IX Trade Follows the Flag
“Bon jour, Ms’ieu, you want to know where dat Captinne?” The polite Creole lifted his cap.
“’Pears now, maybe I heerd he wuz Guv’ner,” said the keen-eyed trapper thoughtfully.
“Guff’ner Lewees ees det,—kilt heeself. Generale Clark leeves on de Rue Royale, next de Injun office.”
In unkempt beard, hair shaggy as a horse’s mane, and clothing all of leather, the stranger climbed the rocky path, using the stock of his gun for a staff.
It did not take long to find the Indian office. With a dozen lounging braves outside and a council within, sat William Clark, the Red Head Chief.
General Clark noted the shadow in the door that bright May morning. Not in vain had these men faced the West together.
“Bless me, it’s Coalter! Where have you been? How did you come?”
From the mountains, three thousand miles in thirty days, in a small canoe, Coalter had come flying down the melting head-snows of the Rockies. He was haggard with hunger and loss of sleep.
Leading his old companion to the cottage, Clark soon had him surrounded with the comforts of a civilised meal. Refreshed, gradually the trapper unfolded his tale.
When John Coalter left Lewis and Clark at the Mandan towns and went back with Hancock and Dickson, in that Summer of 1806, they, the first of white men, entered the Yellowstone Park of to-day. In the Spring, separating from his companions, Coalter set out for St. Louis in a solitary canoe. At the mouth of the Platte he met Manuel Lisa and Drouillard coming up. And with them, John Potts, another of the Lewis and Clark soldiers. On the spot Coalter re-enlisted and returned a third time to the wilderness.
Such a man was invaluable to that first venture in the north. After Lisa had stockaded his fort at the mouth of the Bighorn, he sent Coalter to bring the Indians. Alone he set out with gun and knapsack, travelled five hundred miles, and brought in his friends the Crows. That laid the foundation of Lisa’s fortune.
When Lisa came down with his furs in the Spring, Coalter and Potts with traps on their backs set out for the beaver-meadows of the Three Forks, the Madison, the Jefferson, and the Gallatin.
“We knew those Blackfoot sarpints would spare no chance to skelp us,” said Coalter, “so we sot our traps by night an’ tuk ’em afore daylight. Goin’ up a creek six miles from the Jefferson, examinin’ our traps one mornin’, on a suddent we heerd a great noise. But the banks wuz high an’ we cudn’t see.
“‘Blackfeet, Potts. Let’s retreat,’ sez I.
“‘Blackfut nuthin’. Ye must be a coward. Thet’s buffaloes,’ sez Potts. An’ we kep’ on.
“In a few minutes five or six hunderd Injuns appeared on both sides uv the creek, beckonin’ us ashore. I saw ’t warnt no use an’ turned the canoe head in.
“Ez we touched, an Injun seized Potts’ rifle. I jumped an’ grabbed an’ handed it back to Potts in the canoe. He tuk it an’ pushed off.
“An’ Injun let fly an arrer. Jest ez I heard it whizz, Potts cried, ‘Coalter, I’m wounded.’
“‘Don’t try to get off, Potts, come ashore,’ I urged. But no, he levelled his rifle and shot a Blackfoot dead on the spot. Instanter they riddled Potts,—dead, he floated down stream.
“Then they seized and stripped me. I seed ’em consultin’.
“‘Set ’im up fer a target,’ said some. I knew ther lingo, lernt it ’mongst the Crows, raound Lisa’s fort, at the Bighorn. But the chief asked me, ‘Can ye run fast?’
“‘No, very bad runner,’ I answered.”
Clark smiled. Well he remembered Coalter as the winner in many a racing bout.
“The chief led me aout on the prairie, ‘Save yerself ef ye can.’
“Et thet instant I heerd, ‘Whoop-ahahahahah-hooh!’ like ten thousand divils, an’ I flew.
“It wuz six miles to the Jefferson; the graound wuz stuck like a pinquishen with prickly-pear an’ sand burrs, cuttin’ my bare feet, but I wuz half acrosst before I ventured to look over the shoulder. The sarpints ware pantin’ an’ fallin’ behind an’ scatterin’. But one with a spear not more’n a hunderd yeards behind was gainin’.
“I made another bound,—blood gushed from my nostrils. Nearer, nearer I heerd his breath and steps, expectin’ every minute to feel thet spear in my back.
