“Ahem,” came a slight cough from behind, and Colter turned around. Immediately a smile came to his face.
“Sacagawea!” he nearly shouted, rushing up to the young Shoshone Indian woman, though even with Jean Baptist – Pomp – fastened to her back, he still mostly thought of her as a girl.
She smiled up at him, those cheeks over hers going slightly red. “I wanted to say goodbye to you, John Colter.”
“Well I’m mighty glad you did, ma’am!” Colter said with a laugh. He began to look about a bit.
“Charboneau is still sleeping,” she said, as if anticipating what he’d ask next, then scrunched up her nose. “Oh…how much did you make him drink last night, John Colter!”
“Whoa, you’ll have to ask George about that one!” the mountain man said with another laugh, his hands up in protest as he backed away.
Sacagawea smiled. “I will miss you.”
Colter smiled back. “I’ll miss you too.”
He turned about, wanting to wave at Joe or Forest to get their attention, to introduce them to the young Indian girl that’d done so much for the men of the expedition, but they were too far down the bank talking with George and John at the moment. Colter turned back and…
“Gone,” he said when his eyes fell on the empty spot where Sacagawea was just standing. There wasn’t much about, some scrub and a few stunted trees, but the girl had done it to him again – just up and disappeared. He shrugged and got back to the canoe.
10 – Outfitting
It was a North canoe, that’s the only way Colter could really describe it. It was smaller than the Montreal canoes used by the voyageurs, the men that transported the furs from the frontier back to the edges of civilization. Those craft stuck mainly to the Great Lakes and the Ottawa River and were 36 feet in length and a good 6 feet wide. They could carry 3 tons, but the North canoes were much smaller, and this thing that Colter was staring at was even smaller still.
Where a North canoe might be 25 feet long, this one wasn’t even 20 by the looks of it, and just barely 4 feet wide. The mountain man would be surprised if they could hold a thousand pounds in her, and with the three of them and the supplies, they’d only have enough room for 400 pounds of furs at the most. Once again Colter frowned and shook his head at the level of unpreparedness the two fur trappers had shown in getting this far, as well as the captains’ bailing them out. While helping them was the honorable thing to do, Colter didn’t really see it any differently as catching a man a fish each day for lunch. It’d be much better to teach the fool to do it for himself, but then the captains had never liked fish anyways. Colter sighed.
The boat certainly wasn’t anything like the Red Pirogue had been, the one Colter had set out from back in Pittsburgh on that last day of August 1803. The mountain man chuckled to himself at the memory – would it really be three years now just next week?
He shook the thought from his head, but not the picture of that boat. It’d been a long craft, carrying twelve men including Captain Lewis. They’d hired a pilot to take them over the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville, something that sent the expedition back $70. The taxpayers, Captain Clark would have been quick to remind Colter if he’d said anything different.
The craft had been more than 40 feet long with a beam of 9 feet, and she could carry nearly 10 tons. Yet she couldn’t withstand the elements. Colter still remembered the captains bickering over whether to leave the boat behind near the Marias River the previous June or not. In the end they’d elected to, and it’d cost them – upon arriving back the next July and checking in on where the pirogue had been stashed, the men found it completely decayed.
There’d be no risk of that this trip, Colter knew as he stared down at the canoe before him. They’d keep the craft close to them always, for it was their one connection back to the world, a tether to civilization, one that could not be cut. Colter bit his lip as he thought on the subject and contrasted the two levels of preparedness. Hearing footsteps fast approaching behind him tore him from those thoughts.
“Captains Lewis and Clark are outfitting us well,” Joe said as he drew near. Colter didn’t bother to turn around as the trapper came up past him and dropped yet another crate of provisions into the boat.
“They can afford to,” the mountain man said, “we were conservative the whole voyage and got more trade with the Indians than we’d expected.”
“These Mandans sure are friendly,” Joe said as he got the crate secure, “more so than that tribe to the south.”
Colter nodded. “The Arikaras are one to steer clear from.” He narrowed his eyes and looked down at Joe. “I still can’t believe you two managed to sneak past them on your own.”
“I told you,” Joe said, his voice up and his eyes as well as he gave Colter a hard look, “we slipped by silently at night, paddling as quietly as a pair of ducks in a pond.”
Colter shrugged. “Didn’t say you didn’t, just said I couldn’t believe it is all.”
“You sure the hell don’t believe Joe and me carried that dugout up onto our backs and over a couple a miles, do you?”
Colter turned around to see Forest coming up, several muskets in his hands, as well as a McCormick pistol. He narrowed his eyes and pointed at it.
“That’s the captain’s gun.”
Forest nodded as he reached him and came to a stop. “And this one here’s Clark’s. Captain Lewis said they’d not be needin’ them now, not with as peaceful as the river’s become in the past two years.”
“Has it?” Colter said, giving Forest a hard look.
The fur trapper looked up and matched him stare for stare. “Aye, that it has.”
The two men’s eyes remained locked for another few moments until Forest scoffed and then shouldered his way past the mountain man.
“Pardon,” he said over his shoulder as Colter staggered back on one foot.
