XIX.
EXPERIENCES IN WILD LIFE.
NECESSITIES OF TRAVELLERS IN WILD COUNTRIES.—CONCEALING DOG FOOD.—DEFENCES AGAINST WILD ANIMALS.—HONESTY OF CERTAIN NATIVES.—THE AUTHOR’S EXPERIENCE WITH SIBERIAN KORAKS.—CONCEALING FOOD IN ICEBERGS.—BARON WRANGELL AND DR. KANE.—STORY OF BLANKETS AND BLANKET STRAPS.—A CACHE.—WHAT IT IS.—AUTHOR’S FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH ONE.—A FRAUDULENT GRAVE.—CACHE OF A WHISKEY KEG, AND HOW IT WAS MADE.—“TWO-BOTTLE CAMP.”—CONSOLATION OF A HARD DRINKER.—AN EXTENSIVE CACHE.—HOW THE INDIANS FOUND IT, AND WHAT BECAME OF THEM.—JIM FOSTER AND HIS TENDER HEART.
In all sparsely settled or wild countries, travellers when on journeys are frequently obliged to carry provisions for their entire trip. If they are to go back over the same route they follow in their outward course, they do not carry their provisions the whole distance, but leave them at different points, where they can find them on their return. Especially is this the case where food for the draught or riding animals must be provided. In Northern America and Asia, and in Greenland, Spitzbergen, and other arctic countries, dogs are used for draught purposes; and where a party is travelling it is always necessary to carry a supply of dog food. The favorite article for feeding dogs in winter is dried fish, and great quantities are prepared in the summer months, and stored away where they can be safely kept.
CONCEALING FOOD IN ICE.
An expedition starting in winter for a journey of ten days will carry ten days’ supply of food for dogs and men. If the journey exceeds that time, the allowance must be reduced; and sometimes the party will be on the point of starvation. At the end of each day’s journey, it is customary, if the party is to return by the same route, to conceal a day’s supply of food, and thus lighten the load as much as possible. Thereare several ways of making these deposits. The first requisite is generally to protect the food against wild animals. Poles eight or ten feet high are set upright, and a rude box is made at the top, where the food can be placed. Wolves and foxes are the principal four-footed thieves; they cannot climb, and therefore anything protected in this way is safe from their depredations. Sometimes a hole is made in the ground, and the deposit is placed within it. This can only be safely done in winter, as the soft earth in summer can be dug up by the enterprising and keen-scented animals with very little trouble. A hole in winter can be made secure by pouring water over the replaced earth, and allowing it to freeze. Wolves and foxes can do many things, but they have not yet invented any way to dig through frozen ground. They are wise enough not to attempt it, as they would need a new set of paws every half hour if they followed digging in frozen earth as a means of livelihood.
Baron Wrangell, Dr. Kane, and other arctic explorers, when travelling on the ice of the Polar Sea, used to make holes in the bergs and hummocks, and sometimes in the level ice, which frequently gets a thickness of eight or ten feet. After they had made the deposit in a hole of this sort, they would fit a block of ice as nearly as possible to the opening. After inserting the block they poured water into the interstices, and allowed it to freeze, so as to make the place as solid and even as ever. This was a sufficient protection against small animals, but not always against polar bears. These huge beasts would scent out the food, and with their powerful claws they managed to dig into the ice, and help themselves. Even if the food had been put into strong boxes before it was deposited, the beasts did not seem to be hindered in getting at it, as they would break the boxes as easily as a rat would open an egg-shell. Dr. Kane once tried the plan of sealing the food in sheet iron cans pointed at the ends. Sometimes the bears tossed these cans a while, and then abandoned them but they generally managed to throw them about with sufficient violence to break the shell and reach the contents.A healthy and full-grown polar bear is a powerful beast, and has no respect for the laws affecting the ownership of property.
HONEST ABORIGINALS.
In the extreme north deposits of food are in much greater danger from four-footed beasts than from men. In the first place, the beasts are much more numerous than men, and consequently want more to eat. Men are not very likely, in those wild countries, to come near the deposits, especially in arctic explorations; and even when they find them they are not generally in the habit of stealing. The Esquimaux of the region where Dr. Kane made his explorations are somewhat thievish when they have the opportunity, but the natives of Northern Asia have a high reputation for honesty. There are some tribes that have never learned to steal; they have had very little intercourse with white men, and are thoroughly uncivilized. As an illustration of this barbarous honesty, I will give my own experience among the Koraks of North-eastern Siberia.
