USA > Louisiana > The province and the states, a history of the province of Louisiana under France and Spain, and of the territories and states of the United States formed therefrom, Vol. I > Part 38
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In the autumn of 1808, Ramsay Crooks and Robert Mclellan, with eighty men and a large stock of merchandise, advanced by the St. Louis merchants to be sold on shares, set sail up the Mis- souri river, intending to go to the Rocky mountain country to trade for furs, or perhaps to Santa Fe to dispose of the goods to the Spaniards. When well up the river, they met Captain Pryor with bad accounts of the Indians, and turned back, wintering at Council Bluffs. In the spring of 1800, they again proceeded, but were stopped at the Sioux villages by about six hundred warriors. As they had with them at this time only about forty men, open opposition to the demands of the Indians to turn back would have been to invite annihilation. Intrigue was therefore resorted to, and the villages were passed by part of the expedi- tion. But finally all sailed down the river, and abandoned the enterprise. They alleged that the conduct of the Indians was due to the machinations of Mr. Lisa ; which allegation was prob- ably true. It is likely that Lisa took this method to thwart the aspirations of business rivals in the Indians' country. Both Crooks and McLellan joined the forces of the American Fur Company and crossed the mountains with the Hunt party.
It was necessary for the government to send back to their homes in safety the Indian chiefs who had gone to Washington in response to their agreement with Lewis and Clark .; In May, 1807, Ensign Pryor. with thirteen soldiers, and Lieutenant Kim- hall, with about twenty-five Sioux, went up from St. Louis to the Mandan villages with the returning chiefs; but were attacked by the Arickarees and after a sharp conflict were driven back. It was alleged that this attack was instigated by English traders, and there is good evidence to support the charge. Previous to
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the visit of Lewis and Clark to the Mandans and Arickarees, the English had no opposition with those people; they now saw that their trade among these tribes was rapidly drawing to a close. They also saw that by making friends of the Indians, or by insti- gating them against the Americans, they could prolong their com- mercial existence in this. valuable field.
Manuel Lisa was very active while connected with the Missouri Fur Company. He went up to the Big Horn in 1807, but returned the following year. In the spring of 1809, he again went to the Big Horn, but came down to St. Louis again in October of the same year. The next year he made another round trip. Early in 1811, he started up to learn what had become of Major Henry. With him on this trip were only about twenty men, and this was the occasion when he made such a remarkable spurt to overtake the party under Mr. Hunt. The Missouri Fur Company was reorganized in 1811-12, Lisa becoming still more important and influential under the new order of affairs. . He conducted an expedition to the Mandans in the spring of 1812, but returned in June of the following year. While thus engaged, the war with England broke out and the Indians of the upper country became very restless. In this emergency, the govern- ment, knowing his influence with the tribes of the upper Mis- souri, appointed him sub-agent and authorized him to maintain at all hazards the friendship of the Indians as against the repre- sentatives of Great Britain. There is no doubt that it was largely due to his efforts and influence that the Missouri tribes refrained from taking up the hatchet against the Americans, notwithstand- ing that the agents of Great Britain went among them with belts of wampum to incite them to war. The tribes on the upper Mis- sissippi, being as they were more directly under the eye of the English, were almost from the commencement of war hostile to the United States and friendly to Great Britain. Lisa even suc- ceeded in organizing war parties on the Upper Missouri to attack the Chippewas in their homes on the Upper Mississippi. In the spring of 1815 he brought down to St. Louis forty-three chiefs and head men of the Upper Missouri tribes for the purpose of signing treaties with the government. He resigned his sub- agency in 1817, and about this time became president of his com- pany, but died in 1820.