The mountain man frowned, but bit his lip and held his tongue. Already Forest was getting on his nerves, but he’d already gotten his discharge papers and the captains were loading them down. What was he to do – back out now? He swallowed his pride, but not his dignity, and turned around to face Forest, who was now in the boat.
“Listen you son of a bitch, I may be guiding you up the Missouri but I’m not your servant and I sure the hell ain’t your slave. If you want me guiding you two then I expect to be treated with some respect, you got that?”
Colter stood staring straight at Forest, in the boat and with the muskets still in his hands. The trapper laughed, and looked to Joe, who was staring with eyes wide at the mountain man, as if he’d never heard someone speak to Forest like that before.
Forest looked back to Colter and laughed again, but nodded. “You’ll get your respect, don’t you worry about that. For now why don’t you get the rest of our supplies.”
Colter frowned. He wasn’t sure he’d be making it through the winter with these two.
11 – Up the River
The terrain began to change as the men progressed. That first night they camped on the banks, but not a lot of talk was traded back and forth. When asked a question, Colter would answer, but he just didn’t have much to say. He supposed that if any of the men of the expedition had to describe him they’d use just three words: shy, quiet and reserved. He couldn’t blame them, for he’d use the same three words himself. What was there to talk about, after all, besides the same things over and over? When you were out in the wilds there was only so much small talk you could make. The men of the expedition had used theirs up after a few weeks. Colter saw that the three of them had used theirs up in the first hours.
The next morning they’d gotten up early, ready to hit the river and make some ground. They had a long way to go, that was one of the things Colter had made clear to them soon after they’d set out from the Mandan Villages. And he’d been clear to them that they’d have a choice of which river to go down. Neither Joe nor Forest had liked the idea of deciding on river’s they didn’t know, however, so i
t’d been left to Colter. Colter himself had fretted about which river to take, but in the end it’d been an easy decision. The Blackfeet had been around the upper reaches of the Missouri and down into its three forks, and that meant the Yellowstone was more of an attractive proposition to him. Convincing Joe and Forest of that would take some work…or at least Colter had thought it would. In the end it’d just been the offhand mention of friendlier Indians, primarily the Crow, A’anninen and Hidatsa, that’d done most of the convincing. Not for the first time did Colter wonder if the men weren’t telling him about something, so easy had that decision been.
The more the mountain man thought upon it, he wondered how much these men knew of the river they were on. They sure didn’t seem to know the tribes that called it home, but then most leaving St. Louis didn’t. After leaving the last vestiges of civilization, the Arikara village would be the first that travelers would see on their route northward on the Missouri. It was 1,440 miles from St. Louis, with its palisade built out of cedar logs and its nearby fields, cultivated and ready for harvest. The village was stationary, and something anyone coming northward on the river couldn’t miss. It was also known that the tribe was hostile, especially to small groups. Colter was still curious as to how the two trappers made it past.
After that it was the Mandan village, further upriver about fifty miles or so. The Mandan had a lighter complexion than most plains Indians, and brown hair to boot. Many thought they resembled the Welsh, and some even went so far as to say there were part of some “lost band” of the Welsh. Colter wasn’t convinced.
Past the Mandan village there was a Hidatsa or A’anninen village, perhaps one and the same, though Colter wasn’t sure. Following that, there were known to be roaming bands of Assiniboine, a tribe that shunned villages in favor of mobile travel dominated by the collapsible tepee tents. They ranged to the northwest of the Yellowstone, however, so Colter didn’t expect to run across any.
The days went on as they progressed northward, paddling their way through the currents, passing by the beautiful scenery. Trees clung to the riverbank and animals were plentiful on the river’s shore. Antelope, coyotes, black bear, and moose. Hawks overhead, kestrels and eagles too. Not a single Indian brave yet, however, though Colter couldn’t say he minded. They’d have several days of moving north followed by quite a few moving west. Then the Missouri would branch off to form the Yellowstone River, which would flow southwestward for hundreds of miles, and itself branch off into a quite a few tributaries. It was the ideal trapping area, and Colter fully expected the three of them to make a killing. Along the way travelers would pass through the “heart of the Crow country” though that bothered few as the tribe was as peaceful as could be. The Sioux and Cheyenne were also present, as were the Blackfeet. Besides that, Nez Perce, Shoshone and Bannocks all ranged into the valley from across the Rockies, following the game that flocked their during the winter months.
Forest and Joe seemed to know little of that, but Colter couldn’t much fault them – he’d known less coming through two years earlier. He did know now, however, that the Yellowstone was the river to take. It might not prove more profitable than the larger Missouri, but it would prove safer, Colter knew that. Oh yes, what the Yellowstone lacked in beaver it certainly made up for in hospitality. The Crow had large tepees that could be quite inviting, the most graceful on the plains so said their neighbors, but they also had the terrible propensity to steal any horse they saw, so their neighbors cursed endlessly. None of that concerned Colter too much though, mainly because they had no horses.
The mountain man frowned when he thought upon that, and also at the aching in his shoulders. One of the reasons the Missouri was more attractive than the Yellowstone was the easier current. There was little to do for that, however, but grin and bear it. Colter put his back into it and did just that.
