CHAPTER IV
THE CROSSROADS OF THE WEST
The geese were now indeed flying down the river, coming in long, darklines out of the icy north. Sometimes the sky was overcast hours at astretch. A new note came into the voice of the wind. The nights grewcolder.
Autumn was at hand. Soon it would be winter--winter on the plains. Itwas late in October, more than five months out from St. Louis, whenMr. Jefferson's "Volunteers for the Discovery of the West" arrived inthe Mandan country.
Long ago war and disease wiped out the gentle Mandan people. Today twocities stand where their green fields once showed the first brokensoil north of the Platte River. But a century ago that region,although little known to our government at Washington, was not unknownto others. The Mandan villages lay at a great wilderness crossroads,or rather at the apex of a triangle, beyond which none had gone.
Hereabout the Sieur de la Verendrye had crossed on his own journey ofexploration two generations earlier. More lately the emissaries of thegreat British companies, although privately warring with one another,had pushed west over the Assiniboine. Traders had been among theMandans now for a decade. Thus far came the Western trail from Canada,and halted.
The path of the Missouri also led thus far, but here, at theintersection, ended all the trails of trading or traveling white men.Therefore, Lewis and Clark found white men located here beforethem--McCracken, an Irishman; Jussaume, a Frenchman; Henderson, anEnglishman; La Roque, another Frenchman--all over from the Assiniboinecountry; and all, it hardly need be said, excited and anxious overthis wholly unexpected arrival of white strangers in their owntrading-limits.
Big White, chief of the Mandans, welcomed the new party as friends,for he was quick to grasp the advantage the white men's goods gave hispeople over the neighboring tribes, and also quick to understand thevirtue of competition.
"Brothers," said he, "you have come for our beaver and our robes. Asfor us, we want powder and ball and more iron hatchets and knives. Wehave traded with the Assiniboines, who are foolish people, and havetaken all their goods away from them. We have killed the Rees until weare tired of killing them. The Sioux will not trouble us if we haveplenty of powder and ball. We know that you have come to trade withus. See, the snow is here. Light your lodge fires with the Mandans.Stay here until the grass comes once more!"
"We open our ears to what Big White has said," replied Lewis--speakingthrough Jussaume, the Frenchman, who soon was added as interpreter tothe party. "We are the children of a Great Father in the East, whogives you this medal with his picture on it. He sends you this coat,this hat of a chief. He gives you this hatchet, this case of tobacco.There are other hatchets and more tobacco for your people."
"What Great Father is that?" demanded Big White. "It seems there aremany Great Fathers in these days! Who are you strangers, who come fromso far?"
"You yourself shall judge, Big White. When the geese fly up the riverand the grass is green, our great boat here is going back down theriver. The Great Father is curious to know his children, the Mandans.If you, Big White, wish to go to see him when the grass is green, youshall sit yonder in that boat and go all the way with some of my men.You shall shake his hand. When you come back, you can tell the storyto your own people. Then all the tribes will cease to wage war. Yourwomen once more may take off their moccasins at night when theysleep."
"It is good," said the Mandan. "_Ahaie!_ Come and stay with us untilthe grass is green, and I will make medicine over what you say. Wewill open our lodges to you, and will not harm you. Our young womenwill carry you corn which they have saved for the winter. Our squawswill feed your horses. Go no farther, for the snow and ice are comingfast. Even the buffalo will be thin, and the elk will grow so leanthat they will not be good to eat. This is as far as the white menever come when the grass is green. Beyond this, no man knows thetrails."
"When the grass is green," said Lewis, "I shall lead my young mentoward the setting sun. We shall make new trails."
Jussaume, McCracken, and all the others held their own council withthe leaders of the expedition.
"What are you doing here?" they demanded. "The Missouri has alwaysbelonged to the British traders."
The face of Meriwether Lewis flushed with anger.
"We are about the business of our government," he said. "It is ourpurpose to discover the West beyond here, all of it. It is our owncountry that we are discovering. We have bought it and paid for it,and will hold it. We carry the news of the great purchase to thenatives."
"Purchase? What purchase?" demanded McCracken.
And then the face of Lewis lightened, for he knew that they had outrunall the news of the world!
"The Louisiana Purchase--the purchase of all this Western country fromthe Mississippi to the Pacific, across the Stony Mountains. We boughtit from Napoleon, who had it from Spain. We are the wedge to split theBritish from the South--the Missouri is our own pathway into our owncountry. That is our business here!"
"You must go back!" said the hot-headed Irishman. "I shall tell myfactor, Chaboillez, at Fort Assiniboine. We want no more traders here.This is our country!"
"We do not come to trade," said Meriwether Lewis. "We play a largergame. I know that the men of the Northwest Company have found theArctic Ocean--you are welcome to it until we want it--we do not wantit now. I know you have found the Pacific somewhere above theColumbia--we do not want what we have not bought or found forourselves, and you are welcome to that. But when you ask us to turnback on our own trail, it is a different matter. We are on our ownsoil now, and we will not turn for any order in the world but that ofthe President of the United States!"
McCracken, irritated, turned away from the talk.
"It is a fine fairy tale they tell us!" said he to his fellows.
