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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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THREE YEARS AMONG THE INDIANS AND MEXICANS
Thomas James
LACONIA PUBLISHERS
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Copyright © 2016 by Thomas James
Interior design by Pronoun
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
THREE YEARS AMONG THE INDIANS AND MEXICANS
By Gen. Thomas James,
of Monroe County, Illinois
Waterloo, Ill
Printed at the Office of the “War Eagle.”
1846
CHAPTER I
Introduction — Missouri Fur Company — Terms of Engagement with them — Departure for the Trapping Grounds — Incidents on the Route — The Pork Meeting — Scenery — Check — A Western Pioneer — His affair with the Irishman — A Hunting Excursion — The Rickarees — The Mandans — The Gros Ventres — The Company’s Fort — Cheek and Ried — Friends between the French and Americans — Violation of Contract by Company — Departure for Upper Missouri — Wintering — Trip across the Country — Famine and Cold — Scenery on the Yellow Stone — Manuel’s Fort — Col. Menard and Manuel Liza — Indian Murders — A Snow Storm in the Mountains — Blindness — Arrival at the Forks of the Missouri — Preparations for business.
I HAVE OFTEN AMUSED MYSELF and friends, by relating stories of my adventures in the West, and am led to believe, by the, perhaps, too partial representations of those friends, that my life in the Prairies and Mountains for three years, is worthy of a record more enduring than their memories. I have passed a year and a half on the head waters of the Missouri and among the gorges of the Rocky Mountains, as a hunter and a trapper, and two years among the Spaniards and Camanches. I have suffered much from the inclemency of nature and of man, had many “hair breadth ‘scapes” and acquired considerable information illustrative of Indian and Mexican character and customs. By a plain, unvarnished tale of Western life, of perils and of hardships, I hope to amuse the reader who delights in accounts of wild adventure, though found out of the pages of a novel and possessing no attraction but their unadorned truthfulness. I am now on the shady side of sixty, with mind and memory unimpaired. If my reminiscences, as recorded in the following pages, serve to awaken my countrymen of the West and South-west, now thank God, including Texas, to the importance of peaceful and friendly relations with the most powerful tribe of Indians on the continent, the Camanches, I shall not regard the labor of preparing these sheets as bestowed in vain.
In the year 1803, when twenty-two years of age, I emigrated with my father from Kentucky to Illinois. In the spring of 1807 we removed from Illinois to Missouri, which were then, both Territories, and settled in the town of St. Ferdinand, near St. Louis. In the fall of this year, Lewis and Clark returned from Oregon and the Pacific Ocean, whither they had been sent by the administration of Jefferson in the first exploring expedition west of the Rocky Mountains, and their accounts of that wild region, with those of their companions, first excited a spirit of trafficking adventure among the young men of the West. They had brought with them from the Upper Missouri, a Chief named Shehaka, of the Mandan tribe of Indians. This Chief, in company with Lewis and Clark visited the “Great Father” at Washington City, and returned to St. Louis in the following Spring (1808) with Lewis, who, in the mean time had been appointed Governor of Missouri Territory. He sent the Chief Shehaka up the Missouri with an escort of about forty United States troops, under Capt. Prior. On their arrival in the country of the Rickarees, a warlike tribe, next East or this side of the Mandans, they were attacked by the former tribe, and eight or ten soldiers killed. This event so disheartened the rest, that they returned with Shehaka to St. Louis. The Missouri Fur Company had just been formed, and they projected an expedition up the Missouri and to the Rocky Mountains, which was to start in the spring of the following year, 1809. The company consisted of ten partners, among whom was M. Gratiot, Pierre Menard, Sam’l. Morrison, Pierrie Chouteau, Manuel Liza, Major Henry, M. L’Abbadeau and Reuben Lewis. Gov. Lewis was also said to have had an interest in the concern. The company contracted with him to convey the Mandan Chief to his tribe, for the sum, as I was informed of $10,000. I enlisted in this expedition, which was raised for trading with the Indians and trapping for beaver on the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia rivers. The whole party, at starting, consisted of 350 men, of whom about one half were Americans and the remainder Canadian Frenchmen and Creoles of Kaskaskia, St. Louis and other places. The French