XXVII The Home Stretch
In the distance there was a gleam of coloured blankets where the beehive huts of the Mandan village lay. A firing of guns and the blunderbuss brought Black Cat to the boats.
“Come and eat.” And with the dignity of an old Roman, the chief extended his hand.
“Come and eat,” was the watchword of every chieftain on the Missouri. Even the Sioux said, “Come and eat!”
Hospitable as Arabs, they spread the buffalo robe and brought the pipe. While the officers talked with the master of the lodge, the silent painstaking squaws put the kettles on the fire, and slaughtered the fatted dog for the honoured guests.
“How many chiefs will accompany us to Washington?” That was the first inquiry of the business-pushing white men. Through Jussaume the Indians answered.
“I would go,” said the Black Cat, “but de Sioux—”
“De Sioux will certainly kill us,” said Le Borgne of the Minnetarees. “Dey are waiting now to intercept you on de river. Dey will cut you off.”
“We stay at home. We listen to your counsel,” piped up Little Cherry. “But dey haf stolen our horses. Dey haf scalp our people.”
“We must fight to protect ourselves,” added the Black Cat. “We live in peace wit’ all nation—’cept de Sioux!”
In vain Captain Clark endeavoured to quiet their apprehensions. “We shall not suffer the Sioux to injure one of our red children.”
“I pledge my government that a company of armed men shall guard you on your return,” added Lewis.
At this point Jussaume reported that Shahaka, or Big White, in his wish to see the President, had overcome his fears. He would go to Washington.
Six feet tall, of magnificent presence, with hair white and coarse as a horse’s mane, Shahaka, of all the chiefs, was the one to carry to the States the tradition of a white admixture in the Mandan blood. “The handsomest Injun I iver saw,” said Patrick Gass.
Arrangements for departure were now made as rapidly as possible. Presents of corn, beans, and squashes, more than all the boats could carry, were piled around the white men’s camp.
The blacksmith’s tools were intrusted to Charboneau for the use of the Mandans. The blunderbuss, given to the Minnetarees, was rolled away to their village with great exultation.
“Now let the Sioux come!” It was a challenge and a refuge.
The iron corn mill was nowhere to be seen. For scarcely had Lewis and Clark turned their backs for the upper Missouri before it had been broken into bits to barb the Indian arrows.
Sacajawea looked wistfully. She, too, would like to visit the white man’s country.
“We will take you and your wife down if you choose to go,” said Captain Clark to Charboneau.
“I haf no acquaintance, no prospect to mak’ a leeving dere,” answered the interpreter. “I mus’ leeve as I haf done.”
“I will take your son and have him educated as a white child should be,” continued the Captain.
Charboneau and Sacajawea looked at one another and at their beautiful boy now nineteen months old, prattling in their midst.
“We would be weeling eef de child were weaned,” slowly spake Charboneau. “Een wan year, he be ole enough to leaf he moder. I den tak’ eem to you eef you be so friendly to raise eem as you t’ink proper.”
“Bring him to me in one year. I will take the child,” said Captain Clark.
Captain Lewis paid Charboneau five hundred dollars, loaded Sacajawea with what gifts he could, and left them in the Mandan country.
All was now ready for the descent to St. Louis. The boats, lashed together in pairs, were at the shore. Big White was surrounded by his friends, seated in a circle, solemnly smoking. The women wept aloud; the little children trembled and hid behind their mothers.
More courageous than any, Shahaka immediately sent his wife and son with their baggage on board. The interpreter, Jussaume, with his wife and two children, accompanied them. Yes, Madame Jussaume was going to Washington!
Sacajawea, modest princess of the Shoshones, heroine of the great expedition, stood with her babe in arms and smiled upon them from the shore. So had she stood in the Rocky Mountains pointing out the gates. So had she followed the great rivers, navigating the continent.
Sacajawea’s hair was neatly braided, her nose was fine and straight, and her skin pure copper like the statue in some old Florentine gallery. Madonna of her race, she had led the way to a new time. To the hands of this girl, not yet eighteen, had been intrusted the key that unlocked the road to Asia.
Some day upon the Bozeman Pass, Sacajawea’s statue will stand beside that of Clark. Some day, where the rivers part, her laurels will vie with those of Lewis. Across North America a Shoshone Indian Princess touched hands with Jefferson, opening her country.
All the chiefs had gathered to see the boats start. “Stay but one moment,” they said.
Clark stepped back. Black Cat handed him a pipe, as if for benediction. The solemn smoke-wreaths soon rolled upward.
