[1] For the story of the Prophet and Tecumseh, see "Boys' Book of Indian Warriors."
In all the planning for possession of the country north and west of the Ohio River the Indians were far out-stripped by the white men. By the treaty of peace with England, in 1783, at the close of the Revolution, the United States obtained the lands west to the Mississippi River. When beginning in 1805 the Shawnee Prophet, or Open Door, tried to league the red people together, the Long Knife nation of the Thirteen Fires had extended clear to the Rocky Mountains. There was no stopping them. In the spring of 1803 President Thomas Jefferson, for the United States, had succeeded in buying the great Louisiana Territory from France. This Province of Louisiana covered from the Mississippi to the summits of the Rocky Mountains, and from Texas to Canada.
The messengers sent out by Open Door traveled even to the Blackfeet Indians of present Montana; but messengers sent out by President Jefferson had traveled farther. Starting from near St. Louis, in June, 1804, they had carried the new flag and the new peace word clear up the Missouri River, through Sioux country, through Blackfoot country and through Snake country, and had explored on to the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River in present Washington. They had beaten the Open Door by several years.
These messengers of the United States were true Long Knives: young Captain Meriwether Lewis of Virginia and Lieutenant William Clark, his friend and a brother of the famed General George Rogers Clark, of Kentucky. They were to report upon the nature of the northern Louisiana Purchase, talk friendship with the strange Indians, and find a way by water across the Oregon Country beyond, to the mouth of the Columbia.
They took a company of thirty-one men enlisted as soldiers and boatmen and interpreters. Among them there were nine of the Kentucky Long Hunters. It is said that Lewis Wetzel joined, but he dropped out. John Colter, of Maysville on the Ohio River at the mouth of Limestone Creek, opposite West Virginia, was another. He went through.
Ten years before, Daniel Boone had moved west, into Louisiana Province while it was owned by Spain. He had settled in central Missouri, on the Missouri River above St. Louis; wanted "elbow room," he said—and the Spanish governor gave him eight thousand five hundred acres of land. Colonel Boone the Big Turtle was the first of the American dead-shots in the new West. When the Lewis and Clark men toiled up-river here he still was, living among the French in the very last white settlement.
He was not to be alone long. Many another Kentuckian and Carolinan and Tennesseean and Virginian had been thinking of a try at Boone's latest hunting-grounds; they remembered that he had made a good choice when he picked Kentucky: and now that the country yonder was being opened by Americans for Americans they pressed after Lewis and Clark—their own kind. There were furs to be found, under American protection, and sold at St. Louis, an American city.
So when in the summer of 1806 the Lewis and Clark men were on the down-river trail, bound for St. Louis again, on the Missouri below the mouth of the Yellowstone River away up in North Dakota they met two American trappers, Forest Hancock and Joseph Dickson, hailing last from Illinois.
John Colter, of the nine Kentuckians, thought that this was a good chance for him. The two free-trappers had been in here for two years—had set out right on the heels of the exploring party; they had caught many beaver and were doing well. They turned back, for fifty miles, with the company. On the way down John Colter arranged to become their partner. Captain Lewis gave him his discharge; and instead of going home he stayed, to be a trapper.
This land of high bare plains and snow-tipped, rock-ribbed, pine-clad mountains was very different from the forests of the Ohio region; but he had learned a great deal during his two years' trip. He was no greenhorn. He could take care of himself—he had been farther than Hancock and Dickson, felt no more fear of the Western Indians than he did of the Eastern Indians. After all, an Indian was an Indian, although these plains Indians like the Sioux and Blackfeet numbered thousands and seemed to think themselves much better than the white man.
In the fall his partners went "out," to take their furs to St. Louis. He remained in, and spent the winter alone, up the Yellowstone River of Montana, which was Blackfoot country. Captain Lewis had had trouble with the Blackfeet. They had tried to rob him, and two had been killed. But the Blackfoot head chief announced that this had served his young men right, and that the other Blackfeet bore the Americans no ill will.
Therefore Trapper Colter passed the winter in peace. The Crows, who also claimed the Yellowstone, did not molest him, either. In the spring he was taking the lone trail for St. Louis, when he met a company of American and French fur-hunters under Manuel Lisa, a swarthy Spaniard. They were coming in to build a trading post among the Blackfeet or Crows.
Trapper Colter had reached the mouth of the Platte River, in Nebraska—was almost "home," to the States, after an absence of three years; but he cared little. Trader Lisa wished him to be their scout to the Yellowstone and help them with the Indians; so he promptly turned around and took the back trail. He loved the trapper's life.
They built the post, named Manuel's Fort, beside the Yellowstone at the mouth of the Big Horn River in southeastern Montana. Trader Lisa found out that the Blackfeet were friendly; but their trade was not enough for him. He coveted the furs of the Crows and other Indians. John Colter was the man to carry the word that a trading post had been "brought" to the Yellowstone, and that all Indians were invited to visit it. He set out with the news.
