CHAPTER X
The Spring hunt opened on the Green river, and continuing there a while, the party went to the Big Snake; and after trapping with extraordinary success for a few weeks, returned to the Summer rendezvous, held again upon the Green River. Meantime Carson had recovered from his wound.
An unusually large number of trappers and traders, with great numbers from the neighboring Indian tribes, assembled at this rendezvous, made up of Canadians, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Spaniards, and many a backwoodsman, who had lived upon the borders, perhaps, for three generations, removing when a neighbor came within ten miles, because near neighbors were a nuisance to him. Let us see the parties as they come in, the leader, or the one to whom fitness accords this position, having selected the spot for the camp, so remote from every other, as to have plenty of grass about it for the animals of the party. Perhaps a tent is spread, at least, everything is put in proper order, according to the notions and the tastes of the men who make up the party; for the camp is the home of its members, and here they will receive visitors, and exchange courtesies.
The party or parties that have made the special arrangements for the rendezvous – traders with a full supply of goods – have spread a large tent in a central spot of the general encampment, where the whole company, save those detained at each camp in charge of the animals belonging to it, will assemble, at certain hours each day, the time upon which the sales are announced to take place, and the exchanges commence.
The several parties arriving first, have been obliged to wait until all expected for the season have arrived, because there is a feeling of honor as well as a care for competition, that compels the custom. The traders take furs or money for their goods, which bring prices that seem fabulous to those unaccustomed to the sight or stories of mountain life. The charge, of course, is made upon the ground of the expense and risk of bringing goods eight hundred and a thousand miles into the wilderness, from the nearest points in western Missouri and St. Louis.
Irving opens his Astoria with the following: "Two leading objects of commercial gain, have given birth to wide daring and enterprise in the early history of the Americas; the precious metals of the South and the rich peltries of the North." When he wrote this, it was true of the localities he named – the gold was not yet an attraction, except in the south, and only the British Fur Company in Canada had become an object of history in this branch of trade. He says, "While the fiery and magnificent Spaniard, influenced with the mania for gold, has extended his discoveries and conquests over those brilliant countries, scorched by the ardent sun of the tropics, the adroit Frenchman, and the cool and calculating Briton, have pursued the less splendid, but no less lucrative, traffic in furs, amidst the hyper-borean regions of the Canadas, until they advanced even within the Artic Circle.
"These two pursuits have thus, in a manner, been the pioneers and precursors of civilization. Without pausing on the borders, they have penetrated at once, in defiance of difficulties and dangers, to the heart of savage countries; laying open the hidden secrets of the wilderness; leading the way to remote regions of beauty and fertility, that might have remained unexplored for ages, and beckoning after them the slow and pausing steps of agriculture and civilization. It was the fur trade, in fact, that gave early sustenance and vitality to the great Canadian provinces.
"Being destitute of the precious metals, they were for a long time neglected by the parent country. The French adventurers, however, who had settled on the banks of the St. Lawrence, soon found that in the rich peltries of the interior, they had sources of wealth that might almost rival the mines of Mexico and Peru." The Indians, as yet unacquainted with the artificial value given to some descriptions of furs, in civilized life, brought quantities of the most precious kinds and bartered them away for European trinkets and cheap commodities. Immense profits were thus made by the early traders, and the traffic was pursued with avidity.
"As the valuable furs became scarce in the neighborhood of the settlements, the Indians of the vicinity were stimulated to take a wider range in their hunting expeditions; they were generally accompanied on these expeditions by some of the traders or their dependants, who shared in the toils and perils of the chase, and at the same time, made themselves acquainted with the best hunting grounds, and with the remote tribes whom they encouraged to bring peltries to the settlements. In this way the trade augmented, and was drawn from remote quarters to Montreal. Every now and then a large body of Ottawas, Hurons, and other tribes who hunted the countries bordering on the great lakes, would come down in a squadron of light canoes, laden with beaver skins and other spoils of the year's hunting. The canoes would be unladen, taken on shore, and their contents disposed in order. A camp of birch-bark would be pitched outside of the town, and a kind of primitive fair opened with that grave ceremonial so dear to the Indians.