It was in 1810 that the Missouri Company built a fort about two miles above the confluence of the Jefferson and Madison rivers. In this vicinity a body of trappers under Andrew Henry and Pierre Menard took ont three hundred packs of beaver in
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a comparatively short time, but were finally driven out by the hostility of the Blackfeet. Joshua Pilcher, who succeeded Lisa as president of the company, built Fort Benton in 1821. The following year the company sent a large expedition under Messrs. Jones and Immel to the mountains : the latter sent down the same year about twenty-five thousand dollars worth of furs. In 1823 the same men tried to reach the Blackfoot country, but were finally ambushed by an overwhelming force and seven were killed and four wounded, both Jones and Immel being among the slain. This attack was laid to the instigation of the English. It was afterward learned that the guns, hatchets and ammunition used by the Blackfeet were obtained from British agents on the Assiniboine, and that the furs captured by the Indians were sold to the same agents. At this time the Missouri Company had over three hundred trappers and hunters in the mountains; but the defeat of Henry caused the company to withdraw all to the terri- tory below the mouth of the Platte. Thus the company under Pilcher was not so successful as it had been under Lisa.
Late in the year 1812, it was determined by the Rocky Mount- ain Fur Company to send a hunting and trapping party up the Platte river to the mountains for the winter, and the following year Gen. William H. Ashley, one of the principal officers of the company, was selected to command this expedition. Under him was placed a force of thirty-four men, the most of whom were experienced hunters and trappers, but several of whom were criminals and refugees. The most distinguished afterward in the party except Ashley, was James Beckworth, a boy in his teens and the future chief of the Crows. After a few days' jour- ney, two Spaniards of the party, who were guilty of an atrocious act, were given the choice of hanging or of one hundred lashes on the bare back: they chose the latter and were accordingly whipped until the blood ran down. They took their revenge the ". following night by running away with two of the best horses and such articles as they wanted and could carry. For a short time the valley of the Platte seemed wholly deserted by the buffaloes- in fact by game of every sort-and the whites were driven to the last extremity.
Every expedition to cross the plains at that time relied on game for means of subsistence while on the trip. If the game was absent, it meant intense privations, if not absolute starvation. The men were finally reduced to half a pint of flour a day. They were compelled to' organize protracted hunts. It is claimed that the boy, Jim Beckworth, saved the expedition from disaster on his first hunt by killing a deer and three elks, and that thereafter he
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was the hero of the camp. It was mid-winter, the snow was deep and the cold intense. When they reached the Pawnee Loup villages, they found an abundance of Buffalo meat. While there the Indians organized a grand buffalo hunt. They employed their whole force of several thousand, and surrounded a stretch of country probably ten miles square. They then began the march toward a common center, making a great noise; and when all the animals were driven to common ground, the slaughter began. There were killed in this hunt fourteen hun- dred buffaloes, General Ashley counting the tongues to make certain of the number. This hunt had been instituted before the arrival of the Ashley party, who were not permitted to pro- ceed until it had terminated. They were then given all the meat they wanted. Thus it was with the hunting and trapping par- ties, first a feast and then a famine, amid the fierce blizzards or burning heats of the plains or the mountains. Between two thou- sand and three thousand Indians participated in this circular hunt. The supply of meat lasted for many days, but again the expedition was reduced to corn and beans, when far out toward the mountains.
At Pilot 'Butte the Crows stole nearly all of their horses; and soon afterward they were so reduced in means of subsistence that they organized a general hunt. From the mountain tops, they saw far ahead countless buffaloes in the valley of Green river. All were soon industriously engaged in trapping beaver, divided into parties for greater opportunities for search, but strong enough to make a stubborn defense against the Indians in case of attack, and all within easy reach of each other. In the spring they made canoes of wood and buffalo hides, and descended Green river, and were at last in Utah mountains. Here they again divided into parties, scattered in all directions, but under instructions to return to a certain spot July Ist. In the meantime the bulk of their furs and supplies were cached. One party on Horse creek took one hundred beaver in a few days. At this time beaver skins of the first class were worth ten dollars per pound in St. Louis, and sixty dried skins made one hundred pounds. On Le Brache creek another party caught about as many more in a few days. While here they were attacked by a war party of sixteen Indians and one man; La Brache, was killed, which occurrence gave rise to the name of the stream. By June the entire party had collected seven or eight packs of sixty skins each of beaver. While in these mountains they met another party of sixteen trappers, who had been out for two years and had a large number of hides. Finally the Ashley party returned to their homes with a valuable lot of skins.