My first acquaintance with them was on the shores of the Okhotsk Sea, where they had assembled with their herds of reindeer. When we went ashore we managed somehow to wet our blankets, and I hung mine up to dry. I expressed my fears that the blankets would be stolen by some of the Koraks, but was told that everything would be safe. When we camped at night, my blankets were dry, and I slept in them. But I forgot the blanket-straps, and there they hung in the open air all night, and all the next day.
Now, it is a moral or an immoral certainty that a pair of leather straps, new, and in good condition, in almost any other country would have been taken in hand by somebody who couldn’t bear to see them unused. But when I finally thought of my straps, I found them hanging where I had left them thirty hours before, in full view of a dozen or more natives, who were dressed in skins, and didn’t know anything more about civilization and the customs of fashionable society than a horse knows about running a sewing-machine.
EXPERIENCE WITH A CACHE.
On our western plains the custom of concealing articles inthe ground prevails over any other mode. The Indians have long practised it, and they manage it so skilfully that it is next to impossible to detect them. The early French settlers and explorers learned the practice from the Indians, and the name they gave to a place of concealment—“cache,” fromcacher, to conceal—has been adopted into the language of all plainsmen, of whatever nationality. So well is this word known that many frontier Americans use it in preference to words in their own language having the same meaning. A frontiers-man will speak of finding a place where a squirrel hadcacheda peck of nuts, or will tell you that hecachedhis bowie knife in his boot-leg rather than carry it at his waist-belt.
My first acquaintance with a cache on the plains was in the vicinity of Fort Kearney. Our party was camped near a half dozen men who were returning from Salt Lake City, and had lost three of their oxen. We struck up an acquaintance, and in the evening invited them to sit around our fire, where we exchanged news and stories, they telling us of Utah, and we telling them about the States or “God’s Country,” as one of them called it. “Stranger,” said he, “if ever I get back to God’s Country, and you catch me again on these yere plains, you may just shoot me for a prairie dog. I’ve seen all I want of this yere living, and don’t hanker for no more of it. I’m a going back where I can have a square meal at a table, and drink whiskey that wouldn’t burn a hole through an old boot in five minutes.”
We were not bountifully supplied with the necessaries of life, but we felt liberal, and ventured to offer a drink of whiskey to each of the strangers. They took it as unhesitatingly as a kitten would take a saucer of new milk, and we became friends in a short time. When we separated, one of the eastward-bound travellers said,—
“May be you’ll run short of flour before you get to the mountains, and a little would help you along. Now, we had to lighten up just this side of the Platte crossing, where we lost two of our oxen. We couldn’t find anybody to sell to, and as we didn’t like to throw things away altogether, wecached some of them. Next day we met a man one of us knew, and we sold him all the caches but one, and told him where to find them. But there was one bag of flour in a cache away from the rest, and he didn’t want no flour; so we didn’t tell him where it was.”
We offered to buy the flour, but the men would not listen to the proposition.
“It’s Utah flour,” said one of them, “and isn’t very good. The sack is small, and the whole lot wouldn’t be worth a great deal; but you can’t buy it. You’ve treated us handsome, and we’re not going to be rattlesnakes. We want you to take that flour, and you shan’t pay for it.”
We thanked them heartily, and proffered another drink, which was accepted and swallowed.
HOW TO CONCEAL FLOUR.
“About five miles this side of the old crossing of the Platte,” one of the strangers continued, after wiping the drops of whiskey from his lips, “you will come to a dry creek. There’s a small clump of willows on your right hand, and mighty small willows they are too; and on the left side, a dozen yards off the road, there are three buffalo heads piled up, with a sage bush sticking in the top one. Now, you go up the creek past these yere buffalo heads about fifty yards, and you’ll see a grave with a little board at one end. On the board are some words which we cut, that says, ‘J. MEANS, SALT LAKE, 34 YEARS.’ Now, there ain’t no J. Means there, but there is a sack of flour, and you’ll find it by digging.”
We made a memorandum of the direction, and soon after retired to sleep. In the morning we broke camp, and continued our journey, keeping the cache constantly in mind. When we reached the spot indicated, we opened the grave, and found the sack of flour, as our friends of a night had told us we should find it. The soil where it lay was quite dry, and the flour might have been left there for months without serious injury, beyond growing a little musty.