"Now would ensue a brisk traffic with the merchants, and all Montreal would be alive with naked Indians, running from shop to shop, bargaining for arms, kettles, knives, axes, blankets, bright-colored cloths, and other articles of use or fancy; upon all which, the merchants were sure to clear two hundred per cent.
"Their wants and caprices being supplied, they would take leave, strike their tents, launch their canoes, and ply their way up the Ottawa to the lakes."
Later, the French traders, couriers des bois, penetrated the remote forests, carrying such goods as the Indians required, and held rendezvous among them, on a smaller scale, but similar to the one Carson had attended, so far as the Indian trade was concerned. But the Yankee element of character preponderated among the traders and trappers from the States; besides the greater difficulty and expense necessarily incurred to reach the hunting grounds by land than in canoe, called into the work only men of energy and higher skill than the employees, mostly French, in the service of the Hudson Bay Fur Company, and a score of smaller parties, each owning no authority outside itself, adopted the plan of these summer encampments, during the season when the fur of the beaver and the otter was not good, as an arrangement for mutual convenience; and the Indians of this more southern section availed themselves of the occasion, for their own pleasure and profit, and to the advantage and satisfaction of the traders, whose prices ruled high in proportion to the difficulty of transit, as well as the monopoly in their hands of the articles deemed necessary to the trapper's dress, culinary establishment, and outfit. These consisted of a woolen shirt, a sash or belt, and with some stockings, coffee, and black pepper, and salt, unless he could supply himself from the licks the buffalo visits; with tin kettle, and cup, and frying pan; the accoutrements of the horse, saddle and packsaddle, bridle, spurs, and horse-shoes; with material for bait; and last, but not least, tobacco, which if he did not use, he carried to give to the Indians – made up not only the necessaries, but the luxuries which the Indian and the white man indulged in, and for which, at such times, they paid their money or their furs.
Perhaps the trapper took an Indian wife, and then she must be made fine with dress, denoting the dignity of her position as wife of a white man, and presents must be given to the friends of his bride. This was usually an expensive luxury, but indulged in most frequently by the French and Canadian trappers, many of whom are now living quietly upon their farms in Oregon and California, and the numerous valleys of the West. Indeed we might give the names of many a mountain ranger, and pioneer of note, first a trapper, who still lives surrounded by his Indian wife and their children, and finds himself thus connected with this people, having their utmost confidence, chosen the chief of his tribe, and able to care for them as no one not in such association could.
At almost any point upon Green River the grass upon the bottom lands is sufficient for a night's encampment for a small party; but at the place selected for the rendezvous, in the space of two or three miles upon either side of the river, the bottom spreads out in a broad prairie, and the luxuriant growth of grass, with the country open all about it, made the spot desirable for a large encampment.
CHAPTER XI
Early in the summer the grass is green, but later it is hay made naturally, root and branch dried on the ground – there is no sod – and this, though less agreeable, is more nutritious for the animals than fresh grass.
A scattered growth of fine old trees furnishes shade at every camp, and immediately about the great tent they afford protection from the sun to parties of card players, or a "Grocery stand," at which the principal article of sale is "whiskey by the glass;" and perhaps, further on is a monte table, parties from several Indian tribes, and the pioneer of semi-civilization – the back-woodsman – has come in "with his traps," a few bags of flour, and possibly some cheese and butter, and the never failing cask of whiskey. Perhaps his wagon is the grocery stand, to which we have just alluded. Without extenuation, these encampments were grand occasions of which a few descriptions may be found written at the time by men of science and intellectual culture, like Sir Wm. Stewart, who traveled upon these plains for pleasure, or the Rev. Samuel Parker, who happened at a Green River rendezvous, in 1835, while on his way to the Columbia River, under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. This was long before Brigham Young came West – before his scheme of religious colonization had its birth.