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In 1812 it became necessary to send important dispatches from Astoria to New York, and accordingly, Robert Stuart was sent overland by the Astor Company. With him were Ben Jones and John Day, both famous in the West, two Canadians, Le Clerc and Vallee, and several others among whom were McClellan and Crooks. The start was made on the 29th of June, and was intrusted to Stuart, because he was experienced, cool-headed, knew the country, could speak nearly all the western Indian tongues, possessed great strength and did not know what fear or hardship meant. John Day soon became demented -and was sent back. McClellan was mutinous and gave the leader much concern. When they reached the country of the Snakes and the Crows, they began to experience trouble. They likewise nearly starved to death in the mountains and the desert regions of the mountainous country. Here it was that the nerve of nearly all was exhausted, except that of the dauntless leader. Never for a moment did he falter or think of turning back. He met all the wiles of the Indians with superior wiles and courage. His mutinous men were steadily pressed into the harness and obliged to proceed. He took the brunt of everything and bore the dread- ful cold without a murmur. Finally, on October 26, they reached the headwaters of the Platte of Nebraska, where they prepared to pass the winter, because it would never do to try to cross the plains at that time of the year. They selected a suitable location and built a log house eight feet wide, eighteen feet long, with walls six feet high, with buffalo skins for a roof, and with a hole left in the center to let out the smoke. While some were thus engaged, the others went on a grand hunt, and in two days suc- ceeded in killing thirty-two buffaloes, and a little later killed fifteen more, which then gave them sufficient meat to last them all winter.
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They now prepared to hunt and trap and "live on the fat of the land" during the remainder of the winter. They killed many deer (twenty-eight in two days) for their skins, with which they made moccasins, mittens, clothing, etc., and had plenty of bear steak from time to time. All would have gone well had they not been discovered by the Indians. One day when all were in, their hut, they heard a yell outside, and knew that it meant Indians. No one seemed willing to go out, so Stuart, accompanied by one man, opened the door and stepped out to what was thought death. It was a war party of Arapahoes, ont after the Cheyennes and Crows, who they claimed had slaughtered their women and chil- dren in their absence. They had followed their enemy so persist-
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ently that they had not taken time to hunt for food, and were of consequence almost starved. There were twenty-three of them and they begged for food. Stuart saw at once that it would never do to let this many enter the liut ; so he told them that he would give them food, but that only the principal chief and one other would be permitted to enter the cabin. They did so and food was passed to the others outside of the door. All were armed with bows and arrows, knives, tomahawks and a few guns, but were short of powder. For two days they gorged themselves like swine with the buffalo meat that Stuart gave them; but then left, being supplied with six days' ratious of meat.
After they had gone it became apparent to all that their posi- tion was no longer tenable. The hostile Crows were on one side of them and the Arapalioes and Cheyennes on the other, their presence was now known, because the trail of the visitors would be followed by their enemies, the size of Stuart's party was known, and any considerable band of Indians could at any time, by taking advantage, of which there was abundant opportunity, crush them in a single encounter. After fully deliberating, they finally determined to brave the awful storms and cold of the plains to the eastward rather than remain and risk the tomahawks of the Indians. They accordingly packed up everything they could carry (they had one horse), and for fourteen days jour- neyed eastward down the valley of the Platte. They now had come about three hundred miles, the snow was fifteen inches deep, and the timber was very small and scant. They finally concluded to retrace their steps three days to a thick grove, the last they. had passed, where there was a suitable camping place. They turned abont on December 27, and on New Year day had one wall of their new cabin up. They rested and observed the day as well as they could, feasting on buffalo roasts and broils. On January 6. the cabin was finished, and here they were free from molestation from the Indians and passed the remainder of the winter in comfort, feasting, hunting and swapping stories. Dur- ing the winter they made several canoes from the trunks of trees, but as it turned out, they could not use them the next spring, owing to the shallowness of the Platte. On the 8th of March they started down the river, using their one horse to carry all he could of their outfit. They were driven back by bad weather, but on the 20th again set forth, and in due time arrived at Le Grande Isle, thus named by French Canadians. A little later they met two white trappers who told them of the war between the United States and England. From them they bought boats, floated down to Fort Osage, and on April 30 reached St. Louis,
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It was about the year 1822 that the Rocky Mountain Fur Com- pany began active operations, among its leading members at the start being Gen. William H. Ashley, Andrew Henry, Will- iam L. Sublette, Milton Sublette, David E. Jackson, Jedediah S. Smith, Robert Campbell, James Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Etienne Provost, Samuel Tulloch, and James Beckworth. Aslı- ley conducted the following important expeditions to the upper Missouri country : To the Yellowstone in 1822, to the Arick- aree villages in 1823, to the Green river valley in 1824, to Great Salt Lake valley in 1825, and to the Rocky mountains in 1826, at which latter time he sold out to the partnership of Smith, Jackson & Sublette, who in turn sold to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in 1830. Either this was a revival of that com- pany, or General Ashley was operating independently. At a little later date, Fitzpatrick, Sublette & Bridger were active oper- ators in the mountains.