This part of the Yellowstone was really Crow country; they ranged in southern Montana, the Blackfeet ranged in northern Montana, but they fought each other whenever they met in south or north, or in the mountains west. The Blackfeet were the stronger; they were eating the Crows, year after year. Trader Lisa should have known better than to invite them both to trade with him.
John Colter shouldered a pack of thirty pounds weight, containing presents, and with his rifle and ammunition started to hunt the Crows in the southwest. He paddled his canoe up the Big Horn into northern Wyoming, and finally discovered the Crows in their summer quarters of the Wind River Valley, to the westward.
With them he traveled westward still, across the Wind River Mountains and the Teton Mountains into northeastern Idaho. For the first time the eyes of a white American saw this wild and grandly beautiful scenery of a hunter's paradise.
He had traveled by canoe and foot and horse about five hundred miles. Here he met the Flathead Indians, with whom he had made friends when with Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clark. Here he met the Blackfeet, too—fifteen hundred of them on a horse-stealing expedition. But he met them in battle. He was with the Crows and Flatheads, and of course had to aid his own party. It was do or die, because the Crows and Flatheads numbered only eight hundred.
He showed them how a white man could fight; he was wounded in the leg, the Blackfeet were driven off, they had seen him as a leader in the ranks of their enemies, they refused to forget, and ever after that they were the sworn foes of the whites.
There was no use now in his trying to talk with the Blackfeet. If they caught him they'd kill him. He'd better avoid them. The Crows were afraid to guide him far, and he struck out alone for Manuel's Fort, and made his own trail. Possibly the Crows had told him of a "big-medicine" country—a region of bad and good spirits, lying between him and the Big Horn, and into which few Indians ventured. It promised to be a safe trail, he was not afraid of "spirits"—preferred "spirits" to the Blackfeet; he struck out, and plunged into the wonders of the Yellowstone Park.
He arrived at Lisa's Fort (which was another of its names) without trouble, and full of stories about hot geysers and boiling mud and strange colorings. For many years nobody believed his stories; they were only "trapper yarns;" but there he had been, in this year 1807, and had had the place all to himself.
Trader Lisa was not satisfied. He wished furs, and more furs; he wished the Blackfeet furs, as well as the Crow and Flathead and Sioux furs. In the spring of the next year he sent Trapper Colter out again, to seek the Blackfeet, make peace with them, and urge them to come in Fort Manuel. By this time they probably would have forgiven the one white man who had been in a tight fix and obliged to fight whether or no.
John Potts agreed to go with John Colter. They were comrades of old. John Potts was another of the Lewis and Clark men: had served as a soldier enlisted at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, by Captain Lewis himself. He had joined the Trader Lisa company at St. Louis, a year ago, and on the way up-river had been glad to meet John Colter. It was a reunion.
Now from Lisa's Fort they paddled up the Yellowstone again, down which they had come in 1806 with Lieutenant Clark, and crossed westward over the divide between the Yellowstone and the heads of the Missouri. This was the Three Forks country, of present southwestern Montana, where the Missouri split into three branches named by Captain Lewis the Madison, the Gallatin and the Jefferson. They knew it well; had they not worked hard here, when bound for the Columbia in the summer of 1805?
Likely enough they were not at all anxious to find the Blackfeet or to have the Blackfeet find them. The Blackfeet sometimes roamed here; so did the timid Snakes, descending from the mountains to hunt buffalo on the Missouri River plains in the east; so did the Crows. While spying around, they two built a canoe apiece and trapped beaver in the Jefferson River, over toward the mountains.
The beaver were as abundant as ever. To keep out of sight of Indians, they set their traps after dusk, ran them very early in the morning, and lay hidden all day. It certainly was not pleasant, to live like 'coons and owls, but so many furs were worth the trouble.
One early morning they were in their canoes, deep between the high banks, down toward the mouth of the river where it united with the Madison, when they heard a dull tramping in the valley.
"Harkee!" spoke John. "D'ye hear, Jack? That sounds like Injuns. We'd better drop our traps an' câche (hide) ourselves."
"Injuns nothin'!" John Potts laughed. "Them's buff'ler. Seems like every time the wind blows you're thinkin' 'Injuns.' Can't you tell buff'ler from reds? Or are you gettin' skeered out!"
"Jest as you say, then," the other John replied. "But if anything happens, don't blame me. I've a notion we ought to climb up an' spy 'round."
"If they're Injuns, our heads would give us away. We'll keep where we are, snug under the banks, an' they'll pass us by. But those are buff'ler, I tell you."
They worked along, lifting their beaver traps. The dull tramping increased, as if the buffalo were about to cross the river. Suddenly, above them, on the edge of the east bank, there appeared dark figures, with blankets and feathered crowns and guns and bows.
