USA > Oregon > The Oregon trail : sketches of prairie and Rocky Mountain life > Part 31
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Deslauriers made his appearance in the morning, strangely 40 transformed by the assistance of a hat, a coat, and a razor.
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THE OREGON TRAIL
His little log-house was among the woods not far off. It seemed he had meditated giving a ball on the occasion of his return, and had consulted Henry Chatillon as to whether it would do to invite his bourgeois. Henry expressed his 5 entire conviction that we would not take it amiss, and the invitation was now proffered accordingly, Deslauriers adding as a special inducement that Antoine Lajeunesse was to play the fiddle. We told him we would certainly come, but before the evening arrived a steamboat, which came down ro from Fort Leavenworth, prevented our being present at the expected festivities. Deslauriers was on the rock at the landing place, waiting, to take leave of us.
" Adieu ! mes bourgeois; adieu ! adieu !" he cried out as the boat put off; "when you go another time to de Rocky 15 montagnes I will go with you; yes, I will go !"
He accompanied this patronizing assurance by jumping about, swinging his hat, and grinning from car to car. As the boat rounded a distant point, the last object that met our eyes was Deslauriers still lifting his hat and skipping 20 about the rock. We had taken leave of Munroe and Jim Gurney at Westport, and Henry Chatillon went down in the boat with us.
The passage to St. Louis occupied eight days, during about a third of which time we were fast aground on sand-
25 bars. We passed the steamer Amelia crowded with a roaring crew of disbanded volunteers, swearing, drinking. gambling, and fighting. At length one evening we reached the crowded levee of St. Louis. Repairing to the Planters' House, º we caused diligent search to be made for our trunks, 30 which after some time were discovered stowed away in the farthest corner of the storeroom. In the morning we hardly recognized each other; a frock of broadcloth had supplanted the frock of buck-skin; well-fitted pantaloons took the place of the Indian leggings, and polished boots were substituted 35 for the gaudy moccasins.
After we had been several days at St. Louis we heard news of Tête Rouge. He had contrived to reach Fort Leavenworth, where he had found the paymaster and re- ceived his money. As a boat was just ready to start for 40 St. Louis, he went on board and engaged his passage. This done, he immediately got drunk on shore, and the boat went off without him. It was some days before another
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THE SETTLEMENTS
opportunity occurred, and meanwhile the sutler's stores furnished him with abundant means of keeping up his spirits. Another steamboat came at last, the clerk of which happened to be a friend of his, and by the advice of some charitable person on shore he persuaded Tête Rouge to 5 remain on board, intending to detain him there until the boat should leave the fort. At first Tête Rouge was well contented with this arrangement, but on applying for a dram, the bar-keeper, at the clerk's instigation, refused to let him have it. Finding them both inflexible in spite of his en- Ic treaties, he became desperate and made his escape from the boat. The clerk found him after a long search in one of the barracks; a circle of dragoons stood contemplating him as he lay on the floor, maudlin drunk and crying dismally. With the help of one of them the clerk pushed him on board, 15 and our informant, who came down in the same boat, de- clares that he remained in great despondency during the whole passage. As we left St. Louis soon after his arrival, we did not see the worthless, good-natured little vagabond again.
On the evening before our departure Henry Chatillon came to our rooms at the Planters' House to take leave of us. No one who met him in the streets of St. Louis would have taken him for a hunter fresh from the Rocky moun- tains. He was very neatly and simply dressed in a suit of 25 dark cloth; for although, since his sixteenth year, he had scarcely been for a month together among the abodes of men, he had a native good taste and a sense of propriety which always led him to pay great attention to his personal appearance. His tall athletic figure, with its easy flexible 30 motions, appeared to advantage in his present dress; and his fine face, though roughened by a thousand storms, was not at all out of keeping with it. We took leave of him with much regret; and unless his changing features, as he shook us by the hand, belied him, the feeling on his part was 35 no less than on ours. Shaw had given him a horse at West- port. My rifle, which he had always been fond of using, as it was an excellent piece, much better than his own, is now in his hands, and perhaps at this moment its sharp voice is startling the echoes of the Rocky mountains. On the next 40 morning we left town, and after a fortnight of railroads and steamboatso we saw once more the familiar features of home.
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xxi : 36. American history. Good bibliographies for the western trails and the history of the Oregon country may be found in Barrows's Oregon (1883) and Mowry's Marcus Whitman (1901).