The fight of Ashley with the Arickarees in 1823 is notable for having brought on one of the first encounters between the gov- ernment and the Indians of the Upper Missouri. With Ashley were about forty men with two or three keel-boats loaded with goods. At daylight on the morning of June 2d, they were attacked by a large force of Arickarees armed with London fusils, and twelve were killed on the spot, two mortally wounded and nine severely wounded, there being twenty-three casualties in all. Their horses and nearly all their other property were captured by the Indians. Under a hot fire, the rest of the force managed to reach a small island below and finally to escape down the river. Ashley promptly called for assistance, and Col. Henry Leavenworth, then at Fort Atkinson, near Council Bluffs, advanced up the river with two hundred and twenty soldiers of the Sixth infantry, two 6-pounders, three small swivels and three keel- boats. Ashley co-operated with the remnant of his force : so did Henry with all his men except twenty, who were left to hold the fort on the Yellowstone. Pilcher assisted with about forty men under Major Henry Vanderburg, a 51/2-inch howitzer and a body of Sioux and Yankton warriors numbering from four hundred to five hundred. The total force under Colonel Leavenworth aggregated about one thousand one hundred. Opposed to them were between six hundred and eight hundred warriors at the Arickaree villages. The battle occurred on the 9th and ioth of August, and should have been an overwhelming victory for the allied whites and reds; but instead resulted in a compromise, under which the Aricksarees were not subdued and the white
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traders were not satisfied. Colonel I,cavenworth was sharply criticised by Pilcher, Ashley and others, and no doubt deserved censure for his unaccountable clemency. Even the Indian allies deserted him owing to the mildness and inefficiency of his con- duct during the battle. It is reasonably clear that the hostility of the Arickarees was caused by the British agents on the Assini- boine.
By 1831 the American Fur Company had practically monopo- lized the fur trade of the West. Farnam & Davenport operated among the Sacs and Foxes, the Winnebagoes and the Iowas; Mr. Rolette on the Mississippi as high as St. Anthony's Falls and on the Minnesota; Alr. Cabanne on the Missouri as high as Council Bluffs and among the Pawnees; A. P. Chouteau among the Osages; and Messrs. Mckenzie, Laidlaw & Lamont, who called themselves the Columbia Fur Company, in the Missouri river country above Council Bluffs. Every spring an immense supply of goods for the western trade was sent on from. New York to St. Louis, and thence dispatched up the Missouri in a small steamboat and distributed to the various posts. The furs were brought down to St. Louis, opened, examined, weighed, repacked, and shipped to New Orleans, and thence sent by water to New York, where they were finally assorted, packed in bales and sent to the European markets. Extensive credit was given to the Indians, but at a much higher price than usual to cover probable losses.