"Blackfeet!" John Colter gasped. "Watch out. Stop paddling. Drop your traps." His own he let slide over the side of his canoe farthest from the Indians.
The Blackfeet instantly covered the two canoes with bended bows and leveled muskets. The whole bank was bristling with their fierce array, so that the narrow river seemed shadowed.
A chief called sternly, and gestured, bidding the two canoes to land where the bank had washed in a little cove.
"We're in for it," remarked John Colter. "Come on, and I'll talk with 'em."
"Not I," the other John growled. "Let's talk from here."
"That's pure folly." And knowing Indians better than his comrade did, John Colter paddled in with a few strokes.
One of the Blackfoot warriors seized his canoe at once; hands rudely hauled him out, and upon the bank, wrenched his gun from him and tore off all his clothes. It was an alarming welcome.
John Potts was still in his own canoe, in mid-stream. The Indians again called to him, and the chief beckoned.
"Come ashore, or they'll kill you where you are," urged John Colter. There were eight hundred of them!
But Trapper Potts shook his head.
"I'll not. I might as well be killed here and now, as be robbed and beaten first. You—"
A bow twanged angrily. Down he fell, in the bottom of his canoe. John Colter could scarcely see, by reason of the dancing, shouting Blackfeet. Then he heard.
"Colter! They've got me! I'm wounded!"
"Bad hurt?"
Trapper Potts was standing, rifle in hand and an arrow jutting from his hip.
"Yes. I can't make off. Get away if you can. I meant to kill one at least."
He aimed and fired; shot a Blackfoot dead. That was his last act. The smoke had no more than cleared the muzzle of his gun, ere a hundred arrows and bullets "made a riddle of him." Thus he died, also; a brave no-surrender man.
Yelling furiously, the Blackfeet, in a jostling mob, rushed into the stream, pulled the canoe ashore, dragged the body out upon the bank, and hacked it to pieces. They threw the pieces into John Colter's face, the slain warrior's relatives fought to get at him with their tomahawks, while the other Blackfeet formed about him and thrust them aside.
It was a doubtful moment. The air quivered to threat and insult. Trapper Colter expected to be killed at once. His friend had sealed the doom of both of them; had destroyed the one chance, for if no blood had been shed the Blackfeet might only have robbed them and let them go.
The tumult gradually lessened. The chiefs squatted in a circle, and while all scowled at the prisoner a council was held. The only point to be discussed was, how should he die?
They appeared to have decided. The head chief arose, and stalking to John motioned to him to go farther out into the open.
"Go! Go away!" he ordered, in the Crow tongue. Evidently they recognized John Colter as the white man who had fought against them among the Crows. That made matters worse.
John guessed that they were using him for a practice target. As soon as he was out a little way, they would shoot at him—see how many times they could hit him before killing him. That would be great sport as well as good practice. He slowly walked, to the east, upon the open plain, expecting with every step to feel the first arrow or bullet. This was a nervous stroll for a naked man. He heartily wished that he never had seen the Crows, or John Potts either.
He was not moving fast enough to suit the Blackfeet. An old fellow commenced to shout at him, and motion for him to go faster. But he didn't wish to go faster; the ground was thickly grown to prickly-pear cactus, and he had to pick his path amidst the spines.
Then the old Indian scuttled after him, very impatient. Told him to go faster yet—hurry, hurry! Even gave him a shove, or two.
From about one hundred yards out he looked again, and saw that the younger warriors were casting off their blankets and leggins; were stripping as if for a race!
What! A race it was to be, with his scalp the prize? A wave of hope and determination surged into his throat, and his heart beat madly. After all, the Blackfeet were treating him like a man. He was one among eight hundred; they had given him a chance!
He drew long breath. He was in his prime, aged about thirty-five; was five feet ten inches in height, stout-limbed, broad chested—strongly built after the Daniel Boone type of hunter. And he was a swift runner; few men that he knew were his equal.
With a leap, he launched himself full-speed across the bare plain, aiming for the Madison River, five miles before. A burst of yells and whoops reached his ears. He glanced behind and saw some one hundred young braves, naked, the most of them, to their breech-clouts, careering after with spears.
He had made good time in other races, but he never had run like this. His strength and stride astonished him. The ground fairly whizzed from under him, the wind whined in his ears, almost drowning the cries of the pursuit. He wasted no moments now in picking his way through the prickly-pears; had to step on them with his bare soles, whether or no; and he gathered the stinging spines as a pin-cushion gathers pins.
He wasted no moments, either, in looking back. He bent all his energy upon reaching the Madison River. Soon he had run a mile, without slackening; could hear no feet except his own, had felt no lunge of spear. He kept on for another mile, and had not dared to relax. His lungs were sore, his throat dry, his breath wheezed, and his eyes were dizzy. But he was half way to the Madison. Was he going to escape? He did not know. The yells were fainter.
