CAPTAIN JOSEPH LA BARGE.

In the summer of 1896 the author of this work, while engaged in collecting data for a history of the American Fur Trade of the Far West, met the venerable Missouri River pilot, Captain Joseph La Barge, at his home in St. Louis. In the course of several interviews he became deeply impressed with the range and accuracy of the old gentleman’s knowledge of early Western history, and asked him if he had ever taken any steps to preserve the record of his adventurous career. He replied that he had often been urged to do so, but that lack of familiarity with that kind of work had hitherto caused him to shrink from it, and he presumed he should die without ever undertaking it. Believing that his memoirs were well worth preserving, as a part of the history of the West, the author proposed to prepare them for publication if he would consent to dictate them. After some hesitation he concluded to try it, and the work was forthwith begun. Full notes were taken in the rough, and a clean copy was then submitted to Captain La Barge for revision. He went through the whole with painstaking care, and the record was left as complete as axii memory of extraordinary power could make it. The intention was, at the time, to put the notes into shape for publication at once; but the Spanish-American war interfered with the author’s part of the work, and before it could be resumed Captain La Barge died.

This event led to a material change in the plan of the work, and it was decided to make it, not merely a narrative of personal experiences, but a history of steamboat navigation on the Missouri River. Very few people now have any conception of the part which this remarkable business played in the upbuilding of the West. There is no railroad system in the United States to-day whose importance to its tributary country is relatively greater than was that of the Missouri River to the trans-Mississippi territory in the first seventy-five years of the nineteenth century. The business of the fur trade, the intercourse of government agents with the Indians, the campaigns of the army throughout the valley, and the wild rush of gold-seekers to the mountains, all depended, in greater or less degree, upon the Missouri River as a line of transportation.

It is not alone from a commercial point of view that the record of this business is an important one. From beginning to end it abounds in thrilling incident, and the life which it fostered was full of picturesque and even tragic details. The circumstances surroundingxiii a voyage up or down the Missouri, whether by canoe, mackinaw, keelboat, or steamboat, were quite out of the line of ordinary experience. No other river in this country has a record to compare with it.

Captain La Barge’s life embraced the entire era of active boating business on the river. He saw it all—from the time when the Creole and Canadian voyageurs cordelled their keelboats up the refractory stream to the time when the railroad won its final victory over the steamboat. He was on the first boat that went to the far upper river, and he made the last through voyage from St. Louis to Fort Benton. He typified in his own career the meteoric rise and fall of that peculiar business. He grew up with it, prospered with it, and was ruined with and by it. He saw and shared the wonderful metamorphosis that came over the Missouri Valley in the space of fourscore years, and his reminiscences are a succession of living pictures taken all along the line.

It is hoped that the method adopted, of weaving the story which it is here attempted to relate around the biography of its most distinguished personality, will not detract from its value as historical material. It is not the bare narration of events that gives history its true value, but those intimate pictures of human life in other times that show what people really did and the motives by which they were actuated. To thisxiv end, biography, and even fiction, possess distinct advantages over the ordinary method of historical writing.

In the preparation of this work valuable personal aid has been received from many sources, particularly from the Hon. Phil E. Chappelle of Kansas City, Mo.; Messrs. N. P. Langford and J. B. Hubbell of St. Paul, Minn.; Hon. Wilbur F. Sanders of Helena, Mont.; and General Grenville M. Dodge of New York City.

CAPTAIN JOSEPH LA BARGE

(When a young man)

In the far-reaching operations of the French Government upon the continent of America, by which its western empire at one time embraced fully half of what is now the United States and Canada, two streams of colonization flowed inward from the sea. The course of one was along the valleys of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes to the upper Mississippi and its tributaries. That of the other was along the lower Mississippi northward from the Gulf of Mexico. The two streams met at the mouth of the Missouri, where their blended currents were deflected westward toward the unknown regions of the setting sun. Near this place of meeting there arose, more than a decade before the birth of the American Republic, a village which has now become one of the greatest cities in the western world. Here, in the early days, the Canadians from the north and the2 Creoles from the south, kindred in language and tradition, mingled in common pursuits and enterprises, and for many years bore an important part in the great movement which proceeded onward from this common starting-point.

Among the well-known families identified with this movement was one whose ancestral line represented both the northern and the southern blood, and was a pure type of their united quality. This was the family of Captain Joseph La Barge, the subject of the present sketch. The father of Captain La Barge was a typical representative of the French peasantry of Quebec. His mother was a Creole descendant of both the Spanish and French elements in the settlement of the Mississippi Valley.

On the paternal side the ancestors of Captain La Barge came from Normandy, France. Robert Laberge was a native of Columbière in the diocese of Bayonne, and was born in 1633. He came to America early in life and settled in the county of Montmorency, below Quebec, where he was married in 1663. He is said to have been the only person of the name who ever emigrated to America. His descendants are now of the most numerous family in the district of Beauharnois, if not in the entire province of Quebec, where it has held important positions both in Church and State. Its ramifications in the3 United States have likewise become very extensive. The true spelling of the name was Laberge, and this form still prevails in Quebec; but the St. Louis branch of the family has for many years spelled the name in two words, La Barge.

Captain La Barge was of the sixth generation from his Norman ancestors. His father, Joseph Marie La Barge, was born at Assomption, Quebec, July 4, 1787.1 He emigrated to St. Louis about 1808, just as he was arriving of age. He traveled by the usual route, up the Ottawa River and through the intricate system of waterways in northern Ontario which leads to Georgian Bay and to Lake Huron. Thence he went by way of Mackinaw Strait and Lake Michigan to Green Bay, and along the Fox and Wisconsin rivers to the Mississippi, which he descended to St. Louis. He used a single birch-bark canoe all the way, with only eight miles of portaging.

The elder La Barge led a varied career in St. Louis, as did most of the pioneers in those days, when fixed callings were few and men turned their hands to whatever fell in their way. A good deal of information has survived concerning him, and all to his credit.4 He was evidently a man of good parts, of strict integrity, loyal in his business relations, and a bold lover of the adventurous life which characterized the early history of this new country.2

At the time when the Sac and Fox Indians were giving the government so much trouble, and endangering human life all along the upper Mississippi, La Barge senior was employed in the perilous business of carrying dispatches to Rock Island, having volunteered for this service when others refused to go. He served in the War of 1812, and was present in the battle of the River Raisin, or Frenchtown, January 22, 1813, and was there shot in the hand, losing two fingers. He also received a tomahawk wound on the head, and carried the scar through life. He became naturalized as a result of this service in the army. Although entitled to a pension under the laws of the United States, he never asked for nor received any.

La Barge married in 1813, and some two years5 afterward acquired a farm at Baden, a small village a few miles north of St. Louis, and now within the limits of that city. His main business here was the manufacture of charcoal, which he hauled to St. Louis for sale. He soon moved to town, where he had gained quite an extensive acquaintance, particularly among the Canadian voyageurs. Here he opened up a boarding-house, which developed into a regular hotel or tavern, with a livery attachment, at that time one of the most important in the city. It was while engaged in this business that he served the English traveler, James Stuart, already referred to.

La Barge senior was, to a considerable extent, identified with the early trapping business in the Far West, and has left his name on geographical features in widely separated localities. There is a La Barge or Battle Creek, a tributary of the Missouri, which took its name from some affair with the Indians in which La Barge bore a part; but the details are apparently lost. The same is true of La Barge Creek, a tributary of Green River in Wyoming, which was named before 1830. La Barge was present in General Ashley’s disastrous fight with the Aricara Indians on the Missouri River in 1823, and was the man who cut the cable of one of the keelboats so that it might drift out of range of the fire of the Indians.3

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La Barge senior lived to a good old age, and was sound and healthy to the last. As a remarkable evidence of this, it was long remembered by his acquaintances that he practiced in old age his favorite winter pastime of skating. His death was the result of accident. He had heard that a brother-in-law, Joseph Hortiz, was ill, and he resolved to go to see him. It was a cold wintry day, and Captain La Barge tried to dissuade him, but to no purpose. He slipped on the icy sidewalk at the corner of Olive and Fourth streets, in St. Louis, struck the curb, and received injuries from which he died two days later, January 22, 1860.

Many interesting anecdotes of the elder La Barge have come down to us, some of which are worth relating as illustrating the character of the man in different situations. One of these comes from General Harney, who was long an intimate friend of Captain La Barge. In the later years of General Harney’s life, when physical ailments prevented his leaving the house, he used to send for Captain La Barge, if the latter happened to be derelict in his visits, to come and talk over old times. On one of these occasions, not long before his death, he gave the Captain the following story:

“Your father,” he said, “was the only man who ever scared me. We were ascending the Missouri River on a keelboat laden with troops and supplies,7 he in charge of the boat, and I, a lieutenant, on duty with the soldiers. In one place the boat had to round a sharp point, where there was an accumulation of driftwood. The current was very strong, and it required the utmost efforts of the men to stem it. When we reached the most difficult place, the Captain stimulated his men by calling out to them (in the French language), ‘Hale fort! Hale fort!’ (‘Pull hard! Pull hard!’). I didn’t understand French, but thought I detected in the Captain’s language something like the military command, ‘Halt.’ As some of the troops were on the line with the voyageurs, and as they might not understand, I thought I could help the Captain by repeating to them his command. This created some confusion, for my men began to slacken while the Captain’s were pulling harder than ever. Again he commanded, ‘Hale fort!’ and again I called to the men to halt. The situation was extremely critical when the Captain thundered a third time, ‘Hale fort!’ in a voice and manner not to be misunderstood. The men all bent to the line and finally extricated the boat from its perilous position. The Captain then came over to where I was standing and told me that if I ever dared interfere again with his management of the boat he would pitch me into the river. I knew he meant what he said, and thereafter confined myself to my military duties.”

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One fine morning in the early twenties a man called at the house of Mr. La Barge, who met him at the door and asked him what he wanted. The man said: “I applied to you a short time since for employment, having heard that you were hiring men for the Ashley Expedition.4 I was refused, and I would like to know the reason.”

“Simply because you did not suit,” replied La Barge.

“I am as good a man as you are or any you have employed, and I take the liberty of telling you so,” rejoined the six-footer.

“I want no trouble,” replied La Barge, “and therefore will request you to get out, or I will be compelled to put you out.”

“Just what I want you to undertake,” was the retort. Scarcely were the words out of his mouth when La Barge seized a rawhide riding whip and started for the fellow and laid him about the back and shoulders so vigorously that the man soon gave up the contest and took to his heels.

The next morning a constable came and arrested La Barge on the charge of assault and battery, with directions to bring him at once before Esquire Garnier, Justice of the Peace.

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“Lead the way, and I will follow,” said La Barge, taking down his rawhide and starting along with the constable. La Barge told the people he met on the way to come and see the fun. In due course the trial came off and La Barge was fined four dollars. He thanked the Justice, but handed him eight dollars, saying that the fun was cheap at that price, and he would give the fellow another dose. He then seized his whip and started for him, chasing him out into the street, where he gave him a second drubbing, to the great delight of the crowd, who stood around shouting and setting him on.

Another incident, which occurred late in life, exhibits the sterling integrity of the man who could withstand the temptations of wealth rather than do the smallest act of injustice. About the time that the elder La Barge was married he purchased from Joseph Morin, for the sum of twenty-five dollars, a small tract of land on Cedar Street, between Second and Third. Land was then of very little value, and transfers were often made without deed and with no more formality than in exchanging cattle or horses. In this way La Barge traded off his lot on Cedar Street to Chauvin Lebeau for a horse, with which he moved to his Baden farm, only recently purchased. Here, as already narrated, he manufactured charcoal and hauled it to town, where he sold it to Theodore Bosseron and Vilrais10 Papin, then the principal blacksmiths of the village. Long years afterward, when these transactions were almost forgotten, and the property had become very valuable, a lawyer presented himself to the old gentleman and asked him if he had ever owned any property on Cedar Street. La Barge replied in the affirmative and described its locality. The lawyer then asked him when and how he disposed of it. He could not at first recall, but Mrs. La Barge remembered the circumstances and related them to the lawyer, at the same time remarking to her husband that that was the way they got their horse to set themselves up on the farm with. The lawyer then assured La Barge that the title to this property was still in him, and that he could hold it against all comers, for there was absolutely no record of the conveyance in existence. The old gentleman, with a look of indignation, asked the lawyer if he took him for a thief. “I traded that land,” said he, “to Chauvin Lebeau for a horse, which was worth more to me then than the land was. I shall stand by the bargain now. If Chauvin Lebeau’s heirs have no title, tell them to come to me and I will make them a deed before I die.”

Such are some of the glimpses we still have through the mists of time of the father of Captain La Barge.

On the maternal side he was likewise descended from11 creditable ancestry. Among the early mechanics in the village of Fort de Chartres, near the mouth of the Ohio River, when to be a mechanic was to be a leading citizen, were Gabriel Dodier and Jean Baptiste Becquet, blacksmiths. The younger of these two men, Becquet, married the daughter of the other. They had three children, the eldest being a daughter, Marguerite Marianne. On the 27th of January, 1780, this daughter was married to Joseph Alvarez Hortiz, who was the son of François Alvarez and Bernada Hortiz, and was born in the town of Lienira, in the Province of Estremadura, Spain, in the year 1753. Alvarez was a private soldier in the military service of Spain, and came to St. Louis after Spanish authority had been established there in 1770. He attained the rank of sergeant, and being a man of some education, was for several years detailed as military attaché to the Governor. He finally became Secretary to the last two Spanish Governors, Trudeau and Delassus, and had charge of the public archives down to 1804. He had nine children, of whom the eighth was a daughter, of the name of Eulalie. This daughter was married to Joseph Marie La Barge in St. Louis, August 13, 1813.

The parents of Captain La Barge thus represented the best traditions of French and Spanish occupancy of the Mississippi Valley. Their marriage took place after their country had become American territory,12 and their offspring, the subject of our present inquiries, was born an American citizen.5

Joseph La Barge, son of Joseph Marie La Barge and Eulalie Hortiz, was born in St. Louis, October 1, 1815. He was the second child in a family of seven children, three boys and four girls, who all grew to adult years. The two brothers were Charles S., who was killed in a steamboat explosion in 1852, and John B., who dropped dead at the wheel in 1885 while making a steamboat landing at Bismarck, N. D.

Soon after the birth of Captain La Barge the parents moved to the newly acquired farm in Baden. There is but one incident relating to the young child while living here that need detain us. Although this place was distant only six miles from where the courthouse of St. Louis now stands, it was at that time unsettled and uncleared, and Indians not infrequently roamed in the vicinity. The Sac and Fox tribes were particularly troublesome, and many were the outrages which they committed upon the isolated settlement. The incident in question occurred one day just before the father had started on his usual trip to town. He was14 loading his cart at some distance from the garden, where Mrs. La Barge had gone to dig some potatoes to send to her mother in the village. Housewives in those days seldom enjoyed the luxury of nurses, and Mrs. La Barge was obliged to carry her child with her into the garden. Depositing him between the rows of potatoes, she was proceeding with her work, when suddenly the house dog set up a cry of alarm. Looking up, Mrs. La Barge was horrified to see an Indian approaching. She uttered a scream and started for the house, forgetting in the suddenness of her alarm the baby in the garden. Meanwhile the father had heard the dog’s bark and his wife’s screams, and hastened to see what was the matter. His first question was about the baby, and Mrs. La Barge, more terrified than ever, rushed back to where she had left him. Fortunately the dog had held the Indian at bay, and when the father arrived, gun in hand, he beat a prompt retreat. Captain La Barge’s father often reminded him of this incident in after years, predicting that he would always escape harm from the Indians, for they had had their opportunity and had failed. In his many experiences with the Indians throughout a life spent in their country, he never suffered personal injury at their hands, and came to have faith in his father’s prediction.

Captain La Barge was not yet two years old when15 the first steamboat came to St. Louis, nor four when the first one entered the Missouri River. It is said that his father used to take him to the river bank to see these early boats, and that they always had a great attraction for his youthful fancy. To be a steamboat master was his ambition, and he spent much of his time as a child in drawing boats and making models, and thus unwittingly training himself for his after career.

The boy was a leader among his fellows, and an expert in all youthful games practiced at the time. In contests of skill among the boys of the village each side was anxious to secure Joe La Barge. “He could jump higher,” says one authority, “run faster, and swim farther than any other lad in the town.”

Among the noteworthy events of Captain La Barge’s childhood, the memory of which clung by him even in old age, was the visit of Lafayette to St. Louis in 1825. This venerable patriot, whom, next to Washington, Americans in that day delighted to honor, arrived in St. Louis on board the steamer Natchez, at 9 A. M., May 29. He was met at the wharf by a committee of leading citizens, and an address of welcome was made by the Mayor, to which Lafayette responded. He then entered a carriage with the Mayor and Mr. Auguste Chouteau and Stephen Hempstead, a soldier of the Revolution, and was driven to16 the house of Mr. Pierre Chouteau, Sr., which had been prepared for his reception. He was escorted by a company of light horsemen, and also by a company of uniformed boys, of whom Captain La Barge, then ten years old, was one. The Captain always remembered the venerable appearance of the General and his review of the youthful troop. He shook hands with them, indulged in the pleasant questions which age delights to ask of youth, and doubtless himself took a keen pleasure in the incident, because most of his youthful auditors could reply in his own tongue.6

An interesting sequel of Lafayette’s visit to St. Louis occurred in that city in 1881, on the occasion of17 the visit of Lafayette’s grandson with General Boulanger and party, who had come to America to attend the centennial celebration of the surrender of Yorktown. Captain La Barge was sent for, to meet the distinguished company at the Merchants’ Exchange. When introduced to the members of the party, the grandson of Lafayette came forward, and taking La Barge by both hands, looked at him a moment and said: “You have seen one whom I wish it were my lot to have seen, and that is my revered grandfather.” He cordially urged the Captain to come to his home if he should ever visit France, and in other ways showed an almost affectionate interest in this individual who had once, though but a boy, beheld the face of his distinguished ancestor.

Captain La Barge’s schooling was necessarily very limited, for the educational facilities of St. Louis in those days were of a truly primitive order. He first went to a schoolmaster of considerable local renown, Jean Baptiste Trudeau, at the latter’s private residence on Pine Street, between Main and Second. Here he studied the common branches, all in French. He went for a time to Salmon Giddings, founder of the First Presbyterian Church, in St. Louis, and later to a more pretentious school kept by Elihu H. Shephard, an excellent teacher. At both of these schools instruction was given in English. Captain La Barge’s18 parents foresaw that their native tongue could not long survive in common use, and felt it to be their duty to equip their son, so far as their slender means would permit, with the language of his country. The pupil found the task a tedious one, and was a long while in mastering it. He never forgot the almost insurmountable obstacle he found in the English “th.” He used his native language in common intercourse down to nearly 1850, and retained a fluent command of it to his death. He also acquired a very perfect command of English, in which there was no trace of foreign accent, but in which the mellowing influence of the softer tongue had produced a modulation of the voice that was very pleasant to listen to.

In 1819 there was established in Perry County, Mo., a Catholic School, St. Mary’s College. Young La Barge was sent there at the age of twelve, and remained three years. On their way to the college himself and father traveled by the steamer Tuscumbia. It was Captain La Barge’s first ride in a kind of boat with which most of his after life was to be connected. The desire of the young man’s parents was to educate their son for the priesthood, and his course at college was shaped somewhat to that end. But the boy did not fall in with their plans, as his tastes ran in a different direction. He did not finish the course, for his career at the school was summarily cut short by a19 delinquency which is the only one we have to record in a life of more than fourscore years. He became involved in intrigues with young women to an extent which barred him from a further continuation of his course.

Associated with him in this unfortunate episode was Edward Liguest Chouteau, a youth of about the same age as himself. The young men walked to St. Genevieve, on the Mississippi. Chouteau was without funds, and La Barge nearly so, having scarcely the amount of a single steamboat fare to St. Louis. They found the De Witt Clinton at the bank on her way up the river. La Barge told the captain of the boat the straight story of their misfortune: that they had only enough money for a single fare to St. Louis, and would have to walk unless they could make some arrangement with him. He laughed, and told them to get on board and he would see them home. This incident, in which the two young men were companions in misfortune, was not forgotten by either, and we shall have occasion to refer to it again in the course of this narrative.

After La Barge left college his father placed him in the office of John Bent, a leading lawyer of St. Louis, and one of the noted Bent brothers. He soon became disgusted with his new situation on account of his preceptor’s habit of excessive drink. He then went20 into a clothing store, and after remaining about a year, left that.

The restless ambition of the young man was now directed toward a kind of life which, in every portion of the country, has filled up the period between discovery and settlement—the business of the fur trade. At this particular time it was the only business carried on in the trans-Mississippi territory beyond the few scattering settlements along the lower Missouri. Large parties of hunters and trappers remained constantly in the wilderness, wandering all over those vast regions in quest of beaver and other fur. Each spring expeditions set out for various points in the Far West from Santa Fe to the British boundary, carrying supplies and recruits and bringing back the furs collected during the previous year. The great bulk of this business was done along the Missouri River, where trading posts were established throughout the entire valley. The annual journeys to these posts were always made by water. In the keelboat days they consumed an entire summer, but after the steamboat came they were completed by the middle of July.

From its very nature this business was one of adventure and excitement, and particularly attractive to those who were fond of an independent and out-of-door life. We can but faintly imagine at this day how strong was the attraction for youth in this wild life.21 Now it is considered a great piece of good luck for a boy to get on a common surveying party in the mountains, where he may see something of the wildness of nature, and perhaps catch sight of some surviving specimens of the larger game. In those days a trip to the mountains meant adventure of the genuine sort—absence from civilization, ever-present danger from the Indians, game of all kinds in abundance, and the grandeur and beauty of nature in a region still unknown except to a very few.

Being now at the impressionable age of sixteen, young La Barge became infatuated with the tales of adventure related by those who came back every year from the distant mountains. He told his father that, for the present, his mind was made up. He would join one of the fur-trade expeditions and see something of the Indian country. This decision met a responsive chord in the adventurous nature of the father, who said he had no objection if the mother were willing. The matter was laid before her, and after much entreaty and expostulation, her consent was secured. This was in the year 1831.

Captain La Barge did not immediately find an opportunity to visit the Indian country. The annual expeditions for the year had all gone. The Yellowstone was already far away on her historic first trip up the Missouri for the American Fur Company, and nothing was left for the impatient youth but to await a later opportunity. When the Yellowstone returned from her voyage, she was sent down the Mississippi to pass the time until the following spring in the Bayou la Fourche sugar trade. La Barge was engaged as second clerk on this voyage and found himself in constant demand as interpreter during the winter. The people of the Bayou la Fourche district spoke only French, which most of the officers of the boat did not understand. La Barge, who knew both French and English well, was of great use in carrying on the trade.

In the spring of 1832 the Yellowstone returned to St. Louis to prepare for her second voyage up the Missouri. This boat had been built as an experiment,23 to determine if it would be practicable to substitute steamboats for keelboats in the trade of the upper river. In the summer of 1831 she had gone as far as Fort Tecumseh, which stood on the opposite shore from the present capital of South Dakota. It was now proposed to take her as far as the mouth of the Yellowstone. The attempt was completely successful, and the voyage has ever since been considered one of the landmarks of the early history of the West.

Although La Barge was only in his seventeenth year he signed a contract binding himself to the service of the American Fur Company, as voyageur, engagé, or clerk, for a period of three years, at a salary of seven hundred dollars for the whole time.7 He did not go as part of the boat’s crew, but as an employee of one of the posts. No place was specified in his engagement, but his assignment was left to the bourgeois of the different posts, who came down to the boat when it arrived, looked over the new engagés, and selected such as they thought would suit them. Young La Barge was a promising-looking lad, and did not get above Council Bluffs, where he was taken off and put to work at Cabanné’s post, a few miles above the modern city of Omaha.

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When the Yellowstone returned from Fort Union, John P. Cabanné, the bourgeois in charge of the post, went down to St. Louis and took La Barge with him. While waiting to return to the upper country the young engagé took temporary service on the steamboat Warrior, Captain Throckmorton, bound for the seat of the Blackhawk, or Sac and Fox, war. She was loaded with government stores for Prairie du Chien, and La Barge went along in some subordinate capacity. It happened that she arrived at the scene of the Battle of Bad Axe just as that decisive conflict was going on. Captain Throckmorton saw a number of Indians trying to make their escape by swimming the river and he fired into them, killing several. They proved to be all women, and the over-zealous captain long had reason to regret his hasty action. After this adventure the Warrior returned to St. Louis.

When Cabanné went back to his post at the Council Bluffs young La Barge went with him to commence in earnest his life in the Indian country. His initiation into the business of the fur trade was such as to leave a lasting impression on his mind. He had not been at Cabanné’s post very long when he had a lively experience of the evils of competition in that business, and of the extreme measures to which unrestrained rivalry sometimes led. Narcisse Leclerc, at one time25 an employee of the American Fur Company, had saved a little means, which certain parties in St. Louis eked out to a respectable sum, and he resolved to go into the trading business on his own and their account. Under the style of the Northwest Fur Company he carried on a prosperous trade in a small way for two or three seasons. The American Fur Company, jealous of all opposition, always treated these petty rivals with the utmost severity, and, if possible, crushed them by sheer force. When it could not do this it bought them out. Leclerc, who was a shrewd fellow, and as unscrupulous as any of the company’s agents, had developed staying qualities which caused the company a good deal of uneasiness. He went up the river in the autumn of 1832 with a larger outfit than ever, and the company determined that something must be done to arrest his career. The problem was left for Cabanné to solve, and he was given authority, as a last resort, to offer Leclerc outright a thousand dollars if he would not carry his trade up the river beyond a specified point.

Circumstances, however, threw in Cabanné’s way what he considered a better means of dealing with Leclerc. Congress had lately passed a law prohibiting the importation of liquor into the Indian country. Cabanné found out in some way that Leclerc had smuggled a considerable quantity past the military authorities26 at Leavenworth. Here was his opportunity. He would stop the expedition, and confiscate the property on the ground that Leclerc was violating the law of the land. It did not seem to occur to him that the enforcement of the law is intrusted to duly constituted officials, and that he, not being one of these, could not legally do more than inform against Leclerc. He did not trouble himself about fine distinctions of that sort. Exultantly he wrote to the house in St. Louis: “Have no fear; leave the matter to me, and I will make our incapable adversary bite the dust.”

Cabanné laid his plans well for the capture of Leclerc’s outfit. As soon as the boat passed his post he organized a party under charge of Peter A. Sarpy, clerk at the post, to go and arrest Leclerc. Sarpy picked out about a dozen men, among whom was the new engagé, La Barge. They were all well armed and carried besides a small cannon. Going to a point near old Fort Lisa, where the channel of the river came in close to a high impending bank, Sarpy stationed his men there and awaited Leclerc’s arrival. At the proper time, when the voyageurs were cordelling the boat along a sandbar just opposite, scarcely a hundred yards off, he ordered Leclerc’s party to surrender or he would “blow everything out of the water.” Although Leclerc had some thirty men, they were mostly unarmed, and could make no effective27 resistance. They surrendered, and the whole outfit returned to Cabanné’s post, where the liquor was confiscated and the expedition broken up.

This drastic measure came near proving fatal to the company’s business upon the river. Leclerc immediately returned to St. Louis, where he began suit against the company and lodged a criminal complaint against Cabanné. The matter bore a very serious aspect for a time. It was with the utmost difficulty, and with an evident resort to misrepresentation, that the company’s license was saved; and doubtless it would have been revoked but for the influence of Senator Thomas H. Benton. As it was, it cost the company a large sum of money, increased the public distrust of this powerful concern, and banished Cabanné, one of its most efficient servants, permanently from the country.

At Cabanné’s post La Barge was employed in the various duties of engagé, and was frequently sent out to surrounding bands of Indians with small outfits of merchandise to trade for their furs. His most interesting and valuable experience in this line was with the Pawnees, who resided on the Loup Fork of the Platte, about one hundred miles west of the Missouri. They were what are called permanent village Indians; that is, they had fixed villages made of large, strong houses, where they regularly lived; while many of the28 tribes, like the Sioux, Crows, and Blackfeet, lived only in tents, and were always moving from one place to another. The Pawnees, it is true, roved about a great deal on their hunting and war expeditions, but they had a fixed place of abode to which they always returned from their wanderings. Their houses were circular in form and quite large, being sometimes sixty feet in diameter, and, to judge from pictures of them, resembled in appearance, when seen from a distance, a group of oil tanks in a modern petroleum district.