A grave is regarded with respect by nearly all white men and by most savages. Consequently a cache is frequently made in the form of a grave. A head-board bearing thename, residence, and age of a fictitious dead man, serves to complete the deception, and is likewise useful in describing the cache so that it can be found. All sorts of articles can be placed in the grave, provided they are not of a character to attract wild animals and cause them to dig. In certain localities, the animals, when hungry, will dig into a real grave, and exhume the body to devour it. Thus it happens that the fact that a mound has not been disturbed by beasts sometimes reveals its character to a keen-eyed observer, and tells him that it is a cache, containing something else than the remains of a luckless traveller.
DECEIVING A DRUNKARD.
In a journey from Denver to New Mexico, in the autumn of 1860, our party contained one man whose appetite for whiskey was of the keenest and most insatiable. In making up our outfit, we had left a portion of the purchases to him, and he had bought about six times as much fire-water as we really needed. On the first and second day he managed to get as drunk as a Tammany repeater at election time, and was neither ornamental nor useful. On the second night, while he was sleeping, and possibly dreaming of a paradise where there were rivers of pure Bourbon, and no charge to bathers and drinkers, we arranged a plan to bring him to grief. We took a keg of whiskey from our wagon, and cached it a little way from camp. We threw the dirt into the creek, and built a fire over the place of concealment, so that there was no trace of what we had done. In the morning we kept him away from the wagon until we were several miles on the road, and as he had a bottle at his command he did not discover the loss until night.
But when he did discover it, there was trouble in the camp. We dared not tell the truth, for fear he would insist upon returning to recover the treasure. So we feigned ignorance, thought it must have been lost on the road, or left in Denver, or, possibly, the driver had stolen it. We were all certain that it had not been left at the camp, as we had followed the universal custom of emigrants on the plains, and carefully examined the ground after the wagon had started.
To console himself, he went into a condition of blind drunkenness, and remained in it till morning. At this camp we cached a couple of bottles of whiskey, and then solemnly averred, next morning, that he had swallowed them. To all his denials we were incredulous, and we narrated, with great minuteness, how he drank one bottle after another, filling a pint cup at a time, and draining it at a gulp. He finally began to believe that we were right, and for the rest of the journey he kept comparatively sober.
TWO-BOTTLE CAMP.
On our return, two weeks later, we had a long day’s journey before us to reach “Two-Bottle Camp,” as we had named it. In the morning we made a general confession to the old fellow, and owned up to the theft and concealment of the bottles. His rage at the deception practised upon him was great, but it was not equal to his joy at knowing there was happiness ahead. Never on the whole journey did he exert himself more than on that day to keep the wagon in motion, and enable us to reach the whiskey-hunting ground by sunset. To him the camp of the Two Bottles was like a harbor for which the storm-tossed mariner hopes and prays when the gale is upon him, and his ship is lying at the mercy of the wind; and as soon as we reached it, he made a rapid break for the cache, and opened it before the wagon was fairly halted.
He forgave us everything, and for that evening we had a millennium on a small scale. We compelled him to retain one bottle for the festivities of the next evening, as we wanted him to go to town sober, and consequently determined to exhume the keg, and put it in the wagon without his knowledge. Everything was lovely; the keg was secured, and when we reached Denver, we pretended to discover it in the office whence we had started.
In the days of the great emigration overland in 1849 and ‘50, the emigrants frequently found their wagons too heavily burdened, and were obliged to throw away or cache a large part of their loads. When they cached their goods, the Indians generally found them, as the work was almost alwaysdone carelessly and in haste, so that traces of it could be plainly seen. One old plainsman once described to me a cache which was made by a party to which he belonged.
“We found,” said he, “that we must lighten up our wagons; and so we concluded to stop a day or two, make a cache, and give our animals a chance to rest. We were near the Wind River Mountains, and Indians were not abundant. We had seen none for several days, and thought we could rely upon doing our work without their seeing us. We were in camp when we decided to make the cache, and at daylight next morning two of us started out to find a good place.
“About three miles off the trail we found a bluff that was quite steep towards a small river that we named Lost Ox River, because one of our oxen afterwards got into the quicksand and was drowned. We thought this bluff would be a good place for a cache, as we could throw the dirt into the river and have it washed away. The bluff was hard and dry, and would keep things from spoiling.