were all veteran voyageurs, thoroughly inured to boating and trapping. Manuel Liza, called by the men “Esaw” had enlisted many of them in Detroit for this expedition, and hired them by the year. We Americans were all private adventurers, each on his own hook, and were led into the enterprise by the promises of the company, who agreed to subsist us to the trapping grounds, we helping to navigate the boats, and on our arrival there they were to furnish us each with a rifle and sufficient ammunition, six good beaver traps and also four men of their hired French, to be under our individual commands for a period of three years. By the terms of the contract each of us was to divide one-fourth of the profits of our joint labor with the four men thus to be appointed to us. How we were deceived and taken in, will be seen in the sequel. The “company” made us the fairest promises in St. Louis, only to break them in the Indian country. Liza, or Esaw, or Manuel as he was variously called, had the principal command. He was a Spaniard or Mexican by birth, and bore a very bad reputation in the country and among the Americans. He had been on the head waters of the Missouri, the year before with a company of about fifty men and had met with great success in catching beaver and trading with the Indians. He had built a Fort, called “Manuel’s Fort” at the junction or fork of the Big Horn and Yellow Stone rivers, and left a garrison of hunters in it when he returned in the Spring of this year, and went into the Missouri Fur Company. He was suspected of having invited the Rickarees to attack the Government troops under Capt. Prior, with Shehaka the year before, for the purpose of preventing the traders and trappers who were with the troops from getting into the upper country. Mr. Choteau and Col. Menard acted jointly with Liza in conducting the expedition. I went as steersman or “captain” of one of the barges, with about twenty-four men, all Americans, under my command. There were thirteen barges and keel boats in all. On my barge I had Doct. Thomas, the surgeon of the company, and Reuben Lewis, brother of Merryweather Lewis, the Governor.
We started from St. Louis in the month of June, A. D. 1809, and ascended the Missouri by rowing, pushing with poles, cordeling, or pulling with ropes, warping, and sailing. My crew were light hearted, jovial men, with no care or anxiety for the future, and little fear of any danger. In the morning we regularly started by day break and stopped, generally, late at night. The partners or bourgoises, as the French called them, were in the forward barge, with a strong crew of hardy and skilful voyageurs, and there Liza and some of his colleagues forded it over the poor fellows most arrogantly, and made them work as if their lives depended on their getting forward, with the greatest possible speed. They peremptorily required all the boats to stop in company for the night, and our barge being large and heavily loaded, the crew frequently had great difficulty in overtaking them in the evening. We occasionally had races with some of the forward barges, in which my crew of Americans proved themselves equal in a short race to their more experienced French competitors. We thus continued, with nothing of interest occurring till we passed the Platte. Six weeks of hard labor on our part, had been spent, when our allotted provisions gave out and we were compelled to live on boiled corn, without salt. At the same time all the other boats were well supplied and the gentlemen proprietors in the leading barge were faring in the most sumptuous and luxurious manner. The French hands were much better treated on all occasions than the Americans. The former were employed for a long period at stated wages and were accustomed to such service and such men as those in command of them, while we were private adventurers for our own benefit, as well as that of the company, who regarded us with suspicion and distrust. Many Americans on the passage up the river, disgusted with the treatment they received, fell off in small companies and went back. At Cote Sans Desans, opposite the mouth of the Osage, most of them returned. On reaching the Mandan country we numbered about ten Americans, having started from St. Louis with about one hundred and seventy-five and an equal number of French. After passing the Platte river my crew were worn down with hard labor and bad fare. Their boiled corn without salt or meat, did not sustain them under the fatigue of navigating the barge and the contrast between their treatment and that of the French enraged them. A meeting was the result. The company had, on our barge, thirty barrels of pork, and one morning my crew came to me in a body demanding some of these provisions. I commanded them not to break into the pork without permission, and