Near to their villages the Pawnees cultivated extensive fields of maize or Indian corn. After the spring planting was over they generally went on long excursions to hunt buffalo, to make war, or to secure wood and other materials for the village. Their cornfields were left to shift for themselves during this period, and their enemies sometimes took advantage of this fact; but on the whole the latter were very cautious about what they did, for they knew that the wily Pawnee would learn who the robbers were and would not fail to exact full retribution. When the corn was ripe the Indians gathered it and remained in their villages a considerable part of the winter. Their business, however, compelled them at this season to make their hunts for robes and furs, which were salable only when taken during the cold weather. When the skins were brought into the villages the squaws took them,29 scraped them down, rubbed them with brains or pork, and otherwise manipulated them until they were soft and flexible and ready for the trade.

The custom of the traders was to send over from their posts near the old Council Bluffs one or more clerks, with a few men and the necessary merchandise, to reside in the villages until the trade was over. The clerk generally lived in the lodge of the principal chief, kept his goods there, and also such furs as were received in trade. After the season’s business was over the furs were loaded into bullboats, in which they were floated down the Loup and the Platte rivers to the Missouri. Here they were reshipped in large cargoes to St. Louis.

It was on a business of this kind that young La Barge spent his first winter in the Indian country—1832–33. His party consisted of four men, who, with the merchandise, were accommodated in the lodge of the chief Big Axe. Here they settled down to genuine Indian life—not half so uninteresting and repulsive as one might be disposed to think. The business of the trade, the ceremonials, the games and gambling, and the never-failing attractions of the gentler sex, which, one may easily believe, are as potent in the wilderness as in the city, all operated to make the time pass agreeably during the long and severe winters. The huts were very comfortable, and Captain30 La Barge always remembered them as the coolest habitations in summer and the warmest in winter of any that he had ever occupied. He noted as a remarkable peculiarity that mosquitoes never entered them.

During his winter sojourn among the Pawnees La Barge applied himself assiduously to learning their language. The interpreter would give him words and sentences in Pawnee and he would write them down and learn them. He practically mastered the language in the course of the winter, to the great astonishment of the natives and even of the whites. To the Indians the process of writing was a great curiosity, a “big medicine,” and when they saw young La Barge write down something and then read it off, they would put their hands to their mouths in their characteristic manner of expressing wonder.

There were numerous Indian scares during the winter, and Captain La Barge fully expected to see something of Indian warfare before he left the villages, but nothing of the sort actually occurred. In the spring of 1833, before he left for the Missouri, Major John Dougherty, Indian agent residing at Bellevue, about ten miles below the modern city of Omaha, arrived at the villages for the purpose of ransoming a female prisoner of the Crow nation, who had been sentenced to be burned at the stake. He prevailed,31 through Big Axe, chief of the Pawnee Loups, upon having her given up on payment of the ransom. He then started back with her to Bellevue, accompanied by an escort, until at a safe distance from the villages. When about ten miles on their way they were overtaken by a Pawnee chief, Spotted Horse, who came riding up at a gallop, and when opposite the woman, shot an arrow through her heart.

When the high water of spring arrived the furs were loaded into bullboats and shipped down to the mouth of the Platte. La Barge returned to Cabanné’s, and after a short time started for St. Louis with a fleet of mackinaw boats loaded with furs. He reached St. Louis in the latter part of May, 1833.

Before La Barge arrived in St. Louis the company had dispatched two boats to the upper river—the Yellowstone and the Assiniboine. The voyage of 1833 is particularly noteworthy as the one on which Prince Maximilian of Wied made his celebrated visit to the upper Missouri—a visit which has done more than any other one thing to preserve a true picture of those early times. The Yellowstone went only as far as Fort Pierre, whence she returned immediately, and as soon as another cargo could be shipped, started on a trip to Council Bluffs.

Captain La Barge went back up the river on this second trip of the Yellowstone to return to his post. It proved to be a most trying and pathetic voyage. The cholera, which was then epidemic throughout the country, broke out with great virulence on the boat, and so many of the crew died that Captain Bennett was forced to stop at the mouth of the Kansas River until he could go back to St. Louis for a crew. His pilot and most of his sub-officers were dead, and he33 was compelled to leave the boat in care of young La Barge, who thus began his career as a steamboat man on the Missouri. His several voyages had given him considerable knowledge of the art of handling these boats, and he had no misgivings in being left in charge, except the fear that the cholera might take him off. It was a very trying moment. Captain Bennett, when he started back to St. Louis, cried like a child. The terrible power of the disease unstrung everyone’s nerves. Victims often died within two hours after being attacked, and no one knew when his turn would come.

Scarcely had Captain Bennett left when a new difficulty arose. The “graybacks,” as the scattered population of western Missouri were then called, having learned that the Yellowstone had cholera on board, organized themselves into a pro tempore State board of health and ordered Captain La Barge to take the boat out of the State, or they would burn her up. The engineer and firemen were dead, so Captain La Barge fired up himself, and, acting as pilot, engineer, and all, succeeded in getting the boat above the mouth of the Kansas and on the west shore of the river, outside the jurisdiction of the State of Missouri.

The Yellowstone had a quantity of goods on board consigned to Cyprian Chouteau’s trading post, which was located some ten miles up the Kansas River.34 Captain Bennett had directed La Barge to turn over these goods to the consignees during his absence. Accordingly, at the first opportunity, he set off alone on foot to find the trading post and tell Mr. Chouteau to come and get his goods. When about a mile from the post he was met by a man who had been stationed there to watch for anyone coming from the Missouri. The news of the cholera was abroad and the lonely post had quarantined itself against the civilized world. The man would not permit La Barge to come nearer, and threatened to shoot him if he persisted. La Barge agreed to stay where he was if the man would return to the post and carry his message to Chouteau. This was done, and Chouteau sent back word to store the goods on the bank and leave them there. It was now too late to return to the boat that night after a fatiguing day’s work, and La Barge would have had to go supperless and coverless to sleep but for the kind offices of his old college chum and former companion in misfortune, Edward Liguest Chouteau, who happened to be at the post. Hearing of La Barge’s situation, he went to find him. He reached his friend’s bivouac about midnight and found him trying to pass the night in some comfort around a large bonfire. He brought something to eat and a large buffalo robe to sleep on, and La Barge got through the remainder of the night very well.

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While the Yellowstone was lying above the mouth of the Kansas the Assiniboine passed down on her return trip.8 La Barge signaled for assistance, but Captain Pratt would not stop. “It was pretty hard,” observed the captain, in narrating this affair. “I never refused to answer a distress signal, even if the boat were engaged in the strongest opposition; but our two boats were in the same trade, bound to assist each other, and yet we were left there alone in the severest straits, with no idea when we should be relieved.”

When asked how these grave dangers, which were more or less his portion through life, affected him, Captain La Barge replied that, if in idleness and given time to think about them, they always depressed and in a measure unnerved him; but he was generally actively engaged, and the interest in his work and the responsibility resting upon him caused him to forget the danger. Violence and death were a familiar feature of the life in which he was engaged, and to some extent he became hardened to them. Speaking of the great number of deaths along the river, the Captain36 shook his head reflectively as he told of the many burials that it had been his lot to make. “There is a spot just below Kansas City—I could point it out now,” he said, “where I buried eight cholera victims in one grave. I could easily name a hundred localities along the river where I have buried passengers or crew. I generally sought some elevated ground for this purpose, which the ravages of the river could not reach. The graves were marked, if at all, with wooden head-boards, for there was generally no other material at hand, and if there were, time did not permit the use of it. It will never be known, and cannot now even be conjectured, how many of these forgotten graves there are, but enough to make the shores of the Missouri River one continuous cemetery from its source to its mouth. Were every white man’s grave along that stream distinctly marked, the voyageur would never be out of sight of these pathetic reminders of futile contests with the universal enemy. But, alas! no mark remains upon any but a very few, and the names of those who are buried in them are forever wrapped in oblivion.”

After a long delay Captain Bennett returned with a crew on the steamboat Otto, Captain James Hill, an opposition boat in the service of Sublette & Campbell. This was the year when Sublette & Campbell made such a strong show of competition with the American37 Fur Company.9 Sublette himself was on board the Otto at the time. As soon as Captain Bennett resumed charge of the Yellowstone the boat proceeded on her way and reached Cabanné’s post in August.

Cabanné having been expelled from the Indian country, the post had a new bourgeois, Joshua Pilcher, a man of long experience in the Indian country, and former president of the Missouri Fur Company. Late in the month of August Pilcher sent La Barge with a small outfit of goods to the Pawnee villages to buy some buffalo meat. La Barge packed his goods on five horses and set out. He found the Pawnees still absent, and as war parties of their enemies might be lurking around the vacant villages, he thought it prudent to await at a distance the return of the Indians. In the meanwhile his party ran out of provisions, and their situation was becoming serious when La Barge decided to go and get corn enough from the fields to last them until the Pawnees should return. He went with another man, and they soon loaded themselves with ears and returned to camp. This process continued successfully for several days, great pains being taken to levy tribute uniformly throughout the cornfield, so that the Indians might not detect the loss.38 They were not skillful enough in this, however, and finally had to pay for the corn.

On the fourth day of their foraging expeditions they were discovered by a small war party of Sioux about a mile off. They took to flight, and tried to infuse some life into their mules, but the stolid animals would not hurry. This was particularly the case with La Barge’s mule, which could scarcely be driven into a slow gallop. La Barge saw that at the rate they were going they would surely be cut off, and he told his companion, who had the best mule, to hurry to camp for help, and he would stand the Indians off with his rifle. The companion did not like to do this, but La Barge insisted. He felt comparatively safe for a short time, for he was in a perfectly open plain, where it was impossible for the Indians to approach under cover. Whenever they drew too near he would level his rifle at them and they would venture no further. In the meanwhile he kept moving on toward camp, and soon had the pleasure of seeing his companion riding up at full speed with re-enforcements.

When the Pawnees returned La Barge bought a good supply of meat and took it to Cabanné’s. There he found that veteran mountaineer, Etienne Provost, who at that time probably knew the western country better than any other living man. He had just come in for the purpose of guiding Fontenelle and Drips,39 partners in the American Fur Company mountain service, and owners of the trading post at Bellevue, to the Bayou Salade (South Park, Colorado), where they intended to spend the winter trapping beaver. Provost heard of La Barge’s adventure and complimented him very warmly upon it. He was now an old man, but he came up to La Barge, took him by both hands, and said to him: “I am glad you did not show the white feather to those rascals. You are the kind of man for this country. I am going to ask Major Pilcher to let you go with me. I have need of such men.” La Barge was very anxious to go, filled as he was then with the thirst of youth for adventure. But Major Pilcher needed his services and would not consent. Pilcher was very kind to La Barge, even permitting him to eat at his table—a great concession, for none of the employees were allowed to eat with the bourgeois of the post unless it was so stipulated in their contract of service. Pilcher took a special pride in his young engagé, and tried to put opportunities for distinction in his way.

In November, 1833, Pilcher sent La Barge down to a small trading post at the mouth of the Nishnabotna (river where they make canoes), kept by Francis Duroins for the convenience of a local band of Indians. La Barge’s mission was to take two twenty-gallon kegs of alcohol to Duroins. He was accompanied by a half-blood Indian, and they made the trip in a canoe. The first night they encamped on Trudeau Island, about two and a half miles above the mouth of the Weeping Water River. This island was named after Zenon Trudeau, a trader, brother of the noted schoolmaster, Joseph Trudeau, and was later called Hurricane Island, from the circumstance of its having been swept by a tornado. It has since been entirely washed away. This was the night of the ever-to-be-remembered meteoric shower of 1833. La Barge was awaked from his sleep by the brilliant light, and, though not apprehensive of any impending calamity, was naturally awe-struck at the extraordinary display. The meteors were flying, as it seemed41 to him, in all directions, and their number and brilliancy made the night as light as day. The half-breed companion was absolutely panic-stricken, and declared that the day of doom was at hand. But he did not forget, in his fright, the divine injunction to “eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” Rolling himself up in his blanket, he besought La Barge to open the keg of alcohol and let him meet his fate as became a man in that wild and lawless country.

As nearly as La Barge could recall, the heavier part of the shower lasted about two hours. A singular incident occurred early in its duration. A deer which had become frightened at the unusual sight came bounding through the undergrowth and plunged directly into camp, coming to a dead halt scarcely six paces from where La Barge was sitting. He seized a shotgun and killed it with a load of buckshot.

In January, 1834, the winter express came up from St. Louis. The express was a matter of great importance in the early fur trade. It was sent from St. Louis every winter to all the posts. Usually an express started downstream from the upper posts before the arrival of that from below. They generally met at Fort Pierre, exchanged dispatches, and each made the return trip from that point. By means of the express an interchange of views was had between the house in St. Louis and the partners in the field; and42 the latter were able to send down statements of business, requisitions for supplies, with information as to the prospects for the ensuing season’s trade at the upper posts, and the condition of snow in the mountains. The carrying of the express was a matter of great danger and hardship. It was generally done in the dead of winter. Between Pierre and St. Louis it was carried on horseback; above Pierre on dogsleds. The packages were put up with the most scrupulous care, and were intrusted only to those in whom the company had absolute confidence. The bearers were not permitted to carry anything else, nor to do errands for others, but were required to attend to the express only. The chief danger on the long journey was from the cold, for at this season the Indians were not dangerous, being generally huddled together in their villages for the winter. The route above Bellevue was along the west shore to opposite Vermillion, where it crossed the river and remained on the east shore the rest of the way until opposite Fort Pierre.

Captain La Barge’s father brought up the express from St. Louis in the winter of 1834. He was to return from Cabanné’s post, and Pilcher was to provide for its carriage the rest of the way. A few days before his arrival a brutal murder occurred at the post. A half-breed named Pinaud, while in a state of drunkenness, shot and killed a white man named43 Blair. Both of the men were hunters for the post. Pilcher immediately put Pinaud in irons, to be held until he could be sent to St. Louis for trial. When the elder La Barge arrived Pilcher asked him if he would undertake to deliver the prisoner to the United States authorities in St. Louis. He agreed to try it. When ready to start he requested Pilcher to remove the irons and put Pinaud on a mule. This astonished Pilcher a good deal, but La Barge explained that the man could ride better with the free use of his limbs, which was also necessary to keep him from freezing to death. He said he could catch him if he undertook to run, for the mule was no match in speed for his horse. He would take the irons and put them on in camp.

The prisoner was delivered in due time to the proper authorities in St. Louis, where he was held for trial. And now ensued one of those miscarriages, or rather travesties, of justice which marked the entire history of the American Fur Company on the Missouri River. Although Pinaud’s crime was a cold-blooded and causeless murder, it was nevertheless of vital importance that he be acquitted; otherwise it would bring out the fact that the Company was violating the Federal statutes by selling liquor at its posts. The company therefore took good care that none of the people from the upper country who were conversant with the44 facts should be in St. Louis when the trial came off. The prosecution, consequently, could produce no witnesses, and the man was acquitted.

Two or three days after the elder La Barge left Cabanné’s post for St. Louis, Pilcher summoned young La Barge to him and asked him to take the express to Pierre. “There are old voyageurs here whom I can send,” he said, “but I can’t trust them. I want you to go. What do you say to it?”

“Well, Major,” La Barge replied, “I have never been as far above this post in my life, but if you have confidence in me I think I can get through.”

“I believe you will,” said the Major. “I will trust you, at any rate. Get ready and you shall have the best horse in the post.”

In fact Pilcher gave La Barge his own horse, a very fine animal. Captain La Barge made ready and set out alone in a country entirely new to him, uninhabited by white men, and now buried in the embrace of a northern winter. He took a few pounds of hard bread and a few ears of corn to parch, but for the rest subsisted on game. He followed the foot of the bluffs as far as possible, and in due time reached Fort Pierre. Fortunately, the day after his arrival the express from Fort Union came in. Exchanges were made, and after a short rest La Barge set out on his return trip. He reached Cabanné in good time.45 The exploit gratified Pilcher highly, and he said to La Barge, “I knew I had made no mistake.”

Captain La Barge recalled only two incidents on this trip: He saw one day, what he never saw before nor afterward, although he had heard hunters and Indians relate similar experiences, two dead elk whose horns had become interlocked in fighting, and who had died bound together in that way. While in camp one night, just above Vermillion, he had a good fire of dry cottonwood and willows, and was roasting a prairie chicken in the flame. Happening to look up, he saw four gray wolves only a little way off on the opposite side of the fire, looking steadily at him. He was almost paralyzed at the sight, but nevertheless did not leave his place, but quietly got his gun and pistols convenient for action and sat still and watched his visitors. After looking at him a few minutes, and concluding, apparently, that he was not the kind of game they were after, they withdrew.

In the month of April, 1834, La Barge was sent with a party under one La Chapelle to go to the Pawnees and bring down the bullboats with the winter’s trade. They were detained several days at the Pawnee Loup village, waiting for some of the Indians to come in. During this delay a band of horse-stealing Sioux slipped into the village one stormy night, and, opening the corrals, let out some sixty head of horses and46 got away without waking anybody up. When the theft was discovered the following morning the chief called for volunteers to go in pursuit. Some seventy-five men started, and with them La Barge and a companion named Bercier. La Barge had never had an experience of this sort, and thought the present opportunity a good one. On the second evening after their departure they discovered the thieves and their horses encamped on the Elkhorn River. There were about fifteen of the Indians. The pursuers carefully reconnoitered the position, and next morning at daybreak attacked it, killing eleven of the Indians and capturing all of the horses. The man Bercier, who accompanied La Barge, met death at the hand of another tribe of Indians thirty-one years afterward. In 1865 he went up the Missouri with Captain La Barge to Fort Benton, and was killed by the Blackfeet on the Teton River near that post.

On their way down the Platte from the Pawnees, on this trip, the party were greatly annoyed by rattlesnakes at the camps on shore. If they made camp before dark they carefully scoured the entire neighborhood and killed or drove off these dangerous reptiles. But they often kept on the river as long as they could see, and on such occasions could not take the usual precaution. The snakes were not pugnacious, and sought the camp only because of the warm nestling47 places they found there. They liked to creep into or under the blankets, and the great danger was that when the occupant of the bed awoke he might step on or otherwise hurt the snakes and cause them to strike before he was conscious of their presence. On one occasion Captain La Barge found two of these snakes under his coat, which he had folded and used for a pillow. In some places they were so numerous as to cause the Indians to move their camps. An instance of this kind occurred at Red Cloud, below what is now Chamberlain, S. D., where the site of the agency had to be changed. As late as 1883, when Captain La Barge was pilot of a boat in the service of a United States surveying party, he took some members of the party to a point near the Bijoux hills, where he remembered having seen long years before a colony of rattlesnakes. Sure enough, there they were, still as thick as in former days. The party killed 130 within a few minutes. Captain La Barge could not recall a single death from a rattlesnake bite in his whole experience on the river. He stated that swine were the best exterminators of these reptiles.

As soon as the robes had been packed into mackinaw boats at the mouth of the Platte, about the middle of May, 1834, La Barge started for St. Louis. This was the last of his service with Pilcher, for before his return the Major had left the post for some more48 important business in St. Louis. He had taken a great liking to the young engagé and undertook to secure him a promotion. He sent down by La Barge a letter of recommendation to Daniel Lamont, one of the partners of the upper Missouri department of the American Fur Company. Captain La Barge knew nothing of the letter at the time. It eventually found its way into the Chouteau archives, where it was discovered by the author of this work and shown to Captain La Barge sixty-two years after it was written. It read as follows:

After a few weeks’ visit among his friends in St. Louis in the spring of 1834 La Barge started back on the steamer Diana for Cabanné’s post. Pilcher was no longer in charge, having been succeeded by Peter A. Sarpy. During his service under Sarpy La Barge had an adventure which came near cutting off his career on the river almost at its beginning. Late in the fall of the year Sarpy sent him down to Bellevue to take charge of a herd of horses which was being wintered there for the mountain expeditions of Fontenelle and Drips. There were about 150 horses in the herd, and they were kept on the east side of the river in the bottoms, where they subsisted mostly on the bark of young cottonwood trees. This kind of forage was extensively used in those days. It was an excellent food and was liked by the stock. Instances are recorded where they have taken it in preference to grain. Horses throve well upon it, and it is related that Kenneth McKenzie at Fort Union fed it exclusively to his hunting stock.

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The method of preparing the bark for forage along the Missouri River was as follows: The trees were cut down and the trunk then cut into short logs three or four feet long. In the winter time the bark was frozen and had to be thawed out before using. To do this the logs were stood up in front of a fire and turned around gradually until the bark was warmed through. It was then peeled off with drawknives and cut up into small pieces, after which it was ready for food. It was very essential that the bark be thawed out when fed, for the sharp edges of the shavings were like knife blades if frozen, and liable to cut the throats and stomachs of the horses. Animals were occasionally lost from this cause. After the logs had been stripped of their bark they were split and piled on the river bank, forming an excellent fuel for the next season’s steamboat. Traders at the various posts were under standing instructions to gather up the “horse wood” in their vicinity and pile it on the bank of the river, where it could be reached by the boats.

It was while engaged in this work of caring for horses that La Barge had the adventure just alluded to. It was mid-winter, 1834–35. The Missouri was frozen deep, and a pathway led from the post at Bellevue across the river on the ice to the east bottoms, where the herd was kept. The path ran between two large airholes through the ice—one just51 above and the other about a hundred yards below. The weather was extremely cold, and there was every indication of an approaching blizzard. Captain La Barge wrapped himself in a blanket coat, held tight to his body by a belt, and was armed with a rifle, tomahawk, and knife. He experienced no difficulty in crossing to the east shore, for the wind was behind his back. But before he was ready to return the blizzard was on in full force; the wind came from the west obliquely across the river, and the drifting snow completely obliterated the path. La Barge nevertheless felt confident of crossing all right, for the distance was short, and he knew the way so well that he felt as if he could follow it blindfolded. In fact, that was practically his present situation, for the wind drove the snow into his face so violently that it was impossible to look ahead. Getting his bearings as well as he could, he started across on a slow run in face of the blinding storm. It would seem in any case to have been a reckless performance, considering the existence of the airholes near the path; but La Barge was not given to enlarging upon future dangers, and forged boldly ahead. For once his confidence deceived him. All of a sudden he plunged headlong into the river. He instantly realized that he was in one of the air holes—but which one? If the lower one, he was certainly lost, for the swift current had borne him under the52 ice before he came to the surface. If the upper hole, he might float to the lower. But did the current flow directly from one to the other, and would he be at the top at the critical instant? All these questions and many more flashed through his mind with the rapidity of thought in the presence of imminent peril. He soon rose to the surface and bumped the overlying ice. Sinking and rising again he bumped the ice a second time. The limit of endurance was almost reached, when suddenly his head emerged into the open air. Spreading out his hands, he caught the edge of the ice. He held on until he could draw his knife, which he plunged into the ice far enough to give him something to pull against, and after much severe and perilous exertion he drew himself out. He had stuck to his rifle all the time without realizing the fact, and came out as fully armed as when he went in.

But now a new peril awaited him. The storm was at its height, the cold intense, and his clothing was drenched through. The bath which he had received had not chilled him in the least, for the water was much warmer than the air outside, and his exertion would have kept him warm anyway; but out in the wind the chances were that he would freeze if he did not quickly reach a fire. Hastily recovering his bearings, he set out anew, and had the good fortune to reach the post without any further delay.

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It is needless to say that the inmates of the post were slow to credit the Captain’s story, in spite of the proof afforded by his frozen clothing. Martin Dorion, one of the most respectable of the numerous family of that name, said to La Barge, “Your time hasn’t come yet. Your work remains to be done.” It was not until after he had changed his clothing and had settled down by a strong fire that the reaction from the terrible strain came; but then for a little while he felt as if he could not keep himself together.

La Barge was an expert swimmer, having practiced the art from childhood. He learned to swim in the old Chouteau pond, which filled the hollow near where the Union Station of St. Louis now stands. It was not an uncommon feat for him in his younger days to leap from a boat when he saw an elk or deer crossing the river, outswim and catch it, hold on to it until its feet touched the bottom, and then kill it as it was ascending the bank.

In the year 1850 La Barge was making a voyage to the upper river on the steamer St. Ange. Mrs. La Barge and some other ladies were on board. One day a boy fell overboard from the forecastle. La Barge, who happened to be near, instantly leaped in and seized him, keeping him from the wheel (it was a sidewheel boat), and got him to shore before the boat could get there. A lady sitting on the deck with Mrs.54 La Barge asked her if she was not alarmed when her husband leaped overboard. She replied that she was not in the least; that she knew Captain La Barge’s qualities as a swimmer too well to doubt his ability to rescue the boy.

In the summer of 1838, when La Barge was serving as pilot on the Platte, another incident occurred which illustrated his skill as a swimmer. At a point some twelve miles below Fort Leavenworth one of the guys of the yawl derrick broke, precipitating the yawl into the river. This craft was so essential to the steamboat in navigating the Missouri River that its loss would at any time be irreparable. The alarm was instantly given that the yawl was overboard. Captain La Barge was in his stateroom, but immediately hastened to the stern of the boat, where he met Captain Moore, the master. The latter said he had ordered the steamboat to the shore and would send men down the bank to try to recover the yawl. Captain La Barge replied, “I will get the yawl; send some men down to help me bring it back.” So saying, he plunged into the river, overtook the yawl, and brought it to land half a mile below the boat.

In the spring of 1835 Captain La Barge went down, as usual, with the mackinaws to St. Louis. This terminated his three years’ engagement with the company. He remained in St. Louis all summer except55 when absent on short river trips in the vicinity. In the fall he went up the Missouri to the Black Snake Hills (St. Joseph, Mo.), where he engaged for the winter to the trader Robidoux, who was in charge. Nothing of interest transpired, and in the spring he returned to St. Louis.

The next four years of Captain La Barge’s life were a practical apprenticeship in the business which he was to follow as a career. They were spent almost entirely on the lower river in the various capacities of clerk, pilot, and master on different boats. Not many events of special note occurred, and the actual voyages made are now somewhat uncertain. But the experience was a useful one, and by the time it was over the Captain had won a reputation as a pilot which thereafter insured him continuous service.

The Captain’s first service during this time was as assistant pilot on the steamer St. Charles, but the boat was burned at Richmond landing, opposite Lexington, Mo., July 2, 1836. He then engaged as pilot on a new boat, the Kansas, and ran in the lower river the rest of the season. In the spring of 1837 he shipped as clerk on the steamboat Boonville, but this boat was wrecked on a snag early in November near the mouth of the Kansas River, and was lost with a full cargo of government freight. In the spring of 1838 he went as pilot on the Platte, a boat built during56 the previous winter, and the first double-engine boat that ever plied the river. He remained on this boat for two years, mainly on the lower river. He made but one trip to the far upper river, and started, in the fall of 1838, for the Bayou la Fourche, to spend the winter in the sugar trade. The boat had gone scarcely thirty miles below St. Louis when she ran upon a snag, which tore an immense hole in the bottom and caused her to sink immediately. In the spring of 1840 the Captain again entered the service of the American Fur Company as pilot of the steamer Emily, which was to make a trip to Fort Union. Before the season was over the company assigned him to work on a new steamboat, the Trapper. For some reason the Captain did not like this assignment and refused to accept it. This incensed the company, who considered him bound to serve wherever directed. Neither side would yield, and the Captain forthwith left the service of the company.

During these four years of apprenticeship several incidents of interest occurred, some pertaining to the local history of the country and others of a purely personal character. Captain La Barge saw a good deal of the Mormons, who at this time were undergoing those persecutions in western Missouri which finally drove them from the State. They were frequently57 on the steamboats, and the Captain at one time or another saw nearly all the leaders, including Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum, Sidney Rigdon, Orson Hyde, and others. Captain La Barge never liked the appearance or demeanor of Smith, and never believed in his sincerity. He thought more of Rigdon, who was a most pleasant talker and who once preached a sermon on his boat. Captain La Barge’s knowledge of the Mormons and their doings at this time led them to request him, nearly sixty years afterward (1895), to appear for them and give evidence as to their title to the land in Independence, Mo., on which their temple was built.