By 1831, the mountain country was overrun with hunters and trappers, and furs began to diminish. Rascals of every race and crime infested the camps and posts, and life became cheaper than whisky. A lone man with money or furs or both, need to make haste to get rid of it, because if he did not he would nolens volens soon be deprived of his plunder. It was diamond cut diamond among the rough elements of the camps, while the hon- est trappers froze in the mountains for the furs. Wild men from the South, from New England, from the Mississippi valley, from Canada ; deserters from the army, escaped convicts, horse-thieves, pirates from the Gulf, cut-throats from heaven only knew where, bullies, desperadoes and highwaymen, thronged the posts and levied their deadly tributes on the labors of the trappers. After the treaty of 1818 between the United States and Great Britain, the traders of the latter were prohibited from coming south of the forty-ninth parallel, and all of their posts south of that line were bought by the American Fur Company. Kenneth Mckenzie had extended a line of posts from Green Bay to the Missouri
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river, but had done business in an American's name, as he him- self was a Britisher; but when his forts and posts passed to the American Company, he remained in the service of the latter, and built a fort at the junction of the Missouri and the Yellowstone. In that vicinity he afterward became a great power, and he kept much better order at his post than many of the other company agents could do. ITere he entertained Audubon, the naturalist, Catlin, the artist, Prince Maximilian, Lord Hamilton, and other persons famous in the world at that time. It is certain that Mckenzie managed either to outbid or outwit the agents of the Rocky Mountain Company, because he soon secured nearly all of the Indian' trade in the northwest. The Deschamps made themselves famous, or rather infamous, at the Mckenzie post ; but were finally wiped out of existence by his directions.
In 1832 Captain William Sublette, a member of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, passed up the Platte valley with a strong party of sixty men, among whom was the veteran hunter- and trapper, Robert Campbell. While at Independence, Mo., he had met a party of about twenty "tenderfeet" under the command of Nathaniel J. Wyeth, nearly all of whom were from the remote . East and wholly inexperienced in western methods of living- and dying. For certain considerations Captain Sublette agreed to permit the Wyeth party to join his, and together they advanced up the rivers. The green men were very valiant so long as there was no danger, but after that they were seriously demoralized. . The hardships soon tamed their fiery spirits, but at first the nov- elty was a delight. The design of Wyeth was to cross the mount- ains to the Columbia river for the purpose of engaging in the salmon industry. Although their sufferings were severe in the valley of the Platte, they finally reached its headwaters without serious accident. In July, they met a party of fifteen free trap- pers, who had had excellent success,-although opposed by all the companies and by the Indians incited against them.
About this time eleven of the Wyeth men, while out hunting, were attacked by a party of Blackfeet, but took refuge in a strip of thick timber, where they were safe until the arrival of their comrades, when in turn the Indians were surrounded in a swamp. The battle lasted several days, but the Blackfeet finally succeeded in making their escape up the side of the mountain during dark- ness. Many of the Nez Perces assisted the whites in this engage- ment, which became called the "Swamp Fight." Five white men and one half-breed were killed and ten or a dozen wounded, and the friendly Indians suffered to about the same extent. Twenty
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or thirty of the Blackfeet were killed and wounded. This was stern experience to the new men, but they began "to get their mountain clothes on" at last, and were not such weak objects as they had been at first. Several afterward became noted in the West for their courage, skill and hardihood. Soon after the Swamp Fight, six or eiglit of the Wyeth party resolved to return to the States and not go on to the mouth of the Columbia. They started, but were finally annihilated by the Blackfeet, not one remaining to tell the tale. After securing many beaver skins the Sublette party duly returned to St. Louis.
The famous Fort Laramie was built in 1834 by William Sub- lette and Robert Campbell, of the American Fur Company, and was at first called Fort William after the former, but later was named Fort John, and finally Fort Laramie after a French Cana- dian, Joseph Laramie, who had been killed by the Indians near the place. A trading post had been established in 1832 by Louis Vasquez at the mouth of Clear creek, and had been named for him, Fort Vasquez. In 1835 the fort at Laramie was sold to Milton Sublette and James Bridger and others of the American Fur Company ; but in 1849 it became a government post. In its busiest times Fort Laramie was not surpassed by any other trad- ing post in the United States. Here it was that all the trappers of the mountains came for their supplies and to dispose of their furs. Here came Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Jim Baker, Jim Beck- worth and a score of others little less noted in border history. The officials of the fur company ruled this section with an iron hand, as it was necessary for them to do among these reckless and lawless men. Here came the criminals from the states to evade the law, and here was dealt out at the end of a pistol or at the noose of a rope sudden death and retribution to many of them. It was seven hundred miles to a spot where the laws of the United States were executed, but here the fur company was a law unto itself.
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