promised, if they would work and keep up till noon, to procure some for dinner. At noon when we stopped, the men rolled up a barrel of pork on to the deck and one of them, named Cheek bestrided with a tomahawk, crying out “give the word Captain.” I forbade them, as before, and went ashore to find Lewis, who had left the boat at the beginning of trouble. He said the pork was the company’s and told me not to touch it. I said the men would and should have some of it, and went back to the boat to give the “word” to Cheek. Lewis hastened to the “bourgeoise“ in their barge close by, to give the alarm. I could see them in their cabin, from the shore where I stood, playing cards and drinking. Lewis entered with the news that “James’ crew were taking the provisions.” Manuel Liza seized his pistols and ran out followed by the other partners. “What the devil, said he to me, is the matter with you and your men?” We are starving, said I, and we must have something better than boiled corn. At the same time Cheek was brandishing his tomahawk over the pork barrel and clamoring for the “word.” “Shall I break it open Captain, speak the word,” he cried, while the rest of my crew were drawn up in line on the boat, with rifles, ready for action. The gentlemen bourgeoise, yielded before this determined array, and gave us a large supply of pork; that is, as much as we pleased to take. A few days after this we stopped to clean out the barges and the pork in ours was removed to another and its place supplied with lead. The Cheek who figured as ring-leader on this occasion was a Tennesseean, about six feet high and well proportioned. His courage was equal to any enterprise, and his rashness and headstrong obstinacy at last, in the Indian country, cost him his life. I had on my barge a large, lazy, and very impertinent Irishman, who was frequently very sulky and remiss in his duties. I was compelled one day, to call him by name for not working at the oars, saying to him he was not rowing the weight of his head. The height of disgrace among boatsmen is, to be publicly named by the Captain. The Irishman took my treatment in very ill humour and swore he would have satisfaction for the insult. When the boat stopped for breakfast, the men dispersed as usual, to get wood, and with them went Cheek and my friend, the Irishman. Cheek returned without him and informed me, he had whipped him “for saucing the captain.” I said, Cheek I can attend to my own fighting without your assistance, or any other man’s. “No by G — d said he, my Captain shan’t fight while I am about.” The Irishman returned, at length, to the boat, but was so badly hurt as to be unable to work for several days.
The scenery of the Upper Missouri is so familiar to the world as to render any particular description unnecessary. As you ascend the river, the woods diminish in number and extent. Beyond Council Bluffs, about 700 miles above the mouth they entirely disappear, except on the river bottoms, which are heavily timbered. The Prairies were covered with a short thick grass, about three or four inches high. At this time the game was very abundant. We saw Elk and Buffalo in vast numbers, and killed many of them. Prairie dogs and wolves were also very numerous. The Indians have thinned off the game since that time, so much that their own subsistence is frequently very scanty, and they are often in danger of starvation. Their range for hunting now extends far down into the Camanche country and Texas, and the buffalo, their only game of importance, are fast disappearing. When these valuable animals are all gone, when they are extinct on the West as they are on the East side of the Mississippi, then will the Indian race, the aboriginals of that vast region, be near their own extinction and oblivion. They cannot survive the game and with it will disappear.
The Western declivity of the Mississippi valley from the mountains to the “Father of Waters” is nearly all one great plain, with occasional rocky elevations. We saw hills at the foot of which were large heaps of pumice stone, which had the appearance of having been crumbled off from above by the action of fire. The scenery of Illinois or Missouri is a fair example of that of the whole country West to the mountains. The Prairies here, however, are vaster and more desolate. One extensive plain is usually presented to the eye of the traveller, and stretches to the horizon, without a hill, mound, tree or shrub to arrest the sight.
We continued our ascent of the river without any occurrence of importance. Below Council Bluffs we met Capt. Crooks, agent for John J. Astor, and who was trading with the Mohaws. Here all the few Americans remaining, with myself, were on the point of returning. By the solicitations and promises of the company we were induced to continue with them.