Another incident which occurred about this time calls up one of the famous characters of American frontier history—Daniel Boone. This noted pioneer had passed most of his life in Kentucky, but when settlement began to crowd upon his primeval domain he moved westward and settled in Warren County, near St. Charles, Mo., where he died in 1820. Some years later, by agreement between the governments of Kentucky and Missouri, Boone’s remains were moved to the latter State. A committee from the Kentucky Legislature went to Missouri on the occasion of the removal and were taken up the river to Marthasville, where Boone was buried, on the steamer Kansas. Captain La Barge, who was serving on the58 Kansas at the time, recalled the circumstances perfectly. Many years later he was invited to go to Frankfort, Ky., to attend an anniversary celebration pertaining to Boone’s career, but was not able to accept. La Barge’s father knew Boone intimately, and La Barge himself was a warm friend of his son Nathan Boone.

The term “opposition” in the early Missouri River fur trade had a definite and specific meaning. It applied to any trading concern, great or small, individual or collective, which was doing business in competition with the American Fur Company. So powerful was this company that it never permitted any other company or trader to occupy the same field with itself except at the cost of ruinous commercial warfare. There were many attempts to compete with it, but all of them ended in failure.

The incident related in the last chapter, which led Captain La Barge to quit the company’s service, induced him to try his own luck as an opposition trader; but the result, which quickly developed, was quite like that of his many predecessors and successors in the same line. The Captain had laid by a few thousand dollars, which he put into the venture, and secured additional capital from J. B. Roy and Henry Shaw of St. Louis. The steamer Thames was chartered to convey the cargo as far as Council Bluffs, for, owing60 to the lateness of the season, it was not thought safe to attempt to take the boat further. An outfit of wagons was carried along, and it was expected that they would be able to purchase enough horses and oxen to haul the goods the rest of the way.

It was late in the summer when the boat arrived at Council Bluffs. She was promptly unloaded and turned over to her owners, and the Captain immediately set about organizing his wagon train. October had come before he was finally ready to start. His plan was to reach old Fort Lookout before winter set in. He knew that that post had been abandoned, but he understood that it was still in a good enough state of preservation to winter in. At L’Eau qui Court (Niobrara River) he was compelled to abandon his wagons on account of the snow, and build sleds. He traveled the rest of the way on the frozen surface of the river.

Soon after leaving the Niobrara Captain La Barge had a foretaste of what he must expect from the American Fur Company, and found that he must be prepared to contend, not only with the long-established power and unscrupulous methods of that great organization, but with the petty trickery of small traders who were trying to make some headway in the country. At the Niobrara he found Narcisse Leclerc, the same whose expedition he had helped break up at61 Council Bluffs eight years before. The Captain knew him well as a man acquainted with the Indians and capable of rendering efficient service, but devoid of good principle and ready for any underhand action that would promote his interest. La Barge found him, with his family, entirely destitute, and, counting on his well-known hostility to the company, he thought that if he were to employ him he might depend on his loyalty. He accordingly engaged him, but later bitterly regretted it.

Soon afterward, when Captain La Barge and Leclerc had passed Handy’s old trading post, where Fort Randall later stood, they were met by a party of ten Indians and a white man by the name of Bruyère, who claimed that they were en route from Pierre to Vermillion. Leclerc cautioned La Barge not to believe them, for he was certain that they had been sent down from Pierre to spy out La Barge’s movements and break up his expedition if possible. La Barge’s experience in the Indian trade, and his strong backing in St. Louis, made his opposition a matter of much importance. It was decided that it must be gotten rid of in some way, by force if that were practicable, and if not, by purchase or competition. The party that had come down the river was evidently sent to find out what could be done.

A parley ensued and La Barge invited Bruyère and62 his party to go back to Handy’s old post and he would give them a feast. This was agreed to, and after reaching the post and fixing camp they were first treated to coffee and hard tack. La Barge then gave Bruyère some liquor, and asked him if he should give the Indians some. Bruyère assented, saying the Indians liked it and he could take care of them. Bruyère’s party numbered eleven in all. The Captain resolved to get them all deadly drunk and then set out, leaving some liquor to keep them drunk the longer. As the liquor began to work on Bruyère he became communicative, and openly avowed his mission, which was the same as Leclerc had sagaciously foreseen. “You treat me better than any trader ever treated me before,” he said. “I was sent here to do you harm, but now I am for you, and if any Indians attempt to harm you I will defend you.”

La Barge then went on to Fort Lookout without any further molestation and took possession of the abandoned buildings, intending to conduct his winter trade there. Shortly afterward he received, by the hands of an Indian, a note from the agent at Pierre, inviting him in the most polite and courteous terms to come to his post, as he had some business to propose, and particularly wanted to have a friendly visit. Here again La Barge’s suspicions were aroused. The Indian messenger, who was a brother-in-law of the63 agent, had come to Fort Lookout totally unarmed, a thing unheard of in the Indian country. He at once inferred that the Indian hoped to allay any fears which La Barge might have of traveling alone with him. La Barge received him kindly, said he would decide in a day or two, and asked him to wait. At the first opportunity the Captain strolled off with his gun, as if on a chicken hunt, and set out on the route by which the Indian had come. He followed the trail several miles, when he found the place where the Indian had cached his gun under a tree top. La Barge confiscated the outfit, took it to camp, and hid it. He then told the Indian that he was ready to go to Pierre, and that they would start the next morning. They accordingly set out at an early hour, intending to accomplish the journey in two days. The distance was something over sixty miles by land, though one hundred by river, for the great bend of the Missouri lay between the two places. When they reached the place where the Indian had cached his gun the latter excused himself for a moment, telling La Barge not to wait. After a while he came up, but showed no signs of what his feelings must have been. He behaved very well all the way. The first night was spent on a sandbar of the river, and Fort Pierre was reached at a good hour on the afternoon of the second day.

The agent could not at first conceal his astonishment64 at seeing La Barge, but quickly recovered himself, and feigned great pleasure at the meeting, saying he was glad La Barge had gotten through safely—there were so many scoundrels around the country that one’s life was in danger, if unprotected. The agent then gave La Barge a good supper, and after it was over insisted that he must sit up all night and talk about things in St. Louis. Jacob Halsey was clerk at the time. They pressed the Captain to join them in their drinks, but without success. The agent then lost his temper, declared that La Barge was “unsociable,” and that he was insulting his host by refusing his hospitality. La Barge replied that if it was necessary to get drunk in order to be sociable he would not be sociable.

“I had not been in the Indian country so many years for nothing,” said Captain La Barge, when describing this affair. “I knew perfectly well the unscrupulous methods of the company, for I had been an eyewitness of them. They cared not how desperate the measure to arrive at their end if only they could escape detection, and this was a comparatively easy matter. ‘Killed by the Indians,’ and similar reports, were used to veil deeds which were too black to expose to the world. It was no uncommon thing for servants of the company who had started for St. Louis, with a statement of the amount to their credit, to be heard65 of no more. Knowing these things, I was confessedly distrustful of my hosts. I knew that they dared do nothing openly, for that would lead to prompt report and investigation; but if I were to join in their revels, and lose my self-control, it would be easy enough to involve me in a fray with an Indian and get rid of me in that way, or get me to sign some agreement drawn up by themselves, which should rob me of my outfit and drive me out of the country. Although a temperance man anyway, I resolved to be particularly so on this occasion, and remain absolutely sober. I knew well enough that a proposition would soon come to buy me out, and I had no intention of losing my ability to drive a good bargain.

“The expected proposition came from the agent on the morning of my second day at Pierre. It was not as liberal as I thought it ought to be, and I rejected it. Next day an express came from Lookout with serious news for me. Leclerc, without the slightest authority, had taken a third of my outfit and had gone to the Yanktonais Indians to trade. This would seriously interfere with my plan, which was to hold my outfit at Lookout until I knew what terms the company would offer. I now felt that the quicker the matter was closed up the better, and knowing the great hazard of attempting to oppose so powerful a company, I accepted the proffered terms. These were66 that the company should take my entire outfit at an advance of ten per cent. upon the cost to me where it was, while I was to engage myself to the company for a period of three years.

“Even after this arrangement the agent subjected me to new and imminent peril, as if still hoping that he would arrive at his end by a shorter cut. Although he could just as well have instructed his trader on the Little Cheyenne to receive and receipt for the goods in Leclerc’s possession, he insisted that I should go to that post and either get the goods or make a personal transfer to the trader there. He refused me any escort, and the only thing that he would do was to lend me a horse and sled. The mission was a particularly perilous one. The Yanktonais were the most dangerous and hostile of all the Sioux tribes. They knew the value of opposition in securing them better terms in trade, and if they were to learn that my mission was to sell out to the company, they would unquestionably undertake to wreak vengeance on me. Notwithstanding the needlessness, as well as the peril, of the trip, I was compelled to go, and accordingly set out.

“The overland distance to the mouth of the Big Cheyenne was about forty miles, and I made it in one day. Here the American Fur Company had a wintering post under charge of a man named Bouis, who67 had with him as interpreter a very valuable man by the name of Zephyr Rencontre.10 Zephyr was a good friend of mine and I resolved to practice a little strategy to secure his company to the Little Cheyenne and his assistance there. When I reached the post at the Big Cheyenne, Bouis exclaimed, with a good deal of astonishment, ‘What! are you alone?’ I replied that I was, but that I had authority to take Zephyr to the Little Cheyenne camp and return. Bouis was somewhat surprised at this, but said that if such were the orders he would go. We set out at once, and as soon as we were well on the way, I laid the whole matter before Zephyr. He advised me by all means not to try to take the goods away, for such an attempt would enrage the Indians. The thing to do was to get an inventory of the goods from Leclerc, transfer it to the trader there, Paschal Cerré, get his receipt, and thus transact the whole business on paper without the knowledge of the Indians. We arrived safely at the post and proceeded at once to our business. Everything went well under Zephyr’s management for a time, but the suspicion began to spread among the Indians that I was there either to remove68 my goods or to sell out, and they began to assume a tone of insolence and bravado. Leclerc was probably responsible for this, for he did not relish at all the turn that things had taken. In the meanwhile I took refuge in the lodge of an Indian who was a friend of Zephyr. The latter said he would dispatch the business with all possible speed. The Indians were feasting from lodge to lodge, and Zephyr said they might try to annoy me at any time, but told me to remain right there, say nothing to them, nor resent their actions if they became troublesome. ‘I am looking out for you,’ he said, ‘and have also some of my Indian friends on guard.’ Along in the evening the Indians began to come around, evidently in very bad temper, but none of them entered the tent. They made things very uncomfortable, however, and several times I concluded that all was over. They slashed the tent with their knives, and stuck their guns through and shot into the fire, throwing the coals all over me. They were trying to anger me to the point of resistance, as Zephyr had said they would, and they came near succeeding. I could hardly stand it. It seemed certain that I should be killed, and if I failed to take off one or two of them I should die that much less satisfied. I kept control of myself, however, and presently Zephyr came to me announcing that the business was completed, the inventories69 receipted, and that when a young Indian should come and tell me to follow I was to get up and go. It was about midnight that the Indian appeared and beckoned me to follow. I left the tent through one of the openings which the Indians had slashed in it, and we immediately struck out at a rapid pace down the Little Cheyenne. After proceeding four or five miles I was joined by Zephyr, and the young Indian was sent back.

“We then started straight across the hills for the mouth of the Big Cheyenne, some forty miles distant. It was very important to get there early the next day, lest we be cut off by the Indians. We ran a good deal of the way, but such was the severity of the weather that we almost froze. The thermometer must have reached thirty degrees below zero. On the open hills the cold was terrible, and the side of my body next to the wind became thoroughly numbed. The journey was not without decided interest, however, for we were treated to one of the most beautiful displays of the Aurora Borealis that I have ever seen.

“We reached the mouth of the Big Cheyenne a little after sunrise, and I immediately got breakfast and set out for Pierre, where I arrived about nightfall. When I reached the fort the agent could hardly believe his eyes. ‘What! are you back already?’ he said. ‘I hardly thought you would succeed in70 turning those goods over.’ I replied that I too was astonished that I had got out of that scrape uninjured. ‘How did you manage it?’ he asked. ‘I took Zephyr along with me.’ ‘Why, how could Bouis spare him?’ ‘By your order. Didn’t you authorize me to take him?’ ‘No, I never gave any such authority,’ said the agent, as he turned away in anger that he had been so completely outwitted.

“The next day the agent detailed James Kipp, with three or four men and a dozen Indians, to go with me to Lookout and receive the goods at that point. The Indians were wholly unnecessary, and I can explain their being sent only on the theory that the agent had not yet given up the short cut for destroying this new opposition. But Kipp was a different sort of man, and although he was sometimes compelled to do the bidding of others to save himself, he never approved of such desperate measures.

“When we set out Kipp was on horseback and I on foot, and he said, ‘Well, let’s see who will get to Lookout first.’ Bercier and I were the only ones who reached there that night, but I was so badly used up that it was several days before I could walk naturally. Kipp did not get in for two days. The rest of the property was then turned over and the ugly business brought to a close.”

Such was Captain La Barge’s first experience in71 opposing the American Fur Company; and if it resulted in a quick collapse the profitable termination to himself, and the extreme opposition of the company, showed that they did not regard his enterprise with an easy eye. The whole affair made them set a higher value on La Barge’s services and treat his opinions and rights thereafter with more consideration.

As soon as the business with the Fur Company was completed La Barge set out for Bellevue, arriving there about April 1, 1841. He at once went to the Pawnees, where he used to go seven or eight years before, and brought down the bullboats. He was glad to make this trip, for he always liked the Pawnees. Having arrived at the mouth of the Platte with the bullboats and transferred their cargo, he set out for St. Louis with the mackinaws.

The summer of 1842 was mostly spent on the lower river, without any incident of especial note. This year was marked, however, by a very important event in the life of Captain La Barge. On the 17th of August, 1842, he was married to Pelagie Guerette. His wife’s mother’s name was Marie Palmer, one of a noted Illinois family of that name. Her father’s name was Pierre Guerette, one of the Louisiana French, and he was born in Kaskaskia, Ill. He was a millwright and architect. He built for Auguste Chouteau one of72 the first grist mills run by water in St. Louis. The mill was located at the old dam which extended from Chouteau Avenue to Market Street, in the vicinity of Ninth Street. Pelagie Guerette was born January 10, 1825, and was therefore nearly ten years Captain La Barge’s junior. He had known her from childhood. She was a beautiful woman, and although not robust in health, reared a family of five boys and two girls, to adult years. She was a very sensible, noble woman, and a constant help to her husband during their married life of nearly sixty years.

We have now followed the career of Captain La Barge through the various experiences of youth and early manhood until he is finally settled in the business of his subsequent life—the navigation of the Missouri River. It is therefore a proper time to consider the nature of that business, its features of peculiar interest, and its relation to the growth of the western country. This is the more important because it is a phase in the development of that country which has permanently passed away, and in the general mind is already buried in oblivion. Yet for fully a hundred years the history of the Missouri River was the history of the country through which it flowed. Its importance no one to-day can comprehend. Now the railroad has made accessible almost every section of the country. Then there were no railroads to speak of west of the Mississippi, nor, for that matter, any other roads worthy of mention. The river was the great, and almost the only, highway of travel and commerce.74 Everything was done with reference to it. Commercial posts and military garrisons were established; expeditions were undertaken, and all business operations were carried on with careful reference to this mighty stream, which descended from the distant mountains to the very heart of the continent and thence to the sea, whence the road was open to every quarter of the globe. But now its influence upon the growth of the western country has ceased to exist. The mighty river, which was once alive with steamboats and other craft, from the Great Falls to its mouth, cannot boast a single regular packet. In the most absolute sense its glory has departed, and not a trace is left to remind the modern observer of its former greatness. In the following descriptions, therefore, we hope to be serving the true purpose of history, in gathering together for preservation some interesting features of a type of our frontier life which has long since run its appointed course.

Of all the rivers on the globe the longest is the Missouri-Mississippi. On the summit of the Rocky Mountains, above the upper Red Rock Lake, some forty miles west of the Yellowstone National Park, and directly on the boundary between the States of Montana and Idaho, Jefferson Fork of the Missouri, finds its source. From this point, by a continuous water course to the Gulf of Mexico, the distance is75 4221 miles. The river is formed by the confluence of three fine mountain streams which unite at a point about fifty miles south of Helena, Mont. They were named by their discoverers, Lewis and Clark, the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin rivers, in honor of the national administration which set on foot the expedition of these explorers. Two of these streams rise in the Yellowstone National Park, and the other, as we have seen, a little distance to the westward.

Of the many tributaries of the Missouri the most important is the Yellowstone, which rivals in size the main stream and joins it nearly eight hundred miles below the Three Forks. Like the Missouri it finds its source in and around that now famous region, where Nature has lavished without stint her most marvelous handiwork, and which the government of the United States has set apart for the common enjoyment of the people. Both the Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers, in the upper portions of their course, flow over immense cascades and rapids which have become well known among the cataracts of the globe. The Great Falls of the Missouri are located near the modern city of the same name. They comprise several cataracts and rapids, the highest perpendicular distance being 87 feet, and the total fall over 500 feet. The falls of the Yellowstone are within the National Park, the highest perpendicular distance being 31076 feet, and the total descent from Yellowstone Lake to below the first cañon near Livingston, Mont., being about 3200 feet.

Upon emerging from the foothills of the mountains, both streams begin to assume that peculiar character which distinguishes them throughout the rest of their course to the sea. They flow through alluvial bottoms, built up of the detritus from the highlands and mountains, until the present bed of the river is in most places fifty to a hundred feet above the original bed in the solid rock. The usual characteristics of an alluvial river are here found in their highest development—a muddy current, freshly formed islands, sandbars innumerable, an unstable channel, and a shifting bed which is never in the same place for two years in succession.

Among the most striking phenomena of a river like the Missouri is the constant change that is going on in the location of its channel. This seems to be in some places a periodical matter. The forces of the river get to working on particular lines and push their devastations for many years in one general direction. Being finally arrested by some insurmountable obstacle, or turned, it may be, by trifling causes, they work in another direction, and invade lands which have enjoyed long immunity, and upon which the cottonwood, walnut, and cedar have attained mature growth.

A NEW “CUT OFF”

Old course of river
toward background

Old course of river
from background

77

The river, in its unrestrained rambles from bluff to bluff, performs some curious freaks. It develops the most remarkable bends, varying in length from one to thirty miles, with distances across the necks but a small fraction of those around. In time these narrow necks are cut in two, and the river abandons its old course, which soon fills up near the extremities of the bends and leaves crescent-shaped lakes in the middle. This process is a never-ending one, and the channel distances along the river are in a state of never-ending change. There is one bend in the upper river, known from the earliest times as the Great Bend, which was not formed in the way just described. The course of the river here is comparatively permanent, and is evidently the same as that of the original stream bed. The distance around is nearly thirty miles, while that across is only a mile and a half. It was a regular custom with travelers, when the Indians were not too dangerous, to leave the boats at the beginning of this bend and walk across, going on board on the other side.

The existence of so many bends increased the length of the channel, but this drawback was more than offset by the reduction of the slope which made the current less strong and enabled steamboats to overcome it with greater ease. The river is like a great spiral stairway leading from the ocean to the mountains. A steamboat78 at Fort Benton is 2565 feet—two and one-half times the height of the Eiffel tower in Paris—above the level of the sea; yet so gentle is the slope nearly all the way that, in placid weather, the water surface resembles that of a lake. This wonderful evening-up of the slope of the river by the extreme sinuosity of its course is a fact not only interesting as a natural phenomenon, but of the utmost importance in the behavior and use of the stream.

CHANGES OF THE CHANNEL
OF THE
MISSOURI RIVER

THROUGH MONONA COUNTY, IOWA.

Present Channel Distance, 44 Miles

(Compiled by MITCHELL VINCENT, ONAWA, IOWA.)

Not only does the general course of the river have these larger windings, but in periods of low water they are multiplied many fold. When a large proportion of the river bed between its banks becomes exposed, as it does in the low-water season, the stream flows back and forth across this bed until its length is largely increased over that at high water. Here again is to be seen the wisdom of nature’s methods. In periods of high water, when it is important to move the floods rapidly down the valley, the river straightens out, shortens its length, increases its slope, and accelerates its velocity of flow.

Of the immense carrying power and potential energy of this stream it is difficult to form an adequate conception. It yearly carries into the Mississippi 550,000,000 tons of earth, which has been brought an average distance of not less than 500 miles. The work thus represented is equivalent to 275,000,000,000 mile-tons,79 or tons carried one mile. The railroads of the United States carried in the year 1901 141,000,000,000 mile-tons of freight.

That such an exercise of power should leave its impress deep upon the country through which the river flows is not to be wondered at. Every year thousands of acres of rich bottom lands are destroyed. Forests, meadows, cultivated fields, farmhouses, and villages fall before its tremendous onslaught, and the changes that have been wrought in the topography of the valley during the past one hundred years almost defy belief.11 To one familiar with its history, the many crescent-shaped lakes and curvilinear benches show where the river once flowed and where it may flow again. In recent years the government has seriously undertaken to set metes and bounds to the migratory80 habits of the stream; but it has found a most refractory subject to deal with. Even with the expenditure of vast sums of money in the construction of the most powerful dikes and improved bank protection known to engineering, it can never feel certain that its prisoner will not break its bonds at any moment and escape.

SNAGS IN THE MISSOURI RIVER

(After Maximilian)

As with most of our Western streams the principal arboreal growths along the banks of the Missouri are the willow and cottonwood. The willow matures very rapidly, and well-grown forests are constantly met with in places where the river flowed but two or three years before. The cottonwood requires more time to mature, but this is afforded by those longer cycles of change in which the river passes back and forth across the bottoms. On many of the islands along the central portion of the river there were formerly extensive growths of cedar. The walnut and other trees abound to a less extent. Every year great numbers of trees that line the river bank are undermined and fall into the stream. They are borne along by the current until they become anchored in the bottom, where they remain with one end sticking up and pointing downstream, sometimes above and sometimes below the surface. These trunks or branches have always been the most formidable dangers to navigation of the river. They are called snags or sawyers, though sometimes,81 from the ripple or break in the surface of the water, “breaks.” It is, in fact, only by the appearance of these breaks that a submerged snag can be discovered by the pilot; and fortunately, in a rapid current, like that of the Missouri, a snag will cause such a break if it is near enough to the surface to touch the bottom of a boat. These snags were the terror of the pilot, as well they might be. The record of steamboat wrecks on the Missouri, and it is an appalling one, shows that about seventy per cent. were due to this cause.

A large portion of the river is in a latitude where it freezes over every winter. During the ice period it is indeed effectually enchained. The banks are safe for a season, and the water itself becomes comparatively clear. But as soon as the breezes of spring soften the ice the river resumes its customary wanderings, with renewed vigor after its long rest. By way of celebration of its release from its icy prison it frequently gives exhibitions of power that far surpass all its other manifestations. When the ice “breaks” and begins to “run,” it is liable to strand like a steamboat on the shallow bars. Other ice following, and finding the way obstructed, piles up on that before it. Gradually, sometimes, and sometimes rapidly, the accumulation spreads, cutting off the channel of the river, until, as often happens, it forms82 a veritable dam across the entire stream. These ice “gorges” develop a power that nothing can withstand, and the amount of property destroyed by them in the history of the river has been very great. There is almost nothing that can be done to break them. Dynamite explosions are resorted to, but the ice piles up so rapidly and in such vast quantities that the most powerful blast seems harmless. In the face of this appalling danger man is forced to stand a helpless spectator until the river itself accumulates sufficient force to burst through the dam. It has more than once happened that, before the dam has given way, the river has cut an entirely new channel.

The moving of the ice, even when not accompanied by serious blockades, is always an impressive sight. Usually the warm weather loosens it from the shore before it begins to move, and even disintegrates it, so that it is unsafe to cross upon. The softer it becomes before it begins to run the less danger is there of its gorging. After the movement begins it continues for several days, until the vast quantities of ice stored in the river above have floated by, or melted away. During the height of the movement the crushing of innumerable ice cakes upon each other produces a continuous roar which can be heard for a long distance from the river.

To the lonely dwellers of the valley in the early83 times the annual “break-up” of the ice was the most welcome event of the year, for it was the knell of the long and tedious winter, and the certain harbinger of approaching spring.

The river has two regular floods every year, one usually in April and the other in June. The first flood is short, sharp, and often very destructive. The second flood is of longer duration and carries an immensely greater quantity of water, but does less damage than the first. The April flood is due to the spring freshets along the immediate valley as the snow melts off and the first rains come. The June rise comes primarily from the melting snows in the mountains. The great and exceptional floods, however, are not due to these regular causes, but to periods of long and excessive precipitation in the lower portions of the valley.

The slope of the river in the lower half of its course is less than a foot to the mile, and the velocity of its current varies from two to ten miles per hour, depending upon the stage of the water.

From an æsthetic point of view, the Missouri River has an unenviable reputation. People who never see it except in crossing railroad bridges, from which they look down into a mass of muddy, eddying water, are liable to compare it unfavorably with other important streams. But to him who is fortunate enough to84 travel upon it, and study it in all its phases, it is not only an attractive stream, but one of great scenic beauty. As seen in its more placid periods, near morning or evening, when the slanting rays of the sun show the water mainly by reflection, robbing it of its muddy tinge, and replacing it by a crimson hue or silver glimmer that stretches away toward the horizon, cut off again and again by the bends of the river, but ever and anon reappearing until lost in the distance, there are few scenes in nature that appeal more strongly to the eye of the artist.

Again, in its less peaceful moods, when the persistent prairie winds blow day after day without ceasing, there is a peculiar attractiveness about the weird scene. In all directions, as far as the eye can reach, the air is filled with clouds of sand, drifting along the naked bars, and changing their forms almost as rapidly as does the water those in the bed of the river. The willows and cottonwoods bend complainingly before the blast. The river is lashed into foam, and often becomes so tempestuous that rowboats cannot live in it, while larger craft, making a virtue of necessity, lie moored to the shore until the wind has abated its fury.

Perhaps the most frightful scenes on the river are the violent summer storms of thunder, hail, and rain, with the characteristic tornado tendencies so common in85 the central prairies. When these black storms gather, and the incessant lightning seems to bind the clouds to the earth, and the rolling and agitated vapors disclose the terrible play of the winds, the river man discreetly makes for shore, and loses no time in gaining the shelter of some friendly bank. The fury of these storms as they break into the valley, pouring down wind and rain with terrific violence, until the river yields up clouds of spray like the vortex of Niagara, forms one of the wildest and most sublime manifestations of the forces of nature. It cannot be truly enjoyed by an eyewitness, because of the element of danger which is present, but the impression produced upon one who is fortunate enough to pass safely through it remains ineffaceable in the memory. These storms generally come from the southwest, and it was a well-recognized rule on the river in boating days to tie up for the night on the southwest, or right shore of the river, so as to be under cover of a bank if a storm should come before day. Accidents from these storms were numerous. Boats were often torn from their moorings and driven upon the bars, where they were as good as lost. Smokestacks, hurricane deck, and pilot-house were frequently carried away and windows destroyed by the hail.

The condition of the weather had an influence upon the business of navigating the river which was86 of the highest importance, yet would never occur to one unless his attention were directed to it. The excessively uneven and broken condition of the bed of the river, filled as it was with ever-shifting sand-drifts or bars, sometimes called reefs by the river men, produced an appearance upon the surface of the water which was almost the only guide in tracing out the sinuous channel. The experienced pilot could tell from this appearance, not only where snags and other hidden obstructions were, but the outlines of submerged sandbars, and the position of the deepest water. Anything, like wind or rain or a slanting sun, which disturbed this normal appearance, disturbed the serenity of the pilot’s mind. Wind was less troublesome than rain, for it ruffled the deep water more than the shallow, and thus left some indication of the locality of each. Rain, on the other hand, reduced everything to a common appearance. The sun, when below forty-five degrees from the horizon, was exceedingly troublesome on account of the reflection from the water whenever the boat was sailing toward it.