There is now – has been for years – a trading post where a Canadian Frenchman and an American partner, with Indian wives, have provided entertainment or furnished supplies to emigrants and Indians. It is near the Green River crossing, on the road from the South Pass to great Salt Lake City, via Fort Bridger.
Amid the motley company it might be expected that quarrels would arise, and disorderly conduct, growing out of the feuds among the tribes of Indians. These were kept in abeyance as much as possible, and already Carson's popularity with them enabled him to act the part of peace-maker between them and the quarrelsome whites, as well as between each other, for many of them recognized him as the brave who had led excursions, whose success they had felt and suffered, and even though leader of victorious parties against themselves, they admired his prowess still; for the party of Blackfeet came to the rendezvous under the protection of the white flag, and for the time, no one more truly buried the hatchet than Carson, though just recovered from a wound given by a party of that tribe, which had nearly cost him his life, and of which we have written in a previous chapter.
There was belonging to one of the trapping parties a Frenchman by the name of Shuman, known at the rendezvous as "the big bully of the mountains," exceedingly annoying on account of his boasts and taunts, a constant exciter of tumult and disorder, especially among the Indians. Bad enough at any time, with the means now for intoxication, he was even more dangerous.
The habits of the mountaineers, without law save such as the exigency of the moment demanded, required a firm, steady hand to rule. Carson had feared the results of this man's lawlessness, and had often desired to be rid of him, but he had not as yet found the proper opportunity. The mischiefs he committed grew worse and worse, and yet for the sake of peace they were borne unresistingly. At length an opportunity offered to try his courage. One day Shuman, boasting of his exploits, was particularly insolent and insulting toward all Americans, whom he described as only fit to be whipped with switches. Carson was in the crowd, and immediately stepped forward, saying, "I am an American, the most inconsiderable one among them, but if you wish to die, I will accept your challenge."
Shuman defied him. He was sitting upon his horse, with his loaded rifle in his hand. Carson leaped upon his horse with a loaded pistol, and both rushed into close combat. They fired, almost at the same moment, but Carson an instant before his boasting antagonist. Their horses' heads touched, Shuman's ball just grazing Carson's cheek, near the left eye, and cutting off some locks of his hair. Carson's ball entered Shuman's hand, came out at the wrist, and passed through his arm above the elbow. The bully begged for his life, and it was spared; and from that time forward, Americans were no more insulted by him.
If, as in other duels, we were to go back to remoter causes, and find in this too, the defence of woman – a Blackfoot beauty – whom Shuman had determined to abuse, which Carson's interference only had prevented, for the sake of truth, of honor, and virtue, as against insolence, falsehood, and treachery, although the girl did belong to a tribe that was treacherous; we shall be but giving a point to the story that it needs for completeness, and show Carson in the exalted manliness and fidelity of his character.
The trappers made arrangements at the rendezvous for the fall hunt; and the party who were so fortunate as to secure Carson's services, went to the Yellowstone River, in the Blackfeet country, but met with no success. Crossing through the Crows' country to the Big Horn River, they met the party of Blackfeet returning from Green River. Carson held a parley with them, as was his custom whenever it was safe to go to an Indian camp. He told them he had seen none of their people, and that the tomahawk was buried if they were faithful to him. "But," said he, "the Crows are my friends, and while I am with them, they must be yours."
On the Big Horn, too, their success was no better, and Carson did not meet his Crow friends. On the Big Snake, too, which they next visited, the result was the same.
They here met a party from the Hudson Bay Company, led by a Mr. McCoy. Carson and five of his companions accepted the offer he made them, and went with him to the Humboldt river, trapping with little success from its source to the desert where it loses itself, and where the termini of several other large rivers are all within a day's ride, according to the statement of residents at this point. Capt. McCoy said to Carson, as he and two of the company started off upon the desert,
"Do not be gone longer than to-morrow night, and if you strike a stream where there is beaver – there must be water between here and those snow mountains – we will trap a few days longer."