The first Indians we saw were a party of Mohaws hunting; with them were two Sioux Chiefs. They sent forward a runner to their village above and themselves came on board our boats. We found the village at the mouth of the Jaques river, perhaps twelve hundred miles, by its course, from the mouth of the Missouri. They were of the Teton tribe, which is kindred with the Sioux. As we approached the bank, which was lined with hundreds; they fired into the water before the forward barge, and as we landed, they retreated with great rapidity, making a startling noise with whistles and rattles. After landing and making fast the boats, about fifty savages took charge of them, as a guard. They wore raven feathers on the head. Their bodies were naked, save about the middle, and painted entirely black. They presented on the whole a most martial and warlike appearance in their savage mode, and performed their office of guarding the boats so well that not even a Chief was allowed to go onto them. Other Indians came with buffalo skins to be used as pulanquins or litters for carrying the partners to their council house; each was taken up and carried off in state. I was compelled by some Indians to go in the same style to the place of council. Here was a large company of old men awaiting us, and for dinner we had served up a great feast of dog’s meat — a great delicacy with the Indians. The rich repast was served in forty-one wooden bowls, as I counted them, and from each bowl a dog’s foot was hanging out, evidently to prove that this rarity was not a sham but a reality. Not feeling very desirous of eating of this particular dainty, I stole out and was pulled by a young Indian and invited to his wigwam. I went and partook with him of buffalo meat. We stayed with these hospitable savages two days. On arriving, we found the British flag flying, but easily persuaded them to haul it down. The Hudson’s Bay Company had had their emisaries among them and were then dealing with them precisely as they are now dealing with the savages in our territory of Oregon — namely: buying them up with presents and promises, and persuading them to act as allies of Britain, in any future war with the United States. On the third day we left the friendly Tetons and proceeded up the river as before. Capt. Choteau had conceived a prejudice against Cheek, and on one occasion, ordered him to leave the boats. Lewis conveyed the order to me. I remonstrated against the cruelty of sending a man adrift in a wilderness, 1400 miles from home. He insisted, and Cheek took his gun as if he was going to obey. Lewis ordered him to leave the gun behind, which he refused to do. Lewis then commanded me to take it from him. I replied, that he or Choteau might do that themselves. The men of my boat flew to their arms, and avowed their determination of defending Cheek and sharing his fate. The order was not pursued any further. Such recontres and difficulties between the Americans and the partners, embittered their hands against us, and ultimately did us no good. Much of the ill treatment we afterwards received from them, was probably owing to the reckless assertion of our independence on every occasion and at every difficulty that occurred. After leaving the Teton village, our boat again failed of provisions, and by request of Lewis I went ashore on the North bank with one of our best hunters, named Brown, to kill some game. We went up the river, and in the evening, killed an elk, brought it to the river bank, and waited there for the boats till morning. They came up on the opposite shore and sent over a canoe to take us and our game across. The wind rose in the mean time, and blew so strong as to raise the waves very high, and render it dangerous for us all to cross together in the same canoe. We sent over the game and Brown and myself continued our course, afoot, expecting to get aboard when the boats crossed at some one of the river bends. By the middle of the day the wind had risen so high that the boats with sails hoisted, quickly went out of sight. We travelled on till evening, and struck a large bayou, which we could not cross, and took the backward course till we encamped within a mile of the spot where we had stayed the night before. The next morning we struck off from the river into the prairie, and took the best course we could, to reach the boats. Seven days elapsed, however, before we overtook them. The wind blew a strong breeze, and drove the boats along very rapidly. We killed another elk and some small game, which subsisted us till the fifth day, when our amunition gave out. Our moccasins being worn out, fell off and our feet were perfectly cut up by the prickly pear, which abounds on these prairies. At last, nearly famished and worn down, sore, lame and exhausted, we found the boats. My crew had, in vain, requested leave to wait for us, and we might have perished before the bourgeoise would have slackened their speed in the least, on our account. We had a narrow escape from starvation in this excursion and I was ever afterwards careful to have plenty of amunition with me when I went out — as I frequently did — on similar expeditions.