1:2. St. Louis. The principal city of Missouri, on the Mississippi river, twenty miles below the mouth of the Mis- souri. Founded as a French trading post in 1764, it was made the next year the capital of Upper Louisiana. Here took place in 1804 the formal transfer by France to the United States of the Louisiana territory, which had been purchased by President Jefferson of Napoleon Bonaparte the year before. The first steamboat arrived in the city in 1817. In 1819 John Jacob Astor located the western department of his fur company here. In 1822 the town received a city charter; and in 1846, when Parkman made his trip West, it was the usual starting-place for ex- peditions of all kinds bound for the western plains and mountains.
1:5. Santa Fé. An ancient Spanish town on the Rio Grande; near one of the passes in the Rocky mountains; headquarters, in the second quarter of the nineteenth cen- tury, of a large and lucrative overland trade between the California slope and the American frontier; now the capital of New Mexico. Originally an Indian pueblo, it is, next to St. Augustine, in Florida, the oldest settlement in the United States.
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1: 16. Rocky mountains. In general, all the moun- tains between the Great plains and the Pacific ocean; more particularly, the ranges of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and New Mexico. This name, as well as the earlier ones, Stony and Shining mountains, appears par- ticularly appropriate to the lofty elevations of this region, upon which naked rocks appear to an extent rarely known elsewhere on the globe.
1:18. wagons. These " large wagons of a peculiar form, for the Santa Fé trade" were very different from the prairie schooners of the emigrants. In Chapter XXVI Parkman mentions them as "the close, black carriages in which the traders travel and sleep," and in another place as " the rakish vehicles of the Santa Fé traders."
2 : 5. mountain-men. A well-defined class of back- woodsmen, mostly Americans and Indian half-breeds, skilful in the use of the rifle and in Indian warfare, and versed in everything pertaining to life upon the plains and in the mountains; a different class of men from the voya- geurs, mostly French-Canadians, who were employed by the fur companies in transporting goods by the rivers and across the land to and from the remote stations of the North and Northwest.
2:27. abatis. A structure for defence formed of felled trees, so placed that the ends of their branches, sharp- ened and directed outward, form a barrier bristling with points.
2 : 32. great western movement. See Introduction, The Oregon Trail, p. xx.
3 :21. Westport. In the 40's Westport and Independ- ence were both places of much importance in fitting out expeditions for the Oregon country. On the maps of that period distances by the various trails across the prairies
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are computed " from Westport." The place still receives a line in the gazetteers; but it has disappeared from the maps, while Independence flourishes as never in the emi- grant days.
5 : 26. regeneration. The act of being born again; the change of heart by which holy affections and purposes are substituted for evil ones.
6 : 34. camp-meetings. Religious gatherings in retired places, for open-air preaching and exhortations.
7 : 15. course of the traders. That is, northwest from Westport, by the usual route, of the traders and emigrants. See Introduction, The Oregon Trail, and map.
7 : 17. marked out by the dragoons. The course marked out by Colonel Kearny and his dragoons in their expedition to Fort Laramie in the summer of 1845 led directly across the prairie westward from Fort Leavenworth to an intersection with the regular Oregon trail near the point where the latter crossed the Big Blue.
7 : 31. Daniel Boone. A famous American pioneer and hunter, 1735-1820. Emigrating from Pennsylvania, the state of his birth, to North Carolina, at the age of eighteen, he subsequently explored a great part of what is now the state of Kentucky. In 1775 he founded upon the Kentucky river a settlement which he named Boonesborough. Re- peatedly captured by Indians, from whom he as often es- caped, he removed in 1795 to a place 45 miles west of St. Louis, Missouri, where he found a new field for his favorite pursuits.
9 : 14. - holsters. Leather cases for his pistols, carried by a horseman, at the bow of his saddle.
9 : 29. patois. A dialect used by the illiterate classes.
9 : 30. "Sacré enfant de garce !" An imprecation more forcible than elegant.
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10 : 2. Jean Baptiste. A soubriquet for the French Canadians. Compare John Bull, Uncle Sam, and Brother Jonathan.
10 : 4. bourgeois. Head man - master, employer, boss, as the case may be.
10 : 9. fur company. Since the chartering of the Hud- son Bay company in 1670 there had been a number of great fur companies trading in the Northwest - the American fur company, the Pacific fur company, the Northwest fur company, and others. The association here referred to, with headquarters in St. Louis, was called the Rocky Moun- tain fur company. The subject of the fur companies is a large and interesting one.