On they rode over the artemisia plain till the lake was out of view from an eminence which Carson climbed; then struck a tract of country entirely destitute of every sign of animal or vegetable life, with surface as smooth as the floor for miles in extent, then broken by a ridge a few feet high, like the rim to a lake, whose bottom they had passed, to plunge immediately upon another like it, with perhaps a white and glistening crystalization spread thinly over it.
Carson knew he must be upon the celebrated Mud Lakes of which he had heard, and of which he had seen miniature specimens further east. Over these lake bottoms of earth, that broken, seemed like mingled sand and ashes, but which bore the tread of their horses, and over which they seemed to fly rather than to step, so fragrant and exhilarating was the atmosphere, they traveled thirty miles, then struck the artemisia plains again, only there was less of even this worthless production for the next ten miles than he had seen before for long a distance.
Through a heavy sand, the weary horses plod, for they had come forty or fifty miles beneath a burning sun without food and without water. On they ride, for rest and refreshment to themselves was not to be thought of till they have it for the animals. The river is gained! a broad, deep current of water, muddy like that of the Platte, supplies the moisture to the trees, whose tops ascend only a few feet above the desert level, and whose trunks rise from green meadows but little above the surface of the water. The bottom lands are narrow, and the abrupt bank descends to the water perpendicularly twenty feet or more, seemingly of clayey earth, so soft, the water constantly wore upon it, and evidently the river channel was settling, as the years advanced. There were no signs of beaver, and, from the nature of the banks, there could be none, unless high up on the stream.
CHAPTER XII
Capt. McCoy had calculated that he would soon find game in the country through which his route lay, and therefore he had turned over to Carson, and the division of the party under his command, nearly all the food which was left, but this was insufficient to give them full meals for more than three days. Their prospect was a dreary one indeed, for at the earlier season of coming down the river, they had not half enough to eat, even with the few beaver they had taken, to add to the supply, and even this was now denied them. And now, that the reader may understand Carson's position, we invite him to enjoy with us a few of the incidents passed through, and views observed in our passage up this river, which the untraveled eastern man would find so entirely new, and the man of travel and of letters would find so full of interest, as did the man whose name the river bears, for it was named by Fremont, after Carson, whom he had learned to love and respect, long before he reached it. We shall speak especially of the features of this country, common to so much that lies between the civilizations of the Atlantic and the Pacific slopes, though the latter was not a civilization; and when from the desert Carson gazed with admiration at the snow mountains, he surmised, as he afterwards realized through hunger, cold, danger, and suffering, that this was the chain of mountains which separated him from California.
At the station-house, upon the lake, called the Sink of the Humboldt, we were told that the Humboldt did not connect with this lake, except in the spring season, after the rains; and that for the last two years it had not been connected even at that time; and that in the autumn one could pass between the lake and the limit of the marsh in which the river loses itself, upon dry ground; and that the sinks, or the margins of the lakes or marshes in which the Carson, the Walker, and the Susan Rivers, neither of them less than a hundred miles in length, and some of them several hundred, in the wet season empty or lose themselves, were all within the limit of a single day's ride, and in the direct vicinity of the desert upon which the reader last saw Carson.
It was the evening of the second of July, during a rain storm, (an unusual occurrence at this season of the year, no traveler having ever reported a similar one so far as we had heard,) that, weary, and wet, and cold, we found our way in the dark to this river in the wilderness. The house of the traders at the sink was made of logs, with two rooms – the logs having been drawn from the mountains, forty miles distant. There was no timber in sight, and nothing that was green except some grass about the lake, which we were told was poison, and on examining, we found it encrusted with a crystalization of potash, left on it by the subsiding water in which the grass had started.