“Agin I looked. Not twenty yeards behind he ran. On a suddint I stopped, turned, and spread my arms. The Blackfoot, astonished at the blood all over my front, perhaps, tried to stop but stumbled an’ fell and broke his spear. I ran back, snatched the point, and pinned him to the earth.
“The rest set up a hidjus yell. While they stopped beside ther fallen comrade, almost faintin’ I ran inter the cottonwoods on the borders uv the shore an’ plunged ento the river.
“Diving under a raft of drift-timber agin the upper point of a little island, I held my head up in a little opening amongst the trunks of trees covered with limbs and brushwood.
“Screechin’, yellin’ like so many divils, they come onto the island. Thro’ the chinks I seed ’em huntin’, huntin’, huntin’, all day long. I only feared they might set the raft on fire.
“But at night they gave it up; the voices grew faint and fer away; I swam cautiously daown an’ acrost, an’ landin’ travelled all night.
“But I wuz naked. The broilin’ sun scorched my skin, my feet were filled with prickly-pears, an’ I wuz hungry. Game, game plenty on the hills, but I hed no gun. It was seven days to Lisa’s fort on the Bighorn.
“I remembered the Injun turnip that Sacajawea found in there, an’ lived on it an’ sheep sorrel until I reached Lisa’s fort, blistered from head to heel.”
As in a vision the General saw it all. Judy’s eyes were filled with tears. Through the Gallatin, the Indian Valley of Flowers, where Bozeman stands to-day, the lonely trapper had toiled in the July sun and over the Bozeman Pass, whither Clark’s cavalcade had ridden two summers before.
Six years now had Coalter been gone from civilisation, but he had discovered the Yellowstone Park. No one in St. Louis would believe his stories of hot water spouting in fountains, “Coalter’s Hell,” but William Clark traced his route on the map that he sent for publication.
John Coalter now received his delayed reward for the expedition,—double pay and three hundred acres of land,—and went up to find Boone at Charette.
“What! Pierre Menard!” Another boat had come out of the north. General Clark grasped the horny hand of the fur trader. “What luck?”
“Bad, bad,” gloomily answered the trader with a shake of his flowing mane. “Drouillard is dead, and the rest are likely soon to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Blackfeet!”
Clark guessed all, even before he heard the full details behind locked doors of the Missouri Fur Company at the warehouse of Pierre Chouteau.
“As you knew,” began Menard, “we spent last winter at Fort Lisa on the Bighorn. When Lisa started down here in March we packed our traps on horses, crossed to the Three Forks, and built a double stockade of logs at the confluence of the rivers. Every night the men came in with beaver, beaver, beaver. We confidently expected to bring down not less than three hundred packs this fall but that hope is shattered. On the 12th of April our men were ambuscaded by Blackfeet. Five were killed. All their furs, traps, horses, guns, and equipments are without doubt by this time at Fort Edmonton on the Saskatchewan.”
“But you expected to visit the Snakes and Flatheads,” suggested one to rouse the despondent trader from his revery.
“I did. And the object was to obtain a Blackfoot prisoner if possible in order to open communication with his tribe. They are the most unapproachable Indians we have known. They refuse all overtures.
“Just outside the fort Drouillard was killed. A high wind was blowing at the time, so he was not heard, but the scene of the conflict indicated a desperate defence.
“Despair seized our hunters. They refused to go out. Indeed, it was impossible to go except in numbers, so Henry and I concluded it was best to report. I set out by night, and here I am, with these men and thirty packs of beaver. God pity poor Henry at the Three Forks!”
Thus at one blow were shattered the high hopes of the Missouri Fur Company. All thought of Andrew Henry, tall, slender, blue-eyed, dark-haired, a man that spoke seldom, but of great deeds. Would he survive a winter among the Blackfeet?
But there was another cause of disquiet to the Missouri Fur Company.
“Have you heard of John Jacob Astor?”
“What?”
“He has gone with Wilson Price Hunt to Montreal to engage men for an expedition to the Columbia.”
“What, Hunt who kept an Indian shop here on the Rue?” They all knew him. He had come to St. Louis in 1804 and become an adept in outfitting.
