XIIIHORSES AT LAST
“Are they Snakes, Hugh?”
“Yes, of course. But we put in the dag-gonedest time you ever saw, catchin’ ’em,” responded Hugh. “First we had ’em, then we didn’t, next they had us!”
“What’s that around your neck? Where’s your hat?”
“Faith, ye look like a Borneo ape,” added Pat.
Hugh almost blushed through his coat of tan and whiskers. He was bare-headed, and about his neck was a curious object like a tippet or boa. In fact, it was very similar to the fur boas worn by women of to-day. One end was a nose and eyes, the other end was a tail; and all along the edge dangled small rolls of white fur sewed to a white band and hanging eighteen inches long—forming a kind of tassel cloak. The collar itself was brown otter, the border and tassels were ermine. But it was an odd-looking rig.
“Shucks,” apologized Hugh. “We traded clothes with the Injuns, to show good feelin’. The other fellow’s wearin’ my hat. Shields traded his shirt, too. The chief’s got on the captain’s cocked hat. And you ought to see Drouillard. He’s painted, to boot. With all that, we had a narrow squeak, I reckon.”
“How far you been?”
“Across the mountains, boys, to the Columby side. We followed up the Missouri, through yonder gap, till it got so small I stood with one foot on each bank. And we went on over, up an Injun trail. Where the waters flowed west we drank of the Columby!”
“Didn’t you meet any Injuns on this side?”
“Yes. I’ll tell you.”
And so he did. On the third day out, the captain had sighted an Indian, through his spy-glass. The Indian was horseback, and looked as though he might be a Snake. But when the captain, calling “Tabba bone,” meaning, in Sho-sho-ne, “white man,” and stripping back his sleeve to show his white skin, was just about to talk with the Indian, John Shields foolishly came in and the Indian galloped away. The captain gave John a proper “dressing down,” for this.
A number of horse tracks were seen, and the captain kept on advancing, following a sort of a road, into the mountains. He ordered a United States flag to be carried, on a pole. Next, two squaws were frightened, and ran away—but only a mile on, down the road, an old woman and a young woman and a little girl were discovered, on a sudden, digging roots. The young woman ran, but the old woman and the little girl squatted and covered their heads, expecting to be killed.
The captain raised them up and gave them presents, and got Drouillard to talk with them in sign language. The young woman came back; and after the captain had painted the cheeks of the three with vermilion, intoken of peace, the two parties started on, for the village.
Pretty soon, up the road charged sixty other Indians—warriors, on horses, ready for a fight; but the women went ahead, to talk peace, and the captain followed, alone, carrying the flag; and as soon as they knew what to expect, the Indians jumped from their horses and hugged the white men and rubbed faces with them.
“Ah hi e, ah hi e!” said the Indians; meaning: “Glad to see you.”
The chief was Ca-me-ah-wait. In the village the men were given salmon trout to eat, so they knew that they were on the Pacific side of the mountains. The village was friendly, but when the captain asked the Indians to return with him to the east side and meet the other white chief and men, they were afraid again—said the white men might be spies for the Minnetarees. Finally Ca-me-ah-wait was persuaded, and started, with eight warriors.
The women wept and wailed, but after a few hours the village followed.
“Well, our troubles began again,” continued Hugh. “To get those Snakes down here was like haulin’ the barge up-stream in some of those rapids. They turned so suspicious that we traded clothes with ’em. We gave ’em our flag to carry. The cap’n had told ’em that the other white chief was to be found at the forks—but when we sighted the forks, the boats weren’t to beseen, and that made matters worse. Where was the other white chief? Of course, we’d calkilated you fellows might be slow, ’cause of the rapids, but we’d hoped.
“Now we gave over our guns, and the cap’n told the chief to have us shot if there was any ambush. We were terrible afraid the whole pack of Injuns’d skip and leave us stranded without hosses, or guns either. The cap’n sent Drouillard and an Injun down to the forks, to get a note that had been stuck on a pole there, for Captain Clark. They brought back the note, and the cap’n pretended it was a note put there by the other white chief, sayin’ he was comin’, but had been delayed. The cap’n wrote another note, by light of a brush fire, telling Captain Clark to hurry. Drouillard and an Injun were to take it down river in the morning.
“That night the Snakes hid out, all ’round us, in the brush, for fear of a trap, while the chief and four or five warriors bunked close beside us. Our scalps felt mighty loose on our heads—and the mosquitoes were powerful bad, too, so we none of us slept much. The cap’n was pretty near crazy. It was touch-and-go, how things’d turn out. The Snakes were liable to skeedaddle, the whole pack of ’em, and carry us off with ’em. The only reason they were stayin’ now, was that Drouillard had told ’em we had one of their women in the main party, and a big black medicine man.”
“Hoo! Dat am me,” asserted York, proudly. “Dis eckspedishun can’t get ’long wiffout Yawk.”
“Next mornin’ we were on the anxious seat. The fate of the expedition hung on whether you fellows arrived pretty soon at those forks and proved that the cap’n had spoken truth. The chief sent out a lot of scouts; and Drouillard and one Injun started early with the note, to find you. They hadn’t been gone more than two hours by sun, when in came a scout at a gallop, makin’ signs. He said he’d seen men like us, with skin color of ashes, travelin’ up-river in boats, and they weren’t far away. Hooray!”