Drouillard came a moment later to his chief.
"Those men she'll take her dog-team for Assiniboine now--maybe so onehundred and fifty miles that way. He'll told his factor now, on theAssiniboine post."
Lewis smiled.
"Tell him to take this letter to his factor, Drouillard," said he. "Itis a passport given me by Mr. Thompson, representing Mr. Merry, of theBritish Legation at Washington. I have fifty other passports, betterones, each good at a hundred yards. If Mr. Chaboillez wishes to findus, he can do so. If we have gone, let him come after us in thespring."
"My faith," said Jussaume, the Frenchman, "you come a long way!Why you want to go more farther West? But, listen, _MonsieurCapitaine_--the Englishman, he'll go to make trouble for you. Heis going for send word to Rocheblave, the most boss trader on LakeSuperior, on Fort William. They are going for send a man to beatyou over the mountain--I know!"
"'Tis a long road from here to the middle of Lake Superior's northshore," said Meriwether Lewis. "It will be a long way back from therein the spring. While they are planning to start, already we shall beon our way."
"I know the man they'll send," went on Jussaume. "Simon Fraser--I knowhim. Long time he'll want to go up the Saskatchewan and over themountain on the ocean."
"We'll race Mr. Fraser to the ocean," said Meriwether Lewis; "him orany other man. While he plans, we shall be on our way!"
Well enough the Northern traders knew the meaning of this Americanexpedition into the West. If it went on, all the lower trade was lostto Great Britain forever. The British minister, Merry, had known it.Aaron Burr had known it. This expedition must be stopped! That was theword which must go back to Montreal, back to London, along the trailwhich ended here at the crossroads of the Missouri.
"The red-headed young man is not so bad," said one of the whitenews-bearers at the Assiniboine post. "He is willing to parley, and heseems disposed to be amiable. But the other, the one named Lewis--Ican do nothing with him. For some reason he seems to be hostile to theBritish interests. He speaks well, and is a man of presence andeducation, but he is bitter against us, and I cannot handle him. Wemust use force to stop that man!"
"Agreed, then!" said his master, laughing lustily, for, safe i
n hisown sanctuary, he had not seen these men himself. "We shall useforce, as we have before. We will excite the savages against them thiswinter. If they will listen to us, and turn back in the spring--all ofthem, not part of them--very well. If they will not listen to reason,then we shall use such means as we need to stop them."
Of this conversation the two young American officers, one of Virginia,the other of Kentucky, knew nothing at all. But they held council oftheir own, as was their fashion--a council of two, sitting by theircamp fire; and while others talked, they acted.
Before November was a week old, the axes were ringing among thecottonwoods. The men were carrying big logs toward the cleared spaceshown to them, and while Meriwether Lewis worked at his journal andhis scientific records, William Clark, born soldier and born engineer,was going forward with his little fortress.
Trenches were cut, the logs were ended up--taller pickets than any oneof that country ever had seen before. A double row of cabins was builtinside the stockade. A great gate was furnished, proof againstassault. A bastion was erected in one corner, mounting the swivelpiece so that it might be fired above the top of the wall. A littlemore work of chinking the walls, of flooring the cabins, of makingchimneys of wattle and clay--and _presto_, before the winter had wellsettled down, the white explorers were housed and fortified and readyfor what might come.
The Mandans sat and watched them in wonder. Jussaume, the Frenchtrader, shook his head. In all his experience on the trail he hadseen nothing savoring quite so much of preparedness and celerity.
Among all the posts to the northward and eastward the word went out,carried by dog runners.
"They have built a great house of tall logs," said the Indians. "Theyhave put the thing that thunders on top of the wall. They never sleep.Each day they exercise with their rifles under their arms. They havelong knives on their belts. They carry hatchets that are sharp enoughto shave bark. Their medicine is strong!
"They write down the words of the Mandans and the Minnetarees in theirbooks. They are taking skins of the antelope and the bighorn and thedeer, even skins of the prairie-grouse and the badger and theprairie-dog--everything they can get. They dry these, to make somesort of medicine of them. They cut off pieces of wood and bark. Theyput the dirt which burns in little sacks. They make pictures and makethe talking papers--all the time they work at something, the twochiefs. They have a black man with them who cannot be washedwhite--they have stained him with some medicine of their own. He makessounds like a buffalo, and he says that the white man made him as heis and will do us that way. We would like to kill them, but they havemade their house too strong!
"They never sleep. In the daytime and in the nighttime, no matter howcold it is, one man, two men, walk up and down inside the wall. Theyhave carried their boats up out of the water--two boats, a great oneand two small. All through the woods they are cutting down thelargest trees, and out of the straight logs they are making moreboats, more boats, as many as there are fingers on one hand. They haveaxes that cast much larger chips than any we ever saw. We fear thesemen, because they do not fear us. We do not know what to think. Theyare men who never sleep. Before the sun is up we find them writing ormaking large chips with their axes, or hunting in the woods--not a daygoes by that their hunters do not bring in elk and deer and buffalo.They do not fear us.
"We have seen no men like these. They are chiefs, and their medicineis strong!"
The Magnificent Adventure Page 19
