History of South Dakota, Vol. I, Part 17

Author: Robinson, Doane, 1856-1946. cn
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: [Logansport? IN] : B. F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 998

USA > South Dakota > History of South Dakota, Vol. I > Part 17

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Monday, 11th. Keelboat "Flora" left here for Fort Union with a cargo of merchandise. Keelboat "Male Twin" left here for the Navy Yard to hring down timber.

Friday, 15th. The "Male Twin" and four ba- teaux arrived from Navy Yard loaded with pickets for the fort.

Sunday, 17th. Keelboat "Male Twin" and four bateaux, conducted by Mr. Honore Picotte, left here for St. Louis loaded with one thousand four hundred ten packs of buffalo robes.

Wednesday, 20th. Joseph Jewett, who left here on the 10th, arrived today from Oglallas with dry meat, lodges, etc. Four hundred eighty pounds of dry meat was left here in the spring, but the wolves broke into the house and ate all except about twenty pieces.

Sunday, 24th. Steamboat "Yellowstone" arrived from Fort Union. Sent down six hundred packs of robes on board of her.

Monday, 25th. Steamboat "Yellowstone" left us for St. Louis with a cargo of one thousand three hun- dred packs robes and beaver. Mr. Laidlaw went on board of her. He is to go down as far as the Sioux agency and return by land. Ortubize has got a keg of whiskey and is continually drunk himself and he

tries to make as many of the men drunk as will drink with him.

Sunday, July 1st. Messrs. Laidlaw and Dickson left for Lac Traverse in quest of some Canadian pork- eaters expected here this summer. Castorigi sick and off duty.

Pork-eaters was the popular name for new men from Canada, and came to be used in the same sense as tenderfoot or greenhorn is now applied. The French call them mangeurs de lard. In the instance mentioned in the journal raw recruits from Canada are meant. They were bound for a period of five years under most rigorous engagement and at wages which made it impossible for them to arrive at the end of their term without being in debt to the company. As there was no way for them to get passage out of the country while so in debt they were compelled to remain and keep at work. The name arose because while enroute from Canada they were fed on pork, hard bread and pea soup. but principally pork.

Sunday, 8th. Messrs. Brown, Durand and two Americans, all beaver trappers, arrived with about a pack of beaver.

Monday, 9th. At six A. M. Henry Hart arrived from Fort Union with three batteaux loaded with robes, etc. Loaded one boat with one hundred twenty packs beaver and other skins and put on board of an- other thirty packs of robes. She is to take on one hundred twenty or one hundred thirty packs at Yank- ton post.

Thursday, 19th. Jewett and Ortubize returned from hunting, having killed two bulls. On their ar- rival on this side of the river we discovered two more bulls on the opposite side of the river, when we immediately recrossed them. At night they re- turned, having killed one more bull.

Friday, 20th. Vasseau and two men helonging to LeClerc company arrived at the mouth of the Te- ton river for the purpose of building and establishing a trading house here. LeClaire and a few men ar- rived here from Fort Lookout.

The LeClerc post was not established. Narcisse LeClerc had long been in the employ of the American Fur Company and had made some money and he determined to organize a company and trade on his own account. He demonstrated in 1831 that he was no mean op- position and the American concluded that it

123 ,

HISTORY OF SOUTH DAKOTA.

would be wise to buy him off from entering the Sioux country. The business was entrusted to J. P. Cabanne, a partner and manager of the company's affairs at Council Bluffs. LeClerc started just as word came of the passage of the act of July 9, 1832, prohibiting the transporta- tion, use or sale of intoxicating liquors in the Indian country. General Clark, however, hav- ing no official notice of the passage of such a law, permitted LeClerc to carry in his outfit two hundred fifty gallons of alcohol. Immediately upon the arrival of the "Yellowstone" at St. Louis from its trip to Fort Union, Pierre Chou- teau, fearful of -the effect of the rumored new law, put fourteen hundred gallons of liquor on her and started her back to the Indian country, but at Fort Leavenworth the spirits were seized and confiscated. LeClerc, however, had gotten by the officers with his whiskey. This would give him a great advantage over the American if something was not done. Cabanne was, how- ever, quite equal to the emergency. When Le- Clerc reached Cabanne's neighborhood that worthy was horrified to learn that, contrary to the law of the land this unscrupulous trader was about to carry-whiskey into the Indian country, no doubt with the express intention of debauch- ing the natives and defrauding them of their property. His sense of justice was outraged and he was virtuously indignant. Although he was but an ordinary citizen, without any legal au- thority being vested in him, he resolved to compass the defeat of so unholy and nefarious an enterprise and he sent Peter Sarpy with a force of men and a small cannon to capture LeClerc, bag, baggage, whiskey and all. Sarpy hastened to take possession of a point which commanded the passage of the river and when LeClerc arrived ordered him to surrender or he would blow him out of the water. LeClerc knew a good thing when he found it floating down the river and he promptly complied with the demand and hastened back to St. Louis, where he promptly brought suit for his damages and for which he recovered nine thousand two hundred dollars. The American people were already sufficiently unpopular and the report of