But what was that? Blood began to gush from his nose, choking him. He had burst a blood-vessel. It frightened him and weakened him, and he rather despaired. For the first time he glanced over his shoulder, to measure distance. Hurrah! He had dropped all the Blackfeet except one; but that one was overhauling him, and was within the hundred yards: a tall, fast young warrior, with a spear in his right hand and his blanket streaming from his left arm and shoulder.
Exhausted, Trapper Colter about decided to give up. He had done his best. So he ran more slowly; and when he thought that the Indian was about to spear him he turned abruptly, and spread both his arms, in surrender, and gasped, in Crow language:
"Do not kill."
He took the Indian quite by surprise, for a gory, frightful sight he was. But the Indian's-mind had been made up. He saw the scalp, his hard-won prize; and poising his spear in both hands he charged on, to lunge. He, too, was wellnigh all in, and stumbled as he tried to thrust. John managed to grab the spear near the head, and hold it off, and they swayed and tugged. The spear broke, and the Indian fell flat. Trapper Colter stabbed him with the point, snatched the blanket, and leaving him lying there was away again.
A tremendous yell echoed from the Indians who had been watching; but now filled with hope once more he ran, he said, "as if he had not run a mile." Ahorse and afoot the whole Blackfoot band were tearing after.
He reached the Madison in the lead. He had run his five miles, but he had not won his life. There was to be no mercy for him, now that he had killed a warrior. Would the Madison save him? Beyond, there was only another open stretch, to be crossed, and a high mountain to be climbed.
He did not know exactly what to do, as he crashed through the willows bordering the little river. Then he saw a very large beaver-house, like a small haystack rising ten feet above the water, in a dammed pond. He plunged for it, and commenced to swim. If he might manage to get into that beaver-house before he was sighted—! He had quick wit, did John Colter.
The water was some ten feet deep, at the house. He held his breath and took a deep, deep dive. Luck was with him, to reward him. He groped, near the bottom, and struck the entrance; got his head through, and his body, and wriggled on—perhaps to stick fast inside and drown! No! As he had wildly hoped, the house was of two stories and big enough for him. The second floor was high and dry, for the beavers to lie upon; and the hole up through it was wide enough so that he could support his shoulders and breathe. Here he panted and waited, in the darkness.
Presently he could hear the Blackfeet, plashing about, and talking. In a moment or so they were upon the beaver-house itself. Their moccasins crunched the brittle sticks and mud; they thrust with their spears, and seemed uncertain what to do, themselves.
Another fear thrilled him. Supposing they guessed that he was under them, and set the house on fire! It would burn; the fire would eat down, and he would be roasted or smothered. He listened intently, for the crackling; even fancied that he could smell the smoke; let himself down as far as he might, so as to dodge the spear points.
After a long, long time the voices and the plashing grew less, as the Blackfeet appeared to be giving up the search. Then they all collected again. Then they went away. Then they came back. Would they never quit? He was chilled stiff, soaked with the icy water. But he hung on.
Finally silence reigned. They had gone; or hadn't they? Maybe they were hidden, near, waiting for him. He grimly waited, too. At last he could stand the place no more. By the blackness, and the feel of the air, night had arrived. He drew another breath, let go, and dived from under. He cautiously rose to the surface; all was darkness. So he swam upstream and landed on the east side.
He did not dare to linger, though. A mountain range enclosed the valley, and he had to make it before daylight. He traveled on as fast as possible, with his blistered feet and his sodden blanket and his spearhead, for thirty miles, to a pass that he knew of.
However, the Blackfeet doubtless were before him, to cut him off in the pass. There was nothing for him, but to climb the mountain here instead of taking to the regular trail. Up he climbed, in the dark, by such a steep route that he had to haul himself by grasping at the rocks and brush and branches. Soon he was into snow. And when, at dawn, he gained the crest of the ridge, he could go no farther. He might yet be seen, and captured.
He lay here all day, aching and shivering and starved, with his wet blanket wrapped around his naked shoulders; managed to chew on some sappy bark, and swallow some tender tips; but that was poor fare. At dusk he started down, to try for Manuel's Fort, northeast three hundred miles across the open plain again.
That was a terrible journey, for a man in his shape. He had nothing except his blanket and his spear-head; so he had to eat roots and bark. He found enoughpommes blanches(white apples) or Indian turnips to keep him alive. They were starchy, and ought to be cooked, but he ate them raw.
When, on the eleventh day, he staggered into the fort, he was so thin and haggard in face and body, and his legs and feet were so puffed, that he scarcely looked like a man, and nobody recognized him. But he was a man indeed, and had out-matched the Blackfeet and the rigors of mountain and plain.
After all, the white American is a hard fighter to down.