“Tell our Great Fader de young men will remain at home and not mak’ war on any people, except in self-defence.”
“Tell de Rickara to come and visit. We mean no harm.”
“Tak’ good care dis chief. He will bring word from de Great Fader.”
It was a promise and a prayer. Strong chiefs turned away with misgiving and trepidation as they saw Shahaka depart with the white men.
Dropping below their old winter quarters at Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clark saw but a row of pickets left. The houses lay in ashes, destroyed by an accidental fire. All were there for the homeward pull but Coalter. He had gone back with Hancock and Dickson, two adventurers from Boone’s settlement, to discover the Yellowstone Park.
On the fourth day out three Frenchmen were met approaching the Mandan nation with the message,—
“Seven hundert Sioux haf pass de Rickara to mak’ war on de Mandan an’ Minnetaree.” Fortunately, Shahaka did not understand, and no one told him.
The Arikara village greeted the passing boats. Lewis, still lame, requested Clark to go up to the village. Like children confessing their misdeeds the Arikaras began:
“We cannot keep the peace! Our young men follow the Sioux!”
The wild Cheyennes, with their dogs and horses and handsome leathern lodges, were here on a trading visit, to exchange with the Arikaras meat and robes for corn and beans. They were a noble race, of straight limbs and Roman noses, unaccustomed to the whites, shy and cautious.
“We war against none but the Sioux, with whom we have battled for ever,” they said.
Everywhere there was weeping and mourning. “My son, my son, he has been slain by the Sioux!”
Between the lands of the warring nations surged seas of buffalo, where to-day are the waving bonanza wheat fields of North Dakota.
From an eminence Clark looked over the prairies. “More buffalo than ever I have seen before at one time,”—and he had seen many. “If it be not impossible to calculate the moving multitude that darkens the plains, twenty thousand would be no exaggerated estimate.”
They were now well into the country of the great Sioux Indian Confederacy. Arms and ammunition were inspected.
The sharp air thrilled and filled them with new vigour. No wonder the Sioux were never still. The ozone of the Arctic was in their veins, the sweeping winds drove them, the balsamic prairie was their bed, the sky their canopy. They never shut themselves up in stuffy mud huts, as did the Mandans; they lived in tents. Unrestrained, unregenerate, there was in them the fire of the Six Nations, of King Philip and of Pontiac. Tall, handsome, finely formed, agile, revengeful, intelligent, capable,—they loved their country and they hated strangers. So did the Greeks. An effeminate nation would have fallen before them as did the Roman before the Goth, but in the Anglo-Saxon they met their master.
“Whoop-ah-ho-o-oh!”
As anticipated, Black Buffalo and his pirate band were on the hills. Whether that fierce cry meant defiance or greeting no man could tell.
“Whoop-ah-ho-o-oh!”
The whole band rushed down to the shore, and even out into the water, shouting invitations to land, and waving from the sand-banks.
But too fresh in memory was the attempt to carry off Captain Clark. Jubilant, hopeful, and full of the fire of battle as the white men were, yet no one wished to test the prowess of the Sioux.
Unwilling to venture an interview, the boats continued on their way. Black Buffalo shook his war bonnet defiantly, and returning to the hill smote the earth three times with the butt of his rifle, the registration of a mighty oath against the whites.
Leaving behind them a wild brandishing of bows, arrows, and tomahawks, and an atmosphere filled with taunts, insults, and imprecations, the boats passed out of sight.
Wafted on the wind followed that direful “Whoop-ah-ho-o-oh!” ending with the piercing shrill Indian yell that for sixty years froze the earliest life blood of Minnesota and Dakota.
Here in the land of the Teton Sioux was to be planted the future Fort Rice, where exactly sixty years after Lewis and Clark, there crossed the Missouri one of the most powerful, costly, and best equipped expeditions ever sent out against hostile Indians,—four thousand cavalry, eight hundred mounted infantry, twelve pieces of artillery, three hundred government teams, three hundred beef steers, and fifteen steamboats to carry supplies,—to be joined here on the Fourth of July, 1864, by an emigrant train of one hundred and sixty teams and two hundred and fifty people,—the van guard of Montana settlement. The Sioux were defeated in the Bad Lands, and the emigrants were carried safely through to Helena, where they and their descendants live to-day.
Already sweeping up the Missouri, Lewis and Clark met advancing empire. Near Vermilion River, James Aird was camping with a license to trade among the Sioux.
“What is the news from St. Louis?”
