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CHAPTER 40
Traveller's tales - Indian lurkers - Prognostics of Buckeye - Signs and portents - The medicine wolf - An alarm - An ambush - The captured provant - Triumph of Buckeye - Arrival of supplies - Grand carouse - Arrangements for the year - Mr. Wyeth and his new-levied band.
THE horror and indignation felt by Captain Bonneville at the
excesses of the Californian adventurers were not participated by
his men; on the contrary, the events of that expedition were
favorite themes in the camp. The heroes of Monterey bore the palm
in all the gossipings among the hunters. Their glowing
descriptions of Spanish bear-baits and bull-fights especially,
were listened to with intense delight; and had another expedition
to California been proposed, the difficulty would have been to
restrain a general eagerness to volunteer.
The captain had not long been at the rendezvous when he
perceived, by various signs, that Indians were lurking in the
neighborhood. It was evident that the Blackfoot band, which he
had seen when on his march, had dogged his party, and were intent
on mischief. He endeavored to keep his camp on the alert; but it
is as difficult to maintain discipline among trappers at a
rendezvous as among sailors when in port.
Buckeye, the Delaware Indian, was scandalized at this
heedlessness of the hunters when an enemy was at hand, and was
continually preaching up caution. He was a little prone to play
the prophet, and to deal in signs and portents, which
occasionally excited the merriment of his white comrades. He was
a great dreamer, and believed in charms and talismans, or
medicines, and could foretell the approach of strangers by the
howling or barking of the small prairie wolf. This animal, being
driven by the larger wolves from the carcasses left on the
hunting grounds by the hunters, follows the trail of the fresh
meat carried to the camp. Here the smell of the roast and
broiled, mingling with every breeze, keeps them hovering about
the neighborhood; scenting every blast, turning up their noses
like hungry hounds, and testifying their pinching hunger by long
whining howls and impatient barkings. These are interpreted by
the superstitious Indians into warnings that strangers are at
hand; and one accidental coincidence, like the chance fulfillment
of an almanac prediction, is sufficient to cover a thousand
failures. This little, whining, feast-smelling animal is,
therefore, called among Indians the "medicine wolf;" and such was
one of Buckeye's infallible oracles.
One morning early, the soothsaying Delaware appeared with a
gloomy countenance. His mind was full of dismal presentiments,
whether from mysterious dreams, or the intimations of the
medicine wolf, does not appear. "Danger," he said, "was lurking
in their path, and there would be some fighting before sunset."
He was bantered for his prophecy, which was attributed to his
having supped too heartily, and been visited by bad dreams. In
the course of the morning a party of hunters set out in pursuit
of buffaloes, taking with them a mule, to bring home the meat
they should procure. They had been some few hours absent, when
they came clattering at full speed into camp, giving the war cry
of Blackfeet! Blackfeet! Every one seized his weapon and ran to
learn the cause of the alarm. It appeared that the hunters, as
they were returning leisurely, leading their mule well laden with
prime pieces of buffalo meat, passed close by a small stream
overhung with trees, about two miles from the camp. Suddenly a
party of Blackfeet, who lay in ambush along the thickets, sprang
up with a fearful yell, and discharged a volley at the hunters.
The latter immediately threw themselves flat on their horses, put
them to their speed, and never paused to look behind, until they
found themselves in camp. Fortunately they had escaped without a
wound; but the mule, with all the "provant," had fallen into the
hands of the enemy This was a loss, as well as an insult, not to
be borne. Every man sprang to horse, and with rifle in hand,
galloped off to punish the Blackfeet, and rescue the buffalo
beef. They came too late; the marauders were off, and all that
they found of their mule was the dents of his hoofs, as he had
been conveyed off at a round trot, bearing his savory cargo to
the hills, to furnish the scampering savages with a banquet of
roast meat at the expense of the white men.
The party returned to camp, balked of their revenge, but still
more grievously balked of their supper. Buckeye, the Delaware,
sat smoking by his fire, perfectly composed. As the hunters
related the particulars of the attack, he listened in silence,
with unruffled countenance, then pointing to the west, "the sun
has not yet set," said he: "Buckeye did not dream like a fool!"