While getting away from the Blackfeet, Trapper Colter had vowed that if he escaped this time he'd go straight to St. Louis. He had had enough. When he grew strong at Fort Lisa, he changed his mind; he thought he'd better stay through another season; go back for his beaver-traps, at any rate. First-class beaver-traps cost fifteen dollars apiece.
It took him until winter to grow strong. Then he set out alone, to find his traps in the Jefferson River. He hoped that the Blackfeet would be in their winter villages, and not ranging about.
Well, he crossed the same mountain, into the valley, and was in camp, at night, in the Three Forks country not far from where he had run his race—yes, was not far from the very beaver-house in which he had hidden, when while cooking his supper of buffalo-meat he heard the cracking of brush behind him. He pricked up his ears, and did not stir. But when he heard the sharp click of gun-locks, out there in the darkness, at one jump he had leaped over his fire and dived for safety.
A volley scattered the fire and spurted the sod under his flying feet. He had been none too prompt. Away he ran, as before, only this time he was better clothed. Again he climbed straight up the mountain; again he lay on top; and again he traveled by night for the Manuel Lisa post. And again he declared that if he might only escape, he surely would quit such a region forever.
Did he do it? Not he. Early in April, 1810, he was once more at the perilous Three Forks, but now with a company of other trappers. The deadly Blackfeet attacked, on the Jefferson, killed or captured five—and John Colter roundly asserted:
"That's three times for me, boys. I daren't risk a fourth time. I'm going to pull out for the States. Goodby."
He arrived in St. Louis in thirty days, having traveled three thousand miles, mainly by canoe. His stories of his fights and of the marvels he had discovered in the Yellowstone Park caused much talk in the newspapers and among the people. His fights were believed, but not his Yellowstone "yarns." He married, the next winter, and settled at Dundee, on the Missouri River in Franklin County, west of St. Louis. It was a tame life.
When the fur-traders and the beaver-trappers passed up, bound for the plains and mountains and the Blackfeet country, he eyed their "fixin's" wistfully, and longed to go. But he would not leave his wife. He postponed his next hunt until in November, 1813, he died of the jaundice while still an able-bodied man with his thoughts turned westward to the land of the fierce Blackfeet.
The Blackfeet remained firm enemies of the invading trappers and fur-hunters. John Colter's adventures were the beginning of a long and bitter war. The Crows made friends with the white men, and only stole their horses and traps and other "plunder;" but to a Crow this was no crime. The Sioux and Cheyennes and Arapahos and Utes frequently declared that their hearts were good. The Blackfeet never softened. They were many in number, and proud and scornful, and did not stoop even to pretend friendship.
The Three Forks region became known as one of the most dangerous places in the beaver country. All the Upper Missouri River, from the Yellowstone River on, was dangerous by reason of the widely roaming Blackfeet.
Of course, the American trapper and trader did not stay away, on this account. Manuel Lisa and others had formed the Missouri Fur Company, in 1809. In 1822 the Rocky Mountain Fur Company was organized, at St. Louis, and advertised for "one hundred young men to ascend the Missouri River to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years," trapping.
It proved to be a famous company. It had on its rolls Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Jedediah Smith the Knight in Buckskin, the Sublette brothers, Jim Beckwourth the French mulatto who lived with the Crows as chief, and scores of others, mainly young men, genuine Americans of both French and Anglo-Saxon blood. Its career did not cease until the summer of 1834.
The two men who organized the company were General William Henry Ashley of the Missouri militia, and first lieutenant-governor of the State; and Major Andrew Henry who had helped to found the Missouri Fur Company and now was mining for lead in Washington County southwest of St. Louis.
Major Henry already had served in the Blackfeet country. He was there at the Three Forks in the spring of 1810, when five trappers had been killed or captured and John Colter had decided to pull out. Next, George Drouillard, who had been a hunter with the Lewis and Clark party (another of John Colter's old companions), and whose father Pierre Drouillard had rescued Simon Kenton from the Shawnees, was killed while fighting bravely. Finally the Blackfeet had driven all the trappers from that region. Major Henry led his remaining men west across the mountains, to the Snake River in Idaho. There on Henry Fork he built a trading-post. It was the first American post west of the Rocky Mountains.
Major Henry returned to St. Louis in 1811. He had met with bad luck in the fur-hunt business, so he went into mining. But the beaver country kept calling to him. He was not yet beaten by the Indians, the snows, the freshets and the hunger.
Therefore in 1822 he started again, for the mouth of the Yellowstone and the Great Falls of the Missouri, farther up. The Assiniboines stole all his horses. He stayed at the mouth of the Yellowstone until he had traded for more, from the Crows; went on to the Great Falls—and the Blackfeet again smashed him and sent him back down-river, minus four good men.
General Ashley was to follow him, with reinforcements of another one hundred young men. He was met by a courier from his partner, asking for horses, horses, horses. He stopped to trade with the Arikaras, in present South Dakota; they suddenly attacked him, rolled him up, and stopped him completely.