this high-handed outrage created a demand that they be driven out of the Indian country and it required all of the diplomacy of the entire Astor- Crooks-Chouteau combination to save its char- ter. So it was that the LeClerc post was not built at Fort Pierre.

Sunday, 29th. At 10 A. M. Mr. Laidlaw arrived on the other side with thirty-six porkeaters. He lost two on the road. Employed the greater part of the day in crossing the men and their baggage. At 12 m. Cardinal Grant arrived from the Yankton post.

Thursday, August 2d. Plenty of buffalo. Mr. Laidlaw went out to hunt them and killed three.

Saturday, 4th. Four Brule Indians arrived in search of a trader. They are encamped five days' march from this.

Monday, 6th. Baptiste Dorion, Charles Primeau and Hipolite Niessel left here this morning with the four Indians who arrived on the 4th, with merchan- dise to trade. Sent Ortubize to the Navy Yard to hunt for our men at work there.

Tuesday, 14th. Messrs. Catlin and Bogart ar- rived from Fort Union on their way to St. Louis.

Wednesday, 15th. Baptiste Dorion and G. P. Cerre arrived from Brule camp with dry meats, robes, etc.

Thursday, 15th. Mr. Catlin left us for St. Louis, accompanied by Mr. Bogart in a skiff.

Friday, 17th. In the early part of the day news was brought of a band of buffalo not being far from the fort. Consequently a party went out to hunt them. Baptiste Dorion was one of the party; they all returned without killing any buffalo; but Dorion fell in with a Stiaago Indian riding off with one of the company's horses. After a little scuffle he killed the Indian and we got back the horse. We suppose he was a Ree. Dorion did not fire at the Indian until he had fired two arrows at him.

Tuesday, 21st. At eleven A. M. Mr. Brown ar- rived from the lumber yards. Two of the men there, Louis Turcot and James Durant, having stolen a canoe and deserted, Mr. Brown with one man left here in a canoe at 12 M. in pursuit of them. Several lodges of Yanktons and Esontis arrived on the other side of the Missouri and camped there.

The "Esontis" were doubtless Santees, the real name being Esantée, meaning "knife."

Thursday, 23d. Mr. Brown arrived with the two deserters, Turcot and Durant. He caught them in the middle of the big bend.

Friday, 24th. Commenced planting the pickets of the fort.

Sunday, September 9th. The prairies are on fire in every direction.

124

HISTORY OF SOUTH DAKOTA.

Monday, 24th. Laidlaw, Halsey, Campbell, De- maney and an Indian left for Sioux agency, near old Fort Lookout.

Sunday, 30th. They returned, bringing Dr. Mar- tin, who visits this place to vaccinate the Indians. Messrs. Mckenzie and Fontenelle with several others arrived from Fort Union in a bateau, having on board about six thousand beaver skins.

The foregoing concludes Captain Chitten- den's extracts from the journal, from which I have excluded the daily reference to the weather conditions. There is enough in the eight months covered by the record to indicate that South Dakotans of 1832 were enterprising and there was no lack of incidents to make up a lively

season. A murder, desertions, two Indian raids, a steamboat trip, Catlin and his picture-making, the excitement of a flood, besides the moving to the new fort and the every-day grind kept the managers and the mangeurs de lard on the quivive throughout the year.

Though no mention is made of the fact in the journal, Pierre Chouteau, Jr., was a passenger on the "Yellowstone" on its up-river trip this year and it was while he was stopping at the fort that his name was given to it. Major Wilson says that it was called Fort Pierre Chouteau, but if that is true it was not regarded, even by the men who named it, for in all of the correspond- ence of the times it is called simply Fort Pierre.

CHAPTER XV

GEORGE CATLIN IN SOUTH DAKOTA.