Captain La Barge records a curious fact in regard to the appearance of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers as seen by night. He found the Missouri much easier to “read,” and always experienced a feeling of relief when he left the main stream and entered its great87 tributary. The Mississippi seemed black in the night, and this appearance aggravated the darkness. The Missouri, on the other hand, had a distinct whitish tinge, and it seemed, as he entered the stream, as if a faint light had been struck up along its surface.

Such are some of the more striking physical characteristics of this very remarkable stream. It is not surprising that, in the early times, when it first came to be known, it produced a profound impression on the minds of explorers and drew from them expressions of wonder and awe. Marquette and Joliet, who discovered the river in 1673, were floating down the Mississippi in a comparatively clear current, when they came to a point where a mighty volume of water poured itself into the Mississippi from the west shore, carrying trees, stumps, and drift of all descriptions. It filled them with amazement, as it has every person since who has stood at the confluence of these two mighty streams, particularly when the Missouri is bringing down the great floods of spring.

We do not know when the Missouri was first entered by white men, but probably about the year 1700. The French had made sufficient progress along its course in the early years of the eighteenth century to alarm the Spaniards, who, in the year 1720, sent an expedition to destroy the Missouri Indians, the allies of the French. This expedition was itself destroyed88 by the Missouris, but the event caused the French to build a post some two hundred miles up the river on an island opposite the village of the Missouris. This was Fort Orleans, and was, so far as we know, the first structure erected by white men along the course of the stream.

The name of the river comes from the tribe of Indians just mentioned, who once dwelt at its mouth, but were driven from this position by the Illinois Indians. The word means “dwelling near the mouth of the river,” and has no reference to the muddy quality of the water.

The fact that the Missouri River is longer than the entire Mississippi, and more than twice as long as that portion of the latter stream above the mouth of the Missouri, has led to the frequent observation that the name which applies to the lower course of the Mississippi should apply also to the tributary. But this would evidently not be a fitting nomenclature. The Mississippi is the trunk stream, receiving the drainage from the Alleghenies on the east and the Rockies on the west. It divides the continent into approximately symmetrical portions. This division has entered into the very life of our national development, and is so natural and convenient that the stream itself from north to south is appropriately known by a single name. The Missouri is the great tributary from the89 mountains on the west, as the Ohio is from the mountains on the east. The characteristics of the Missouri are so peculiarly its own that a separate name is more befitting than one divided between itself and another and very different stream.

During the eighteenth century the French gradually extended their knowledge of the river. It is not likely that the voyageurs had ascended as far as to the Mandan villages, a short distance above the modern capital of North Dakota, when, in 1738–43, De la Verendrye crossed over from the north and struck the river at that point. But it is quite certain that at the time of the founding of St. Louis, 1764, the river was well known for a thousand miles above its mouth. From that time knowledge of it increased more rapidly, and when Lewis and Clark went up the river in 1804, they found that white men had preceded them almost to the mouth of the Yellowstone.

The swift and turbulent character of the Missouri River led to exaggerated accounts by the early explorers of the difficulty of navigating it. Such navigation was at first considered wholly out of the question except in the simplest craft. Tradition says that Gregoire Zerald Sarpy was the first to introduce keelboats on the river, but the date of this essay is not very definitely fixed. It would seem that the French must have used large boats at the time they were established at Fort Orleans. In any event the advent of the keelboat on the Missouri in connection with the fur trade could not have been long after the founding of St. Louis, and probably antedated it. Gradually these boats made their way to points farther and farther up the river, until in 1805 they were taken by Lewis and Clark to the head of navigation. A similar experience was gone through with in the case of the steamboat. It was at first thought impossible for such boats to navigate the river at all, but in 1819 the attempt was made, and the Independence entered the Missouri91 on either the 16th or 17th of May, and ascended the river two hundred miles. The Western Engineer, a government boat, went as far as the old Council Bluffs in the same year. From that time on steamboats remained on the river, making farther and farther advances toward the head of navigation, which was finally reached forty years after the first boat entered the river.

The principal craft which have been used on the Missouri and its tributaries are the canoe, mackinaw, bullboat, keelboat, and steamboat. The yawl, a very important boat, was not much used for independent navigation, but rather as an appurtenance to the steamboats.

The canoe was the simplest and most generally used of all the river craft. It was the wooden canoe, or “dugout,” and not the bark canoe which was so much used where the proper material could be found. The Missouri River canoe was generally made from the logs of the cottonwood, though frequently from the walnut, and occasionally from cedar. The cottonwood in the river bottoms attained immense size, ample for the largest canoes, for these boats rarely exceeded thirty feet in length and three and one-half in width. The ordinary length was between fifteen and twenty feet. A suitable tree having been found, it was felled92 and a proper length of the trunk was cut out. The exterior was straightened with the broad-ax, and reduced to a round log shorn of all roughness and irregularity. The top was then hewn off, so as to leave about two-thirds of the log. The ends were given a regular canoe model, and were sometimes turned up on bow and stern with extra pieces for purpose of ornament. The log was then carefully scooped out from the flat surface so as to leave a thin shell about two inches thick at the bottom and one at the rim. To support the sides and give strength to the craft the timber was left in place at points from four to six feet apart, making solid partitions or bulkheads. A good-sized canoe was easily built by four men in as many days. They had tools especially adapted to the work, the most important being the tille ronde, or the round adz.

These log canoes made excellent craft, strong, light, and easily managed. A full crew generally consisted of three men, two to propel and one to steer. The paddle (French aviron) was always used. A mast was occasionally placed in the center and rigged with a square sail, but this could be used only with an aft wind, for fear of capsizing the canoe.

Sometimes these boats were made with a square stern, and were then called pirogues; but this name was more frequently used where two such boats were93 rigidly united in parallel positions a few feet apart and completely floored over. On the floor was placed the cargo, which was protected from the weather by the use of skins. Oars were provided in the bow for rowing and a single oar in the stern between the boats for steering. Sails could be used with a quartering wind on these boats without danger of upsetting. Dubé’s ferry, on the Mississippi, one of the earliest ferries of St. Louis, used a boat of this kind.

The principal use of the canoe was for the local business of the larger river posts. Often, however, they were used in making trips to St. Louis, even from the remotest navigable points of the main stream or its tributaries. Many such a journey has been made with a single voyageur running the gantlet of hostile tribes all the way from the mountains to the Mississippi. A common use of the canoe was for sending express messages down the river, and there are several records of their having been used to transport freight. An example of this last use was the shipment of bear’s oil, which was extensively used in St. Louis as a substitute for lard in the early days when swine were scarce and black bears plentiful. The oil was extremely penetrating, and would rapidly filter through skin receptacles. Barrels or casks not being available, the center apartment of the canoe was filled with the oil and tightly covered with a skin fastened94 to the sides of the boat. Honey was also transported in this way. In those days bee trees were exceedingly plentiful in the Missouri bottoms, and large quantities of honey were taken from them.

The mackinaw boat, as the name implies, was an imported design, having already been used on the Eastern lakes and rivers. It was made entirely of timber, and before nails were carried up the river all the parts were fastened with wooden pins. The bottom was flat, and was made of boards about one and a half inches thick. On these rested cross-timbers, to which, and to the bottom, were fastened the inclined knees that supported the sides. The boats were sometimes made as large as fifty feet long and twelve feet beam. The plan was that of an acute ellipse, and the gunwale rose about two feet from the center of the boat toward both bow and stern. The keel showed a rake of about thirty inches from the bow or stern to the bottom. The hold had a depth of about five feet at the two ends of the boat, and about three and one half at the center.

The central portion of the boat was partitioned off from the bow and stern by two water-tight bulkheads or partitions. Between these the cargo was loaded, and piled up to a height of three or four feet above the gunwale and given a rounded form. Over the cargo95 lodge skins were drawn tight and fastened with cleats to the sides and gunwales of the boat, so as to make practically a water-tight compartment. In the bow were seats for the oarsmen, and in the stern an elevated perch for the steersman, from which he could see over the cargo in front, and give directions to the crew in the bow or study the river ahead.

The crew of the boat ordinarily consisted of five men, four at the oars and one at the rudder. The latter had charge of the boat, and was called the patron. Only experienced, courageous, and reliable men were chosen for this responsible work.

These boats were only used in downstream navigation, and the labor of handling them was not arduous. The men found ample time for song and gossip, and every hour or so, after a vigorous pull, would take advantage of a good stretch of river to rest their oars (laisser aller) and take a smoke (fumer la pipe). Then they would let fall their oars (tomber les râmes) and bend to their work for another hour. They ran from fifteen to eighteen hours per day and made from 75 to 150 miles. The boats carried about fifteen tons of freight, and the cost per day was about two dollars. Transportation by mackinaw boat was therefore inexpensive.

These boats were cheaply made, and were intended only for a single trip down to St. Louis, where they96 were sold for four or five dollars apiece. After the advent of the steamboat the mackinaws were frequently carried back to the upper rivers on the annual boat, for even steam did not absorb the peculiar field of usefulness of these craft. They were quite safe and were preferred to the keelboat for downstream navigation.

The lumber for the mackinaws was manufactured where the boats were built, or rather the latter were built where suitable timber could be found. There being no sawmills, the boards had to be sawed by hand, and for this purpose the logs were rolled upon a scaffold high enough for a man to work underneath. They were first hewed square, and were then sawed by two men, one standing above and the other below. At all important posts there was a chantier (French for boatyard) located where timber was to be had. Here all woodwork was done. The Fort Pierre chantier, always called the navy yard, was some fifteen miles above the post, and was a very active place. The Fort Union chantier was twenty-five miles above the post, while that at Fort Benton was three miles below at the mouth of Chantier (now Shonkin) Creek. At all these workyards skilled artisans were employed.

The bullboat of the fur traders, in distinction from97 the tubs which were used by some of the Missouri River tribes, was an outgrowth of the conditions of navigation on such streams as the Platte, Niobrara, and Cheyenne. The excessive shallowness of these streams precluded the use of any craft drawing more than nine or ten inches. The bullboat was probably the lightest draft vessel ever constructed for its size, and was admirably fitted for its peculiar use. It was commonly about thirty feet long by twelve wide and twenty inches deep.

THE INDIAN BULLBOAT

(After Maximilian)

The frame of the bullboat was constructed by laying stout willow poles, three or four inches in diameter, lengthwise of the boat, and across these similar poles, the two layers being firmly lashed together with rawhide. The side frames were made of willow twigs about an inch and a half in diameter at the larger end and six to seven feet long. The smaller ends were lashed to the cross-poles, and about two feet of the larger ends were then bent up to a vertical position. Along the tops of the vertical portions and on the inside was lashed a stout pole like those forming the bottom of the framework. To this gunwale were lashed cross-poles, at intervals of four or five feet, to keep the sides from spreading. No nails or pins were used for fastenings, but rawhide lashings only. The frame so constructed was exceedingly strong, and its flexible quality, by which it withstood the continuous98 wrenching to which it was subjected, was an important element of strength.

The framework, being completed, was then covered with a continuous sheet of rawhide formed by sewing together square pieces as large as could be cut from a single buffalo hide. Only the skins of buffalo bulls were used for this purpose (whence the name of the boat), for they were the strongest and best able to resist abrasion from rubbing on the bottom of the river. The pieces were sewed together with buffalo sinew. Before this work was done the hides were carefully dressed by the Indians so as to be free of hair and perfectly flexible. When the covering was all sewed together it was thoroughly soaked and then placed over the framework and the sides and ends made fast to the gunwale of the boat. The hides would then dry and shrink until they were drawn as tight as a drumhead.

The final operation in the work was to pitch the seams. The material used was a mixture of buffalo tallow and ashes, and it was carefully rubbed into all seams or cracks until the whole covering was water-tight.

The boat so built was very light, and could be easily turned over by two men. When in the water and ready for its cargo, a layer of loose poles was laid lengthwise on the bottom so as to keep the cargo five99 or six inches from the bottom and protect it from any water that might leak in. The cargo nearly always consisted of furs, securely packed in bales about thirty inches long, fifteen inches wide, and eighteen inches deep. They were placed one bale deep over the bottom of the boat, leaving space in bow and stern for the pole men. The bales were always laid flatwise, so that if the water should reach them it would injure only the bottom skins and not all, as it would if they were set edgewise. The cargo rarely exceeded six thousand pounds.

The boat was handled by means of poles, and the crew generally consisted of two men. The draft of the boat, when placed in the water in the morning, was about four inches, but the boat hide becoming soaked during the day, and possibly some water leaking in, it would probably be as much as six or eight inches by night. Every evening when camp was made the boat was unloaded, brought up on the bank, and placed in an inclined position, bottom side up, to dry. In this position it served as a shelter for both cargo and crew. In the morning the seams were repitched, and any incipient rents or abrasions were carefully patched. The boat was then launched and reloaded and the voyage resumed.

Low water, even on the Platte, was generally preferred to high water for bullboat navigation, because100 in high water the current was too strong. Every little while the boat would glide into deep pockets, where the poles could not touch bottom, and it was then necessary to drift with the current until a shallower stretch would give the men control again. Sometimes in those wide and shallow expanses, which give the Platte such a pretentious appearance in high water, the wind would play vexatious pranks with the bullboat navigators. A strong prairie gale blowing steadily from one direction during the day would drift most of the water to the leeward side of the stream. The boat would naturally follow the same shore, and the night camp would be made there. If, as often happened, the wind changed before re-embarkation, the river would very likely be wafted to the other side of its broad bed, and the crew would find themselves with half a mile of sandbar between them and the water.

Bullboat navigation, as here described, was most frequently resorted to in bringing the trade of the Pawnees on the Loup Fork of the Platte to the Missouri, but it was likewise extensively used on the Cheyenne and Niobrara and other tributaries. There were some very extensive bullboat voyages. A good many were made from Laramie River to the mouth of the Platte, but generally it was impossible to find enough water to make a continuous voyage. In 1825101 General Ashley loaded one hundred and twenty-five packs of beaver into bullboats at the head of navigation on the Bighorn River, with the intention of conveying them in that way to St. Louis. But at the mouth of the Yellowstone he met General Atkinson, who offered him the use of his keelboats for the rest of the journey. In 1833 the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, Captain Bonneville and Nathaniel J. Wyeth, embarked all their furs, the product of a year’s hunt, in bullboats on the Bighorn River, and together went downstream to the mouth of the Yellowstone. Sometimes these boats were actually given names, and we have a record of the bullboat Antoine, in which a free trapper, Johnson Gardner, shipped his furs from the “Crossings of the Yellowstone” to Fort Union in 1832.

The boats just described were quite different from the hemispherical tubs used so extensively by the Mandans and other tribes of the upper Missouri. These little boats had a circular rim or gunwale, and the willow supports passed from one side entirely under the boat to the other. The frame was generally small enough to be covered with a single hide, and was designed to carry ordinarily but one person. A fleet of these boats, numbering a hundred or so, was one of the most singular sights ever witnessed on the river. The squaws often used them, on occasions of buffalo102 hunts above the village, to transport the meat downstream. In fact the women rather than the men were the navigators of this picturesque little craft.

We now come to the keelboat, the representative river craft of ante-steamboat days. It was in this boat that the merchandise for the trade was transported to the far upper river, and it was used on all important military or exploring expeditions. It was a good-sized boat, sixty to seventy feet long, and built on a regular model, with a keel running from bow to stern. It had fifteen to eighteen feet breadth of beam and three or four feet depth of hold. Its ordinary draft was from twenty to thirty inches. It was built in accordance with the practice of approved shipcraft, and was a good, stanch vessel. Keelboats were generally built in Pittsburgh at a cost of two to three thousand dollars.

MISSOURI RIVER KEELBOAT

(After Maximilian)

For carrying freight the keelboat was fitted with what was called a cargo box, which occupied the entire body of the boat excepting about twelve feet at each end. It rose some four or five feet above the deck. Along each side of the cargo box was a narrow walk about fifteen inches wide, called the passe avant, the purpose of which will be explained further on. On special occasions when these boats were used103 for passenger traffic, as on expeditions of discovery or exploration, they were fitted up with cabins, and made very comfortable passenger boats.

For purposes of propulsion the boat was equipped with nearly all the power appliances known to navigation except steam. The cordelle was the main reliance. This consisted of a line nearly a thousand feet long, fastened to the top of a mast which rose from the center of the boat to a height of about thirty feet. The boat was pulled along with this line by men on shore. In order to hold the boat from swinging around the mast, the line was connected with the bow by means of a “bridle,” a short auxiliary line fastened to a loop in the bow and to a ring through which the cordelle passed. The bridle prevented the boat from swinging under the force of the wind or current when the speed was not great enough to accomplish this purpose by means of the rudder. The object in having so long a line was to lessen the tendency to draw the boat toward the shore; and the object in having it fastened to the top of the mast was to keep it from dragging, and to enable it to clear the brush along the bank.

It took from twenty to forty men to cordelle the keelboat along average stretches of the river, and the work was always one of great difficulty. There was no established towpath, and the changing conditions104 of the river prevented the development of such a path except along a few stable stretches. It was frequently necessary to send men ahead to clear the most troublesome obstructions away. In some places, where it was impossible to walk and work at the same time, a few men would carry the end of the line beyond the obstruction and make it fast, while the rest would get on board and pull the boat up by drawing in the line. This operation was called warping.

When the boat was being cordelled there stood at the bow, near where the bridle was attached, an individual called in French a bosseman (boatswain’s mate), whose duty it was to watch for snags and other obstructions, and to help steer the boat by holding it off the bank with a pole. There was selected for this place a man of great physical strength, prompt decision, and thorough knowledge of the river. The patron, or master of the boat, stood at the rudder, which was manipulated by means of a long lever from the rear end of the cargo box. This position gave him an elevated point of view, from which he could overlook everything.

There were many places where the keelboat could not be cordelled at all, as along sandbars where the water was too shallow for the boat to get near the shore, or the alluvium too soft for the men to walk in. At such times it was necessary to resort to the pole,105 as it was called. This was a turned piece of ash wood regularly manufactured at St. Louis. On one end was a ball or knob to rest in the hollow of the shoulder, for the voyageur to push against; and on the other was a wooden shoe or socket. In propelling the boat with these poles eight or ten voyageurs ranged themselves along each side, near the bow, facing aft, pole in hand, one in front of the other, as close together as they could walk. The whole operation was under the direction of the patron. At his command “A bas les perches” (down with the poles), the voyageurs would thrust the lower ends into the river close to the boat and place the ball ends against their shoulders, so that the poles should be well inclined downstream. They would all push together, forcing the boat ahead, as they walked along the passe avant toward the stern, until the foremost man had gone as far as he could. The patron then gave the command “Levez les perches” (raise the poles), upon which they would be withdrawn from the mud, and the men would walk quickly back to the bow and repeat the operation. All steering was done while the poles were up, for the boat could not change direction while the men were pushing. It was always essential to give the boat sufficient momentum at each push to keep her going while the men were changing position. The passe avant had cleats nailed to it to keep the feet from slipping,106 and the men, when pushing hard, sometimes leaned over far enough to catch hold of the cleats with their hands, thus fairly crawling on all-fours.

In some places where the water was too deep for the poles and where cordelling was impracticable, oars were resorted to. There were five or six of these on each side of the bow. They often furnished assistance also when the boat was being cordelled.

A great reliance in propelling the keelboat, strange as it may seem considering the nature of Missouri River navigation, was the wind. A mast was rigged, with a square sail spreading about one hundred square feet of canvas, which often gave sufficient power to propel the boat against the swift current of the river. Unless the direction of the wind were altogether wrong the sinuous course of the stream would every now and then give an aft or quartering breeze. In some places the wind seemed to follow the bends, blowing up or down the river clear around. Thus Brackenridge relates that when Manuel Lisa’s boat, in June, 1811, was going around the Great Bend below Fort Pierre, where in the course of thirty miles the river flows toward every point of the compass, an aft wind was experienced all the way, and the entire circuit was made under sail. Some idea of sailing speed up the Missouri under favorable conditions may be gleaned from the fact that, on the day of passing107 the Great Bend, Lisa’s boat made seventy-five miles, a portion of the distance being made at night by the light of the moon. And on another occasion on the same trip Brackenridge records that “we had an extraordinary run of forty-five leagues from sun to sun.”

Thus, by means of the cordelle and pole, the oar and sail, the sturdy keelboat worked and worried its way up the turbulent Missouri in the early days. It was a slow and laborious process at best. A good idea of its maximum accomplishment under rather unfavorable conditions is furnished by Manuel Lisa’s voyage, already referred to. It was made with an exceptionally fine boat, a picked crew, and the most untiring and energetic commander that ever ascended the Missouri. There was especial necessity for rapid progress, for it was of the greatest importance to overtake the Astorian expedition, which was a long distance ahead, before it should reach the dangerous Sioux country. The difficulties from wind and storm were greater than the average, and the rate of progress was not increased by any fortuitous aids. Lisa left St. Charles, 28 miles above the mouth of the Missouri, April 2, 1811. He overtook Hunt at 1132 miles, on the morning of June 11. He therefore made about 1100 miles in sixty-one days, or about 18 miles per day. This, however, was better than the average. A keelboat108 trip to the upper river was practically an entire summer’s operation.

Above the mouth of the James or Dakota River keelboating was easier than below, because the natural obstacles of all sorts were less; but everywhere it was a very laborious process. Captain La Barge often remarked that it would be wholly impossible in this day to get men to undergo such exertions as were required of the keelboat crews. They worked early and late, in water and out, and often to the very limit of endurance. Their food was of the plainest description, consisting mainly of pork, lyed corn, and navy beans. From this allowance, slender as it was, meat was cut off as soon as the game country was reached. The cooking was done at the night camp for the following day. On top of the cargo box there was sometimes placed a cooking stove, in a shallow box filled with ashes or gravel to protect the roof from fire. The men’s baggage was stored in the front of the cargo box, where there was also a place for anyone to lie down who might fall sick. It was, however, a very poor place to be sick in. There were no medicines, no physicians, no nurses or attendants, and nothing but the coarsest food. The prospect itself was enough to frighten everyone into keeping well.

The hired laborers who did the work on these river expeditions were called voyageurs, and were generally109 of French descent. They were an interesting class of people, and presented a phase of pioneer life on the Missouri which has become wholly extinct. They were a very hard-working class, obedient, cheerful, light-hearted, and contented. It was a marvel to see them, after a hard day’s work, dance and sing around the evening campfire as if just awakened from a refreshing sleep. The St. Louis Creoles were regarded as more desirable boatmen than the French Canadians. The American hunter was not so useful in river work as the French voyageur, but was far more valuable for land work and in situations involving danger or requiring the display of physical courage.

Washington Irving, whose love of the romance of early Western history was ardent and sincere, beheld with unfriendly eye the introduction of the steamboat upon the Missouri. He lamented the “march of mechanical invention,” which was “fast dispelling the wildness and romance of our lakes and rivers,” and “driving everything poetical before it.” However well-founded this fear may have been in the general case, we are inclined to think that the exact reverse was true of the Missouri River steamboat. This remarkable craft introduced romantic features of which the old keelboat and its Creole crew never dreamed. The incidents of a single steamboat voyage110 from St. Louis to Fort Union would make an entertaining chapter in any book of adventure. As to impressiveness of appearance, certainly no craft on our Western waters, if upon any waters of the globe, displayed more majesty and beauty, or filled the mind with more interesting reflections, than these picturesque vessels of the early days in the boundless prairies of the West. The very surroundings lent a peculiar attraction to the scene. In every direction the broad and treeless plains extended without water enough anywhere in sight even to suggest a boat. Winding through these plains was a deep valley several miles broad, with a ribbon of verdure running through it along the sinuous course of the river. Everything was still as wild and unsettled as before the advent of the white man, and there was little or nothing to suggest the civilization of the outside world. In the midst of this virgin wildness a noble steamboat appears, its handsome form standing high above the water in fine outline against the verdure of the shore; its lofty chimneys pouring forth clouds of smoke in an atmosphere unused to such intrusion, and its progress against the impetuous current exhibiting an extraordinary display of power. Altogether it formed one of the most notable scenes ever witnessed upon the waters of America. Naturally enough the wild Indian viewed with feelings of awe this great111 “fire canoe,” whose power to “walk on the water” had subdued the intractable current to its own will. It is said to have been the advent of the steamboat which finally turned the scale of the Indian’s favor toward the Americans as against the British.

In truth, the Missouri River steamboat was a most attractive-looking craft. Unlike an ocean vessel, which is in large part buried beneath the waves, the river boat drew only three or four feet of water, and was therefore almost entirely above the surface. This gave it a great apparent size compared with its actual dimensions and tonnage. Its architectural design was pleasing to the eye. Its successive decks, surmounted by the texas and pilot-house, all painted a clear, even white, made it look like a veritable floating palace as it moved majestically among the groves of cottonwood and willow, or through the parched plains of the ashen-colored sage brush.

The criticism has been made that the river steamboat is one of the few modern mechanical contrivances which have shown no particular development, but remain to-day as they were long ago. The criticism is a mistaken one. If comparison be made between the first river steamboats and the best of to-day it will be found that progress in this development is quite up to that in other lines, and it is doubtful if any other machine is more perfectly adapted to its peculiar112 work. In very recent years there has naturally been but little development, for the steamboat business on Western rivers has largely passed away.

The earlier boats were usually of the sidewheel pattern, with only one engine, and an immense flywheel to keep it from stopping on the dead point. Unlike the modern boat, most of the accommodations for freight and passengers were abaft of the wheels. The stages for getting on and off were located there. The forward part was mainly taken up with machinery. The men’s cabins were in the hold. The shape of the boat was ill adapted to its work. It had a model keel, which gave it fully six feet draft with half of the load which has since been carried on three feet.12

Far different from this early boat was that used in the later years of business on the Missouri. The first-class modern river steamboat was about 220 feet113 long and 35 feet wide, and would carry 500 tons. It was built with a flat bottom, so that it would draw, say, thirty inches light and fifty loaded. It was propelled by a stern-wheel, a most excellent arrangement, which had become practicable through the invention of the balanced rudder: that is, a rudder with a part of the blade on each side of the rudder post. There were two engines of long stroke, one on each side of the boat, communicating directly with the wheel shaft and thus avoiding all loss from the friction of gearing. A proper distribution of the weight required that the boilers be placed well forward. This left a large space between them and the engine room, which was well aft.

The forecastle was equipped with steam capstans and huge spars, which served a purpose similar to that of the poles on a keelboat in pushing the boat over sandbars. Steam hoisting apparatus was used, and in the hold were light tramway cars to convey the freight from the hatchway to its place of deposit. Enormous stages, swung from derricks on either side of the bow, facilitated communication with the high banks of the river. The quarters of the crew and steerage passengers were on the boiler deck. On top of the hurricane deck was the texas—a suite of rooms for the officers of the boat. Above the texas stood the pilot-house, high over the river—a very important consideration,114 for the more directly the pilot could look down the better he could see the channel. The hurricane deck, and particularly the pilot-house, were favorite resorts for the passengers.

High above all towered the lofty smokestacks, carrying the sparks from the wood fire well away from the roof of the boat and giving a strong draft to the furnace. Between the two chimneys the name of the company generally appeared in large initial letters, legible for a long distance.13 One or more flags displayed their colors to the breeze, and a light armament, consisting of one or two small cannon, answered the double purpose of firing salutes and terrifying Indians who became too defiant.

The Missouri River pilot was beyond question the most skillful representative of his profession. In no other kind of navigation were the qualities of quick perception, intuitive grasp of a situation, nerve to act boldly and promptly, coolness and judgment in times of danger, so important and so constantly in demand. Navigation on the ocean was child’s play in comparison. The Missouri represented in the highest degree the peculiar dangers characteristic of alluvial streams. Its current was swift, its channel full of snags, its surface nearly always ruffled by the prairie gale, and never for five minutes in succession in a condition which would permit the pilot to take his hand from the wheel or the engineer to let go of the throttle. The elaborate system of communication between the pilot-house and the engine room was always in service, and the tinkle of signal bells in the engineer’s ear was almost continuous. The position of pilot was responsible and exacting, and called for a high order of ability. And so it resulted that the116 better class of pilots were men of high standing and character, in whose care business men unhesitatingly intrusted their property and the lives of their families.

