Read Ebook: Audubon and His Journals Volume 2 by Coues Elliott Annotator Audubon John James Audubon Maria R Maria Rebecca Editor

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DEAR SIR,--We cannot part with you previous to your return to St. Louis, without offering to you our best wishes, and our thanks for your great courtesy, assuring you how highly we appreciate, and feel grateful for, your uniform kindness and gentlemanly deportment to each and all of us. We are most happy to add that our passage to the Yellowstone River has been devoid of any material accident, which we can only attribute to the great regularity and constant care with which you have discharged your arduous duties in the difficult navigation of the river.

We regret that it is not in our power, at this moment, to offer you a suitable token of our esteem, but hope you will confer on us the favor of accepting at our hands a six-barrelled, silver-mounted pistol, which we sincerely hope and trust you may never have occasion to use in defence of your person. We beg you to consider us,

Your well-wishers and friends, etc.,

We have been in a complete state of excitement unloading the boat, reloading her with a new cargo, and we were all packing and arranging our effects, as well as writing letters. After dinner our belongings were taken to the landing of the fort in a large keel-boat, with the last of the cargo. The room which we are to occupy during our stay at this place is rather small and low, with only one window, on the west side. However, we shall manage well enough, I dare say, for the few weeks we are to be here. This afternoon I had a good deal of conversation with Mr. Culbertson, and found him well disposed to do all he can for us; and no one can ask for more politeness than is shown us. Our captain having invited us to remain with him to-night, we have done so, and will breakfast with him to-morrow morning. It is his intention to leave as early as he can settle his business here. All the trappers are gone to the fort, and in a few weeks will be dispersed over different and distant parts of the wilderness. The filth they had left below has been scraped and washed off, as well indeed as the whole boat, of which there was need enough. I have copied this journal and send it to St. Louis by our good captain; also one box of skins, one pair Elk horns, and one bundle of Wolf and other skins.

Harris and Bell came back bringing several small birds, among which three or four proved to be a Blackbird nearly allied to the Rusty Grakle, but with evidently a much shorter and straighter bill. Its measurements will be given, of course. The weather is still lowering and cold, and it rains at intervals. We are now out of specimens of quadrupeds to draw from. Our gentlemen seem to remember the ball of last night, and I doubt not will go early to bed, as I shall.

We are told these Hares are very plentiful, and yet this is the first specimen we have seen, and sorry am I that it amounts to no specimen at all. Harris and I walked several miles, but killed nothing; we found the nest of a Sparrow-hawk, and Harris, assisted by my shoulders, reached the nest, and drew out two eggs. Sprague went across the hills eastward, and was fortunate enough to shoot a superb specimen of the Arctic Bluebird. This evening, Mr. Culbertson having told me the Rabbits, such as Bell had brought, were plentiful on the road to the steamboat landing, Harris, Bell, and I walked there; but although we were very cautious, we saw none, and only procured a Black-headed Grosbeak, which was shot whilst singing delightfully. To-morrow morning Mr. Chardon leaves us in the keel-boat for the Blackfoot Fort, and Mr. Kipp will leave for the Crows early next week.

I am now going to take this book to Lewis Squires and ask him to write in it his account of the Buffalo hunt.

Provost tells me that Wolves are oftentimes destroyed by wild horses, which he has seen run at the Wolves head down, and when at a proper distance take them by the middle of the back with their teeth, and throw them several feet in the air, after which they stamp upon their bodies with the fore feet until quite dead. I have a bad blister on the heel of my right foot, and cannot walk without considerable pain.

This morning as I walked to Fort Mortimer, meeting Squires as he has said, well and happy as a Lark, I was surprised to see a good number of horses saddled, and packed in different ways, and I hastened on to find what might be the matter. When I entered the miserable house in which Mr. Collins sleeps and spends his time when not occupied out of doors, he told me thirteen men and seven squaws were about to start for the lakes, thirty-five miles off, to kill Buffaloes and dry their meat, as the last his hunters brought in was already putrid. I saw the cavalcade depart in an E.N.E. direction, remained a while, and then walked back. Mr. Collins promised me half a dozen balls from young animals. Provost was discomfited and crestfallen at the failure of the Beaver hunt; he brought half a doe and about a dozen fine catfish. Mr. Culbertson and I are going to see the mowers, and to-morrow we start on a grand Buffalo hunt, and hope for Antelopes, Wolves, and Foxes.