All present now recollected the prediction of the Indian at
daybreak, and were struck with what appeared to be its
fulfilment. They called to mind, also, a long catalogue of
foregone presentiments and predictions made at various times by
the Delaware, and, in their superstitious credulity, began to
consider him a veritable seer; without thinking how natural it
was to predict danger, and how likely to have the prediction
verified in the present instance, when various signs gave
evidence of a lurking foe.
The various bands of Captain Bonneville's company had now been
assembled for some time at the rendezvous; they had had their
fill of feasting, and frolicking, and all the species of wild and
often uncouth merrymaking, which invariably take place on these
occasions. Their horses, as well as themselves, had recovered
from past famine and fatigue, and were again fit for active
service; and an impatience began to manifest itself among the men
once more to take the field, and set off on some wandering
expedition.
At this juncture M. Cerre arrived at the rendezvous at the head
of a supply party, bringing goods and equipments from the States.
This active leader, it will be recollected, had embarked the year
previously in skin-boats on the Bighorn, freighted with the
year's collection of peltries. He had met with misfortune in the
course of his voyage: one of his frail barks being upset, and
part of the furs lost or damaged.
The arrival of the supplies gave the regular finish to the annual
revel. A grand outbreak of wild debauch ensued among the
mountaineers; drinking, dancing, swaggering, gambling,
quarrelling, and fighting. Alcohol, which, from its portable
qualities, containing the greatest quantity of fiery spirit in
the smallest compass, is the only liquor carried across the
mountains, is the inflammatory beverage at these carousals, and
is dealt out to the trappers at four dollars a pint. When
inflamed by this fiery beverage, they cut all kinds of mad pranks
and gambols, and sometimes burn all their clothes in their
drunken bravadoes. A camp, recovering from one of these riotous
revels, presents a seriocomic spectacle; black eyes, broken
heads, lack-lustre visages. Many of the trappers have squandered
in one drunken frolic the hard-earned wages of a year; some have
run in debt, and must toil on to pay for past pleasure. All are
sated with this deep draught of pleasure, and eager to commence
another trapping campaign; for hardship and hard work, spiced
with the stimulants of wild adventures, and topped off with an
annual frantic carousal, is the lot of the restless trapper.
The captain now made his arrangements for the current year.
Cerre and Walker, with a number of men who had been to
California, were to proceed to St. Louis with the packages of
furs collected during the past year. Another party, headed by a
leader named Montero, was to proceed to the Crow country, trap
upon its various streams, and among the Black Hills, and thence
to proceed to the Arkansas, where he was to go into winter
quarters.
The captain marked out for himself a widely different course. He
intended to make another expedition, with twenty-three men to the
lower part of the Columbia River, and to proceed to the valley of
the Multnomah; after wintering in those parts, and establishing a
trade with those tribes, among whom he had sojourned on his first
visit, he would return in the spring, cross the Rocky Mountains,
and join Montero and his party in the month of July, at the
rendezvous of the Arkansas; where he expected to receive his
annual supplies from the States.
If the reader will cast his eye upon a map, he may form an idea
of the contempt for distance which a man acquires in this vast
wilderness, by noticing the extent of country comprised in these
projected wanderings. Just as the different parties were about
to set out on the 3d of July, on their opposite routes, Captain
Bonneville received intelligence that Wyeth, the indefatigable
leader of the salmon-fishing enterprise, who had parted with him
about a year previously on the banks of the Bighorn, to descend
that wild river in a bull boat, was near at hand, with a new
levied band of hunters and trappers, and was on his way once more
to the banks of the Columbia,
As we take much interest in the novel enterprise of this eastern
man," and are pleased with his pushing and persevering spirit;
and as his movements are characteristic of life in the
wilderness, we will, with the reader's permission, while Captain
Bonneville is breaking up his camp and saddling his horses, step
back a year in time, and a few hundred miles in distance to the
bank of the Bighorn, and launch ourselves with Wyeth in his bull
boat; and though his adventurous voyage will take us many
hundreds of miles further down wild and wandering rivers; yet
such is the magic power of the pen, that we promise to bring the
reader safe to Bear River Valley, by the time the last horse is
saddled.
Content of CHAPTER 40 [Washington Irving's book: The Adventures of Captain Bonneville]
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