The Magnificent Adventure Part 31

The tide changed quickly when it began to set the other way. Lewis led an advance party across the range. One day, deep in the mountains, he was sweeping the country with his spygla.s.s, as was his custom. He gave a sudden exclamation.

"What is it, Captain?" asked Hugh McNeal. "Some game?"

"No, a man--an Indian! Riding a good horse, too--that means he has more horses somewhere. Come, we will call to him!"

The wild rider, however, had nothing but suspicion for the newcomers.

Staring at them, he wheeled at length and was away at top speed. Once more they were alone, and none the better off.

"His people are that way," said Lewis. "Come!"

But all that day pa.s.sed, and that night, and still they found none of the natives. But they began to see signs of Indians now, fresh tracks, hoofprints of many horses. And thus finally they came upon two Indian women and a child, whom the white men surprised before they were able to escape. Lewis took up the child, and showed the mother that he was a friend.

"These are Shoshones," said he to his men. "I can speak with them--I have learned some of their tongue from Sacajawea. These are her people. We are safe!"

Sixty warriors met them, all mounted, all gorgeously clad. Again the great peace pipe, again the spread blanket inviting the council. The Shoshones showed no signs of hostility--the few words of their tongue which Lewis was able to speak gave them a.s.surance.

"McNeal," said Lewis, "go back now across the range, and tell Captain Clark to bring up the men."

William Clark, given one night's sleep, was his energetic self again, and not in mind to lie in camp. He had already ordered camp broken, more of the heavier articles cached, the canoes concealed here and there along the stream and had pushed on after Lewis. He met McNeal coming down, bearing the tidings. Sacajawea ran on ahead in glee.

"My people! My people!" she cried.

They were indeed safe now. Sacajawea found her brother, the chief of this band of Shoshones, and was made welcome. She found many friends of her girlhood, who had long mourned her as dead. The girls and younger women laughed and wept in turn as they welcomed her and her baby. She was a great person. Never had such news as this come among the Shoshones.[5]

[Footnote 5: Cam-e-ah-wit was the name of Sacajawea's brother, the Shoshone chief. The country where Lewis met him is remote from any large city today. Pa.s.s through the Gate of the Mountains, not far from Helena, Montana, and ascend the upper valley of the Missouri, as it sweeps west of what is now the Yellowstone Park, and one may follow with a certain degree of comfort the trail of the early explorers. If one should then follow the Jefferson Fork of the great river up to its last narrowing, one would reach the country of Cam-e-ah-wit. Here is the crest of the Continental Divide, where it sweeps up from the south, after walling in, as if in a vast cup, the three main sources of the great river. Much of that valley country is in fertile farms today. Lewis and Clark pa.s.sed within twelve miles of Alder Gulch, which wrote roaring history in the early sixties--the wild placer days of gold-mining in Montana.

As for Sacajawea, she has a monument--a very poor and inadequate one--in the city of Portland, Oregon. The crest of the Great Divide, where she met her brother, would have been a better place. It was here, in effect, that she ended that extraordinary guidance--some call it nothing less than providential--which brought the white men through in safety.

Trace this Indian girl's birth and childhood, here among the Shoshones, who had fled to the mountains to escape the guns of the Blackfeet. Recall her capture here by the Minnetarees from the Dakota country. Picture her long journey thence to the east, on foot, by horse, in bull-hide canoes, many hundreds of miles, to the Mandan villages. It is something of a journey, even now. Reverse that journey, go against the swift current of the waters, beyond the Great Falls, past Helena, west of the Yellowstone Park, and up to the Continental Divide, where she met her brother. You will find that that is still more of a journey, even today, with roads, and towns, and maps to guide you. Meriwether Lewis could not have made it without her.

While he was studying the courses of the stars, at Philadelphia, preparing to lead his expedition, Sacajawea was learning the story of nature also; and she was waiting to guide the white men when they reached the Mandan villages. Who guided her in such unbelievably strange fas.h.i.+on? The Indians sometimes made long journeys, their war parties traveled far, and their captives also; but in all the history of the tribes there is no record of a journey made by any Indian woman equal to that of Sacajawea. Why did she make it? What hand pointed out the way for her?

A statue to her? She should have a thousand memorials along the old trail! Her name should be known familiarly by every school child in America!]

All were now content to lie for a few days at the Shoshone village. A brisk trade in Indian horses now sprang up--they would be footmen no more.

"Which way, Sacajawea?" Meriwether Lewis once more asked the Indian girl.

But now she only shook her head.

"Not know," said she. "These my people. They say big river that way.