11 : 15. lope. A gait consisting of long, running strides or leaps, by which a good deal of ground is covered with comparatively little fatigue.
11 : 20. lodges. Rude dwellings of Indians-sometimes tents, circular or rectangular, made of skins stretched upon poles; sometimes huts constructed of logs or other materials, according to the tribe to which the occupants belong.
12 : 21. village. Sometimes, as here, the collection of lodges in which the Indians of a community dwell; but frequently the community itself, whether the Indians are housed in their lodges or travelling with all their parapher- nalia.
13 : 16. rifle. A gun the surface of whose bore is grooved spirally, to increase the accuracy and pentrating force of its fire, by imparting a swiftly rotary motion to its projectile. By game " appropriate to the rifle" our author means game big enough to call for a bullet to despatch it. About the time that Parkman was gunning out West, the breech-load- ing type of rifle was supplanting the muzzle-loading type for sportsmen as well as for soldiers.
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13 : 37. hobbled. Hoppled; having the legs tied together.
15 : 37. tree. Piece of wood.
16 : 14. Penn, William (1644-1718). Founder of the colony of Pennsylvania.
18 : 7. rumors of war. General Taylor, leaving Corpus Christi under orders from Washington, had arrived at Matamoras, on the Rio Grande, on March 28, exactly a month before Parkman began his journey at St. Louis. It was now May.
18 : 14. expedition against Santa Fe. War having broken out between Mexico and America as a result of the annexation of the independent state of Texas by the north- ern republic, General Stephen Watts Kearny, then in com- mand of the Army of the West, marched from Bent's fort on the Arkansas, capturing Santa Fé August 18, 1846, and establishing there a provisional civil government.
20 :13. John Milton (1608-1674). An English writer often regarded as second in importance only to Shakespeare. His principal work, Paradise Lost, is the grandest poem in English. The possession of a set of his works might well be taken as an evidence of the culture that is usually found only in old and settled communities.
20 : 20. Creole. A native of the Louisiana country, of mixed descent.
21 : 1. John Bull. A nickname for the Englishman.
21 : 12. sixteen-to-the-pound caliber. The caliber or bore of a rifle is measured by the number to the pound of the bullets that it takes; the smaller the number of bullets to the pound, the larger the caliber.
21 : 15. " Avance, donc !" "Go on, now! "
21 : 21. Blackstone's Commentaries. Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765-1769, by Sir William Blackstone, a distinguished English jurist, and Vinerian professor of law
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at Oxford university; a treatise which, on account of its methodical plan and perspicuous style, continues to be, in both England and America, the first text-book placed in the hands of the student of law. "Bidding adieu to the princi- ples of Blackstone's Commentaries" was leaving behind that part of the country in which the common law of Eng- land was recognized as the foundation of the social order.
22 : 11. Mazeppa, John. An attaché of the court of John Casimir of Poland, who, surprised in an adventure with a Polish lady, was stripped by her husband and bound back to back on his half-wild horse. The frightened animal, loosed after having been lashed to a frenzy, bore its owner at break-neck speed to his own castle; but Mazeppa fled for shame to the Ukraine and joined the Cossacks. The incident was made, by Lord Byron, the subject of a poem, Mazeppa (1818).
24 : 23. charger. A horse for battle or parade. What element of style is introduced by the use of this word for a homesick horse?
31 : 5. Mormons, or Latter Day Saints, as they call themselves, a religious sect founded in Manchester, N.Y., in 1830, by Joseph Smith. In 1831 he led his congregation of thirty members to Kirtland, O., where during the next seven years the organization rapidly increased. They did not get on with the " gentiles" well, and were now looking for a new wilderness in which to settle.
31 : 26. Gentiles. A term applied by the Mormons to all who do not believe in their religion.
37 : 29. "Voulez-vous. ... charette." "Will you have supper at once? I can make a fire, under the cart."
40 : 40. Dublin. The political and social capital of Ireland, to possess " paternal halls" near which must, pre- suinably, enhance the importance of any Irish gentleman.
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42 : 2. Bond street. A fashionable business thoroughfare in London.
42 : 24. Macaulay's Lays. A collection of ballads called Lays of Ancient Rome, by Lord Macaulay, published in 1842, of which countless editions have been issued in England and America.