The ever-shifting condition of the river channel14 caused the pilot to seek all available information as to its latest position. When other boats were met there was an eager swapping of notes, for it was a common practice in later years for pilots to assist each other by keeping notes of the condition of the river over which they passed.15 The pilots thus came to know the river by heart from its mouth to the head of navigation. The extraordinary knowledge of its topography and nomenclature which Captain La Barge retained to the end of his life was almost incredible. There was not a bend or rapid, a bed of snags, or other117 feature in all of its twenty-six hundred miles that was not as familiar to him as the rooms of his own house.

The most serious problem with which the Missouri navigator had to deal was that of procuring fuel. Wood alone was used, and this was obtained from the growths on the banks of the river. Cottonwood was the main reliance, because of its greater abundance, but it was not a first-class firewood. If green, it was next to impossible to maintain steam with it except by the aid of rosin. It was often found impracticable to carry the boat from one established wooding place to another, and it was then necessary to gather drift logs, or anything else that could be found. Whenever a trading post was abandoned its palisades and buildings quickly found their way into the steamboat furnaces, to the great, though transient, delight of the crew.

In the earlier years the fuel was cut by the crew itself as the boat proceeded on her voyage. But as the traffic became more regular, wood yards were established, either by the boat-owners or by others who cut wood for sale. The Indians themselves found the business a profitable one, and finally refused to let the whites cut wood at all. The sale of their wood thus became a source of considerable revenue to them. In later years, during the Sioux hostilities, the wooding of boats was a most perilous matter. Crews were118 attacked at the landings and only the most vigilant precaution prevented great loss of life at such times.16 To reduce this danger as much as possible, Captain La Barge equipped one of his boats with a sawmill, and took along a yoke of oxen. When he had to have wood he swung out a large stage, drove the team ashore, and dragged several logs on board with the utmost speed. As soon as this was done the boat proceeded on her way and the crew then sawed up the wood.

The “wooding” of a boat was an interesting performance. The moment the boat touched the bank for this purpose the mate called out “woodpile,” and every available man leaped ashore, loaded himself with wood, and hastened back to the boat. In an incredibly short time the work was done and the boat was again on her way.

Steamboat hours were as long as the light of day would permit. It was not customary to run at night, unless there was ample moonlight and the business was extremely urgent. But every hour of daylight was improved. In the higher latitudes morning and evening twilight almost touched hands across the few hours of intervening darkness. Three o’clock A. M. was a common hour of starting, and 9 P. M. of stopping.119 The crew were divided into four watches, so that they could take turns in getting sleep during the day.

The early morning run was liable to be the most successful of the day, unless it were the late evening run. At both times the wind was generally low enough to form no serious drawback. The landscape likewise appeared at its best, and the sight of sunrise or sunset on the river was one to be remembered. The water was comparatively calm at those hours, particularly in the early morning. Later in the day the wind generally began to rise, and the pilot always viewed as an evil omen the first cloud of sand that he saw drifting over the valley. If the wind increased beyond a certain point he was compelled to make for the shore and wait for it to subside. The area of the boat exposed to the wind was so great that in narrow channels it was impossible to keep within them, and it was often necessary to lie at the bank for several hours. This enforced idleness was generally improved in cutting wood for present and future needs.

The danger from snags was always present and sometimes very great, and the passage of these obstructions was a matter of anxious solicitude on the part of both officers and passengers. Less dangerous, but not less annoying, was the passage of shallow bars where there was not sufficient depth to float the boat.120 This usually occurred at the “crossings,” or places where the channel, after having followed one side of the river-bed for a distance, crossed over to the other. In these places the channel generally split up into chutes, none of which might have the required depth of water. The pilot’s first step would be to select the most promising channel. If this failed, he retreated and tried another. Always at such times one of the deck hands was kept at the bow on the forecastle sounding the channel—a function most interesting and novel to one who had never witnessed it. On the shallow Missouri a pole was used instead of a lead line. A deck hand seized this pole and thrust it into the water every five seconds, at the same time calling out the depth in a drawling, sing-song voice. The Canadian boatmen would generally preface these calls with a snatch from some of their native songs, winding up with the required information as a sort of refrain. So novel was the performance to the uninitiated that an expert sounder would attract around him an audience of listeners.

In case no channel was found by direct trial with the boat, the pilot sent the mate out in a yawl, or more generally went himself, and carefully sounded the entire river over the shallow portion. Having determined where the deepest water lay, he returned to the boat, and if the obstacle were not too great, at once121 proceeded to move the boat over it. Steaming in the proper direction, as determined from the sounding, he would run the boat as far as she would go. The crew then lowered the huge spars on either side, set them in the sand with the lower ends pointing downstream so that a pull on the lines would both lift the boat and crowd it ahead; then hauled taut the lines, threw them around the capstans, and proceeded to “walk” the boat over the bar. The process was often long and laborious, and instances were not uncommon where one or two days were consumed in this way. An occasional resource, which always puzzled the uninitiated, was to set the wheel going with a reverse motion, as if trying to back the boat. The object of this was to dam the river up slightly and relieve as much as possible the pressure on the bar. The water was sometimes backed in this way up to a height of four inches, and this meant a great deal. The backward power of the wheel was so much less than the forward power of the spars that it was not considered at all. This was one of the scientific aspects of Missouri River navigation.

The few rapids on the river which were too steep for the boat to stem unaided were usually passed by the method of warping. As soon as the boat reached the foot of a rapid she made for the shore. The moment her prow touched the bank a dozen men122 leaped out and started on the run up along the water’s edge. The foremost carried a pick and spade and a few stakes, the second a stick of timber a little smaller than a railroad tie, and the rest at proper intervals a strong line which was rapidly uncoiled from the boat. Having arrived well beyond the head of the rapid the men proceeded to plant a “dead man”: that is, they dug a trench three or four feet deep in the hard prairie soil, large enough to receive the stick of timber, and with the long dimension at right angles to the river. The timber was then buried and firmly staked down, and the line fastened to it at its middle, while the crew on the boat threw their end of the line around the capstan, which was then slowly wound in under the power of steam. The operation was a very slow one, though less so as a general thing than sparring over sandbars.

Occasionally the pilots encountered genuine whirlpools of such magnitude that steamboats could not cross them. In 1867 the Bishop was swamped in an eddy caused by a new cut-off on the river. The boat was caught at the point where the swift current of the cut-off entered the old channel. At about the same time the Miner narrowly escaped disaster in a violent eddy not far below Sioux City, Ia. The whirl of the water was so swift that the center of the eddy was nearly twelve feet below its circumference. The boat123 was trying to pull itself by with a line when it was caught by the eddy, swung out into the stream, whirled violently around and careened over until the river flowed right across the lower deck. Wood and all other movable material were swept off, and two men were drowned. Only the mate’s presence of mind in slacking off the line saved the boat.

One of the most formidable perils of Missouri navigation during the period from 1860 to 1876 was the hostility of the Indians. The Sioux tribes in particular terrorized the boatmen all along the valley from the Niobrara to Milk River. Many were their actual attacks and many were the lives lost. It became necessary on some voyages to barricade the decks and staterooms, and the most careful vigilance night and day was required in order to avoid disaster.

An exciting and often dangerous pastime indulged in by the river boats was racing. This was particularly true of the period about 1858, when the boating business was rather overdone and there was great competition in the trade. Racing on the Missouri was very risky in any case, owing to the uncertainty of the channel and the abundance of shags; but the chief danger arose from the temptation to raise the steam pressure above a safe limit. Of all classes of steamboat disasters, the most dreadful were those caused by boiler explosions. There were six of these wrecks in124 the history of the river, although it is not known that they were all caused by racing. In 1842 the Edna was destroyed at the mouth of the Missouri, and forty-two German emigrants were killed. The most terrible accident was that of the Saluda, April 9, 1852, at Lexington, Mo. The boat was a sidewheeler, with two large boilers, and was on her way up the river with a load of merchandise and many Mormon passengers. The river was very high and the current so strong that the boat could not round the point just above town. After waiting several days without any improvement of the situation, the captain, Francis F. Belt, ordered another trial. Going into the engine room, he inquired how much steam was being carried. The engineer replied that he was carrying every pound that the boilers could stand. The captain recklessly ordered more steam to be made, and declared with an oath that he would round the bend or blow the boat to pieces. He then went above, rang the bell, and ordered the lines cast off. The boat swung into the stream; the engines made but one or two revolutions when the boilers burst with a terrific explosion that blew the boat into splinters and scattered them far and wide. Nearly all the officers were killed, among them the pilot, Charles La Barge, Captain La Barge’s brother, and the second pilot, Louis Guerette, Mrs. La Barge’s brother. It is said that over one hundred125 bodies were found. Several children who escaped, but had lost their parents, were adopted by the people of Lexington and grew up to be citizens of Missouri instead of Mormon residents of the future State of Utah. The bell of this boat was blown out on the bank while yet it was ringing under the hand of Captain Belt. It was purchased with other wreckage by a resident of Lexington, who sold it to the Christian Church in Savannah, Mo., where it has done duty for the past fifty years.

After the time when the boats began to carry passengers in considerable numbers, much more attention was paid to the table fare than in the days when the passenger list was made up almost entirely of men going to service with the fur companies. In those days pork, lyed corn, and navy beans made up the substance of the bill of fare. It was always a rule, when in the Indian country, to rely on game for meat. For this purpose hunters were regularly employed on the various boats, selected for their skill, and never called upon for any other work. The hunter’s custom was to leave the boat about midnight, some three or four hours before she was to start, and to scour the bank of the river, keeping well ahead. Whenever any animal was killed it was hung up in some conspicuous place, and was brought in by the steamboat yawl as the boat came along.

126

Captain La Barge had many of these hunters in his employ during his career. Henry Chatillon, the same who appears in Francis Parkman’s “Oregon Trail,” was one. He was a fine man, an excellent hunter, and sensible and gentlemanly in all his relations. The Captain’s favorite hunter, however, was Louis Dauphin, who was more fearless than Chatillon and equally skillful as a hunter. He had a very long career on the Missouri River. He seemed to delight in danger, and was never afraid of the Indians; but his lack of prudence at last cost him his life, and he was killed by the Sioux near the mouth of Milk River in 1865.

Such are some of the peculiar features of Missouri River navigation as it existed fifty years ago. To bring back more of the reality of what has now become only a reminiscence, let us follow one of these steamboats on a typical voyage up the river. The principal event on the annual trip was the embarkation at St. Louis. The cargo consisted of a heterogeneous assortment of goods, designed for the Indian trade and for the equipment of hunting and trapping parties. It frequently included also the government annuities for the various tribes, and stores for the Indian agencies and military posts. The passengers composed an even more heterogeneous mixture than the cargo itself. There were, first, the regular boat crew, numbering from thirty to forty. Very likely there were127 several Indians returning home from St. Louis, or even from Washington. Then there were recruits for the various trading companies, consisting of hunters, trappers, voyageurs, and mountaineers, and possibly a company of soldiers for some military service. Nearly always there were passengers distinguished for wealth or scientific attainment, who were making the journey for pleasure or research. Government exploring parties generally traveled by boat to the initial point of their expeditions. In all there were from one hundred to two hundred people on board, with sufficient variety to insure vivacity and interest, however monotonous the journey might otherwise be.

The departure from port was always attended with more or less carousing and revelry, particularly in the keelboat and early steamboat days, when a trip up the river might mean years of absence. The kind of farewell that captured the fancy of the average voyageur was a general debauch, which often disqualified him from being ready when the hour of departure arrived. Sometimes these delinquents who failed to appear hied themselves across the country to St. Charles, and joined the boat there. In order to protect itself from loss, the American Fur Company made all its payments to the men conditional upon a certain amount of service. It made an allowance of clothing and blankets, but never delivered them until the men128 were on board and out of port. Wages were never advanced except to trusted employees.

As the boat swung out into the stream a running salute of musketry was kept up by the mountaineers and others until it was out of hearing. The roll was then called, and the engagés were given their parcels of clothing. Next began the work of putting the boat deck in order for the trip. The bales of goods, which were strewn about in disorderly heaps, were carefully stowed away, and before night the boat was reduced to the appearance which it would wear during the remainder of the trip.

There still remained to be settled a final preliminary to a successful and harmonious voyage—the championship for physical prowess among the engagés on the boat. As in a herd of cattle, so here, someone must be recognized as the strongest—able to whip anybody else in open contest. The crew being largely strangers to each other in starting, there were more or less friction and bickering until a settlement by fist force was reached. Usually the contest would settle down to a small number in a short time. It was a favorite pastime with that veteran mountaineer, Etienne Provost, who was often sent up in charge of recruits, to compel an early settlement which would determine all blustering and quarreling. He would form a ring on the forecastle and compel every braggart to make129 good his claims before the assembled passengers and crew. One after another would succumb, until one man would emerge from the contest victorious over all the others. He would then be awarded the championship, and receive a red belt in token thereof.

Captain La Barge recalled an interesting incident of this kind in which he himself had a hand. It was on the Robert Campbell, in 1863. He had on board a large quota of Irish engagés, in fact they were mostly of this nationality; but there was one well-built, quiet, rawboned American, whose full name he had forgotten, but who was commonly known as Yankee Jack. In modern slang, the Irishmen “had it in” for this Yankee, and made his life as uncomfortable as possible. Two men in particular made it a point to harass and annoy him in every conceivable way, until the Captain finally asked Jack why he did not resent their conduct. Jack, who had a higher respect for authority than his persecutors, had not felt at liberty to take the matter up on the boat, but now told the Captain that, if he would permit it, he would settle the matter once for all very promptly. The Captain told him to go ahead, and himself arranged the preliminaries, and told the Irishmen that they would have to stand up and “take their medicine.” With a good deal of contempt for the Yankee they made ready for the fray. A place was cleared on the deck and one of130 the men stepped out before Yankee Jack, and the battle began; but before the Irishman knew “where he was at” he lay sprawling upon the floor totally hors de combat. The next man stepped up and was led to the slaughter with as little ceremony as the other. For the rest of the voyage the Yankee was unmolested.

While the officers and crew were kept alert and active the livelong day in getting their boat up the troublesome stream, the passengers whiled away their time as best they could. Games of all practicable sorts were indulged in. It was a common pastime to stand on the forecastle or boiler deck and shoot at geese and ducks on the river. Now and then the sight of deer and other animals enlivened the moment, and occasionally the appearance of Indians on the bank caused a flutter of excitement. To relieve the tedium of the voyage it was a common thing, when there was no danger from the Indians, to land at the beginning of extensive bends, and ramble across the country to the other side, rejoining the boat when it came along.

The pilot-house was the favorite resort on the boat when the condition of navigation would permit the passengers to be there. The pilot was always an interesting personage to get acquainted with. When in the proper mood and sailing along some easy stretch of river, he would unloosen his tongue and entertain131 his listeners with tales of his adventurous experiences, in reality the accumulated stories of many years, but as new to the tenderfoot as if told for the first time. Here he would point out a dry sand waste where the channel ran the year before and where now a fine crop of willows was shooting vigorously upward. The high bank yonder, with a grove of cottonwoods close to the water’s edge, was where the boat was attacked by Indians a few years before and two of the crew killed. The holes where bullets tore through the pilot-house were still visible as tragic reminders of a hairbreadth escape. A little further on was where the boat once had to stop to let a herd of buffalo cross the river, for it would not do to try to run through the herd lest their huge bodies become entangled in the wheels and cripple it altogether. Sometimes these delays amounted to several hours. In another place the Captain would point out the grave of some Indian chief reposing in the arms of a tree, where it had been placed by his people years before, and the sight would suggest many thrilling experiences, and even tragedies, which marked the intercourse of these primitive people with the navigators of the river. The recital of these traditions appealed to the imagination of the traveler, and helped allay the monotony of the voyage. If the landscape might often be likened to the “uniform view of the vacant ocean,” there were nevertheless132 a thousand features on every trip which the most interesting ocean voyage lacks.

Among the important events of every voyage were the arrivals at the various trading posts. To the occupants of these remote stations, buried in the depths of the wilderness, shut out for months from any glimpse of the world outside, the coming of the annual boat was an event of even greater interest than to the passengers themselves. Generally the person in charge of the post, with some of the employees, would drop down the river two or three days’ ride and meet the boat. When she drew near the post, salutes would be exchanged, the colors displayed, and the passengers would throng the deck to greet the crowd which lined the bank. The exigencies of navigation never left much time for celebration and conviviality. The exchange of cargo was carried on with the utmost dispatch, and the moment the business was completed the boat proceeded on her way.

These are some of the typical features of steamboat life as it used to exist on the Missouri River. In later years, when the gold discoveries in Montana gave the business such an astonishing impetus, other features of interest developed. The business was always a romantic one, and will stand in American frontier history as one of its most picturesque and delightful memories.

The most important early use of steamboats upon the Missouri River was in connection with the fur trade, for this was the principal business conducted along the valley in the first half of the nineteenth century.17 Steamboats had entered the river in 1819, but that early experiment had not been very successful and had led to no regular traffic as late as 1830. The American Fur Company, which monopolized the fur trade of the Missouri Valley, continued to send its annual cargoes of merchandise up the river in keelboats. The great difficulty, heavy cost, and extreme delay by this method of transportation were a serious handicap upon the business. It took an entire summer to reach the far upper posts and not infrequently ice closed the river before this could be done. A large crew was required for a comparatively small cargo,134 and it was necessary to bring them all back in order not to have more men in the field than were needed.

It was from considerations of this character that the use of steamboats was determined upon in the summer of 1830, and from that time the true history of Missouri River navigation begins. The American Fur Company then had its headquarters in New York. John Jacob Astor was the real head of the company, although his son, William B. Astor, was its president. The Western Department of the Company was established in St. Louis and managed by the firm of Bernard Pratte & Company. Pierre Chouteau, Jr., writing for the firm, August 30, 1830, to the house in New York, thus describes the beginning of this new undertaking:

Such is the clear statement of the origin of a business which thirty years later assumed enormous proportions. The house in New York gave its approval, the boat was built, and was named, most appropriately, the Yellowstone, and in the spring of 1831 started on its first voyage for the far upper river.

THE FIRST YELLOWSTONE

(After Maximilian)

The boat did not get as far as was expected on this trip. A little above the mouth of the Niobrara River it was stopped for a time by low water. Pierre Chouteau,137 Jr., who, with McKenzie, was the soul of the enterprise, was a passenger. Burning with impatience at the delay, he sent to Fort Tecumseh for lighters to take off a portion of the cargo. Every day he got out upon the high bluffs overlooking the river and paced up and down, watching for the desired assistance and praying for a rise in the river. The bluffs have ever since been known as the Chouteau Bluffs.

At last three boats came down and relieved the steamer of enough of her cargo to enable her to reach Fort Tecumseh, where Fort Pierre, S. D., now stands. No attempt was made to go farther, and in a short time she returned to St. Louis.

In spite of the failure to reach the mouth of the Yellowstone the experiment was considered enough of a success to justify its repetition. Accordingly, in the spring of 1832, the Yellowstone set out again, and this time reached Fort Union. The voyage was highly successful, and the return trip was made at the rate of a hundred miles a day. Pierre Chouteau, Jr., was again a passenger. Since the previous year Fort Tecumseh had been rebuilt in a situation less exposed to the ravages of the river, and was ready for occupancy when the Yellowstone arrived on her upward trip. It was at that time christened Fort Pierre, in honor of the distinguished visitor and member of the company. George Catlin, the painter of Indian scenes138 and portraits, was also a passenger, and his writings and sketches have added to the celebrity of the voyage.

The success of the second experiment in navigating the Missouri gave great satisfaction to the company and to the public in general, for it had never been considered possible to take steamboats so far. It added seventeen hundred miles to the internal navigable waters of the United States, with every prospect that this would be extended to the very foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The voyage created great interest both in this country and in Europe, and John Jacob Astor, who was in France at the time, wrote home that nearly all the public journals of the Continent had made mention of it. Ramsay Crooks, general agent of the company in New York, thus expressed his pleasure to the house in St. Louis at the great success which they had achieved:

The experiment thus inaugurated grew into a regular business. The American Fur Company sent up one or more boats every spring, as long as it continued in the business. In the spring of 1833 it sent up two boats, the Yellowstone and the Assiniboine. It was this year that Maximilian, Prince of Wied, went up and spent several months at Forts McKenzie, Clark, and Union.20 The Assiniboine went above Fort Union for some distance, thus making another advance toward the head of navigation. It was caught in this advanced situation by low water, and was compelled to remain there all winter.

A most interesting and valuable relic of these early steamboat days has survived in the form of a journal, or logbook, covering the voyages from 1841 to 1847 inclusive. It is all in French except that for the year 1847. It is very complete, and exhibits in the clearest detail the manner of life which existed on the Missouri140 River steamboat in those early days. Captain La Barge was pilot on some of these voyages, and we shall now note a few of the interesting incidents with which he was connected, for they furnish a living picture of a condition of things which has long since ceased to exist.

The voyage of 1843 is known in more complete detail than any other in the history of the river. There are two complete journals of it—the Sire logbook, just referred to, and the published journal of the great naturalist, Audubon, who was one of the passengers. Captain La Barge himself gave the present author his full recollections of the trip. There were in all about one hundred passengers, besides some Indians returning to their country from a visit to St. Louis. The passenger list included the usual picturesque variety, but its most conspicuous and noteworthy feature was, of course, the presence of Audubon and his party of scientists. Captain Joseph Sire was master of the boat and Captain La Barge pilot.

The Omega left St. Louis April 25, 1843. Along the lower course of the river the voyage was more than ordinarily difficult. The waters were high and the bottoms were badly overflowed, making shore excursions very unpleasant. The current was strong and the winds so severe and constant that the boat had to142 lie at the bank for several hours nearly every day. These delays were improved by the boat crew in procuring wood, and by the scientists in studying the country.

No incident worthy of particular mention occurred until the boat reached Bellevue, a few miles below the modern site of Omaha, Neb. The importation of liquor into the Indian country was prohibited under the severest penalties, and inspectors were stationed at Leavenworth and Bellevue to examine all cargoes bound up the river. Now it so happened that liquor was the one article above all others that the traders considered indispensable to their business, and they never failed to smuggle it through in some way or other. In the earlier years there was only one place at which the cargoes going up the river were inspected, and that was Fort Leavenworth. Later, when an Indian agency was established at Bellevue, that place also became a point of detention. At this particular time it was the bête noire of the American Fur Company traders. The military authorities at Fort Leavenworth, from long experience in the country and intimate knowledge of conditions prevailing there, exercised their office as inspectors with reasonable judgment and discretion. They understood very well that the small competing traders would smuggle liquor past them in spite of all they could do, and that to deprive143 the only responsible company on the river of its means of maintaining itself was simply to debauch the trade with the Indians to a reckless and demoralizing rivalry among a horde of irresponsible traders. They were therefore very lenient in their inspections, and the company rarely had any difficulty in getting past them.

Not so, however, with some of the newly appointed Indian agents. It was about this time that the Indian Department tried the experiment of assigning clergymen to the agencies—an example of good intentions but bad judgment. These new agents showed more zeal than discretion in their work, and although they put the traders to a great deal of trouble, it is doubtful if they lessened by a single drop the amount of liquor carried into the country.

On the occasion of the voyage of 1843 the agent at Bellevue happened to be absent from his station when the boat arrived. Elated at this unexpected good fortune, Captain Sire lost no time in putting off the freight destined for this point and in getting on his way. He pursued his voyage until nine o’clock that evening, and doubtless felicitated himself that he was out of danger. But it appears that the agent had delegated the function of inspector during his absence to the commander of the United States troops in the vicinity. The boat left her mooring at daylight next144 morning, but had scarcely gotten under way when a couple of rifle shots were fired across her bow. She brought to at once and made for the shore. There Captain Sire found a lieutenant in charge of a few dragoons, who had come from his camp four miles distant. The young officer came on board and presented to Captain Sire a polite note from Captain Burgwin, commander of the camp, stating that his orders required him to inspect the boat before letting her proceed.

This was like a dash of cold water to the buoyant spirits of Captain Sire, and none the less so to Audubon, to whom, as well as to the company, the loss of the liquid portion of the cargo would have been irreparable. The naturalist had a permit from the government to carry with him a quantity of liquor for the use of himself and party, and upon showing his credentials to the young officer he was, to use his own words, “immediately settled comfortably.” But in the moment of his good fortune he did not forget his companions who were not yet “settled comfortably.” He understood that time was required to prepare for the approaching function, and he could at least help to secure this time by delaying inspection as long as possible. He accordingly expressed a desire to visit the camp, and the lieutenant detailed a dragoon to accompany him. The great naturalist rode four miles to call145 upon an obscure army officer whom he knew he could see in a short time by waiting at the boat. The officer was overwhelmed at the honor of the visit, and when Audubon offered to present his credentials he politely and gallantly replied that his name was too well known throughout the United States to require any letters. Audubon says of the occasion: “I was on excellent and friendly terms in less time than it has taken me to write this account of our meeting.” Between his entertaining conversation and the shooting of some birds he contrived to detain the Captain for a good two hours before they returned to the boat.

The time had not been wasted by Captain Sire and his loyal crew. The shallow hold of the steamboat of those days was divided lengthwise into two compartments by a partition or bulkhead running the full length of the boat. A narrow-gauge tramway extended down each side of the hold its entire length, the two sides connecting with each other by a curve which passed under the hatchway in the forecastle. Small cars received the cargo let down through the hatchway, and carried it to its place in the hold or brought it out again when the boat was being unloaded. A car could pass from the stern of the boat on one side of the hold around the curve in the bow and to the stern of the boat on the other side. There being no windows in the hold, everything was buried146 in blackness a few feet from the hatchway. Workmen were lighted to their labors by means of candles.

During the absence of Audubon the crew had loaded all the liquor upon the cars, and had run them down on one side of the hold far enough from the hatchway to be entirely concealed in the darkness. They were carefully instructed in the part they had to play in the approaching comedy, and very likely were put through a preliminary rehearsal or two.

When Captain Burgwin arrived in Audubon’s company, he was received most hospitably and treated to a luncheon, in which was included, as a matter of course, a generous portion from the private store embraced in Audubon’s “credentials.” By this time the young Captain was in most excellent temper and was quite disposed to forego the inspection altogether. But the virtuous Sire would not have it so. “I insisted, as it were,” says the worthy navigator in his log of May 10, “that he make the strictest possible search, but upon the condition that he would do the same with other traders.”21

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A proposition so eminently fair was at once agreed to by the inspector, whose mellow faculties were now in a most accommodating condition. The shrewd steamboat master, who never forgot to be sober when his company’s interests were at stake, escorted the officer down the hatchway, and together they groped their way along the hold by the light of a not too brilliant candle. It may be imagined with what zeal the scrupulous Captain thrust the ineffectual flame into every nook and corner, and even insisted that the inspector move a box or bale now and then to assure himself that everything was all right.

Arrived at the foot of the hold, they passed through an opening and started back on the other side. The officer was doubtless too much absorbed with the effects of his recent collation to notice the glimmer of light under the hatchway at the other end of the boat, where a miniature train with its suspicious cargo was creeping stealthily around the curve and disappearing toward the side which they had just left. The party finished their inspection, and everything was found quite as it should be. With many protestations of good will the clever hosts and their delighted guest parted company, and the good Captain Sire went on148 his way rejoicing. But woe to the luckless craft of some rival trader which should happen along with no Audubon in the cabin and no tramway in the hold.22

The ordeal of inspection being over, the boat proceeded on her way with no further drawbacks than those arising from the various hindrances to navigation. One of the disagreeable features of the trip above the mouth of the Big Sioux River was the vast number of dead buffalo that were encountered. They had been drowned on the upper river at the time of the spring break-up in attempting to cross the ice after it became too weak. Their bodies had then floated downstream and had lodged all along the river on sandbars, islands, or the low shores. Some time having elapsed since they were drowned, their flesh was now in a condition that rendered the air almost insupportable.

An incident which caused considerable excitement, but luckily no misfortune, occurred at Handy’s Point (where Fort Randall later stood) on the 22d of May. A band of eight or ten Santee Indians, apparently angered because the boat would not stop for them, opened fire upon it from the bank. The bullets tore through the cabins and pilot-house, but by the greatest good luck no one was hurt. A Scotchman who was149 asleep in his bunk was awakened and terribly frightened by one of the bullets which entered his berth, passing through his pantaloons, and flattening itself against a trunk. Audubon saved two of the spent bullets as relics. He was himself standing near one of the chimneys and saw a bullet splash in the water just in front of the boat. Considering the large number of people on board, the escape of everyone was almost miraculous.

