alamo. He was jolted awake by a blast of gunfire. “It was so dark that we couldn’t see anything,” he remembered.
“Gregorio, the soldiers have jumped the wall,” Enrique’s mother said to his father. “The fight’s begun.”
Enrique watched his father get up, grab his gun, and run out to join the battle. “I never saw him again,” Enrique said.
Remember the Alamo!
Enrique and his mother, and about fifteen other women and children, huddled in the corners of the room as the battle for the Alamo grew louder. “We could hear the Mexican officers shouting to the men,” Enrique said, “and the men were fighting so close that we could hear them strike each other.”
Susanna Dickinson was in a nearby room, clutching her baby daughter, wondering how the fight was going. “The struggle lasted more than two hours when my husband rushed into the church where I was with my child,” she said.
“Great God, Sue, the Mexicans are inside our walls!” shouted Almeron Dickinson. “All is lost! If they spare you, save my child.”
Almeron was right—all was lost. By 6:30 that morning, the badly outnumbered Texans were forced to surrender. Santa Anna’s soldiers killed all 183 Texas soldiers—stabbing many of them with bayonets after they had surrendered.
Later that March, Mexican soldiers defeated another small American army near the town of Goliad, Texas. About four hundred Americans were taken prisoner. Following Santa Anna’s orders, Mexican soldiers marched the prisoners to an open field, shot and bayoneted all of them, and set the bodies on fire.
Enraged Texans promised payback. As one young soldier in the Texas army explained: “The boys were continually talking about the butchery at the Alamo and the slaughter at Goliad; and vowing to a
venge the cold-blooded murder of their countrymen.”
Revenge at San Jacinto
The job of getting revenge belonged to the volunteers of the Texas army—about eight hundred men under the command of Sam Houston. Some doubted that Houston was the right man for the job. While serving as governor of Tennessee a few years back, he had quit suddenly, refusing to give a reason. He had gone to live with the Cherokees, who soon nicknamed him “Big Drunk” (he was six foot two, and often drunk).
On the plus side, Houston had the ability to remain cool under pressure. And he had a good plan. He began retreating east across Texas, forcing Santa Anna’s larger army to chase him two hundred miles. All the while, he watched and waited for the perfect moment to turn and strike.
Houston saw his opportunity near the San Jacinto River on April 21, 1836. “Let us fight fast and hard,” he told his men. “We must win or die.” The Texans charged forward shouting, “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!”
Sam Houston
The attack surprised the entire Mexican army, especially its commander. “I was in a deep sleep when I was awakened by the firing and noise,” confessed Santa Anna. He jumped up from his nap, put on his red slippers, stepped out of his tent—and immediately burst into a panic.
“I saw His Excellency running about in the utmost excitement, wringing his hands, and unable to give an order,” recalled a Mexican officer.
Which Way to the Wild West? Page 2