Among the passengers on the "Yellowstone" upon her second up-river trip in the spring of 1832 was George Catlin, the artist, who was on a trip to the wilderness to paint wild Indians and describe their customs. Mr. Catlin was a native of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, and was educated as a lawyer, but early abandoned his profession for art. He was an enthusiast about the Indians, and gave up forty-two years of his life to the study and picturing of these interest- ing people. At the time of this trip he was thirty-six years of age and it was his third year in the Indian work. He possessed great energy and persistence and accomplished much for the preservation of the history of the primitive In- dians. He arrived at St. Louis in the early spring of 1832 and was so fortunate as to make the acquaintance of Pierre Chouteau, Jr., who invited him to accompany the "Yellowstone" trip. Catlin was a prolific writer and he has left to us a graphic account of the difficulties attending Missouri river navigation in those days. He characterizes the river as "a hell of waters." "If anything did ever literally and completely astonish and astound the natives it was the ap- pearance of our steamer. puffing and blowing and paddling and rushing by their villages."

"These poor and ignorant people, for the distance of two thousand miles, had never before seen or heard of a steamboat and at some places they seemed at a loss what to do or how to act. They could not, as the Dutch did at Newburgh, take it for a floating saw-mill and they had no

name for it, so it was, like everything else with them which is mysterious and unaccountable, called medicine. We had on board one twelve- pound cannon and three or four eight-pound swivels and at the approach to every village they were all discharged several times in rapid suc- cession, which threw the inhabitants into utter confusion and amazement. Some laid their faces to the ground and cried to the great spirit ; some shot their horses and dogs and sacrificed them to appease the great spirit whom they conceived was offended; some deserted the villages and ran to the tops of the bluffs, several miles distant ; and others, as the boat landed in front of their villages, came with great caution and peeped over the banks of the river to see the fate of their chiefs, whose duty it was from the nature of their offices to approach us, whether friend or foe, and go on board. Sometimes, in this plight, they were instantly thrown neck and heels over each other's heads and shoulders, men, women, children and dogs, -- sage, sachem, old and young, -all in a mass, at the frightful discharge of steam from the escape pipe which the captain of the boat let loose upon them for his own fun and amusement. There were many curious con- jectures amongst their wise men with regard to the nature and powers of the steamboat. Amongst the Mandans some called it the 'big thunder canoe,' for when in the distance below the village they saw the lightning flash from its sides and heard the thunder come from it. Others called it the 'big medicine canoe with

126

HISTORY OF SOUTH DAKOTA.

eyes.' It was medicine because they could not understand it and it must have eyes, for, said they, 'it sees its own way, and takes the deep water in the middle of the channel.' They had no idea of the boat being steered by the man at the wheel."

The "Yellowstone" left St. Louis on March 26th and its progress was woefully slow until

GEORGE CATLIN.

it had passed the mouth of the Niobrara, where it found the water so low that it could neither proceed nor return. Chouteau, while waiting for a rise in the river, dispatched a party of twenty men "to Laidlaw's fort at the mouth of the Teton" and Catlin accompanied them, car- rying with him his painting outfit. They left the vessel on May 16th in the morning and arrived at Fort Pierre May 23d. The "Yellow-

stone" did not make that port until the 31st and remained there six days, so that Catlin remained at Fort Pierre on the upward trip fifteen days and during that period he accomplished a great deal of work, painting the likenesses of many of the leading Indians and writing much descriptive matter. He found Laidlaw, Mckenzie and Halsey at the fort and they hospitably enter- tained him. There were at the time six or seven hundred lodges of Sioux Indians encamped about the fort, giving him splendid opportunity to fill his portfolio with likenesses. Among others whom he painted here was a Minneconjou chief named One Horn, who induced the simple- minded artist to believe that he was indeed a big injun, for he notes in his journal: "The Sioux have forty-one bands, each band has a chief, and this man is head of all." Had he been inquis- itive he might have found forty-one chiefs who claimed the same distinction. He also found Waneton, the younger of that name, and painted his likeness. This is the Indian who fought with the English at Fort Meigs and Sandusky and whose appearance is described by Major Long in a previous chapter. Catlin calls him a "Susseton," but he was in fact a Yank- tonais. He is said by Mckinney and Hall, at forty-five years of age to command more influ- ence than any other Indian chief on the con- tinent. Soon after the defeat of the Rees, in 1825, he removed his village from the Elm river over to the Missouri near the mouth of the Warreconne, in what is now Emmons county, North Dakota, where he established a sort of protectorate over the Rees and Mandans. Among others painted here were Black Rock, a famous Two Kettle Sioux of that day, and also the young daughter of this chief. The latter like- ness he gave to Mr. Laidlaw, who hung it in the fort. Black Rock, with his people, went out on the prairies back from the river to make meat and there the daughter died. The old chief returned to the fort, heavy-hearted, but when he saw the likeness of his danghter he was greatly delighted as if she had been restored to him, and he at once offered the commandant ten horses and his wigwam for the likeness. Laidlaw gen-