Captain La Barge was at the wheel at the time. In the pilot-house with him was a French negro from Louisiana named Jacques Desiré, always known as Black Dave. He was an excellent pilot and was on board with a crew to return with the steamboat Trapper, which had been left up the river the previous autumn on account of low water. When the bullet crashed through the pilot-house Black Dave walked quietly out and took shelter behind one of the smokestacks, where he remained until the boat was well away from the scene of the attack. Captain La Barge asked him why he did not remain in the pilot-house, so as to be ready to take the wheel in case he himself were disabled. Dave replied that it was not the fear of bullets that drove him away, but that his eyesight was all he had to make his living by, and he was afraid of its getting injured by the flying glass.

As may readily be understood, a feature of first importance150 on this trip was the presence of so distinguished a passenger as the naturalist Audubon. The impression which the celebrated scientist made upon the crew and those who were entertaining him was quite unfavorable. He was very reserved, and when he did hold intercourse with members of the crew it was generally in an overbearing manner which alienated their good will. It thus resulted that his hunters rendered him inefficient service, and his journal is full of complaints at their failure to keep their promises. Certain personal habits aggravated this defect, and altogether he was not a popular traveler with the crew.

Captain La Barge mentions several instances of his ill treatment, one of which concerned himself, and is here given in his own words, as he once prepared them for publication in the Missouri Republican:

The crew soon lost a good deal of the deference and respect which were justly due to individuals of such scientific attainments as were those of the Audubon party; and it is to be feared that they played pranks on them now and then which they would have avoided with people of more congenial manner. Etienne Provost was serving as guide to the party. No one in that day knew the Western country better than he, and he was quite astonished when Mr. Prou, Audubon’s botanist, said to him one day that he could tell the name of any plant in that country from the leaf and stalk, even if he had never seen it growing. “You may think so,” said Provost, “but I will undertake to prove that you are mistaken; for I know a plant that grows in this country whose name you will not be able to tell, even with the aid of your books.” Soon afterward the boat landed to take on wood near the mouth of the Cheyenne River. A band of Indians had spent the previous winter near by and had dropped some of their corn on the ground. This was now well sprouted and the tender blades were just shooting up. Provost carefully cut the ground around a spear of the corn so as not to disturb the153 roots or the kernel, which was still attached thereto. He deftly concealed everything except one leaf and then showed it to Mr. Prou. The eager scientist was looking for some test of a formidable character, and anything like corn did not even occur to him. It is doubtful if he realized at the time that corn was grown in that country. He racked his brain for a plant that he could identify with the specimen. He grew nervous under the scrutiny of the on-lookers that had gathered around him. Taking his book, he searched back and forth, but to no purpose. It was indeed a new species, and he finally acknowledged himself beaten. Provost then, with provoking gravity, pulled away the dirt around the roots and finally disclosed to the astonished scientist—a kernel of corn.

Above Omaha the boat made its way with more than usual speed and good luck to its destination. It reached Fort Pierre May 31 and Fort Union at sundown June 12. It left Fort Union June 14, reached Pierre June 21, and St. Louis June 29. The time consumed was forty-nine days from St. Louis to Fort Union and seventeen days returning. Mr. Audubon and party remained at Fort Union until autumn, returning in a mackinaw boat.

In the winter of 1843–44 the American Fur Company built a new boat, the Nimrod, designed to correct certain defects in the Omega, and in this boat the voyage of 1844 was made. As in the previous year, Captains Sire and La Barge were master and pilot. It was in the spring and summer of this year that occurred the great flood of 1844. This appears to have been the greatest flood in the lower Missouri and central Mississippi ever known before or since. The entire bottoms in the vicinity of St. Louis were covered with water to a width of several miles. The flood had the curious effect of completely filling up the old bed of the river, so that, when it subsided, the river had to cut out a new channel, and it was many years before the channel was restored to its condition before the flood. The high water lasted far into the summer. When Captain La Barge returned from his trip to Fort Union he ran his boat up Washington Avenue to Commercial Alley, where he made her fast through a window in J. E. Walsh’s warehouse at the155 corner of those streets. This great flood was mostly from the lower country, and scarcely at all from the mountains. When the Nimrod reached the Omaha villages, a short distance below the modern site of Sioux City, Ia., she found the water so low that she was compelled to wait several days for a rise. This fact is a noteworthy one, as another refutation of the popular idea that floods in the Mississippi have their origin in the melting snows of the Rocky Mountains. As a matter of fact they always come from the heavy rains of the lower country.

The Nimrod passenger list, like that of the Omega the year before, included some notable names. Among these were the Comte d’Otrante, son of the famous Fouché of France, and another Frenchman, the Comte de Peindry. D’Otrante was much liked by the crew. He was an accomplished gentleman, very wealthy, and had with him a retinue of servants who had been reared with him upon the ancestral domain in France. He was making the present journey solely for the purpose of pleasure. De Peindry was a different sort of man. He and d’Otrante met by accident on this trip and had little to do with each other. It was noted that de Peindry treated his compatriot with great deference and respect as being his superior. He was silent and impenetrable, and spent much of his time hunting. When leaving the boat on these hunts156 he would give directions not to wait for him if he did not return. He was repeatedly cautioned that the boat could not wait for him, but his invariable reply was: “Do not wait; I will turn up; if I do not, it is no matter.” He caused a great deal of uneasiness on several occasions by not getting back in time, and Captain Sire in his journal comments severely upon his conduct. He was said to be a noted duelist, who, for some unknown cause, had been compelled to leave Paris. He was very much of an enigma to the passengers of the Nimrod. In 1845 he went to California, whence the report came a few years later that he had been assassinated.

In passing the Indian agency at Bellevue this year it was necessary to indulge in some more sharp practice to get the annual cargo of alcohol past that point. The new Indian agent at Bellevue was an ex-Methodist minister of the name of Joseph Miller—as zealous in his new role of liquor inspector as he had ever been in the regular practice of his profession. It was his boast that no liquor could pass his agency. He rummaged every boat from stem to stern, broke open the packages, overturned the piles of merchandise, and with a long, slender, pointed rod pierced the bales of blankets and clothing, lest kegs of alcohol might be rolled up within. The persistent clergyman put the experienced agents of the company to their157 wit’s ends, and it was with great difficulty that they succeeded in eluding his scrutiny.

The urgency of the problem, however, produced its own solution. Captain Sire had the alcohol all packed in barrels of flour. But he knew that even this device would not alone be enough, for the energetic agent would very likely have the barrels burst open. The Captain therefore had them all marked as if consigned to Peter A. Sarpy, the Company’s agent at Bellevue, and they were labeled in large letters “P. A. S.” The moment the nose of the boat touched the landing at Bellevue, the Captain, as was his custom, ordered the freight for that point placed on shore, and the barrels were promptly bowled out upon the bank and carried into the warehouse. The agent, never suspecting this freight, went on board, and after a most rigid search, found nothing wrong. The boat was permitted to proceed, but, contrary to its usual haste in getting away as soon as the loading and unloading were complete, it remained the rest of the day, and gave out that it would not sail until the following morning. The extraordinarily good character of the boat on this occasion, and the unusually long delay in departing, roused the suspicions of the agent, who stationed a man to watch the boat and to whistle if he saw anything wrong.

Everything remained quiet until some time after158 midnight, except that a full head of steam was kept up in the boilers. Presently there was great activity on the boat, although with an ominous silence about it all. The pilot, Captain La Barge, was quietly engineering the reloading of the barrels. He had spread tarpaulins on the deck and gang plank to deaden the noise, and the full crew of the boat were hurrying the barrels back in a most lively fashion. “What does this mean?” one of the deckhands asked of another. “We unloaded these barrels yesterday.” “Why, don’t you see?” was the brilliant reply of another, “they’re marked ‘P. A. S.’; they’ve got to pass.”

The work was quickly over and every barrel was on board, when the agent’s sleepy guard awoke to the fact that something was going on. He uttered his signal, and the agent made haste to turn out and see what was the matter. La Barge and Captain Sire, who knew full well what the whistle meant, did not linger to make explanations. Captain La Barge seized an ax and cut the line. “Get aboard, men!” he shouted; “the line has parted!” The boat instantly dropped back into the current and then stood out into the river under her own steam. She was already out of reach of the bank when the reverend inspector appeared and wanted to know why they were off so early. It was about 3 A. M. “Oh, the line parted,” replied Captain La Barge, “and it was so159 near time to start that it was not worth while to tie up again.”23

This was a little too much for the agent, who could not understand how it happened that the boat was so thoroughly prepared for such an accident, with steam up, pilot at the wheel, crew at their places, and all at so early an hour. Next day he found that the barrels consigned to Sarpy were gone, and saw how completely he had been duped. Mortified and indignant, he reported the company to the authorities, and a long train of difficulties ensued, with ineffectual threats of canceling the company’s license.24 Meanwhile the alcohol found its intended destination in the stomachs of the Indians, and the company reaped the enormous profit which traffic in that article always yielded.

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As already noted, when the Nimrod arrived at the site of the Omaha villages, the river was so low that she could not proceed for several days. A crew was kept constantly busy with the yawl, sounding the channel to detect any favorable changes in its shifting bed. On one of these sounding excursions, when about five miles from the boat, and under a high cut bank, La Barge was surprised and captured by a Pawnee war party on their way to steal horses from the Yanktonais. When the Captain heard them speak Pawnee he felt safe, and at once opened conversation with them in their own tongue. Although he knew none of the Indians personally, he succeeded in inducing them to come to the boat and partake of a feast. Thus the Captain’s knowledge of the Pawnee language, acquired in the villages of that tribe ten years before, stood him in excellent stead. These Indians might not have killed him, belonging as they did to a friendly tribe; but war parties, even of friendly Indians, were lawless and desperate, and they would no doubt have handled the little boat crew pretty roughly.

Among the crew of the Nimrod there were two ocean sailors, good men, but with no river experience, who had engaged for the trip to see the interior of the country. They were employed principally in handling the rigging. One Sunday morning, May 19, while161 the boat was still at the Omaha villages, they set off together with a single gun to try their luck hunting. They failed to return that day and likewise the next, when general uneasiness began to be felt about them. Parties were sent after them in all directions, guns were fired, and everything done to find them, but to no purpose; and the boat proceeded on her way without them. The general opinion was that they had been killed by some vagrant war party of Indians. Some two weeks later, as the boat was setting out one morning, a trader by the name of Kensler was seen coming down the river with a small boatload of furs. La Barge ran his boat to shore and hailed the trader, who promptly hove to and came on board. La Barge explained the circumstance of these two men having been lost, gave Kensler some provisions for them, and asked him to stop at the woodpile,25 where the boat had laid up so long, and see if he could find any traces of the men. He did so, and actually found them there. They had converted the woodpile into a rude fortress, with one opening on the river just large enough to enable them to get out for water. They were almost starved to death, being reduced to mere skeletons, scarcely able to crawl back and forth to the river. Kensler took them to P. A. Sarpy’s trading post at162 Bellevue, where the Nimrod found them on her way back and took them to St. Louis. They gave La Barge the following story: On the first day of their hunt they became confused and lost, and after much wandering came to the bank of the river. But they were utterly unable to conjecture whether they were above or below the steamboat, and in this dilemma resolved to build a raft and float down the river. If above the boat they would, of course, come to where it was; if below, they would land after having proven the fact, and return on foot. As a matter of fact they were below the boat, and after drifting some thirty miles concluded to start back. They were considering the question of landing when their raft ran upon a snag, broke to pieces, precipitated them into the water, and lost them their gun. They swam ashore and walked up the river bank until they reached the place where the boat had been. They resolved to stay there and wait for someone to come along. They disposed the woodpile so as to make a rough fort, and gathered into their fortress all remnants of camp refuse left by the Nimrod which could sustain life. Here they waited for several weeks, and had about given themselves up as lost when they were rescued in the manner already related.

The fare provided by the company for its steamboat crew was exceedingly plain and scanty. The men163 got very tired of it, and as they were much delayed by low water in getting into the buffalo country, La Barge told them that the first buffalo they came in sight of they should have, even if he had to lie to half a day to get it. La Barge had as first mate an excellent man, John Durack, who had served in the English navy, and had made his way to New Orleans and thence to St. Louis. He had been on the river before, but had never been engaged in a buffalo hunt, and the Captain thought this a good opportunity to initiate him. When the boat reached the vicinity of Handy’s post four buffalo bulls were seen swimming the river. “Man the yawl, John,” said La Barge. “I will go with you and we will have a buffalo before we get back.” The Captain gave orders to the men on the boat to shoot the buffaloes, and he would then lasso one of the wounded ones and drag it to the boat. He put Durack in the bow with a line while he took the rudder. The men on the steamboat fired and wounded two of the buffaloes. To get to the wounded ones the boat had to pass close to the two uninjured ones. The Captain supposed that Durack fully understood the programme, but the mate was not “up to buffalo,” and to La Barge’s consternation slipped the noose over the head of one of the uninjured animals. Too late Captain La Barge shouted to him not to do this—that he did not want to anchor to a live buffalo.164 “Oh,” replied Durack, “he’s as good as any.” The buffalo kept straight on his course. The men backed their oars, but to no purpose; they could not stop him. Finally his feet touched bottom and up the bank he went with the boat and its helpless crew after him. They might indeed have taken a boat ride over the bare prairie had not the stem of the yawl given way, being wrenched entirely out of the boat and carried off by the terrified animal. There stood the sorry crew, shipwrecked on a sandbar across the river from the steamboat—and with no buffalo. A whole day was consumed in getting back to the boat and in repairing the broken yawl. Meanwhile the crew kept on eating salt pork and navy bread.

On the 23d of June, when the Nimrod was a little below the site of the Aricara villages, near the mouth of Grand River, there arose one of those frightful tempests of wind, hail, and rain which were so frequent on the central prairies. For a little while the safety of the boat was despaired of. All the glass on the windward side was broken and the interior of the boat deluged with rain and hail. The hail accumulated in the cabin to the depth of a foot, and some of the hailstones were as large as turkey eggs. Captain La Barge made clay impressions of some of them and sent them to the St. Louis Republican as curiosities deserving public notice. Besides the damage to165 the cabins the wind carried away the pilot-house, which had to be replaced with a skin roof.

On another of Captain La Barge’s voyages he encountered a storm which carried away the smokestacks. He extemporized some skin chimneys, which enabled him to complete the trip. The Captain was once summoned as an expert witness in a trial which grew out of a similar accident to another steamboat, whose owners had been sued for damages for not delivering freight. The defense was that a storm had so wrecked the boat that she could not proceed. The particular damage alleged was the blowing down of the smokestacks. La Barge explained how he had managed in a similar case, and the court instructed the jury against the defendant.

In another case La Barge’s evidence, as an expert steamboat man, was decisive. It was a case of collision in which the pilot of the boat that was lost had not followed strictly the recognized signals and rules in passing the other boat. The owners had sued for damages. The defense was that the defendant’s pilot had followed the strict rules of steamboating, and the other pilot had not. The main question was whether the defendant’s pilot, when he saw the danger, should not have given way if possible, even if the other pilot was violating the rules, whether through willfulness or ignorance. La Barge was asked what166 course he would have pursued in the premises. He replied that, under any circumstances, it was a pilot’s duty to avoid accident, if possible. The court agreed with this view.

The rest of the voyage of the Nimrod passed off without noteworthy incident. The boat reached Fort Union on June 22, started back June 24, and reached St. Louis July 9, after an absence of seventy-one days.

Down to the date to which our narrative has now arrived, the steamboat business of the Missouri was mainly that of the fur trade. A small traffic was carried on with the settlements along the lower river and with the government establishment at Fort Leavenworth. In 1829 a regular packet was put on between St. Louis and Leavenworth, and this was kept up at intervals during the next fifteen years. But still the main business was the trade with the Indians or with Santa Fe and the parties of white hunters who roved all over the Western country. Its single noteworthy feature, as late as 1845, was the annual voyage of the Fur Company’s boat to the mouth of the Yellowstone.

At about the date last mentioned a profound change came over the business—a change inseparably connected with the foundation of civilization in the Far West. The emigration of the Mormons to Great Salt Lake was one feature of this new development. That singular sect, whose origin and doctrines have excited the contempt of the civilized world, as its marvelous168 growth and material achievement have commanded its admiration, was at this time about fifteen years old. Its founder was Joseph Smith, its birthplace Fayette, in New York State, and the year of its birth 1830. For causes which are differently stated by the friends and enemies of the church, Smith and his followers found it expedient to emigrate from New York. They went to Kirtland, O., where they laid the foundations of their New Jerusalem, and where they flourished with varying fortune for several years. In the meantime another location was also chosen, possibly as a refuge in case of expulsion from Kirtland—a situation on the very frontier of civilization, twelve miles west of Independence, Mo. Here the corner-stone of Zion was laid, under the sanction of divine revelation, and here the church began to erect its earthly temple. Hither in a few years came the faithful from Kirtland, having been expelled by the community, to whom their doctrine and practices had rendered them obnoxious.

In western Missouri their experience was even more discouraging than in Ohio. The neighboring communities would have none of them. The State authorities were appealed to by both sides, and finally entered the contest; the militia was ordered out, and things assumed the aspect of civil war. Blood was shed, and the Mormons were finally compelled to flee169 from the country, leaving Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon prisoners in the hands of their enemies. These worthies, however, soon escaped and joined the refugees near Commerce, Hancock Co., Ill.

Their first reception in Illinois was one of welcome, for the people of that State believed that they had been persecuted with uncalled-for severity by the citizens and State of Missouri. Under the impulse of this friendly feeling Smith secured a charter from the State, and forthwith began building the city of Nauvoo, on a site which has been universally admired for its great natural beauty. The powers conferred by this charter were very broad, and Smith became virtually emperor of an imperium in imperio. He was mayor of the city, Lieutenant General of the newly created Nauvoo legion, and President of the church. He acquired wide notoriety throughout the country, and became a political factor of no little importance in the State of Illinois. The colony flourished under the impulse of missionary effort, which sent proselytes hither from America and Europe alike. On the 6th of April, 1841, the corner-stone of still another temple was laid.

But the same causes which proved disastrous to the settlements in Ohio and Missouri soon began to operate in Illinois. The people were outraged at the immoral doctrines of the new sect, and alarmed at the arrogant170 defiance of civil authority by its spiritual and temporal head. Finally an act of violence under Smith’s authority led to his arrest and that of his brother Hyrum, and their confinement in the Carthage jail, under guarantee of safety by the Governor of the State. But a mob was organized which overbore the civil authority, broke into the jail, and slew the brothers in cold blood.

For the future development of the sect, this was the most fortunate event in its history. It set the seal of martyrdom upon the founder of the church; it healed internal dissensions; it intensified the high purpose to succeed; and finally it opened up the career of the one man who above all others was qualified to carry the movement to success. This was that astute and gifted leader of men, prophet Brigham Young.

It was now apparent that there was no abiding place for the church upon the soil of the United States, and it was necessary to look beyond. From the narratives of those who had visited the regions west of the Rocky Mountains, Young determined to lead his people to the valley of the Great Salt Lake, at this time a possession of the Mexican Republic. In that remote and benighted wilderness his people could at least have freedom from persecution, for the civil authority of Mexico could scarcely reach so far. The movement was decided upon. Smith had been killed in June,171 1844, and the general exodus began in the spring of 1846. In July, 1847, Young laid the foundation of the final home of his people on the shores of the Great Salt Lake.

In the course of this movement large bodies of Mormons remained encamped for long periods on both shores of the Missouri near Council Bluffs and Omaha. This situation became the great rendezvous for the expeditions before starting across the plains, and it was here that the Mormons came into relation with the steamboat traffic of the Missouri. Large quantities of freight and great numbers of passengers were brought up and disembarked here. The Saluda, whose tragic fate we have elsewhere described, was loaded with Mormons. In 1851 the steamer St. Ange carried up two hundred of these people, and the Sacramento four hundred. Many other boats, for fully a decade after 1846, brought up passengers and freight destined to the distant colony in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.

Another of the great movements of the time, which gave a marked impetus to Missouri River navigation, was the War with Mexico. This great event—great not so much in its battles as in its far-reaching results—had been gathering force for years. The influx of American settlers into the province of Texas caused the Mexican Government to adopt repressive measures172 toward them. This led to successful revolution on the part of Texas, and her independence was finally won by force of arms in 1836. For the next ten years Texas was practically an independent republic seeking annexation to the United States. The question of annexation was the determining issue in the national election of 1844, and the pro-annexationists prevailed. Texas was annexed in the spring of 1845, and in the following December was admitted as a State, against the protest of the Mexican Government. The administration ordered American troops to occupy certain disputed territory claimed by both Mexico and Texas. Collision with the Mexican troops followed: blood was shed, and the United States declared war.

Among the minor operations of the war from a military point of view, but of transcendent importance in their results, were the conquests of New Mexico and California under Harney, Doniphan, and Fremont. All the country so won became a part of the United States. It lay in the pathway of emigration to the West, and must sooner or later have given rise to grave complications. The inevitable issue was precipitated sooner than was expected, but the result must ultimately have been the same. The importance of this acquisition in the history of the nation cannot be overestimated.

The invasion of New Mexico naturally followed173 the line of the Santa Fe trail. The expeditions were organized on the frontier, mostly at Fort Leavenworth, but also at other points, such as Fort Kearney and St. Joseph. The transportation of troops and supplies to Westport, Leavenworth, and Kearney gave a great deal of work to the Missouri River boats, which thus became an important factor in one of our national wars.

Scarcely had the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo, which closed the war, been signed, when an event took place in the newly acquired territory which completely revolutionized the situation of things in the West. This was the discovery of gold in California in 1848. Emigration had been moving to the coast, principally into Oregon, for the previous six years. The first large movement took place in 1843. In 1845 and 1846 several parties crossed the Sierras into California, and there was a strong nucleus of American settlers there when the conquest came. The discovery of gold swelled this incipient stream into a mighty river. From every part of the world, by land and by sea, the rush to California began. The overland movement was one of the greatest and most wonderful migrations of a people which history records. It ran in full strength for several years, beginning in 1849, and by 1854 a vast but unknown number had crossed the plains.

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There were various starting points from the Missouri River in this migration, although the different routes united before Fort Laramie was reached. Westport, Leavenworth, Fort Kearney, and Omaha became initial rendezvous, and a great deal of traffic for the emigrants was done by the river boats from St. Louis to these points.

Following the three great movements just described came the period of government exploration of the entire Western country, and the search for practical railroad routes across the mountains. Large exploring parties were sent into the field, and bodies of troops were dispatched to the Pacific Coast and to distant points in the interior.

The aggregate amount of business brought to the lower Missouri from these various causes was large. Viewed from the standpoint of transportation, the Western country in that day can be likened in shape to a fan. The handle was that portion which extended from St. Louis to the mouth of the Kansas River. Thence the various routes to all parts of the country diverged along the arms of the fan, which were outspread from Santa Fe on the south to Fort Union on the north. Most of the business below the point of divergence was done by steamboat. Vessels in large numbers plied the river over this first four hundred miles, and the amount of freight and passenger traffic175 carried by them was very great. Boats departed daily from St. Louis, carrying an almost inconceivable variety of articles for use of the emigrants, and nearly as large a variety of emigrants themselves. To one who witnessed this business in the noontide of its activity, it would have seemed scarcely possible that another generation should witness its total extinction.

Of the river business which grew out of the several movements just described, Captain La Barge had his full share. He knew the Mormons well. He had already seen much of them during their sojourn in western Missouri, and came into business relations with them on a considerable scale during their emigration of 1846 and subsequent years. He always liked them, and had several warm friends among them. He was introduced to Brigham Young by Peter A. Sarpy at Bellevue, where the American Fur Company post for that section was situated. The Mormons were encamped in this vicinity so long that they brought to Sarpy’s post a large amount of business. La Barge himself became well acquainted with Young and with others of the principal men. Young impressed him from the first as a man of great ability. Apparently deficient in education and refinement, he was fair and honest in his dealings, and seemed extremely liberal in conversation upon religious subjects. He impressed La Barge as176 anything but a religious fanatic or even enthusiast; but he knew how to make use of the fanaticism of others and direct it to great ends. He was kind and considerate, but a firm and strict disciplinarian. In the Mormon movement he had found his niche. He saw in it his opportunity to achieve power and fame, to amass a fortune, and to become a great leader.

The freight business which came to the steamboats as a result of the gold rush was not of a desirable character. Many of the emigrants were so poor that it was difficult to collect from them, and once out of reach there was scarcely a chance of ever hearing from them again. This condition improved in later years, and the emigrant trade on the whole was one of great magnitude and importance.

Referring to the gold craze, Captain La Barge said:

“I was never seized with the craze. My wife wanted me to go, but I was too busy and was already making money. Had I been idle, or unsuccessful in business, I should undoubtedly have gone. I saw enough of the movement to show me how many chances of failure there were to one of success; and as I saw the thousands of disheartened adventurers who turned back without ever reaching the desired region, I never repented not going.”

The annual voyages of 1845–46 were made on the steamer General Brooks. In the fall of the latter year Captain La Barge bought this boat for twelve thousand dollars, but sold her again at the close of the season. This was the first boat he had ever owned. He then went to Cincinnati, where he supervised the building of a new boat. She was named the Martha, and in her the voyage of 1847 was made. Captain Sire, who for several years had gone up as master, now decided to leave the river, and Captain La Barge accordingly made the trip alone in full charge of the Company’s business.

Besides the regular freight for the company trading posts, the boat carried up a large quantity of annuities for the several Indian tribes. A more extended reference to this annuity business and the abuses to which it led will be made further on. It is enough here to say that the agents were sent into the country without any protection; that the Company traders adroitly worked on their fears until they were fain to place themselves under the shelter of the trading posts; and178 that the Company was thus enabled to manage the government business to its own great profit. On this particular trip there was a new agent by the name of Matlock, and a good deal of time had to be spent at the various agencies to permit him to confer with the Indians.

At Crow Creek there was a band of Yankton Sioux near a trading establishment under charge of Colin Campbell. Here agent Matlock gave the Indians a feast and left part of their annuities, but not all, being induced by the Company’s agent to deposit the balance at Fort Pierre. The Indians were sharp enough to see that they had not received all they were entitled to and naturally could not understand why. Campbell assured them that they would receive the balance at Fort Pierre. “Why not here?” asked the Indians. “Why make this long journey for what we can just as well get right here?” Campbell turned them off by saying that the Indian agent could attend to the matter there better.

The Indians sullenly acquiesced, evidently much dissatisfied. Campbell had cut ten or twelve cords of wood at this place for use of the boat, but it was not needed till the down trip. Captain La Barge feared, however, that, if it was left, the Indians, in their present temper, would burn it, and he therefore concluded to take it along. The Indians refused to let179 the wood be taken without pay, and seated themselves on the pile so that the men could not get at it. The captain was compelled to pay for the wood, although it had been cut by Company men. But the matter did not end here. Etienne Provost, who, as elsewhere stated, was employed on these trips to take charge of the rough and turbulent mountain men, was asked to attend to the loading of the wood, as it was feared there might be trouble. Provost came up on the boiler deck and sat down by La Barge, saying: “We are going to have some fun before that wood is on board.” He then shouted “Woodpile! Woodpile!” and enough men rushed out to the bank, to take the whole woodpile at once. Provost ordered them to pick up all they could carry and then to move on to the boat one after another, so as to have no crowding or confusion on the gang plank. Meanwhile a dozen or more Indians were standing by, looking on. When the men were loaded up and were jammed close together in single file on their way to the boat, the Indians jumped upon them and began to belabor them with the rawhide horsewhips which they always had fastened to their waists. The men were frightened almost out of their wits, and dropping their wood, scrambled on board the best way they could. Provost lay back and roared with laughter, saying, “I told you we should see some fun.”

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He then went out himself onto the bank where the Indians were, and said, “Now, men, come out here and get this wood.” They came and loaded up. “Now go on board,” he said, and they went entirely unmolested. Provost went last, and before descending the bank, turned toward the Indians and asked them: “Why don’t you stop them? Are you afraid of me?” The truth is they were afraid of him. They knew him well and respected him, and understood that he would stand no foolishness.