42 : 29. Damascus. A famous city of Syria in Asiatic Turkey, in the 40's quite out of the beaten path of the tourist. R. wished the company to know that he was a great traveller.
42 : 31. Eothen. A work of Eastern travel, that ap- peared in 1844, written by Alexander W. Kinglake (1811- 1891), an English lawyer and historian. Composed in a graphic and poetic vein, yet with great truthfulness to nature, the book was widely read at the time of its publica- tion, and has always remained one of the most popular works of English travel.
43 : 5. Borrow, George (1803-1881). An English adven- turer, who lived several years, with the gypsies, but who in 1833 became agent of the London Bible society, and for some years travelled as such in Russia, Spain, and Morocco. About 1840 he settled at Oulton, on the Norfolk Broads, and took to writing. His Bible in Spain (1843) had made him prominent at the time that Parkman was making his Western journey.
43 : 9. Judge Story, Joseph (1779-1845). An eminent American jurist. In 1801, as a member of the Massachusetts legislature, he defended President Jefferson's proclamation of an embargo as the only measure, short of war, by which American commerce could be protected from the restric- tions of the European powers; and in 1808, as a representa- tive in Congress from that state, he urged the repeal of· the Embargo act, on the ground that it was a temporary
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measure the purpose of which had now been attained. In 1811 he was appointed associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and in 1829 was made Dane pro- fessor of law in Harvard university. His fame rests mainly upon his decisions and upon his Commentaries, which are well known in Great Britain.
43 : 28. Snob. One who is servile to those occupying a position in any way superior to his own, and overbearing to those in any way beneath him.
44 : 19. lariettes. Lassos.
44 : 29. penthouse. A building the roof of which, be- cause it is attached to a larger structure, slopes all in one direction.
44 : 39. Hibernian cavalier. Here, a person who makes himself ludicrous by assuming an air of military importance, while the work upon which he is engaged is but trifling.
46 : 15. brattling. A strong form of rattling.
46 : 25. Mahomet and the refractory mountain. A refer- ence to the story that when Mahomet, having undertaken to prove to his followers that he possessed supernatural powers, found himself unable to move a certain mountain by calling upon it to come to him, rose to the occasion with the declara- tion that if the mountain would not come to him he would go to the mountain; and that he went.
47 : 4. old legitimate trail. The trail pursued by the great majority of the emigrants to Oregon led from the cross- ing of the Kansas, a little west of Westport, northwest over the prairie and across the Big Blue; the St. Joseph trail, starting at that settlement, which was due north of West- port, and proceeding due west across the prairie, did not strike the " old legitimate trail" till after it crossed the same river. R., by leading his party from the crossing of the Kansas due north till they struck the St. Joseph trail at
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right angles and then by following it to its junction with the usual road, demonstrated to the entire satisfaction of his companions that the two sides of a right-angled triangle are longer than is the hypothenuse.
48 : 33. Oregon or California. In 1846 the number of emigrants from the East to California was small in compari- son with the number to Oregon. The overland route to both regions was the same from Missouri, up the Platte and the Sweetwater and through the South pass in the Rocky mountains. Shortly after crossing the watershed, usually at Fort Hall, the Californians branched off to the south- west to descend the Green and the Colorado, while the Oregonians bore off to the northwest, down the Lewis and the Columbia.
- '52 : 13. Oui, oui, monsieur, Yes, yes, sir.
53 : 1. dank. Wet and cold.
53 : 5. champing. Biting off with a quick movement of the head.
55 : 21. valley of the Platte. The Oregon trail, passing across country from the Kansas where that river approaches nearest to the Platte, strikes the Platte a few miles below the upper end of Grand Isle, below which point the river is called the Lower Platte and above it the Upper.
56 : 6. sandy plain. A striking picture of the topography of the Platte country is presented by the relief map of Ne- braska in the Rand-McNally Indexed Atlas of the World. The entire journey of Parkman, northwest from West- port, across country to the Platte and up that river to Fort Laramie; in various directions about the Laramie plains; southward from Fort Laramie, across country to Bent's fort; and eastward from Bent's fort, down the Arkansas and the Kansas to Westport again - the whole forming an immense right-angled triangle, resting on its longer side-may be
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traced on the relief maps of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado.
56 : 38. cincture. Belt; girdle.
58 : 30. capôtes. Long overcoats with hoods.
59 : 4. bois de vache. Literally, wood of cow; dry buffalo dung, which was burned for fuel on the prairies, as dry camel dung is burned on the desert.