For each Bighorn male .00 For a large Grizzly Bear 20.00 For a large male Elk 6.00 For a Black-tailed Deer, male or female 6.00 For Red Foxes 3.00 For small Gray Foxes 3.00 For Badgers 2.00 For large Porcupine 2.00

Independent of which I agree to furnish him with his passage and food, he to work as a hand on board. Whatever he kills for food will be settled when he leaves us, or, as he says, when he meets the Opposition boat coming up to Fort Mortimer." He will also accompany us in our hunt after Bighorns, which I shall undertake, notwithstanding Mr. Culbertson and Squires, who have been to the Mauvaises Terres, both try to dissuade me from what they fear will prove over-fatiguing; but though my strength is not what it was twenty years ago, I am yet equal to much, and my eyesight far keener than that of many a younger man, though that too tells me I am no longer a youth....

Left St. Louis October 22, in steamer "Nautilus" for Cincinnati.

Reached home at 3 P.M., November 6th, 1843, and thank God, found all my family quite well.

EXTRACTS from Mr. Culbertson's Journal, kept at Fort McKenzie, Blackfeet Indian Country in 1834.

DESCRIPTION OF FORT UNION

BY EDWIN T. DENIG. JULY 30, 1843

FORT McKENZIE

BY ALEXANDER CULBERTSON, ESQ. AUGUST 7, 1843

FOOTNOTES:

"We halted for dinner at a village which we suppose to have belonged to the Ricaras. It is situated in a low plain on the river, and consists of about eighty lodges of an octagon form, neatly covered with earth, placed as close to each other as possible, and picketed round."

"The village of the Rikaras, Arickaras, or Rikarees, for the name is variously written, is between the 46th and 47th parallels of north latitude, and 1,430 miles above the mouth of the Missouri.... It was divided into two portions, about eighty yards apart, being inhabited by two distinct bands. The whole extended about three quarters of a mile along the river bank, and was composed of conical lodges, that looked like so many small hillocks, being wooden frames intertwined with osier, and covered with earth."

"From the hills we had a fine prospect over the bend of the river, on which the villages of the Arikkaras are situated. The two villages of this tribe are on the west bank, very near each other, but separated by a small stream. They consist of a great number of clay huts, round at top, with a square entrance in front, and the whole surrounded with a fence of stakes, which were much decayed and in many places thrown down."

"General Ashley of Missouri, a man whose courage and achievements in the prosecution of his enterprises had rendered him famous in the Far West in conjunction with Mr. Henry, of the Missouri Trading Co., established a post on the banks of the Yellowstone River in 1822."

"We reached the mouth of Le Boulet, or Cannon Ball River. This stream rises in the Black Mts. and falls into the Missouri; its channel is about 140 feet wide, though the water is now confined within 40; its name is derived from the numbers of perfectly round stones on the shore and in the bluffs just above."

Present name of the stream which falls into the Missouri from the east, about five miles below Fort Rice; Chewah or Fish River of Lewis and Clark; Shewash River of Maximilian. Audubon is now approaching Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota.--E. C.

Charles Primeau was born at St. Louis, Mo., entered the American Fur Company as clerk, and continued in that service many years. Later he helped to form an opposition company under the name of Harvey, Primeau, & Co., which did business for a few years, until, like most of the smaller concerns, it was absorbed by the American Fur Co. He then went back to his former employers, and afterward was engaged by the U.S. Government as Indian interpreter, long holding this position. In 1896 he was living in the vicinity of Fort Yates.--E. C.

The "Assiniboin" was the steamer on which Maximilian, Prince of Wied, travelled down the Missouri in 1833.

Heart River, the stream which falls into the Missouri near the town of Mandan, about opposite Bismarck, N. Dak. Here the river is now bridged by the Northern Pacific Railroad, which crosses the Missouri from Bismarck, and follows up Heart River for some distance.--E. C.

"Fort Clark came in sight, with a background of the blue prairie hills, and with the gay American banner waving from the flag-staff.... The fort is built on a smaller scale, on a plan similar to that of all the other trading posts or forts of the company. Immediately behind the fort there were, in the prairie, seventy leather tents of the Crows."

Fort Clark stood on the right bank of the Missouri, and thus across the river from the original Fort Mandan built by Lewis and Clark in the fall of 1804. Maximilian has much to say of it and of Mr. Kipp.

The individual so designated was an important functionary in these villages, whose authority corresponded with that of our "chief of police," and was seldom if ever disputed.--E. C.

"It rises to the west of the Black Mts., across the northern extremity of which it finds a narrow, rapid passage along high perpendicular banks, then seeks the Missouri in a northeasterly direction, through a broken country with highlands bare of timber, and the low grounds particularly supplied with cottonwood, elm, small ash, box, alder, and an undergrowth of willow, red-wood, red-berry, and choke-cherry.... It enters the Missouri with a bold current, and is 134 yards wide, but its greatest depth is two feet and a half, which, joined to its rapidity and its sand-bars, makes the navigation difficult except for canoes."