La Barge thought nothing further of the affair, for the Indians soon disappeared, as he supposed, for good. The wind was too high to proceed, and the boat remained at the bank nearly all the afternoon waiting for it to subside. “Everything quieted down,” said the captain, in describing what followed, “and I was sitting in the cabin reading a paper, when all of a sudden there was a heavy volley of firearms and the sound of splintered wood and broken glass. This was instantly followed by an Indian yell and a rush for the boat, and in the uproar someone cried out that a man had been killed. The Indians got full possession of the forward part of the boat and flooded the boiler grates with water, putting out the fires. They had learned something of steam in the fifteen years that boats had been going up the river. My first act was to rush to my wife’s stateroom, where I found Mrs.181 La Barge unharmed. I told John B. Sarpy, who with his son was making the trip, to barricade her door with mattresses and to stay there until the trouble was over. I then hastened to the front of the cabin, but was met at the door by the Indians. Retreating, I met Colin Campbell, and asked him what the Indians wanted. Campbell replied that they wanted me to give up the boat; that if I would do so they would let the crew go, but if I resisted they would spare no one.

“After the first rush the Indians seemed timorous and uncertain, evidently fearing some unpleasant surprise in the unknown labyrinths of the boat. This gave me time for effective measures. I had on board a light cannon of about 2½ inches caliber, mounted on four wheels. Unluckily it was at this time down in the engine room undergoing some repairs to the carriage. I had in my employ a man on whom I could absolutely rely—a brave and noble fellow, Nathan Grismore, the first engineer. Grismore had just finished the work on the cannon, and told me he thought he could get it up the back way, since the fore part of the boat was in possession of the Indians. He got some men and lines and soon hoisted the gun on deck and hauled it into the after part of the cabin. I always kept in the cabin some powder and shot for use in hunting. I got the powder, but the supply of shot was gone. Grismore promptly made up the loss with182 boiler rivets and the gun was heavily loaded and primed, ready for action. By this time the forward part of the cabin was crowded with Indians who were evidently afraid something was going to happen. I lost no time in verifying their fears. As soon as the gun was loaded I lighted a cigar, and holding the smoking stump in sight of the Indians, told Campbell to tell them to get off the boat or I would blow them all to the devil. At the same time I started for the gun with the lighted cigar in my hand. The effect was complete and instantaneous. The Indians turned and fled and fairly fell over each other in their panic to get off the boat. In less time than it takes to tell it, not an Indian was in sight. I had the cannon brought onto the roof, where it remained for an hour or more.

“As soon as the Indians were off the boat I began to look up the crew who had ingloriously fled at the first assault, leaving the boat practically defenseless. They had hidden, some here and some there, but most of them on the wheels (it was a sidewheel boat) where I found them packed thick as sardines all over the paddles. These were the brave mountaineers who were never slow in vaunting their courage and valorous performances! I was so disgusted that I was disposed to set the wheels in motion and give them all a ducking; but the fires had been put out by the Indians.

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“The wind having subsided, we resumed our journey, and about a mile further on attempted to cross to the other shore. Failing in this we encamped for the night. On the following morning we buried the deckhand, Charles Smith, who had been killed when the attack began.”

Captain La Barge said that this was the only time that he was ever caught napping by the Indians, and it taught him a lesson that he did not forget.26

As already mentioned, Captain La Barge’s wife was on board. It was always understood on the upper river that she was the first white woman to ascend the river from old Fort Lisa near the modern site of Omaha, Neb., to Fort Union, at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Her presence created great curiosity among the Indians. They would come on board and examine her with the liveliest interest, measuring her waist and the length of her hair, and wondering at the tastefulness and beauty of her dress. The leading squaws in great numbers visited her, and several adopted her as their sister. A good deal of time was184 lost in satisfying their importunities to see her. Years afterward they would inquire of La Barge after their white sister, and would send her presents. She never failed to send them something in return. As late as 1885, when La Barge was in the government service on the survey of the Missouri River in the vicinity of the ancient Aricara villages, an aged half-breed squaw, old Garreau’s daughter, told La Barge that she remembered seeing his wife on this early trip.

In the year 1848 Captain La Barge again went up the river with his boat Martha, on business for the Company. There were no noteworthy incidents on the trip except that the captain brought back quite a menagerie of the native animals from the upper country. There were buffalo, bear, beaver, antelope, elk, and deer. A large tank was made for the use of the beaver. All of the animals were for Kenneth McKenzie except the buffalo, which were for Pierre Chouteau, Jr.

On this trip La Barge had some difficulty with the Company, which induced him to sell his boat to them at the close of the season. He immediately contracted for a new boat which, when completed, he named the St. Ange, in memory of St. Ange de Bellerive, the first military governor of upper Louisiana. It was a fine boat, and probably the only one ever built entirely complete upon the ways, and launched with steam185 up ready to start the moment she struck the water.27

As soon as the boat was done, La Barge, being no longer in the Company’s service, went to work for the Quartermaster Department of the Army, hauling supplies up the river. He had made two trips to Fort Leavenworth, and on his way back on the second trip encountered a severe storm, which delayed him several hours. This delay, vexatious enough at the time, was a blessing in disguise. Instead of getting into port at St. Louis before dark, it was nearly an hour after midnight before he reached there. As he was nearing the mouth of the Missouri a broad gleam of light overspread the sky in the direction of the city. Its extent and brilliancy clearly enough indicated a great conflagration. When La Barge reached port it was to find the river front wrapped in flames. He steamed the whole length of the levee, seeking a safe place to land, but finding none, turned back, crossed the river, and tied up for the night at Bloody Island, on the east shore.28

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This conflagration, which is the historic “Great Fire” of St. Louis, commenced at about 10 P. M. on the night of May 17, 1849, and continued until 7 A. M. next day. Fire alarms had been heard several times early in the evening, but nothing had come of them, until about the hour above mentioned, when it was found that fire had broken out in earnest on the steamer White Cloud, which lay at the wharf between Wash and Cherry streets. The Endors lay just above her and the Edward Bates below. Both caught fire. At this time a well-intended, but ill-considered, effort to stop the progress of the fire was made by some parties, who cut the Edward Bates’ moorings and turned her into the stream. The boat was soon caught by187 the current and carried down the river; but a strong northeast wind bore it constantly in shore, and every time it touched it ignited another boat. An effort was now made to turn other boats loose before the Bates could reach them, but a fatality seemed to attend every effort. The burning boat outsped them all, and by frequent contacts set fire to many more. These in turn ignited the rest, until in a short time the river presented the spectacle of a vast fleet of burning vessels drifting slowly along the shore. The fire next spread to the buildings, and before it could be arrested had destroyed the main business portion of the city. It was the most appalling calamity that had ever visited St. Louis, and followed as it was by the great cholera scourge of 1849, it was a terrible disaster. At the levee there were destroyed twenty-three steamboats, three barges, and one small boat. The total valuation of boats and cargo was estimated at about $440,000, and the insurance thereon was $225,000; but this was not all paid, for the fire broke up several of the insurance companies.29

Among the boats destroyed was the Martha, which La Barge had sold to the Company. She was loaded188 with a full cargo for the mountains. The day after the fire La Barge received a note from Captain Sire, requesting him to call at the Company’s office. He complied, and was met with an urgent appeal to go to the mountains with the Company’s annual outfit. He was at that time engaged for a government trip to Leavenworth, but offered to go as far as Fort Pierre upon his return, if it were possible to do so. Sire replied that that was all they could expect. The trip to Leavenworth was completed in June, and La Barge immediately started for Pierre. He made a quick and successful voyage, and returned early in August.

The year 1849 was one of the terrible cholera years in the West. Thousands died in St. Louis, and there were many deaths on every boat that went up the Missouri.

In the following year, 1850, Captain La Barge went to the mouth of the Yellowstone for the American Fur Company. It was the quickest trip on record, being made in the extraordinarily short time of twenty-eight days up and back, doing all the Company’s business at the various posts.

The St. Ange left St. Louis on her voyage to Fort Union for the American Fur Company, June 7, 1851. She had on board about one hundred passengers, mostly employees of the Company. The cabin list included two distinguished Jesuit missionaries, Father Christian Hoecken and Father De Smet, bound for the Rocky Mountains.

The spring had been particularly backward and wet, and the Missouri was in one of its most dangerous floods. The whole bottom country was overflowed, and the river looked like a floating mass of débris of every description. Navigation, though relieved of the danger from snags, was much impeded by these floating obstructions, and the gathering of fuel was unusually difficult. The overflowed condition of the country made it malarial and unhealthy—as bad as possible for a year when the cholera was abroad in the land. Sickness in one form or another soon appeared among the passengers. In a little while the vessel, according to Father De Smet,190 resembled a floating hospital, and a feeling of gloom fell over the passengers. Father De Smet himself was seized with a bilious fever which completely prostrated him, and for a time his recovery was doubtful. When about five hundred miles up the river the cholera broke out. A clerk of the American Fur Company was the first victim, and from that time on for the next few days there were several deaths every day. The situation was a terrible one, and oppressed passengers and crew alike with the most dismal forebodings.

There was a physician on board of the name of Dr. Evans, a distinguished scientist who was making the voyage in the interests of the Smithsonian Institution. He did everything in his power to allay the plague. Father De Smet was too ill to do anything, but Father Hoecken worked incessantly, caring for the sick and watching over their spiritual needs. This heroic priest won the hearts of the passengers by his untiring labors in their behalf; but he so completely exhausted himself that he had no reserve strength to combat the disease if it should attack himself. He seemed everywhere at once, like a ministering angel, and Father De Smet earnestly besought him to spare himself somewhat or he would not hold out. Father De Smet’s condition was so serious that he had asked Father Hoecken to receive his confession;191 but the latter did not think his brother in immediate danger, and hastened to the bedsides of those who were in a more precarious condition. In the midst of his unselfish labors the zealous missionary was himself stricken. Father De Smet thus records the sad story of his death:

On the return trip from Fort Union, Captain La Barge, despite the protests of the passengers, took Father Hoecken’s remains on board and delivered them to the Jesuits at St. Louis, and they were buried in the Novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Florissant, whither Father De Smet was to follow twenty-two years later.

After the burial of Father Hoecken near the mouth of the Little Sioux River, Captain La Barge put everyone ashore, made the passengers roam around the neighborhood, unloaded and aired all the baggage, and completely renovated the boat. These measures, with the increasing healthfulness of the country as the boat entered the more arid sections, brought complete relief from the plague. Only one more death occurred, and in a short time everything assumed a normal aspect. The boat reached Fort Union on the 14th of July, and here Father De Smet left it to make a journey overland, southward to Fort John, on the Laramie River, where a great council of plains Indians was to assemble. Captain La Barge went on a hundred miles further, to the mouth of194 Poplar River, it being, as he then understood, the highest point reached by any steamboat; but it was not much, if any, farther than the Assiniboine went in 1834.

This may be a proper place to record some incidents in the career of Father De Smet which fell under Captain La Barge’s observation. De Smet, as is well known, traveled a great deal in nearly all parts of the far northwest. Sometimes he went around by sea, and then came overland to the headwaters of the Missouri; sometimes he went by the Oregon trail; and at others by the Missouri River. La Barge, who saw much of him, found him always a pure and excellent man, very companionable, full of anecdotes, and fearless and brave in all situations. He was liked by everyone who knew him. The Mormons were well acquainted with him and thought much of him. The Indians had the very highest regard for his character, and he seemed always to be safe in their hands. The Government of the United States likewise held him in high esteem, and on several occasions called on him for responsible and delicate work among the Indians.

Father De Smet entertained the most affectionate regard for Captain La Barge. He presented him with autograph copies of all his works, and always referred to him in terms of deepest affection. The195 incidents which follow were witnessed by La Barge himself.

On one occasion near Poplar River a band of Blackfeet came down to the bank near where the boat was. In addition to the well-known traditional hostility of these Indians to the whites, there were other reasons for believing that they were at this time in an ugly temper and meditated trouble. Father De Smet, grasping the situation, said, “It looks as if those Indians mean mischief. I will go out and meet them.” La Barge remonstrated, saying that De Smet was not acquainted with these particular Indians, and that they might kill him, when, if they knew who he was, they might spare him. But De Smet knew that his reputation had traveled where he himself had not been, and he believed that they would recognize and protect the Black Robe, as they called him. He accordingly donned his cassock, and with the crucifix before him, went ashore and walked boldly to where the Indians were. As he had expected, they received him well, made him sit down on a buffalo robe, and then lifted him up and carried him on the boat. La Barge gave them a feast and presented the chief with a suit of clothes, which greatly pleased his vanity. After a time the Indians withdrew without attempting any harm.

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Although the spring of 1851 had been very backward and wet in the lower country, it was not so higher up, and when the St. Ange arrived at the Aricara villages the corn crop of those Indians was found to be actually suffering from drouth. The Aricara chief, White Shield, came on board and said to La Barge, who understood his language well:30

“I am glad to see you, and I hear the Black Robe is on board.”

La Barge replied that that was so. The chief then continued:

“I want to ask him a favor. It is very late in the season and no rain. Corn ought to be up now. We want the Black Robe to send us rain.”

La Barge took the Indian back to De Smet’s room and said to the priest, “Father, here is the White Shield, who wants you to make it rain, for the corn is not up yet.”

De Smet, who knew the White Shield well, laughed heartily, and said he would do all he could. He then asked La Barge if the boat was going to remain there all day, and being informed that it was, he said to the White Shield: “Go to your village and put your lodge in order, and call in some of the chiefs.197 I will come and offer prayer to the Almighty and ask him to be merciful and grant your requests; and I am satisfied that, if you deserve it, the Great Spirit will look down and favor you.”

Captain La Barge and several of the passengers went along with the father, and the interpreter translated the prayer to the Indians. They left the Indians satisfied, and at noon had them on the boat for a feast, after which they returned to their village. As good fortune would have it, along about three or four o’clock in the afternoon, there came up a heavy thunder shower which fairly deluged the place. Father De Smet laughed and said:

“They will think I did it. They will give me all the credit for it.”

Some time after the shower Pierre Garreau, a French Canadian, who had spent all his life among the Indians, and had become almost an Indian himself, came to the boat and said to La Barge:

“I want you to help me. I want to find out how Father De Smet did that.”

“Did what?” asked La Barge.

“Made it rain. I will pay a good price if he will tell me. I will give him ten horses.”

La Barge took him back to De Smet, where he presented his request himself. De Smet told him to be a good Christian, and pray when he wanted it to198 rain, and if he deserved it, it would come. Garreau went away disappointed, for he fully believed that the father had some secret art by which he produced so signal a result. After he had gone, De Smet laughed and said: “Did I not tell you they would say I did it?”

After La Barge returned from this trip he laid the boat up for repairs, and soon after sold her. He had now about made up his mind to quit the river and retire from active business. He had already accumulated a snug fortune for those days, and concluded to enjoy it. He made the best financial move of his life in the purchase of a large tract of land in what is now Cabanné Place in St. Louis. Had he held on to this purchase, the mere growth of the city would have made him immensely wealthy.31 But retirement from business is one of the hardest things for a man to do, even in old age. For a man in the prime of life, as La Barge was at this time, being only thirty-six, it was not to be expected; and fate soon threw in his way a temptation that brought him back to the river.

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In the spring of 1852 he met in town one day Captain Edward Salt-Marsh, who had just arrived from Ohio with a handsome new boat. She was called the Sonora, as almost everything in those days was given a California name. “Nothing would do but that I should go and inspect his boat,” said La Barge. “I found her an excellent craft, and soon learned that Salt-Marsh was disposed to sell her. A desire to purchase at once took possession of me and led to a lengthy negotiation, which ended in my buying the boat for thirty thousand dollars. Next day I went into town and raised the entire amount.”

The Captain this year made a contract with the Company to take their annual outfit up the river. He went to Union and back, but there were no especial incidents on the trip. After the return of the Sonora he ran in the New Orleans trade for the rest of the season. This was a yellow-fever year in that section, and so many boats had left the river that Captain La Barge found plenty of business.

There were some untoward incidents on the Fort Union trip this season which decided La Barge not to go up for the Company the following year. He sold the Sonora in the fall of 1852, purchased a small boat, the Highland Mary, with which he ran in the lower river the entire season of 1853. He sold his boat in the fall of that year.

During the season of 1854 Captain La Barge was in the employ of the government most of the time. In the previous winter Colonel Crossman, of the army, Quartermaster at St. Louis, contracted with a company of boat-builders on the Osage River for a steamboat for government use. When the hull was nearly completed Captain La Barge went up and brought the boat down by the use of sweeps. He supervised her completion and remained on her as pilot during the entire season. This boat was called the Mink, from the color selected in painting her.

The American Fur Company chartered a boat to take up the outfit of 1854, but the crew mutinied, and the voyage proved a failure. Mr. Chouteau then asked La Barge to recommend him a boat for the next year’s trade and join with him in purchasing her. It so happened that two St. Louisans, Sam Gaty and a man named Baldwin, had recently won a prize of forty thousand dollars in the Havana lottery, and were using it in building a boat. They sold the boat201 in her unfinished state, the Company purchasing a half interest and La Barge and John J. Roe each one-fourth. La Barge supervised her completion and named her the St. Mary, after a new town which P. A. Sarpy had just laid out a few miles below the modern Council Bluffs, Ia., and which has been long since entirely washed into the river.

Captain La Barge made the annual voyage of 1855 in this new boat. Mr. Charles P. Chouteau, son of Pierre Chouteau, Jr., accompanied the trip. The only incident of particular moment on this voyage was the transfer of Fort Pierre to the United States Government in accordance with the terms of a sale which had been consummated the previous spring. This important event, which will again be referred to more at length, marked the beginning of the conquest of the upper Missouri country by the army of the United States. The St. Mary was used in making the transfer of the post to the War Department and in moving the Fur Company’s property to a new situation some distance above the old site, near the mouth of Chantier Creek.

General Harney was in command of the troops sent to the upper Missouri in 1855, and La Barge saw him at Fort Pierre. The Captain always liked him, and considered him one of the best friends of the Indians that the army ever produced—a terrible202 fighter when fight was unavoidable, but always desirous of accomplishing his purposes by peaceful means. The Captain recalled an incident of Harney’s intercourse with the Sioux which created a great deal of mirth on the frontier at the time.

While holding a council at Pierre with about three thousand Sioux, the General told them of the great power of the American people and the uselessness of their trying to resist them. He was anxious to exhibit some proof that would appeal to the native imagination. Finally a thought struck him. Chloroform was just coming into use in surgery, and the hospital equipment with the expedition had some of it along. “I will show you the great power of the white man,” said the General with impressive gravity. “I will show you how he can even kill and bring to life again.” He called the surgeon, explained what he wanted, and then, through the interpreter, commanded that a dog be killed and afterward restored to life. He cautioned the surgeon to be extremely careful not to overdo the matter. The surgeon proceeded to chloroform the dog, while the Indians looked on in mute astonishment, if not with superstitious awe. After the dog was insensible the General called the chiefs and told them to satisfy themselves that he was actually dead. The surgeon was then ordered to resurrect the dog. He applied203 the usual restoratives, but the dog slept on. He nipped his tail with a pair of pincers, but still no sign of life. The surgeon finally gave it up, and the white man’s marvelous power did not materialize. The Indians looked on, and putting their hands to their mouths said: “Medicine too strong, too strong.”32

After the return of the St. Mary to St. Louis, Captain La Barge, as was his wont, ran in the lower204 river trade the rest of the season. In the following winter, February 27, occurred the famous ice “break-up” of 1856 on the Mississippi River at St. Louis. The winter had been very cold and the ice was three or four feet thick and the water low. The break-up was not caused in the usual way by the thawing of the ice, but by a rise in the river from above, which caused the ice to move before it had become much disintegrated. It was an appalling and terrible example of the power of a great river when restrained in its course. The following account is from the pen of an eyewitness:

Captain La Barge retained a vivid recollection of this great catastrophe, for he was the only steamboat man who succeeded in extricating his boat from the wreck. The sight was something terrible to him, and a marvelous exhibition of power. The ice piled up in enormous masses as easily as a child would heap up sand, and then it collapsed and gave way. There were three of these pilings-up, or gorges. The noise of the crushing ice was terrific. Some of the boats were smashed to splinters; some were sunk, and others were pushed far up onto the bank.

The St. Mary was lying at the wharf when the movement began. La Barge at once got up steam and prepared to do what he could to save her. Sarpy came down to see him, and said to him, “Do just what you think best with the boat. If anyone can save her you can. Draw on me for anything you want.” It was a very risky thing to trust one’s208 life in a chaos of wreckage like that. Hooper, the mate, came and said that he should go too if the Captain was going to risk the river. He thought he could get five or six men to venture. The final give-way came about dark, and La Barge backed the boat away from the shore, let her drift in the ice, and thus escaped the crush which came along the shore. He drifted some twenty miles downstream before he could extricate himself from the ice.

La Barge went to Fort Union for the Company again in 1856. On this trip Lieutenant Gouveneur K. Warren, afterward general and corps commander in the Civil War, took passage on the boat nearly all the way from St. Louis. He had with him a corps of scientific assistants, among them the eminent geologist Dr. F. V. Hayden, who was then just beginning his explorations of the West. Lieutenant Warren sketched the course of the river from the pilot-house as the boat proceeded, taking compass bearings and estimating the distances. He speaks in his report of the uniform courtesy extended him by Captain La Barge in facilitating his operations. The Captain remembered him well, as he was in the pilot-house nearly all the time. He was very active, and kept his men vigorously employed gathering information. At night he went on shore and took observations. La Barge became very much interested209 in his work, and assisted him in every possible way, often stopping the boat to allow him to do some particular work. He seemed so interested and pleased with everything, and so intelligent and well posted, that he quite won the Captain’s admiration. He was, as Captain La Barge remembered him, a handsome man, with a fine head and clear eye, at that time rather slender, but well built and erect. He was always pleasant, and was liked by his men, but was nevertheless a strict disciplinarian. We can easily discover in the Captain’s recollections the youthful portrait of the future hero of Little Round Top at Gettysburg, and the accomplished leader of the Fifth Corps.

The Captain also distinctly remembered Dr. Hayden, and related a certain incident which came very near proving disastrous to that enthusiastic explorer. Hayden was a man of rather small stature, talkative and companionable, well informed, and very energetic and eager in his work. On one occasion his devotion to his scientific pursuits came very near getting him into danger. The incident in question occurred at the site of old Fort Clark, which stood upon a high cut bank. “We laid up here for an entire day,” said the Captain in narrating this event. “The bank was full of fossils, some of them very rare. I had told Hayden of this on a former trip,210 and he was anxious to investigate the place. He went down under the bank, pick in hand and his rifle over his shoulder. An Aricara village was on the top, and while he was absorbed in his investigations some young bucks took it into their heads to have a little fun at his expense. They commenced pelting him with small pebbles, corncobs, etc., from the top of the bank, at the same time keeping themselves concealed from his view. For some time Hayden could not see where the missiles came from, but at length caught sight of the Indians, and instantly leveled his rifle at them. I had been a quiet spectator from the boiler deck of the boat, and quick as thought called to him to desist or he was a dead man. He lowered his gun and came on board and hunted no more fossils under that bank. If he had fired he would certainly have been killed, and as it was, the Indians were greatly incensed that he should have leveled his gun at them.”

Upon this trip a disagreeable incident happened which led Captain La Barge to leave the Company’s service for good. He had as clerk of the boat a son of one of the partners. The young man’s wife was also on board, going up for the pleasure of the voyage. La Barge had been particularly requested by the clerk’s father to use his best offices for her protection, comfort, and pleasure in the wild and lawless211 country to which she was going, and he promised to do so. Everything passed off pleasantly until Fort Clark was reached, when one of the partners of the Upper Missouri Outfit, the bourgeois of the post at Fort Clark, came on board to accompany the boat to Fort Union. He was naturally a rough, arrogant, blustering character, disposed to override everyone, and on two previous occasions La Barge had been compelled to deal pretty severely with him. He was, nevertheless, a man of great energy, well versed in the business of the fur trade, and a good man for the Company. He was therefore tolerated where a less capable man with his faults would have been gotten rid of.

“When he came on board,” said Captain La Barge, “he went to the office and told the clerk to assign him a stateroom so that he could have his baggage sent to it. The clerk promised to attend to it and the bourgeois withdrew. The clerk and myself then looked over the register to see what we could do for him. There was only one room that could be made available except by causing passengers who had secured and paid for their rooms to vacate them. This room was occupied by two clerks, who were compelled to give it up and sleep on cots outside. It was a forward stateroom, and hence not so desirable as those further aft, but still a good room, and the212 only one that was available. I directed the clerk to have the bourgeois’ baggage put in, and to show him the room when he should request it. About 9 P. M., when the boat was tied up for the night, and I was in the office writing up the journal, the bourgeois came in and asked the clerk for his room. The clerk took him out and showed him his room and told him that two of the clerks had given it up for him. The bourgeois turned up his nose and exclaimed, ‘What! that room for ——, a member of the firm? Can’t I have a room in the after cabin, where the bourgeois are usually assigned?’ He was told that it was impossible without ousting others who could not reasonably be disturbed. He did not ask me, for he knew I would not grant it. Then drawing himself up in a pompous fashion, he said to the clerk, calling him by name: ‘I will occupy your room to-night and you may occupy this,’ and added other suggestions not calculated to mollify the feelings of the young husband.

“The clerk came into the room deathly pale, but made no response to the bourgeois’ insulting insinuations. I overheard the whole conversation, and determined to remain up and see the affair out. After a while the bourgeois came to the door of the office and said to the clerk: ‘Good-night, Mr. ——.’ ‘Good night, Mr. ——,’ replied the clerk, and the213 bourgeois withdrew and started for the ladies’ cabin. I immediately stepped out and followed him. He walked directly back to the clerk’s stateroom and was about to take hold of the door knob, when I seized him by the collar, jerked him around, gave him a smart kick in the direction of the forward cabin, followed it up by two or three others, and in short order landed him in front of the boat yelling ‘Murder!’ and calling for help. Culbertson and others came out, but I told them not to interfere, as I was simply protecting a lady from insult. The bourgeois would not be quiet, and I ordered my mate Hooper to put him on the bank. This was promptly done, the boat was held off shore by a spar, the gang plank drawn in, and the bourgeois could not get back on board. The weather was so warm that he would not suffer from the cold, and the pestering mosquitoes, which swarmed in the willows, kept him active all night.

“When I returned to St. Louis I made no report of this affair, leaving it to the clerk, whose wife’s honor had been protected, to lay the matter before his father. Instead of reporting the facts he represented that I had treated the bourgeois with uncalled-for severity, and that such things ought not to be allowed to go on. He said nothing of the real cause of the trouble, although his wife, a refined,214 cultured, and beautiful woman, drove to my house as soon as she returned, and told my wife how thankful she was for what I had done.

“A few days after my return from Union I was summoned to the office, and was there informed that the men in the upper country thought me altogether too hard on them, and that, to avoid future difficulty, it was best to terminate our relations. I replied that I felt so fully justified in my action that I should retire from their service with the utmost willingness if such was their view of the affair. This was in the fall of 1856, and was the last time that I worked for the Company.

“Three years later I was again called to the office and thus addressed by the father of my ungrateful clerk:

“‘I have called you in to scold you for your conduct.’

“‘Why so, Mr. ——?’

“‘You remember the cause of the trouble in 1856 that led to our separation?’

“‘Very distinctly.’

“‘Why did you not defend yourself? Why did you not make me a full report?’

“‘I thought, sir, it was your son’s place to lay the matter before you, as the whole trouble had been on his and his wife’s account. I had promised you that215 I would protect her, and all I did was in fulfillment of that promise. I am glad that you now know the truth of the matter.’

“‘Perhaps you are right; it was my son’s place to tell me; but he was influenced by others and never mentioned it.’

“The old gentleman was very indignant over the affair, and ever after treated me with the greatest consideration.”