Two or three times Astor had offered to buy stock in the Missouri Fur Company but had been refused. Jefferson himself had recommended him to Lewis. Now he was carrying trade into the fur country over their heads. Already he had a great trade on the lakes, and to the headwaters of the Mississippi. He had profited by the surrender of Detroit and Mackinaw. Another stride took him to the Falls of St. Anthony; and now, along the trail of Lewis and Clark he planned to be first on the Pacific. With ships by sea and caravans by land, he could at last accomplish the wished-for trade to China.
“But I, too, planned the Pacific trade,” said Manuel Lisa, coming down in the Autumn. There was some jealousy that a New York man should be first to follow the trail to the sea.
The winter was one of anxiety, for Astor’s men had arrived in St. Louis and had gone up the Missouri to camp until Spring. Anxiety, too, for Andrew Henry, out there alone in the Blackfoot country.
Could they have been gifted with sufficient sight, the partners in St. Louis might even then have seen the brave Andrew Henry fighting for his life on that little tongue of land between the Madison and the Jefferson. No trapping could be done. It was dangerous to go any distance from the fort except in large parties. Fearing the entire destruction of his little band, Henry moved across the mountains into the Oregon country, and wintered on what is now Henry’s Fork of the river Snake, the first American stronghold on the Columbia.
“We must exterminate Hunt’s party,” said Manuel Lisa.
“No,” said Pierre Chouteau. “Next year he will send again and again, and in time will exterminate us. Your duty will be to protect his men on the water, and may God Almighty have mercy on them in the mountains, for they will never reach their destination.”
From his new home at Charette John Coalter saw Astor’s people going by, bound for the Columbia. To his surprise they inquired for him.
“General Clark told us you were the best informed man in the country.”
Coalter told them of the hostility of the Blackfeet and the story of his escape. He longed to return with them to the mountains, but he had just married a squaw and he decided to stay. Moreover, a twinge in his limbs warned him that that plunge in the Jefferson had given him rheumatism for life.
Daniel Boone, standing on the bank at Charette when Hunt went by, came down and examined their outfit. “Jist returned from my traps on the Creek,” he said, pointing to sixty beaver skins.
Tame beavers and otters, caught on an island opposite Charette Creek, were playing around his cabin. And his neighbours had elk and deer and buffalo, broken to the yoke.
Several seasons had Boone with his old friend Calloway trapped on the Kansas; now he longed for the mountains.
“Another year and I, too, will go to the Yellowstone,” said Daniel Boone.
“Andrew Henry must be rescued. His situation is desperate. He may be dead,” said General Clark, President of the Missouri Fur Company at St. Louis.
Three weeks behind Hunt, Lisa set out in a swift barge propelled by twenty oars, with a swivel on the bow and two blunderbusses in the cabin. Lisa had been a sea-captain,—he rigged his boat with a good mast, mainsail and topsail, and led his men with a ringing boat-song.
Then followed a keelboat race of a thousand miles up the Missouri. June 2 Lisa caught up with Hunt near the present Bismarck, and met Andrew Henry coming down with forty packs of beaver.
To avoid the hostile Blackfeet, Hunt bought horses and crossed through the Yellowstone-Crow country to the abandoned fort of Henry on the Snake, and on to the Columbia.
Aboard that barge with Lisa went Sacajawea. True to her word, she had brought the little Touissant down to St. Louis, where Clark placed him with the Catholic sisters to be trained for an interpreter. Sacajawea was dressed as a white woman; she had quickly adopted their manners and language; but, in the words of a chronicler who saw her there, “she had become sickly, and longed to revisit her native country. Her husband also had become wearied of civilised life.”
So back they went to the Minnetarees, bearing pipes from Clark to the chiefs. Five hundred dollars a year Charboneau now received as Indian agent for the United States. For more than thirty years he held his post, and to this day his name may be traced in the land of Dakota.
We can see Sacajawea now, startled and expectant, her heart beating like a trip-hammer under her bodice, looking at Julia! No dreams of her mountains had ever shown such sunny hair, such fluffs of curls, like moonrise on the water. And that diaphanous cloud,—was it a dress? No Shoshone girl ever saw such buckskin, finer than blossom of the bitter-root.
“I am come,” said Sacajawea.
A whole year she had tarried among the whites, quickly accommodating herself to their ways. But in the level St. Louis she dreamed of her northland, and now she was going home!