"We came to a green spot at the mouth of the Little Missouri, which is reckoned to be 1670 miles from the mouth of the great Missouri. The chain of blue hills, with the same singular forms as we had seen before, appeared on the other side of this river."

At this time the account of the Prince of Wied had not been published in English; that translation appeared December, 1843, two years after the German edition.

This is the Little Knife, or Upper Knife River, to be carefully distinguished from that Knife River at the mouth of which were the Minnetaree villages. It falls into the Missouri from the north, in Mountraille Co., 55 miles above the mouth of the Little Missouri. This is probably the stream named Goat-pen Creek by Lewis and Clark: see p. 274 of the edition of 1893.--E. C.

Or White Earth River of some maps, a comparatively small stream, eighteen and one half miles above the mouth of Little Knife River.--E. C.

Present name of the stream which flows into the Missouri from the north, in Buford Co. This is the last considerable affluent below the mouth of the Yellowstone, and the one which Lewis and Clark called White Earth River, by mistake. See last note.--E. C.

Maximilian, Prince of Wied.

Charles Larpenteur, whose MS. autobiography I possess.--E. C.

That the account given by Audubon is not exaggerated may be seen from the two accounts following; the first from Lewis and Clark, the second from the Prince of Wied:--

"The ancient Maha village had once consisted of 300 cabins, but was burnt about four years ago , soon after the small-pox had destroyed four hundred men, and a proportion of women and children.... The accounts we have had of the effects of the small-pox are most distressing; ... when these warriors saw their strength wasting before a malady which they could not resist, their frenzy was extreme; they burnt their village, and many of them put to death their wives and children, to save them from so cruel an affliction, and that they might go together to some better country."

"New Orleans, June 6, 1838. We have from the trading posts on the western frontier of Missouri the most frightful accounts of the ravages of small-pox among the Indians.... The number of victims within a few months is estimated at 30,000, and the pestilence is still spreading.... The small-pox was communicated to the Indians by a person who was on board the steamboat which went last summer to the mouth of the Yellowstone, to convey both the government presents for the Indians, and the goods for the barter trade of the fur-dealers.... The officers gave notice of it to the Indians, and exerted themselves to the utmost to prevent any intercourse between them and the vessel; but this was a vain attempt.... The disease first broke out about the 15th of June, 1837, in the village of the Mandans, from which it spread in all directions with unexampled fury.... Among the remotest tribes of the Assiniboins from fifty to one hundred died daily.... The ravages of the disorder were most frightful among the Mandans. That once powerful tribe was exterminated, with the exception of thirty persons. Their neighbors, the Gros Ventres and the Riccarees, were out on a hunting excursion at the time the disorder broke out, so that it did not reach them till a month later; yet half the tribe were destroyed by October 1. Very few of those who were attacked recovered.... Many put an end to their lives with knives or muskets, or by precipitating themselves from the summit of the rock near the settlement. The prairie all around is a vast field of death, covered with unburied corpses. The Gros Ventres and the Riccarees, lately amounting to 4,000 souls, were reduced to less than one half. The Assiniboins, 9,000 in number, are nearly exterminated. They, as well as the Crows and Blackfeet, endeavored to fly in all directions; but the disease pursued them.... The accounts of the Blackfeet are awful. The inmates of above 1,000 of their tents are already swept away. No language can picture the scene of desolation which the country presents. The above does not complete the terrible intelligence which we receive.... According to the most recent accounts, the number of Indians who have been swept away by the small-pox, on the Western frontier of the United States, amounts to more than 60,000."

This is the same hybrid Woodpecker which has been already noted on p. 14.--E. C.

The usual title or designation of the chief trader or person in charge of any establishment of a fur company.--E. C.

"The black-tailed deer never runs at full speed, but bounds with every foot from the ground at the same time, like the mule-deer."

The above is a very good example of the way these Woodpeckers vary in color, presenting a case which, as Audubon justly observes, is a "puzzle to all the naturalists in the world." See note, p. 14.--E. C.

See Bell's account of the trip, page 176.

Niobrara River; for which, and for others here named, see the previous note, date of May 20.

On the south side of the Missouri, in present Nebraska, a short distance above the mouth of the Big Sioux. This small stream is Roloje Creek of Lewis and Clark, Ayoway River of Nicollet, appearing by error as "Norway" and "Nioway" Creek on General Land Office maps.--E. C.

J. H. K. Burgwin. See a previous note, date of May 10.

Of Maine; in 1843 a second lieutenant of the First Dragoons. He rose during the Civil War to be lieutenant-colonel of the Fourth Cavalry, and Brevet Major-General of Volunteers; died Jan. 7, 1873.

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