As has been stated already, this was the last service of Captain La Barge for the American Fur Company. Many years of the most active part of his life had been spent in their interest. They never had a pilot on whom they could more confidently rely, and his careful management of their expeditions was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to them. But their hard and exacting ways, often sullied with open injustice, gave rise to misunderstandings, which on several occasions virtually compelled him to quit their service and finally led to permanent separation.

The decade from 1850 to 1860 saw a very rapid growth in the steamboat business of the Missouri River. The stream of emigration across the plains continued practically unchecked. Settlement was rapidly filling up the lower valley of the river, and by 1856 had reached as far as Sioux City, and all the modern towns below that point had commenced their existence. Government exploration was being pushed with vigor in all directions into the country beyond. The Indians were becoming restive under the pressure of settlement; their annuities were increasing, and the presence of troops in all parts of their country was becoming more imperative. The long Indian wars of the Missouri Valley were beginning.

All these developments had their effect upon the steamboat traffic of the Missouri River, for that stream was the one great transportation route into the heart of the West. Some idea of the magnitude of the business may be gleaned from the records of the times as published in the newspapers along the river.217 In the year 1858 there were 59 steamboats on the lower river and 306 steamboat arrivals at the port of Leavenworth, Kan. The freight charges paid at that point during the season amounted to $166,941.35. In 1859 the steamboat advertisements in the St. Louis papers showed that more vessels left that port for the Missouri River than for both the upper and lower Mississippi. In 1857 there were 28 steamboat arrivals at the new village of Sioux City before July 1. There were 23 regular boats on that part of the river, and their freight tonnage for the season was valued at $1,250,000. The period from 1855 to 1860 was the golden era of steamboating on the Missouri River. It was the period just before the advent of the railroads. No other period before or after approached it in the splendor of the boats. All the boats were sidewheelers, had full-length cabins, and were fitted up more for passengers than for freight. It was an era of fast boats and of racing. It was the heyday of that most important personage, the Missouri River pilot.33

While this rapid development of traffic on the lower river was going on, the American Fur Company was laying its plans to carry steamboat navigation to Fort218 Benton. We have elsewhere told how the Assiniboine in 1834 reached a point near the mouth of Poplar River, a hundred miles above the Yellowstone, and being caught by low water, was compelled to stay there all winter. For the next nineteen years this remained the farthest point reached by steamboats. In 1853 the El Paso went about 125 miles further, to a point five miles above the mouth of Milk River. El Paso point, as this place came to be called, marked the limit of steamboat progress up the river for the next six years.

In 1859 the final step, or very nearly so, was taken in reaching the real head of navigation. The record of this event is quite as definite as are those of the entrance of steamboats into the mouth of the Missouri in 1819 and the voyage of the Yellowstone to Fort Union in 1832. In the spring of 1859 the American Fur Company sent up two boats with its annual outfit, its own boat, the Spread Eagle, and a chartered boat, the Chippewa. The Chippewa was a light boat, and her owner, Captain Crabtree, contracted to take her to Fort Benton, or as far as it was possible to go. At Fort Union he defaulted in his contract and sold the boat to the Company for just about the charter price for the voyage. Such freight as the Spread Eagle carried for Fort Benton was then transferred to the Chippewa, making a total cargo of 160 tons. Captain219 John La Barge,34 brother of Joseph La Barge, and pilot of the Spread Eagle, was assigned to charge of the Chippewa on her adventurous undertaking. Mr. Charles P. Chouteau went along as the Company’s representative.

The boat made her way successfully, and without any notable incident, to within fifteen miles of Fort Benton, and discharged her freight at Brulé bottom, where Fort McKenzie stood in former years. Her arrival at this point was on July 17, 1859, forty years and two months after the Independence entered the mouth of the river.35

This noteworthy event must be classed as one of the celebrated feats in steamboat navigation. The Chippewa had reached a point further from the sea by a continuous water course than any other boat had ever been. She was now 3560 miles from, and 2565 feet above, the ocean, and the whole distance had been made by steam on a river unimproved by artificial works.

In 1860 the Chippewa and the Key West completed the short remaining distance to Fort Benton, and made220 fast to the bank in front of the old post July 2 of that year. On June 16, 1866, the steamer Peter Balen ascended the river to the mouth of Belt Creek, six miles from the Great Falls, and thirty-one miles above Fort Benton. This is believed to be the farthest point reached by steam on the Missouri River.36 The feat was accomplished during the June flood and would have been impossible at ordinary stages. Fort Benton has always been considered the head of navigation on the Missouri River.

In 1861 the heroic Chippewa made her last trip up the river. Again bound for Fort Benton, she reached the end of her voyage and of her career at a point a little below the mouth of Poplar River, Mont., since known, from this connection, as Disaster Bend. She was loaded with American Fur Company goods and Blackfeet annuities, and had a goodly quantity of alcohol on board. One Sunday evening in the month of May, while supper was being served, the boat was discovered to be on fire. She was immediately run ashore, the passengers were put off, and she was set adrift to avoid the danger from an expected explosion221 of gunpowder that was in the hold. The boat floated across the river and about a mile downstream, when she blew up, just as the upper works were fairly consumed to the water’s edge. The explosion was terrific, and packages of merchandise were found at a great distance from the place. No lives were lost, and the personal effects of the passengers were saved. The fire was caused by some deckhands, who went into the hold with a lighted candle to steal some liquor.

Few, if any, towns in the Far West country possess so unique and varied a history as Fort Benton. With the exception of some of the old Spanish villages in the southwest it is the oldest settlement in the mountain country, for the traders made their first establishment there in 1831. The true historic career of Fort Benton did not embrace more than half a century, yet in that brief space it saw more of romance, tragedy, and vigorous life than many a city of a hundred times its size and ten times its age.

The commercial importance of Fort Benton arose, of course, from its situation at the head of navigation on the Missouri River; but this was not the cause of its first location there. The surrounding country was the home of the Blackfeet Indians—great fur producers, but in early times inveterate enemies of the whites. From the time when the traders began to penetrate those distant regions it was their ambition to open up trade relations with this fierce and refractory tribe. Attempts were made in the years223 1807–10 and again in 1822–23, but wholly without success. The Indians always evinced a deadly hostility, attacked the trappers, killed a great many, drove them out of the country, and gave them no opportunity to explain their pacific purposes.

In 1831 Kenneth McKenzie, ablest of the American Fur Company traders on the upper Missouri, resolved to make another attempt. He had already securely established himself at Fort Union, near the mouth of the Yellowstone. Fortune threw into his hands at this time the very instrument required for his purposes—an old trapper who had long served under the Hudson Bay Company in the Blackfoot country north of the boundary. His name was Jacob Berger. He understood perfectly the language of these Indians and knew many of them personally. McKenzie prevailed upon him to go to their country with overtures of peace and the promise of a trading post. The real origin of the enmity of the Blackfeet had been the apparent favoritism of the whites, in years gone by, toward their hereditary enemies, the Crows; and McKenzie felt confident that, if he could once get their ear and explain the true purpose of the traders toward them, he would secure their friendship and custom.

Berger set out with a small party in the fall of 1830, carrying unfurled an American flag, and traveled224 upward of four weeks before he saw an Indian. Finally he came upon a large village in the valley of the Marias River. The sight so terrified the little band that they were for instant flight before they should be discovered. Berger, however, persisted in his mission, and the party moved forward, scarcely expecting to be alive another hour. They were quickly discovered, whereupon a number of mounted warriors started at full gallop to meet them. The whites halted and Berger advanced with his flag. The Indians paused and Berger made signs of peace, and called out his own name. As he was well known to the tribe, they recognized him at once. There was a rush to shake hands and Berger and his party were taken to the village, where, to their infinite relief, they were received with every demonstration of good will.

Berger remained at the village for some time, and made the Indians fully acquainted with the purpose of his mission. He finally induced about forty of the leading men to return with him to Fort Union, where they could confer with McKenzie direct. The journey was long, and the fickle nature of the Indians showed signs of weakening before it was nearly completed. They began to fear treachery, and it took all of Berger’s ingenuity to keep them from turning back. Finally, as a last resort, when almost at their journey’s end, he pledged them his scalp and his horses if they225 did not reach the fort in one day more. They agreed to this eminently fair proposition, and before the day had passed they saw, from the top of a hill, in the plain below them, the imposing palisades and bastions of Fort Union. This was about the beginning of the year 1831.

McKenzie did all in his power to impress the delegation favorably. He made them liberal presents, and sent a trader with an outfit of goods to remain in their village during the winter. Finally he promised them a permanent trading post the following year. Before the year had passed he induced the Blackfeet and Assiniboines to make a treaty with each other, and he thus established peace all along the northern border. In the fall of 1831 he sent a complete outfit under James Kipp to the Blackfoot country for the purpose of establishing the promised post. After a long and tedious voyage Kipp reached the mouth of the Marias River and selected the point of land between the two streams for the proposed establishment. It was begun about the middle of October. The Indians appeared soon after his arrival, but Kipp requested them to withdraw for seventy-five days, until he could finish the work. They went away and returned punctually on the day fixed. To their astonishment they found the fort entirely finished and everything ready for the trade. This post was very properly226 named, from the sub-tribe of the Blackfeet in whose country it was located, Fort Piegan.37

Thus was the white man’s first foothold established in the land of the Blackfeet, near where the great post of Fort Benton stood in later years. Kipp drove a thriving trade during the winter, and in the spring went down to Union with the returns and with all his men, for they refused to remain if he went. It is said that the Indians burned the post after Kipp withdrew. Whether from this cause or from some other, it was not rebuilt upon the original site. D. D. Mitchell, one of the Company’s most capable servants, was sent up in 1832 to reopen trade with the Blackfeet. On his way up he lost his boat in a storm, with all the property,227 worth some thirty thousand dollars, and two men, one of them a Piegan Indian. The Indians who were with him suspected foul play and Mitchell had all he could do to maintain himself while sending back to Union for another outfit. He succeeded, however, and in due time reached the mouth of the Marias.

Not liking the situation selected by Kipp, he went up the river some seven miles farther, and chose a spot on the left bank in a fine bottom with abundant growths of timber near by. The erection of the new post was one of the dramatic incidents of the early fur trade. There were several thousand Indians present, suspicious of the whites and ready for trouble upon any pretext. The men worked like beavers in getting up the pickets, and during this time slept on the keelboat. It required the utmost tact and firmness on the part of Mitchell to prevent an outbreak, and several times it seemed as if all were lost. The work was finally completed, and once within the fort the little party felt safe. The new post was named Fort McKenzie, a merited tribute to the man who had accomplished a feat which the traders had hitherto considered impossible.

In the summer of 1833 Alexander Culbertson, next to McKenzie the greatest of the American Fur Company traders, went up with Mitchell from Fort Union, and began his long and eventful career on the upper228 river. Prince Maximilian was a guest of the party, and remained at Fort McKenzie nearly all summer. While there he was treated to a genuine Indian battle. The Assiniboines, becoming weary of peace, broke the treaty of two years before, and fell upon a band of Piegans who were encamped around the fort. They killed several Indians in the first onset, but were quickly repulsed by aid of the inmates of the post, and were finally driven back beyond the Marias. Mitchell and Culbertson took part in the fight, and the venerable Prince became its historian.

ALEXANDER CULBERTSON

The history of Fort McKenzie had more of excitement and incident about it than any of the other early trading posts. The Blackfeet and the Crows were deadly enemies of each other, and many were the bloody encounters between them. The Crows often came to seek their enemy in his own country, and the Blackfeet went to the Crow country on the Yellowstone, where the inmates of Fort Cass witnessed the counterpart of scenes which fell under the eyes of the traders at Fort McKenzie. It is said, but upon uncertain authority, that the Crows once actually laid siege to Fort McKenzie, but as they were a friendly tribe to the whites, this may be taken with some allowance. It is certain, however, that for many years the warfare between these two tribes raged with great fury, though not with much loss to the traders, for the229 booty captured from one party found its way directly to the trading post in the country of the other.

The thrilling incidents with which the annals of Fort McKenzie abounded in these early years would fill a volume; but we can note only the more important. The year 1837 was the year of the terrible smallpox scourge among the tribes of the Missouri Valley. Great care was taken at Fort Union to dispatch the annual outfit for Fort McKenzie without carrying the smallpox along with it. The expedition was in charge of Alexander Harvey, one of the most noted and desperate characters which the fur trade produced. Harvey took every possible precaution, but in spite of his efforts the disease broke out in his party. He therefore thought it prudent to stop before he reached Fort McKenzie and send word to Culbertson, who had been in charge of the fort since 1834, when Mitchell left. Culbertson wisely decided to leave the cargo at the mouth of the Judith until the disease had run its course. There were large numbers of Indians encamped near the fort awaiting the arrival of the boat, and when they learned of the proposed delay they became suspicious and insisted that the boat should be brought up. Culbertson expostulated with them, but all in vain, and to avoid the capture and destruction of the boat and its crew, he yielded to their demands.

The result was exactly what had been foreseen.230 The disease was communicated to the inmates of the post and to the Indians as well. The latter completed their trade and left the fort before the pest actually broke out among them, and the garrison remained for some time in ignorance of what their fate had been. For upwards of two months not an Indian was seen, and Culbertson, fearing the dreadful truth, resolved to go in search of them. With a single companion he set out for the Three Forks of the Missouri, where the Piegans usually spent their autumns hunting beaver. They finally came upon a village of about sixty lodges, only to find it absolutely deserted, with dead bodies strewn in every direction, and carrion birds of prey the only sign of life anywhere around. The smallpox had done its work well, and the few survivors of the village had fled in scattered groups among the surrounding mountains. The mortality among the Bloods and Blackfeet had been as great as among the Piegans, and Culbertson estimated the total loss among the three bands at six thousand souls. The Grosventres, for some cause, escaped with small loss.

The annals of Fort McKenzie during the next six years find their chief sensational interest in the exploits of Alexander Harvey. Many were the desperate deeds committed by him, and it required all the steadying authority of Culbertson to offset his sinister influence among the Indians. Harvey was, however, an231 excellent trader, and rendered the company good service. He was left in charge of the post during the occasional temporary absences of Culbertson at Fort Union, and in spite of his many outrages upon the Indians, and even upon the whites, was considered too valuable a man to lose.

Under Culbertson’s prudent management Fort McKenzie had become, next to Union, the most paying establishment on the river. The Company were so pleased with his record that they decided to send him to Fort John, on the Laramie River, to build up the trade of that post, which was doing a losing business on account of bad management. Culbertson protested that it would be a mistake to take him away from McKenzie, but the Company overruled him, and Francis A. Chardon, one of their most experienced clerks, was sent to relieve him.

Chardon was the same manner of man as was Alexander Harvey, and it goes without saying that such a pair traveled rapidly the highway to commercial ruin. Chardon, being new to his duties and new to the post, relied a great deal upon Harvey, who became the real head of the establishment. The natural consequences of this arrangement quickly followed. Some little offenses committed by the Indians, which a prudent trader would have passed by without trouble, were made the excuse for one of the most atrocious crimes232 ever committed by either white man or Indian upon the other. The plan was to fall upon the unsuspecting Indians the next time they should come in to trade, and to kill all they could and confiscate their property. It only partly succeeded, owing to the failure of the actors to co-operate exactly; but it went far enough to arouse the hatred of the Indians to the highest pitch. They began a war of vengeance, and soon rendered the situation at Fort McKenzie untenable. Chardon accordingly moved down to the Judith River, and erected a new post on the left bank of the Missouri, opposite the mouth of the smaller stream. He named the post Fort Chardon. Fort McKenzie was burned, some say by Chardon himself and some by the Indians. The fort lost its old name and became known as Fort Brulé, or burned fort, a name which still survives in Brulé bottom, where Fort McKenzie stood. The massacre took place early in the winter of 1842–43.38

233

As a result of their reckless management, Chardon and Harvey had by this time ruined the trade with the Blackfeet tribes. In this emergency the Company turned to Culbertson, acknowledged their error in removing him from Fort McKenzie, and besought him to return and restore things to their old-time condition. Culbertson went back in the summer of 1844, abandoned and burned Fort Chardon, and established a new post twelve miles above the modern Fort Benton. The fort was built on the right bank of the Missouri, and was named Fort Lewis, in honor of the great explorer, Captain Meriwether Lewis.

On his way up from Fort Union this season Culbertson was accompanied by Jacob Berger, James Lee, and Malcolm Clark. Clark had served at Fort McKenzie five years before. He was a noted frontier character of good family connections, an unsuccessful student at the West Point Military Academy, a man of fine physical presence, and possessed of a bold and desperate character, which brought to his name the stigma of more than one crime.39 Clark and his companions234 seem to have plotted the murder or severe punishment of Alexander Harvey; for when Harvey came down from Fort Chardon to meet the boat, he was attacked by Clark and Lee and barely escaped with his life. He fled to the post, barricaded himself, induced the inmates to stand by him, and would not admit even Culbertson without a guarantee of personal safety. He then closed up his affairs at the post, left the Company’s service, went down the river, and soon after became senior member in the opposition firm of Harvey, Primeau & Co. He returned to the upper river, built a small post near the mouth of Shonkin Creek, and did a fair business for several years, when he sold out to his old employers.

With Chardon and Harvey away, Culbertson soon won back the trade of the Blackfeet. The site of Fort Lewis, however, proved unsatisfactory. The valley of the Teton River, a tributary of the Marias, which flowed parallel with the Missouri for many miles, was a favorite camping ground of the Indians. Fort Lewis was a long way off, and across the Missouri from this valley. Accordingly, in the spring of 1846235 the post was dismantled, moved down the river, and set up in the fine open bottom where the village of Fort Benton now stands.

The post was thus finally settled in its future permanent location, although the name, Fort Lewis, was still retained for several years. Business flourished under Culbertson’s management, and he at one time had three outlying posts in the country round about. In 1850 he determined to rebuild the post of adobe, after the manner of Fort John, on the Laramie. The soil was well adapted to the purpose, and although the work was begun late in the season, it was completed, thanks to an open fall, before winter set in. On Christmas night, 1850, it was dedicated with a grand ball, and was rechristened Fort Benton, in honor of Senator Thomas H. Benton, who had so often rescued the Company from the peril of its own malefactions. The name Fort Benton, as applied to the post of the Blackfeet, and to the head of navigation on the Missouri River, thus dates from the year 1850, nineteen years after the first trading post was established in that vicinity.

No events of other than a routine nature transpired at Fort Benton until the year 1853, when the extensive exploring expedition of Governor I. I. Stevens took the field to find a northern railroad route to the Pacific Ocean. These explorations brought a great deal of236 business to Fort Benton, and added a new feature to the life of that hitherto almost unknown post. Growing out of this work came the effort to negotiate treaties with the Blackfeet similar to those which had been formed at Fort Laramie three years before with most of the plains tribes. Congress made a large appropriation to cover the expense of the negotiations, and Governor Stevens and Alfred Cummings were appointed treaty commissioners. The necessary gifts for the Indians were purchased, the American Fur Company was awarded the contract for their transportation, and in due time Commissioner Cummings and party left St. Louis on the Company’s steamboat St. Mary.

There were on board, besides Commissioner Cummings, Major Culbertson, Indian agents Vaughn and Hatch, and a friend of Captain La Barge, an army officer, who later became paymaster in the army. At Fort Union the goods were transshipped in keelboats for Fort Benton, while the passengers took wagons for the same destination. Arrived at Milk River crossing, the party met Governor Stevens just returning from the Pacific Coast, and here the details of organization of the Commission were decided upon. There was much dispute over the question of precedence, and although Governor Stevens finally yielded to his colleague, the relations of the two men237 were so embittered that their subsequent work lacked harmony and effectiveness.

From Milk River the party went on to Fort Benton, but the boats were not able to get up that far except with very great delay, and it was decided to hold the expected council at the mouth of the Judith River. The goods were stopped at that point and hither repaired the Commissioners and the various Blackfeet bands to the number of about two thousand. The work was completed and in about ten days the Indians departed with their lavish presents. The era of the fur trader had ended and that of the Indian agent had come. In this case, as in all that had preceded it, the change, so far as the Indians were concerned, was a change for the worse.

These events bring our sketch of the history of Fort Benton down to the point already reached in our regular narrative. The arrival of the first steamboat in 1859 was an epoch in her history. Followed, as it was, almost immediately by the discovery of gold in Montana, and the consequent rush of emigration, it changed the whole order of things at the post. Stores and other buildings began to appear, and in 1865 a town site was laid off.40 The young city grew with astonishing rapidity and became a place of very great238 importance. Strange indeed must it have seemed to the Indians and to the old trappers to behold upon this spot, where for so many years there had been only a single palisade—sole habitation of white men within five hundred miles—buildings of metropolitan style and quality, trains of wagons coming and going, and lines of noble steamboats lying at the bank along the entire front of the town.41 It was a wonderful metamorphosis, scarcely paralleled in any other city of the country. Mushroom towns have sprung up all over the West, but no permanent city from causes like those which built up Fort Benton. Her rise and greatness were due solely to her position as a strategic point in the commerce of the far Northwest, not from any great mineral discovery in her neighborhood. Her supremacy she maintained until other commercial routes had rendered useless the great natural highway which found its terminus at her door.42

FORT BENTON LEVEE

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The American Fur Company, founders of Fort Benton, continued to do business on the upper river until 1864, when they sold out to the firm of Hawley, Hubbell & Co., under the style of the Northwestern Fur Company. The negotiations were concluded in the winter of 1864–65, and the actual transfer accomplished in the following season. In 1869 the Northwestern Fur Company sold out all its interests below Fort Union to Durfee & Peck, and in 1870 abandoned all the trade above Fort Union.

Having permanently left the service of the American Fur Company, Captain La Barge spent the three years, 1857–59, mainly on the lower river, not generally going above Council Bluffs. In the summer of 1859 he built a fine new boat, one of the best that ever went up the river. Pierre Chouteau, Jr., having heard of his undertaking, sent to him and offered any assistance that might be needed. The Company still cherished a high appreciation of Captain La Barge’s services and would gladly have taken him back into their employ. The captain thanked Mr. Chouteau, but never took advantage of his offer. When he had finished his boat he named her the Emilie, for one of his daughters. Soon after this he received a polite note from Mr. Chouteau, telling him to order a complete stand of colors for the boat and he would pay the bill. The captain was much embarrassed, for he knew that Mr. Chouteau had made the offer under the impression that the boat had been named in honor of his wife. When La Barge declined his generous241 offer and explained why, Mr. Chouteau said: “That’s all right. I am glad you have told me so frankly. You did well to name the boat for your daughter.”

The Emilie was one of the famous boats of the Missouri River. She was 225 feet long, 32 feet beam, with a hold 6 feet deep, and could easily carry 500 tons. She was a sidewheel boat, built on the most approved lines, and an exceedingly beautiful craft. Captain La Barge was designer, builder, owner, and master, and set out on his first voyage with her October 1, 1859, his forty-fourth birthday.

Before the boat was completed he entered into a contract with the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, which had just reached the Missouri River at St. Joseph, to run from that point up and down the river in connection with the road. The Emilie was accordingly taken at once up the river, and remained all the fall in that section, going up as far as Fort Randall once or twice.

It was during the boating season of 1859 that Captain La Barge first saw Abraham Lincoln. Among the more obscure incidents in that great man’s career were his visits to the Missouri River in the summer and fall of this year. In August he visited Council Bluffs, and in December several towns in Kansas. The purpose of his first visit was not political, although during his stay at the Bluffs he was induced to242 make a political speech.43 He had evidently come out to take a look at the great West, and possibly also to make some investments in real estate. At any rate, in November following he purchased from N. B. Judd lot 3, block 1, of Riddle’s Subdivision of Council243 Bluffs. In 1867 this property was conveyed back to Mr. Judd by the Lincoln heirs. It is a very singular fact that the adjoining lot 4 of this subdivision was owned by Clement L. Vallandigham, Mr. Lincoln’s greatest political enemy.

General Grenville M. Dodge, who later became a distinguished officer in the Civil War, was at this time244 engaged in surveys for the proposed Union Pacific railroad. He had just come in from the plains, and Lincoln, hearing of the fact, sought him out and had a long talk with him in regard to his surveys. His great interest in the matter and his skill in drawing out information soon gave him all that the young surveyor knew. The latter thought no more of this at the time than that possibly he had been giving away secrets that belonged to his employers only. In 1863, while in command of the district of Corinth, Miss., he received a dispatch from General Grant directing him to proceed to Washington and report to the President. He was a good deal perturbed over the matter, for he feared it might be something pertaining to his military work that had not given satisfaction. When he appeared before Mr. Lincoln he found that the President wanted to consult with him in regard to the eastern terminus of the proposed Pacific railroad, which would soon have to be determined. Mr. Lincoln had remembered the conversation in Council Bluffs, and now sought assistance from the same source from which he drew so freely on the former occasion. The result was that Council Bluffs instead of Omaha was fixed as the terminus, and that is why the Union Pacific railroad begins just across the river in Iowa, and not, as would have seemed natural, on the west shore of the river.

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Late in the fall of 1859 Mr. Lincoln visited Kansas. He arrived at St. Joseph December 1, via the new Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad. He was met at the station by D. D. Wilder and M. W. Delahay, who escorted him at once to the ferry. Mr. Wilder was a member of the reception committee, and had spent several days in the office of Lincoln & Herndon the previous summer. While waiting for the boat they sat down on the bank, and Lincoln talked freely of the recent exciting political events in Illinois. The party then crossed to Kansas, the first stop being at Elwood, where Lincoln spoke on the night of December 1. The next day he went to Troy, Kan., where he gave an address, and in the evening he made a speech at Doniphan. The following day he went to Atchison and spoke in the Methodist church. Lincoln’s speeches on these occasions were essentially the same as that delivered at a later date at Cooper Union, New York. Lincoln seems to have gone to Leavenworth on the 4th of December. He remained there two or three days, delivering two speeches at Stockton’s Hall and holding a public reception. His long stay at this place was probably due to his having to wait for the steamboat to take him back to St. Joseph. He left Leavenworth on the 7th of December, accompanied by Mr. Parrott, the Kansas delegate to Congress.

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It was on the occasion of one of these visits to the Missouri River that Captain La Barge met Mr. Lincoln. It is understood that Mr. Lincoln made his journey to Council Bluffs by boat, either from St. Louis or St. Joseph, and returned home across the State; and that on his Kansas visit he went back by boat from Leavenworth to St. Joseph in December. On one of these trips he traveled on Captain La Barge’s boat. The Captain retained with great distinctness his impressions of the appearance and personal peculiarities of the distinguished passenger. The tall and relatively slender build of Mr. Lincoln, his high hat, sallow complexion, and not very elegant costume, gave him a somewhat comical appearance at first sight. He seemed to La Barge rather quick in his movements, and apparently a good walker. The captain noticed that he was scarcely ever alone, there being always someone listening to him. Although he made no speeches on his way up, he had an audience all the time, and his agreeable address, and interesting way of putting things, made him a constant center of attraction.

La Barge remembered that he frequently came into the pilot-house, and asked many questions, particularly about the fur trade and the Indians. He expressed his desire to make a visit to the upper country. Before he left the boat he asked La Barge if he would247 not procure for him a fine buffalo robe and send it to him, giving him to understand that he should of course expect to pay him well for all expense he might be put to. La Barge promised to do so. Lincoln was not at this time much talked of for the Presidency, and in Missouri was unpopular on account of his attitude toward slavery.

Captain La Barge did not take his boat down the river in the fall of 1859, because the ice cut him off. She was laid up a little below Atchison. He himself went to St. Louis, and in February returned with his family. In the spring of 1860, when the ice was about to break up, the citizens of Atchison offered to furnish fuel for the boat if La Barge would attempt to cut through the ice to St. Joseph. He undertook it, running his boat up on the ice until her weight broke it in, and in that way succeeded in getting through. The captain remained in the service of the railroad all summer, running to Kansas City and Omaha and intermediate points. In the fall he started for St. Louis, but was caught by the ice at Liberty, Mo., and compelled to lay up his boat there. It was at this point that he first heard of Lincoln’s election. When John Baxter, keeper of Liberty Landing, came on board with the news, La Barge said to him: “Up go all your niggers.” “Oh, you don’t think that’ll make248 any difference, do you?” “Up go all your niggers,” replied La Barge; “they will all be set free.” “And they were all set free,” remarked the captain in narrating this dialogue, “and mine with the rest, for I had some.”