Not know which way."

"Now, Merne," said William Clark, "it's my turn again. We have got to learn the best way out from these mountains. If there is a big river below, some of these valleys must run down to it. Their waters probably flow to the Columbia. The Indians talk of salmon and of white men--they have heard of goods which must have been made by white men. We are in touch with the Pacific here. I'll get a guide and explore off to the southwest. It looks better there."

"No good--no good!" insisted Sacajawea. "That way no good. My brother say go that way."

She pointed to the north, and insisted that the party should go in that direction.

For a hundred miles Clark scouted down the headwaters of the Salmon River, and at last turned back, to report that neither horse nor boat ever could get through. At the Shoshone village, uneasy, the men were waiting for him.

"That way!" said Sacajawea, still pointing north.

The Indian guide, who had served Clark unwillingly, at length admitted that there was a trail leading across the mountains far up to the northward.

"We will go north," said Lewis.

They cached under the ashes of their camp fire such remaining articles as they could leave behind them. They had now a band of fifty horses.

Partly mounted, mostly on foot, their half wild horses burdened, they set out once more under the guidance of an old Shoshone, who said he knew the way.

Charbonneau wanted to remain with the Shoshones, and to keep with him Sacajawea, his wife, so recently reunited to her people.

"No!" said Sacajawea. "I no go back--I go with the white chief to the water that tastes salt!" And it was so ordered.

Their course lay along the eastern side of the lofty Bitter Root Mountains. The going was rude enough, since no trail had ever been here; but mile after mile, day after day, they stumbled through to some point on ahead which none knew except the guide. They came on a new tribe of Indians--Flatheads, who were as amazed and curious as the Shoshones had been at the coming of these white men. They received the explorers as friends--asked them to tarry, told them how dangerous it was to go into the mountains.

But haste was the order of the day, and they left the Flatheads, rejoicing that these also told of streams to the westward up which the salmon came. They had heard of white men, too, to the west, many years before.

Down the beautiful valley of the Bitter Root River, with splendid mountains on either side, they pressed on, and on the ninth of September, 1805, they stopped at the mouth of a stream coming down from the heights to the west. Their old guide pointed up this valley.

"There is a trail," said he, "which comes across here. The Indians come to reach the buffalo. On the farther side the water runs toward the sunset."

They were at the eastern extremity of that ancient trail, later called the Lolo Trail, known immemorially to the tribes on both sides of the mountains. Laboriously, always pressing forward, they ascended the eastern slopes of the great range, crossed the summit, found the clear waters on the west side, and so came to the Kooskooskie or Clearwater River, leading to the Snake. And always the natives marveled at these white men, the first they ever had seen.

The old Indians still made maps on the sand for them, showing them how they would come to the great river where the salmon came. They were now among yet another people--the Nez Perces. With these also they smoked and counciled, and learned that it would be easy for boats to go all the way down to the great river which ran to the sea.

"We will leave our horses here," said Lewis. "We will take to the boats once more."

So Ga.s.s and Bratton and s.h.i.+elds and all the other artisans fell to fas.h.i.+oning dugouts from the tall pines and cedars, hewing and burning and shaping, until at length they had transports for their scanty store of goods. By the first week of October they were at the junction of their river with the Snake. An old medicine man of the Nez Perces, Twisted Hair, a man who also could make maps, had drawn them charts on a white skin with a bit of charcoal. And on ahead, mounted runners of the Indians rushed down to inform the tribes of the coming of these strange people.

It was no longer an exploration, but a reception for them now. Bands of red men, who welcomed them, had heard of white men coming up from the sea. White men had once lived by the Tim-Tim water, on the great river of the salmon--so they had been told; but never had any living Indian heard of white men coming across the great mountains from the sunrise.

"Will," said Lewis, "it is done--we are safe now! We shall be first across to the Columbia. This--" he shook the Nez Perces' scrawled hide--"is the map of a new world!"

CHAPTER VIII

TRAIL'S END

Where lately had been gloom and despair there now reigned joy and confidence. With the great mountains behind them, and this new, pleasant and gentle land all around them, the spirits of the men rose buoyantly.

They could float easily down the strong current of the great Snake River, laboring but little, if at all. They made long hours every day, and by the middle of autumn they saw ahead of them a yet grander flood than that of the n.o.ble river which was bearing them.

At last they had found the Columbia! They had found what Mackenzie never found, what Fraser was not to find--that great river, now to be taken over with every right of double discovery by these messengers of the young republic. How swelled their hearts, when at last they knew this truth, unescapable, incontrovertible! It was theirs. They had won!