“Hooray!” cheered the listeners.
“That settled the business. Old Ca-me-ah-wait hugged us, and the other Injuns danced and sang, and away raced a gang of ’em—and next thing Drouillard and a crowd met Captain Clark. And now here you all are. So I reckon we’re fixed. They’ll trade us hosses.”
The council was still in progress; but while camp was being made under direction of Sergeant Ordway, out from the council lodge came Shields and Drouillard, to the camp. Drouillard was grinning and capering, evidently very happy. His swarthy cheeks were painted with vermilion, he wore a Snake tippet and decorated shirt; he looked exactly like an Indian.
“What news, Drouillard?”
“Ever’t’ing is all right. We are ’mong frien’s. Dey all glad to haf Sa-ca-ja-we-a, an’ she speak well for us. She find one woman who was capture’ same time as she but escape’. An’ dat chief, he her brudder.Dey haf recognize’, an’ haf weep togedder under one blanket. I mos’ weep too.”
“A princess, be she?” exclaimed Sergeant Pat. “Well, well! Good for the little Bird-woman. An’ what of hosses?”
“Plenty hoss. No more drag canoe.”
The captains came down. They also were dressed as Indians; in their hair had been tied little shells from the “stinking lake,” as the Snakes called the far-off Pacific Ocean. The shells had been bought from other Indians and were considered very valuable. A canopy of boughs and sails was ordered erected; under this another council was held. Chief Ca-me-ah-wait promised to furnish horses. The Indian women set about repairing the men’s moccasins. They appeared to be a kindly tribe—they wondered much at York, and the battered boats, and the guns, and even at the smartness of the little black dog. But they shook their heads when questioned about the country west of the mountains.
“Dey say it is not ze possible for ze white mans to make travel down ze Columbee by boats, an’ ze trail for ze hoss an’ ze foot is ver’ bad,” declared Chaboneau.
“What’s the matter with Sa-ca-ja-we-a, Toussaint?” queried George Shannon, for the Bird-woman’s eyes were red and swollen.
“She much cry. Mos’ all her fam’ly dead while she been away.”
In the morning Captain Clark took Sergeant Patand ten other men, and started over the mountains to explore beyond the Snake village, in hopes of finding a route by water. They were to send back a man to the Snake village, to meet Captain Lewis there and tell him what had been discovered.
Chief Ca-me-ah-wait and all his people except two men and two women started also for the village, with Sa-ca-ja-we-a and Chaboneau, to bring down horses, for Captain Lewis.
Everybody in the camp was put at work making pack-saddles from oar handles and pieces of boxes tied firmly with raw-hide! Out of sight of the Indians a hole was dug in which to cache more of the baggage, especially the specimens that had been collected.
Five horses were purchased, at six dollars each in trade; the canoes were sunk by rocks in the bottom of the river—and the Snakes promised not to disturb them, while the white men were away. On August 24 the march was begun for the village on the other slope of what are to-day the Bitter Root Mountains. The five horses were packed with the supplies; Sa-ca-ja-we-a and little Toussaint rode on a sixth horse that Chaboneau had bought.
Although this was August, the evenings and nights were so cold that the ink froze on the pens when the journals were being written. The village was reached in the late afternoon of August 26. John Colter was here, waiting. He brought word from Captain Clark that canoes would be of no use; the country ahead wasfit for only horse and foot, as far as the captain had gone.
“We had an old Injun for guide who’d been living in another village further west,” related John. “He says we can’t go to the south’ard, for the land’s bare rocks and high mountains without game, and the horses’ hoofs’d be cut to pieces, and the Broken Moccasin Indians would kill us. ’Tisn’t the direction we want to go, anyhow. The Injuns we met said winter was due, with big snows, and soon the salmon would be leaving for lower country. So the captain decided to turn back and advise Captain Lewis that we’d better tackle another road he’d heard of from the guide, farther to the north, into the Tushepaw country on the big river. After we’d struck the big river, which like as not is the Columby, we could follow it down to the Pacific. Anyhow, the Tushepaws might know.”
Captain Lewis immediately began to bargain for twenty horses. The prices were being raised, so that soon a young horse cost a pistol, 100 balls, some powder and a knife.
Sergeant Pat arrived from Captain Clark’s camp below, to ask how matters were shaping.
“’Tis a hard road ahead, lads,” he confirmed. “Cruzatte will tell you that. Sure, wance he was almost lost, himself. I was sint up here to inquire about the prospect of hosses; but what I want to learn, myself, is: are we have the pleasure of the comp’ny of the little Bird-woman?”
“Yes, she’s going.”
For Sa-ca-ja-we-a was. She preferred the white men to her own people.
“Sa-ca-ja-we-a will go. She wants to see the big water,” she had said.
All were pleased that Sa-ca-ja-we-a, the Bird-woman, would take little Toussaint and continue on with them to the Pacific Ocean.
On the last day of August there was a general breaking up at the village. The Sho-sho-nes under Chief Ca-me-ah-wait rode east over the pass which is to-day Lemhi Pass of the east fringe of the Bitter Root Mountains, to hunt the buffalo on the plains of the Missouri. With twenty-seven horses and one mule the white chiefs’ company, guided by the old Sho-sho-ne and his four sons, set out in quest of the Columbia and the Pacific.
The men named the old guide “Toby.”