There on the borders of a future great State, Lewis and Clark first heard that Burr and Hamilton had fought a duel and Hamilton was killed; that three hundred American troops were cantoned at Bellefontaine, a new log fort on the Missouri; that Spain had taken a United States frigate on the Mediterranean; that two British ships of war had fired on an American ship in the port of New York, killing the Captain’s brother.
Great was the indignation in the United States against Jefferson and the impressment of American seamen.
“The money spent for Louisiana would have been much better used in building fighting ships.”
“The President had much better be protecting our rights than cutting up animals and stuffing the skins of dead raccoons.”
“Where is our national honour? Gone, abandoned on the Mississippi.”
And these coureurs on the Mississippi heard that the conflict foreseen by Napoleon, when he gave us Louisiana, was raging now in all its fury, interdicting the commerce of the world.
To their excited ears the river rushed and rocked, the earth rumbled, with the roar of cannon. To themselves Lewis and Clark seemed a very small part of the forces that make and unmake nations,—and yet that expedition meant more to the world than the field of Waterloo!
The next noon, on ascending the hill of Floyd’s Bluff they found the Indians had opened the grave of their comrade. Reverently it was filled again.
Home from the buffalo hunt in the plains of the Nebraska, the Omahas were firing guns to signal their return to gather in their harvest of corn, beans, and pumpkins. Keel boats, barges, and bateaux came glistening into view,—Auguste Chouteau with merchandise to trade with the Yanktons, another Chouteau to the Platte, a trader with two men to the Pawnee Loupes, and Joseph La Croix with seven men bound for the Omahas.
Through the lessening distance Clark recognised on one of the barges his old comrade, Robert McClellan, the wonderful scout of Wayne’s army, who had ridden on many an errand of death. Since Wayne’s victory McClellan had been a ranger still, but now the Indians were quieting down,—all except Tecumseh.
“The country has long since given you up,” he told the Captain. “We have word from Jefferson to seek for news of Lewis and Clark. The general opinion in the United States is that you are lost in the unfathomable depths of the continent. But President Jefferson has hopes. The last heard of you was at the Mandan villages.”
With a laugh they listened to their own obituaries. On the same barge with McClellan was Gravelines with orders from Jefferson to instruct the Arikaras in agriculture, and Dorion to help make way through the Sioux.
“Brave Raven, the Arikara chief, died in Washington,” said Gravelines. “I am on my way to them with a speech from the President and the presents which have been made to the chief.”
How home now tugged at their heart strings! Eager to be on the way, they bade farewell to McClellan.
Down, down they shot along, wind, current, and paddle in their favour, past shores where the freebooting Kansas Indians robbed the traders, past increasing forests of walnut, elm, oak, hickory.
The men were now reduced to a biscuit apiece. Wild turkeys gobbled on shore, but the party paused not a moment to hunt.
On the twentieth a mighty shout went up. They heard the clank of cow bells, and saw tame cattle feeding on the hills of Charette, the home of Daniel Boone. With cheers and firing of guns they landed at the village.
“We are indeet astonished,” exclaimed the joyful habitants, grasping their hands. “You haf been given up for det long tam since.” The men were scattered among the families for the night, honoured guests of Charette.
“Plaintee tam we wish ourself back on ole San Loui’,” said Cruzatte to his admiring countrymen.
To their surprise Lewis and Clark found new settlements all the way down from Charette. September 21, firing a tremendous salute from the old stone tower behind the huts, all St. Charles paid tribute to the Homeric heroes who had wandered farther than Ulysses and slain more monsters than Hercules.
Just above the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers loomed the fresh mud chimneys of the new log Fort Bellefontaine, Colonel Thomas Hunt in command, and Dr. Saugrain, surgeon, appointed by Jefferson.
The Colonel’s pretty little daughter, Abby Hunt, looked up in admiration at Lewis and Clark, and followed all day these “Indian white men” from the north. Forty years after she told the story of that arrival. “They wore dresses of deerskin, fringed and worked with porcupine quills, something between a military undress frock coat and an Indian shirt, with leggings and moccasins, three-cornered cocked hats and long beards.”
Standing between the centuries in that log fort on the Missouri, pretty little Abby Hunt herself was destined to become historic, as the wife of Colonel Snelling and the mother of the first white child born in Minnesota.
After an early breakfast with Colonel Hunt, the expedition set out for the last stretch homeward. They rounded out of the Missouri into the Mississippi, and pulled up to St. Louis at noon, Tuesday, September 23, 1806, after an absence of nearly two years and a half.