During the wet season, the water of the lake overflows its banks, and the banks of the river are also overflowed, while the water standing upon the surface of the ground is strongly impregnated with potash, not only near the sink, but far up the stream, nearly to its source, the same cause existing, though only in occasional spots is it exhibited to the same degree as about the lake. It is not improbable that some immense coal formation might have been consumed here in some remote past age, though that is a matter for more scientific examination than becomes this work.
But, to leave speculation; the occupants of the station, whilom trappers in the mountains, furnished barley for our animals, and we might have purchased coffee, or a rusty gun, or bad whiskey, but little else, for their regular supplies for the emigrants who were soon expected to arrive, had not yet come in. The parties bound east had passed, and the Mormons, with their herds of cattle for the California markets, had been met beyond the desert. A party of Pah Utah or Piete Indians, a tribe of Diggers, were hanging about the encampment, and possibly had caused the stampede of the Mormon oxen, which one of their herdsmen had reported to us as occurring here. The traders on the plains are charged with conniving at such expeditions of the Indians, and of sharing with them the plunder. These traders may not have been privy to any thing of the kind, but certain it is they always stood ready to purchase the worn out stock of the overland emigrants, much of which is worthless to cross the desert, after the prior fifteen hundred miles of travel.
This is made a lucrative business, as will be readily imagined, when the number of animals driven over is taken into consideration, which has amounted to a hundred thousand annually, by this route, during several of the years since the quest for gold.
The traders said they had twenty-five hundred horses and as many oxen, in charge of herdsmen in a mountain valley. Shrewd men they were, one of them with an eye we would not warrant to look out from a kindly soul.
Miserable wretches were these Humboldt Diggers, with scarcely a trace of humanity in their composition, for they have not improved since Carson first met them, many years ago. The old chief was delighted with a lump of sugar, which one of our party gave him. He wore a long coat made of rabbit skins, warm and durable, strips of the skin with the hair out being wound around a deerskin thong, and these rolls woven into a garment, but the rest of the party were nearly naked.
Passing Lassen's meadows where the party lunched at a spring, indicated, as we approached, by a growth of willows, and striking upon the artemisia plain that constitutes the larger portion of the river valley, when about fifty miles from the station, we left the road by a blind trail, and approached the river, descending to the bottom land by a precipitous bluff thirty feet in height. The mountains approached close on the opposite side of the river, probably a mile distant, and enclosed us in a semi-circle, while the bluff was lined with a scattered growth of alders.
It rained, was raining violently when we halted, and stretching a rope from alder to alder, with a blanket thrown over it, we thus made a tent, and established ourselves cosily to spend here the nation's Sabbath-day, the 4th of July.
The rain turned into snow towards evening, and covered the mountains to their base, but melting as it fell where we were encamped, and with the cooing of the doves which filled the alders, the croaking of the frogs in the marsh next the river, and the patter of the rain upon the bushes, we had other music – nature's deep bass – in a constant roaring sound, like that of old ocean at full tide on a sand beach of the open coast of the Pacific; or like the sound of Niagara, heard half a mile away, but there was no discoverable cause.
Going a mile up and down the river from the camp – if there is up and down to a dead river – we still heard the sound, the same in tone and power. Our Wyandotte – a member of the party who had crossed the plains with Col. Fremont – suggested that it was "the Humboldt sinking."
All the day of the 4th of July we rested here, with our animals in clover, amid the snow which reached even to the foot of the mountains opposite, and the dirge played for us by the unseen hand. It was a quiet, still sweetly sad day – pleasant in memory, and such an one as we shall never spend again – so far from civilized humanity, and in a place so remote from human footsteps, it seemed a natural wonder which had never been properly examined and explained.
Sooner than the old trappers anticipated, will the Humboldt be lined with farms, and the little mountain valleys filled with grazing herds, and the church spire and the cross upon an unassuming building in the centre of a six mile square prairie, indicate the advance of civilization. Yet, except in the mud-lake localities, there is no tract of country that can well be more unpromising than that about the Humboldt; and not many years will elapse before science will make plain and palpable that wonder of the world, "the sinking of the Humboldt."