12 - Through the Years
The days passed and the men made their way. Progress was near-continuous, as the badlands they were moving through weren’t the spots for trapping. Eventually the Missouri straightened out, and then split. The men took the passage on their left and soon found themselves moving south. The ground became greener and less white, and trees appeared once again. The current also increased. Moving down the Yellowstone could be dangerous, what with its more rapid pace, faster water-flow and fewer slack-water eddies. Fewer, but not none, and they were coming on a set now.
“Look sharp there,” Colter said as he pointed ahead, off the bow and forward another hundred yards or so. There were some eddies coming into view, the water going from calm to rough and then a swirl that could suck you about, turn you over. An eddy could form on either side of a river or upside, in front of or behind a boulder. They typically flowed in the opposite direction from the rest of the river and could be violent.
“I see ‘em,” Joe said from behind.
“Forest?” Colter asked, glancing over his shoulder slightly.
“Aye,” the second trapper said.
Colter frowned. He’d come to expect little in the way of conversation, at least when it was something he couldn’t boast of or highlight his role in, at least.
Colter shook off the thoughts, and the men behind him put theirs aside as well. They rode out the rough patch in the river, but not the extent of Forest’s stories. The man went on endlessly and had been for the past several days now. Always it was about nothing. Most of his tales revolved around Virginia or Pennsylvania or the wilderness states around them. He never mentioned anything interesting and…
“Boone, eh!” Colter shouted, a big smile on his face as he caught the latest snippet in Forest’s endless conversation with himself. “Hell, I haven’t seen ol’ Daniel Boone since he and ol’ Simon Kenton were leading expeditions up the Ohio.”
“That was before Little Turtle’s War,” Joe pointed out from behind them, “back in the 80s.”
Colter nodded, but didn’t really hear. The mention of Boone had brought up Kenton in his mind, and that made him think back to George.
What the hell is ol’ Drouillard doin’ right about now? Colter thought as he tightened his grip on his oar. They were heading up to a bend in the river and it looked like there more rapids ahead.
“Let’s switch up spots here, Forest,” Colter said, and the trapper nodded. Some scooting and scurrying and soon Colter was in the middle of the boat and Forest up front. The trapper’s stories kept right on coming, now that he knew he had an audience. Colter kept thinking along his own train of thought.
George’s dad, Pierre Drouillard, had saved Kenton at Sandusky after the Shawnee had forced the poor man through the gauntlet for days straight. Colter chuckled to himself. Of course if Kenton had died instead of being adopted into the tribe then he’d never have scouted for George Rogers Clark in ’78, something that allowed the commander to capture Fort Sackville and be forevermore known as the ‘Conqueror of the Northwest.’ William Clark had spoken often during the expedition about his older brother, and how he’d done more than any other to win so much land from the British in that campaign, although it wouldn’t be formalized until the 1783 Treaty of Paris. The Thirteen Colonies were nearly doubled in size by the measure, William Clark had often said around the campfire at night – especially if he’d been in his cups – though it was an assessment that Meriwether Lewis often downplayed, out of hearing of Clark after his companion had sobered up a bit, of course.
Colter sighed as he thought back on it all. After that George Rogers Clark took more interest in Simon Kenton, which meant he had more work back home in Ohio. That lead to more men, and that’d been how Colter had come to his attention. After all, he was looking for men that knew their way around the wild and around a gun, and everyone agreed the young John Colter was that man. From there he’d travelled in the circles he’d needed to, and come to the attention of those he needed to come to.
“Yep, that damn Daniel Boone,” Forest said.
“Oh, c’mon!” Joe said, and he and Colter both looked
forward, hoping the surly trapper would turn about to see their cold looks.
“What!” Forest said. “If I had my daughter kidnapped by Shawnee and I rode in and saved her, I’d be a hero too.”
Joe shook his head. “Don’t be daft, Forest – ain’t no woman stupid enough to have your daughter.”
“Or bed ya,” Colter said, and the two men immediately fell to laughing.
In front of them Forest just stewed.
“Oh, what’s the matter, Forest,” Joe said after a few moments, taking pity on him.
“That damn Boone!” Forest shouted, unable to hold his anger in any longer. “Never should’ve moved us from Kentucky to New Spain in ’99, never! We were doing just fine back along the Little Sandy River, just fine, mind you! But no, for Boone it was never good enough, and the chance to be a judge!”
“And if it was never for Boone and who he knew then we’d never have heard of Lewis and Clark and we’d never be here now,” Joe said, his exasperation plain.
“So you started out in 1803, then?” Colter asked.
Joe shook his head. “1804, wintered north of Council Bluffs, and had a hell of a time of it.”
“Couldn’t find nothin’ to trap, huh?”
“Ha!” Forest laughed from behind them. “We found plenty – it was stolen!”
“Stolen?” John said, his brows scrunching up. He’d heard mention of hit, but never the full account.
Ahead of him, Joe nodded. “We were flat broke and busted and had nothin’. We joined Charles Courtin’s band of trappers that spring and went all through the season with ‘em, finally wintering with the Teton Sioux further up the Missouri.”
Colter's Winter Page 4