127

HISTORY OF SOUTH DAKOTA.

erously gave him the picture without price. While at Fort Pierre Catlin secured practically all of the pictures which illustrate "The Sioux Nation." He certainly made the most of his short stay. He secured a number of sketches of buffalo hunts and of various Indian dances, made a painting of the fort and wrote extensively of his surroundings. Though at that time the buffalo simply covered the prairies, he plainly foresaw the early extinction of that noble animal and even then pleaded that the government should take action to establish a great park in which numbers of them should be preserved. It is noteworthy that very near to Fort Pierre, upon the very ground where he hunted and painted these animals, private enterprise has established the park for which seventy years be- fore he had prayed, and placed in it the largest remaining herd of bison.

The "Yellowstone" left Fort Pierre, continu- ing its trip up stream on June 5th and proceeded with splendid success and speed. While it had been more than two months in reaching Fort Pierre from St. Louis, it made the round trip from Pierre to Union and return in twenty days. Catlin accompanied the boat up stream, but did not return with it. The only South Dakota point mentioned on the up-trip after leaving Pierre is Arickara. This is the first detailed description of this village after the Leavenworth fight in 1823 and we learn from Catlin's description that it was very little changed. Leavenworth found one hundred forty-three lodges in the settlement. Catlin says : "The Riccaree village is beautifully situated on the west bank of the river two hundred miles below the Mandans, being con- stituted of one hundred fifty earth-covered lodges, which are in part surrounded by an im- perfect and open barrier of pickets set firmly in the ground and ten or twelve feet high. The village is built upon an open prairie and the gracefully undulating hills that rise in the distance behind are everywhere covered with a verdant turf without a bush or tree anywhere to be seen. This view was taken from the deck of the steamer when I was on my way up river ; and probably it is well that I took it then, for so

hostile and deadly are the feelings of these peo- ple toward the pale faces at this time that it may be deemed best for me to pass them on my way down the river without stopping to make them a visit. They are certainly harboring the most resentful feelings toward the traders and others passing on the river and no doubt there is great danger of the lives of white men who unluckily fall into their hands. They have recently sworn death and destruction to every white man who comes in their way and there is no doubt that they are ready to execute their threats."

Reaching Fort Union, Catlin spent some time as the guest of Mckenzie and J. Archdale Hamilton, and painted many Indians of the upper tribes. Concluding his work at this point, he purchased a canoe and employed a French- man named Baptiste and a Yankee named Bogart to accompany him and returned down the river, making a stay of several days with the Mandans and painting and writing ex- tensively of them. This was indeed fortunate. Of no other tribe did he write more fully or more understandingly and even more from him than from Lewis and Clarke do we know of this now almost extinct people, for five years after his visit the Mandans were reduced by smallpox from more than sixteen hundred to thirty-one souls. At the Mandan village he found and painted the likeness of Stanaupat, the bloody hand, chief of the Rees, the same who was the first signer of the Atkinson-O'Fallon treaty of 1825. He also obtained the likeness of another South Dakotan, Pahtoocara, a warrior, as well of Kahbeca, the twin, wife of Stanaupat, and of Pshanshaw, the sweet-scented grass, his daugh- ter.

Leaving the Mandans, Catlin's story con- tinues : "Dropping off down the rolling current again from day to day until at length the curling smoke of the Riccarees announced their village in view. We trembled and quaked, for all boats not stoutly armed steal by them in the dead night. We muffled our paddles and instantly dropped under some willows where we listened to the yelping, barking rabble until sable night had drawn her curtain round (although it was

128

HISTORY OF SOUTH DAKOTA.

not sable, for the moon arose, to our great mortification and alarm, in full splendor and brightness), when, at eleven o'clock, we put out to the middle of the stream, silenced our paddles and trusted to the current to waft us by them. We lay close in our boat with a pile of green bushes over us, making us nothing in the world but a floating treetop. On the bank in front of the village was being enacted at that moment a scene of the most frightful and thrilling nature. A hundred torches were swung about in all directions, giving us a full view of the group that

they looked, there were some hundreds of cack- ling women and girls bathing in the river on the edge of a sandbar at the lower end of the village, at which place the stream drifted our small craft in close to the shore, till the moon lit their shoulders, their foreheads, chins and noses and they stood half merged, like mermaids, and gazed upon us singing 'Cheenaseenun, chenasee- nun, kemonshoo, keehe nena, hawaytah, shesha, shesha.' 'How do you do? How do you do? Where are you going, old tree? Come here, come here.' Then : 'Lahkeehoon, Lahkeehoon !