He had to drop back, fortify, and call for volunteers to take word to Major Henry that nothing could be done this season until the way had been opened. Jedediah Smith, aged twenty-five, stepped forward. He was of New York State, and had been in the West only two years; had never been farther from St. Louis than this, into the Indian country. But his voice rang true; he wished to learn. General Ashley gave him a French-Canadian of St. Louis as a scout companion, and together they crossed the six hundred miles of vast lonely plains infested by the Arikaras and Sioux and Assiniboines, to Major Henry at the mouth of the Yellowstone.
Major Henry's party returned with them, to General Ashley at the mouth of the Cheyenne River in South Dakota. From the United States post at the Lewis and Clark's Council Bluffs, western Iowa of to-day, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Leavenworth (Fort Leavenworth of Kansas is named for him) of the Sixth United States Infantry, hastened up with six companies of regulars, several cannon and three keel-boats. Joshua Pilcher, president of the Missouri Fur Company, joined him; General Ashley and Major Henry met him with other men; four or five hundred Sioux enlisted—the Sioux hated the Arikaras. And all together (except that the Sioux soon quit, disgusted with the way the white soldiers fought) they battered at the Arikara village from a distance until the enemy announced that it was time to make peace.
Now Major Henry took eighty men and once again set out, with horses and packs, for the Yellowstone, to finish the season. He had a fine company—the pick of the rank and file: Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, William ("Billy") Sublette whom the Indians were to name "Cut Face" and "Left Hand," Davy Jackson, old "Cut Nose" Edward Rose who was half white, one quarter Cherokee and one quarter negro and had been a chief of the Crows, "old" Hugh Glass, and others.
Major Henry, of the dark hair, blue eyes, and fondness for the violin, had only fair luck on this trip. Trapper Hugh Glass had much worse, at the beginning, although he ended well.
He was from Pennsylvania, but was no greenhorn on the beaver trail, or else they would not have called him "old." The title "old" announced that a man was "beaver wise" and "Injun wise." So "old" Hugh Glass was a leather-faced, leather-clad, whiskered veteran of probably not over forty years but of the right experience as a "hivernan" or "winterer."
The route taken left the Missouri River, to cut across country more to the westward, for the Yellowstone direct. Near evening of the fifth day out they all had turned up the Grand River, still in present South Dakota, and the hunters were riding widely or trudging through the river thickets, looking for meat.
This was elk, deer and buffalo country—also bear country. Those were days when the grizzly bear ranged the plains as far east as the Upper Missouri; and he posed as the monarch of all he surveyed. The Lewis and Clark men had discovered him on their outward trip in 1804-1805; they had brought back astonishing reports of him. He stood almost nine feet tall, on his hind legs; his fore paws were nine inches across; his claws were over four inches long; his tusks were prodigious; his nose as large as that of an ox; and two men could scarcely carry his hide. Eight and ten balls were sometimes required, to kill him; he would run a mile and more, after being shot through the heart; he feared nothing. Captain Lewis declared that he would rather fight two Indians at once, than one "white bear." No such an animal was known in Kentucky.
The great grizzly usually lurked in the willows, wild-plum trees and other brush of the stream courses. Here he made his bed, and from here he charged without warning—afraid not at all of the two-legged enemy and their single-shot, muzzle-loading flint-lock rifles. In spite of his size, he was marvelously quick. Besides, he had a short temper.
Hugh Glass was making his way, this August evening, amidst the tangle of wild plums, berry bushes, and willows along the bank of the Grand. Suddenly he had burst out into a small clearing—a bear's "nest" made by crushing the brush in a circle: and the bear was at home, had heard him coming.
More than that, it was an old she-bear, and a mother bear, lying with her two cubs upon the twigs and sand. Hugh Glass, a careless though a skilled hunter, had met with a surprise. Before he had time to spring back or even to set the hair-trigger of his rifle, she was towering over him: a huge yellowish bulk whose deep-set piggish little eyes glowed greenish with rage, whose white tusks gleamed in a snarling, dripping red mouth, whose stout arms (thicker than his calves) reached for him with their long curved claws.
This alarming sight he saw—and then she grabbed him, with a stroke that nearly scalped him; drew him in to her, lifted him off the ground to hug him, bit him in the throat, and hurling him flat tore a mouthful of flesh from him and gave it to her cubs!
Horrible! Was he to be eaten alive, like a deer? Evidently she looked upon him as a species of animal that might be a tidbit for her family. When she turned to call her cubs and give them the meat she slightly removed her weight from him. With a writhe he scrambled to get away. No use. She was after him at once; so were the cubs, as eager as she. They did not mean that their supper should escape. The whole family commenced to maul him. The mother seized him by the shoulder and straddled him; she bit, the two cubs bit and raked. He was only a toy to them, and being rapidly gashed to ribbons he would have died then and there had not his shouts and the growling of the bears brought help.