59 : 17. buttes. High elevations of earth or stone rising abruptly from the level of surrounding plains. The term, of French origin, is prevalent in the region west of the Mississippi.
59 : 21. tall white wagons. The emigrant wagons, called prairie schooners, were large, four-wheeled ox- wagons, with capacious tops of canvas stretched over im- mense hoop-like supports and gathered at the front and rear around circular openings, through which the occupants could peer as the vehicles were dragged slowly along. Each wagon would hold a whole family, with their belongings.
61 : 1. prickly-pears. Plants of the cactus family, reptile-like because they pricked the hand that touched them.
63 : 18. 'running' is out of the question. The method of hunting called " running" consists in attacking the buffalo on horseback and shooting him with bullets or arrows when at full speed. In " approaching," the hunter conceals him- self and crawls on the ground toward the game, or lies in wait to kill them.
64 : 19. mountain-men. See note to page 2, line 5.
65 : 17. ebullition. Boiling over; outburst.
68 : 3. snaffle. A slender bit, with a joint in the part to be placed in the mouth.
68 : 12. scuttling. Hurrying with ludicrous efforts.
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72 : 35. pioneers. In 1769 Daniel Boone, a resident of North Carolina, headed a party of six for the exploration of the region watered by the Kentucky river and its tributa- ries. In 1773 he and his younger brother, Squire, set out for Kentucky with their families, and were joined on the way by five other families and forty men; but it was not till 1775 that they were able to locate at Boonesborough a stockade fort which Boone and his companions had erected on the bank of the Kentucky. His wife and daughters were the first white women that ever stood on the banks of that river.
76 : 5. German forests. The division of the Roman do- minion upon the death of Theodosius in 395 between his two sons, Honorius ruling at Milan, and Arcadius at Con- stantinople, was but the prelude to the further dismem- berment of the empire by the Germanic invaders who poured in from the forests of the north. In 410 Rome was sacked by the Visigoths, who founded a permanent king- dom in southern France and Spain; and in 455 by the Van- dals, who took possession of Africa, while the Burgundians occupied the valley of the Rhone. The sovereignty of the empire at Constantinople was nominally recognized in the West till 476, when Odoacer deposed the last emperor and ruled Italy as a German king.
80 : 32. Scott's bluff. The story of the pathetic incident from which this hill was named is told in Irving's Astoria.
82 : 3. pommel and cantle. The upward projections at the bow and rear of a saddle.
82 : 6. girths. Straps under the belly by which saddles are fastened upon the backs of horses.
83 : 20. Macbeth's witches. The three witches who, in Shakespeare's Macbeth, first suggest to the hero of that tragedy that by murdering the king of Scotland he may
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himself obtain the crown, are always so hideously made up for the stage that they are mentioned by our author as the personification of ugliness.
84 : 37. Black hills. In 1846 the name Black hills was not restricted to the oval group of low mountains lying chiefly in South Dakota but partly in Wyoming, but in- cluded several ranges extending in general in a southerly direction from these, and marking the eastern limits of the Rocky mountains in what are now the states of Wyoming and Colorado.
86 : 23. shongsasha. Red willow bark dried.
89 : 8. bedizened. Having many tawdry ornaments upon the dress.
89 : 11. engagés. Employees.
89 : 16. not traders. The jealousies of the fur companies, fierce and unending, were espoused by all their employees.
91 : 2. palisade. A close fence of sharp stakes for defence.
91 : 4. banquette. Raised way.
94 : 26. Catlin, George (1796-1872). An American trav- eller and artist, who, abandoning law, set up at Philadelphia as a portrait-painter, and in 1832 began a study of the Ameri- can Indians which later gave to the National museum at Washington a gallery of 500 portraits from life. His North American Portfolio, like his later works finely illustrated, was published in 1844.
97 : 17. Monterey and Buena Vista. Cities of Mexico from which are named two American victories in the war with that country in which the volunteers effectively sup- ported the regulars.
100 : 24. Spanish flies. Brilliant green beetles common in southern Europe, applications of which, dried and powdered, are used for raising blisters.
104 : 24. Rio Grande. The river that forms the boundary
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between Texas and Mexico. The disorder referred to is dysentery, an epidemic akin to cholera and much dreaded in the army, where its presence inevitably proves very destruc- tive. Severe cases are not much benefited by treatment, and mild cases are apt to assume a chronic form, which may prove fatal.
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