AN EXTENSIVE CACHE.
“We drove the train into the valley, at the foot of the bluff, and then went to work. We made a hole about three feet square, and as many deep, and then we hollowed out a space as large as a good-sized room. We did not drop an ounce of dirt around the opening, but threw it all into the river. We spread blankets and sacks all around the opening, and laid a row of them from the hole to our camp, so that the ground wouldn’t be trodden up.
“Then we lightened our wagons of everything we could spare. There were bundles of goods, extra clothing, saddles, chains, boots, and everything we thought it possible to do without. When the hole was full, we put the stump of a tree into the opening, and scattered leaves and rubbish around it, so that nobody could possibly see that the earth had ever been disturbed.
“It took us three days to make the cache. Our mules and oxen had gathered strength, and we moved on, with a good prospect of getting through to California.
“But things grew worse instead of better. When we gotinto the alkali plains our oxen died off fast, and we had to throw away something every day. With so much bad luck it was quite natural that we should get into rows among ourselves, and the upshot of it was, that we separated. Some of us were discouraged, and wanted to go back; and we did go back.
“Four of us took our rifles, and each picked out a riding mule to carry us to the Missouri River. We had two pack mules, and thought we could somehow manage to get through. We had a hard time of it, stranger, and didn’t get farther than Laramie, where we broke up, and concluded to try our luck at anything that turned up.
“When we got to where we left the trail to make our cache, I told the boys we had better go and see if it was all right. Three of us went there, and left the other to take care of the animals.
“Somehow the Indians had found out the whole thing. We don’t know how they did it, but it was most likely that the wolves and foxes went to digging there for the leather in the boots and saddles, and the Indians saw where they dug, and knew something was hid. All around there were tracks of Indians, and they had taken out more than half of what we had put there.
“While we were talking about the business, and cursing the red skins, we saw five of them coming up the valley. There were four bucks and one squaw, and they hadn’t seen us. So we just laid low and waited for them. They stopped at the foot of the bluff, and the bucks made for the hole, leaving the squaw to take care of their ponies and keep watch.
CAPTURING A SQUAW.
“The squaw sat down, with her back against a tree, about fifty feet from where we were. She was evidently tired, for she dropped her head forward, and didn’t keep much of a watch. Jim Foster, one of the fellows with me, was an old Indian hunter, and knew how to work. He crept up behind her, slipped the belt from his waist, and before she knew what she was about, he had the belt around her neck, and fastened her to the tree. As soon as he had her fast, the other fellowand I ran to the cache, picked up the stump that had been in the hole originally, and put it where it belonged. Then we piled logs and rubbish on top, and stopped up the crevices, and waited a couple of hours, until we thought they had breathed all the air up and were good Indians.”
“What do you mean by good Indians?” I asked.
“Why, don’t you know,” said he, “that all good Indians are dead Indians?”
I saw his point, and after he had terminated the smile with which his axiom was delivered, he went on with the story.
“We made sure that they would never do any more stealing. We didn’t want to kill them, of course, but we thought it would be no more than right to cache them along with the property that was left. There never was a better use made of an Indian than to cache him. As soon as we were satisfied that they couldn’t get out, we took the ponies and went to where our fourth man was waiting with the mules. We distributed our loads on the mules, took the ponies to ride on, and you may believe that we travelled our level best out of that region.”
“And the squaw,” I asked; “did she go with you?”
A CARELESS PLAINSMAN.
“O, I forgot about her. Jim was a careless sort of a fellow, and he pulled that strap so close around her neck that she never recovered. Come to think of it, she didn’t live long, not more than five minutes, and Jim was very sorry. He said he would do the best he could for her, and seeing she was dead, he wouldn’t refuse to bury her. So he carried her to the river, where there was a good bed of quicksand, and dropped her in. She sunk easy, and I reckon she’s somewhere about there now. She had a lot of silver ornaments about her, and Jim felt so bad that he kept them to remember her by. He said it would be a shame to waste them, as silver was scarce in that country. He wanted to go back, and see if the bucks had something valuable about them; but I thought we had done a fair morning’s work in hiving the ponies, and it was best to be getting away from there before any more Indians came around. And we up and travelled lively.”