First, his hunting partner arrived, hot-foot, with rifle ready. One cub drove him waist deep into the river before a ball finished that young battler. The other men hastened in, summoned by the redoubled cries for help. The old mother grizzly was standing upon Hugh Glass and bellowing defiance. The second cub ran. By several volleys they killed the mother grizzly; then they rolled her off from Trapper Glass and inspected him, to see what they could do.
"Poor old Hugh! He's a goner—he's nigh et up." That was the verdict. He certainly looked like a "goner"—all bloody and mangled, with scarcely an inch of sound skin on his face, body and limbs. He could not see, he was past speaking, he was unable to stand; he only lay and dismally groaned.
They washed him and patched him and bound him as best they might, and took counsel together. They couldn't carry him on; they couldn't send him back; and they couldn't camp here, waiting for him to get well or to die; they had to reach the Henry fort at the mouth of the Yellowstone, with their horses and supplies, before winter.
"If two of you men will stay and nurse Glass, we'll make up a purse to pay for the loss of your fall hunt," Major Henry proposed.
Trapper Fitzgerald, and a seventeen-year-old who is said to have been Jim Bridger, agreed to stay with Hugh Glass and nurse him or bury him. They were given eighty dollars, to cover the beaver fur that they might miss out on. Major Henry left them and the groaning Hugh, and hastened with his other men for the Yellowstone.
It was a dangerous and lonely job. They were two (one of them only seventeen and rather of a greenhorn yet); this was Arikara and Sioux country; the Arikaras had shown bad hearts; they fought the Sioux and all friends of the Sioux, the Sioux fought them and all friends of them; and caught by one band or another, white hunters might fare ill. Forty dollars was small pay for risking one's scalp. As for risking it to save a comrade, of course no pay at all was asked. So the money did not figure.
Old Hugh did not grow better; on the contrary, he seemed to grow worse. He was a frightful sight. The teeth and claws of the bears had poisoned him and he was one mass of gaping wounds; lay moaning and raving until his fever weakened him so that he had no strength—couldn't swallow nourishment to keep alive and the men had to sit beside him constantly to brush away the flies.
On the fifth day they gave him up.
"He'll not live the night."
"No. He's goin' fast. It's a wonder he's held out this long, poor Hugh. I never did see a human bein' hang on like him."
"What'll we do, then?"
"Wall, youngster, thar's only one thing to do. That's to pull out while we kin, 'fore we lose our ha'r. 'Tis a wonder the Injuns ain't diskivvered us already. Glass is as good as dead, now; but we'll wait till dark."
"I don't feel jest right about leavin' him, Tom," young Jim objected. "'Tain't natteral to desart a man, that way, an' we said we'd stay."
"We said we'd stay to nurse him or bury him, but he's past nursin' an' he ain't quite ripe for buryin', son. He will be, by mornin'; but what difference to him whether he's layin' atop the ground or under the ground? An' that's a matter o' twelve hours to us, an' twelve hours counts a heap, on the Injun trail. The Injuns can't do him any harm. They kin harm us a lot. No; it's time we kin light out, an' if we say he's dead we'll not be lyin', for dead he'll be long 'fore we get to t'other end. Two live men are wuth more'n one dead man, in this country; an' we've done our duty to old Hugh, sech as he is. We'd best take his gun an' fixin's, too; he won't need 'em an' you kin be sartin he wouldn't want the Injuns to have 'em."
When they left, that night, Trapper Glass appeared to be scarcely breathing. He could not possibly last through till morning; and by morning they might be well upon their way. They rode off. It was a mean thing to do—not at all like Jim Bridger if that was young Jim Bridger; but he could not stay alone and they neither of them had any idea that Hugh Glass would be otherwise than dead within a few hours.
When, early in a morning several days afterward, Trapper Hugh opened his tired eyes and gazed weakly around him, he saw nothing astir except the birds and rabbits. He heard nothing. He had faint memory of two companions—knew their names, or thought that he did; but where were they? The camp-fire ashes were cold; no breakfast smoke arose. He saw no packs, no bedding; the bones of the she-bear were scattered and white and dry.
He called feebly.
"Tom! Jim! Hello! Whar be ye?"
Nobody answered. He tried to sit up; looked for his rifle, felt for his shot-pouch and powder-horn. His two nurses were gone; so were his gun, horn, pouch that held his knife and flint and steel. He had been abandoned; and such a blaze of wrath surged through him that he determined now to live if only to trail those fellows and kill them.
Yes, by thunder, he'd crawl clear to Fort Henry at the Yellowstone and shoot the two in their tracks!