FORT PIERRE. 1832.

were assembled, and some fresh scalps were hung on poles, and were then going through the nightly ceremony that is performed about them for a number of nights, composed of the fright- iul and appalling shrieks and yells and gesticula- tions of the scalp dance.

"But a few weeks before I left the month of the Yellowstone the news arrived that a party of trappers had burnt two Riccarees to death on the prairies. After I had got some hundred miles below them I learned that they were danc- ing two white men's scalps, taken in revenge for that inhuman act.

"In addition to this multitude of demons, as

nath, catogh.' 'A canoe, a canoe! see the pad- dle.' In a moment the songs were stopped ; the lights were out : the village in an instant was in darkness and the dog's were muzzled, and nimbly did our paddles ply the water till spyglasses told tis at morning the boundless prairies were free from following footsteps of friend or foe."

I do not find any other record of the killing of white men by Rees in 1832. The Fort Pierre journal does not mention it and I am inclined to believe it is incorrect.

On Tuesday, August 14th, Catlin arrived at Fort Pierre and remained there over one day. departing down stream on the 16th. From the

129

HISTORY OF SOUTH DAKOTA.

amount of work which he reports having done at this time he must have put in a busy day. The probabilities are that he made notes and hurried sketches, which he afterward completed at his leisure.

When going up, Catlin, at Fort Pierre, painted a profile picture of a chief named Little White Bear, in which, of course, only half of the Indian's face was shown. Little White Bear was an Uncpapa and was the first chief to sign the treaty of 1825. Catlin calls him Matotcheega, but the treaty-makers got it Matochegalla; the latter is more nearly the phonetic spelling. Lit- tle White Bear was on bad terms with another Indian of the Casazsheeta (?) band, named Shunka, the dog, and the latter, watching the progress of the painting, made slighting remarks about Little White Bear being but half a man, due to the fact that only half of his face showed in the likeness. A violent quarrel ensued, in which Little White Bear was shot and killed by the Dog, curiously enough the shot carrying away the entire side of the face which had not appeared in the picture. The Dog and his band instantly departed across the prairies, followed by the now thoroughly aroused and vengeful Uncpapas, and though they were able to break the fellow's arm in the chase he escaped them. Catlin tells the story at length and with unnecessary loquacity. The traders, expecting trouble, prepared for de- fense and the Indians fixed upon Catlin as the cause of the death of their chief. That evening at five o'clock the "Yellowstone" steamed up river with Catlin on board. The death of Little White Bear bore heavily on the Indians and all summer they debated it and the more they con- sidered the matter the more convinced they were that the painter's medicine had been too strong. Torn Belly, a leading Yankton, voiced the usual sentiment when he said : "He looks at our chiefs and our women and makes them alive. In this way he has taken our chiefs away and he can trouble their spirits when they are dead. They will be unhappy. If he can make them alive by looking at them he can do us much harm. You tell us they are not alive. We see their eyes move; their eyes follow us wherever we go.

That is enough." They started out to find and kill the Dog and failing in this they proposed to "take it out" of Catlin when he returned down the river. When he did arrive at the fort Laidlaw was a good deal concerned about his safety and it is probable that fact had a good deal to do with the brief period of the stay there. He got away all right and the Dog was later overtaken by the friends of Little White Bear near the Black Hills and killed.

Only one other noteworthy incident occurred upon this trip within South Dakota. This was an encounter with a herd of buffaloes at the mouth of White river. Thousands of buffaloes were cross- ing the river when, rounding a curve, the skiff was among them before its progress could be ar- rested. They came through without damage, but were badly scared, and the danger was really im- minent.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of South Dakota, Vol. I, Part 17

Author: Robinson, Doane, 1856-1946. cn Publication date: 1904 Publisher: [Logansport? IN] : B. F. Bowen Number of Pages: 998

Author: Robinson, Doane, 1856-1946. cn
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: [Logansport? IN] : B. F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 998