He was too weak to sit or stand, but he managed to draw himself along and find a spring. There he lay, day and night, picking the fruit from the low wild-cherry and buffalo-berry bushes as far as he might reach, and dozing and bathing his wounds; and he got stronger. The tide of life crept higher and higher. Trapper Hugh knew that he was going to live. But he was scarred redly from head to foot, had lost part of his whiskers and part of his hair; was peeled to the bone, in places. What a face he had, although he could not see it!
In about ten days he was ready to travel. The nearest trading-post that he knew of was fully one hundred miles southeast, on the Missouri. That looked like a long, long distance for a man who could not walk straight and had not even a knife. But he was bound to go, get patched up, and find those two villains who had abandoned him—who had left him as dead when he wasn't dead at all!
He managed to find roots, and more berries. At last, on his staggering, slow way, he sighted a late buffalo-calf surrounded by wolves. The wolves killed the calf. He waited until they had dulled their appetites; then waving his arms and shouting he staggered in upon them. He was enough to put almost anything to flight. The wolves dropped their bushy tails and slunk off; and Hugh Glass thankfully "chawed" the raw, warm meat.
He stayed here a short time. He went on, stronger. He came to a deserted Indian village. A few Indian dogs were prowling around. He was very hungry again. He spent two days in coaxing the dogs to him, in order to get his hands upon one. Then he killed it and partly ate it. Living thus, by his wits, like a wild animal or a wild man, he arrived at the trading post near the mouth of the Teton or Mad River, central South Dakota.
But he did not stay long—not even to get patched up. A party of trappers arrived, in a boat from down-river; they were going above, to the Yellowstone—the very spot for which he hankered and where his revenge waited. He embarked. The Arikaras ambushed the boat and killed all the party except Hugh Glass.
They did not get the scalp of old Hugh; no, indeed. He bore a charmed life. He had left the boat, the day before, to make a short cut to Fort Tilton, which lay around a bend. The Arikaras only chased him into the arms of two Mandans; the Mandans took him into Fort Tilton—and that same night, such was his hurry, he set out alone again, on foot, for the Yellowstone and the Andrew Henry fort at the mouth of the Big Horn in Crow and the Blackfoot country.
He did not fear; he believed that nothing could kill him. Nothing had been able to kill him, yet! Thirty-eight days later, or near the close of October, Trapper Glass strode to the gate of the Henry fort at the mouth of the Big Horn, up the Yellowstone.
The sentry stared, agape.
"Who are you?"
"How, yoreself, young feller. Whoopee! Tell 'em hyar's old Hugh Glass, who war et by a grizzly b'ar an' is slick as a peeled onion; an' he wants his gun an' fixin's. Whar's the rascals that stole all my plunder?"
Hugh Glass! A miracle! But he it was.
"We thought you were dead and buried, man!"
"Wall, I ain't, not by a jugful. An' I wants my plunder an' the scalps o' them two villains."
"They aren't here. They're down at Atkinson."
What? Fort Atkinson was the Council Bluffs, on the lower Missouri one thousand miles away.
"I'll git 'em yit," vowed old Hugh. "If I'd only have knowed! I warn't very fur from Atkinson."
In February he started for Atkinson, with four other men. They traveled across country, through central Wyoming, and struck the Platte; paddled down the Platte in hide boats that they made—and ran right into the Arikaras. By night-fall old Hugh found himself again alone; he had lost all four of his comrades (two had been killed before his eyes), and most of his new outfit. But, he said:
"I felt quite rich when I found my knife and steel in my shot pouch. These little fixin's make a man feel right peart when he is three or four hundred miles away from anybody or anywhere—all alone among the painters (panthers) and the wild varmints."
In the early spring the buffalo calves are young and senseless. He easily caught them, cut them up, made a fire and cooked the meat; and in June he was at Fort Atkinson.
By this time he had forgiven the youngster. He was willing to believe that the "young feller" wasn't used to trapper ways, and hadn't known any better. But he still bore a grudge against Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald was at Atkinson, enlisted in the army. Old Hugh raged and stormed, but did not dare to touch him. They talked it over; Fitz explained why he had left the grizzly bear camp—had stayed five days, at the risk of his own life, until there wasn't any nursing to be done; and when he had gone on Hugh Glass was the same as dead and he ought to havestayeddead. Wasn't that reasonable?
Hugh scratched his scarred head and half agreed. The commanding officer ordered that he be given a brand new outfit; whatever he needed. This squared matters, and Trapper Hugh proceeded to entertain the garrison with his tall stories of how he had been "et by a b'ar," and had been chasin' his plunder for ten months, between the lower Missouri and the Yellowstone.
This bear adventure made "Old Glass" a celebrated figure among the traders and trappers of beaver days on the Upper Missouri. As seemed to him, he had earned the right to live forever, in defiance of Injuns and "varmints." But in the winter of 1832-1833 the Arikaras killed him, on the ice of the Yellowstone River, hard by the mouth of the same Big Horn where he had so astonished the Andrew Henry fort nine years before.