The Story of the Trapper Part 1

The Story of the Trapper.

by A. C. Laut.

PREFACE

The picturesque figure of the trapper follows close behind the Indian in the unfolding of the panorama of the West. There is the explorer, but the trapper himself preceded the explorers--witness Lewis's and Clark's meetings with trappers on their journey. The trapper's hard-earned knowledge of the vast empire lying beyond the Missouri was utilized by later comers, or in a large part died with him, leaving occasional records in the doc.u.ments of fur companies, or reports of military expeditions, or here and there in the name of a pa.s.s, a stream, a mountain, or a fort. His adventurous warfare upon the wild things of the woods and streams was the expression of a primitive instinct old as the history of mankind. The development of the motives which led the first pioneer trappers afield from the days of the first Eastern settlements, the industrial organizations which followed, the commanding commercial results which were evolved from the trafficking of Radisson and Groseillers in the North, the rise of the great Hudson's Bay Company, and the American enterprise which led, among other results, to the foundation of the Astor fortunes, would form no inconsiderable part of a history of North America. The present volume aims simply to show the type-character of the Western trapper, and to sketch in a series of pictures the checkered life of this adventurer of the wilderness.

The trapper of the early West was a composite figure. From the Northeast came a splendid succession of French explorers like La Verendrye, with _coureurs des bois_, and a mult.i.tude of daring trappers and traders pus.h.i.+ng west and south. From the south the Spaniard, ill.u.s.trated in figures like Garces and others, held out hands which rarely grasped the waiting commerce. From the north and northeast there was the steady advance of the st.u.r.dy Scotch and English, typified in the deeds of the Henrys, Thompson, MacKenzie, and the leaders of the organized fur trade, explorers, traders, captains of industry, carrying the flags of the Hudson's Bay and North-West Fur companies across Northern America to the Pacific. On the far Northwestern coast the Russian appeared as fur trader in the middle of the eighteenth century, and the close of the century saw the merchants of Boston claiming their share of the fur traffic of that coast. The American trapper becomes a conspicuous figure in the early years of the nineteenth century. The emporium of his traffic was St. Louis, and the period of its greatest importance and prosperity began soon after the Louisiana Purchase and continued for forty years. The complete history of the American fur trade of the far West has been written by Captain H. M. Chittenden in volumes which will be included among the cla.s.sics of early Western history. Although his history is a publication designed for limited circulation, no student or specialist in this field can fail to appreciate the value of his faithful and comprehensive work.

In The Story of the Trapper there is presented for the general reader a vivid picture of an adventurous figure, which is painted with a singleness of purpose and a distinctness impossible of realization in the large and detailed histories of the American fur trade and the Hudson's Bay and North-West companies, or the various special relations and journals and narratives. The author's wilderness lore and her knowledge of the life, added to her acquaintance with its literature, have borne fruit in a personification of the Western and Northern trappers who live in her pages. It is the man whom we follow not merely in the evolution of the Western fur traffic, but also in the course of his strange life in the wilds, his adventures, and the contest of his craft against the cunning of his quarry. It is a most picturesque figure which is sketched in these pages with the etcher's art that selects essentials while boldly disregarding details. This figure as it is outlined here will be new and strange to the majority of readers, and the relish of its piquant flavour will make its own appeal. A strange chapter in history is outlined for those who would gain an insight into the factors which had to do with the building of the West. Woodcraft, exemplified in the calling of its most skilful devotees, is painted in pictures which breathe the very atmosphere of that life of stream and forest which has not lost its appeal even in these days of urban centralization. The flash of the paddle, the crack of the rifle, the stealthy tracking of wild beasts, the fearless contest of man against brute and savage, may be followed throughout a narrative which is constant in its fresh and personal interest.

The Hudson's Bay Company still flourishes, and there is still an American fur trade; but the golden days are past, and the heroic age of the American trapper in the West belongs to a bygone time. Even more than the cowboy, his is a fading figure, dimly realized by his successors. It is time to tell his story, to show what manner of man he was, and to preserve for a different age the adventurous character of a Romany of the wilderness, fascinating in the picturesqueness and daring of his primeval life, and also, judged by more practical standards, a figure of serious historical import in his relations to exploration and commerce, and even affairs of politics and state.

If, therefore, we take the trapper as a typical figure in the early exploitation of an empire, his larger significance may be held of far more consequence to us than the excesses and lawlessness so frequent in his life. He was often an adventurer pure and simple. The record of his dealings with the red man and with white compet.i.tors is darkened by many stains. His return from his lonely journeys afield brought an outbreak of license like that of the cowboy fresh from the range, but with all this the stern life of the old frontier bred a race of men who did their work. That work was the development of the only natural resources of vast regions in this country and to the Northward, which were utilized for long periods. There was also the task of exploration, the breaking the way for others, and as pioneer and as builder of commerce the trapper's part in our early history has a significance which cloaks the frailties characteristic of restraintless life in untrodden wilds.

THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER

PART I

CHAPTER I

GAMESTERS OF THE WILDERNESS

Fearing nothing, stopping at nothing, knowing no law, ruling his stronghold of the wilds like a despot, checkmating rivals with a deviltry that beggars parallel, wa.s.sailing with a shamelessness that might have put Rome's worst deeds to the blush, fighting--fighting--fighting, always fighting with a courage that knew no truce but victory, the American trapper must ever stand as a type of the worst and the best in the militant heroes of mankind.

Each with an army at his back, Wolfe and Napoleon won victories that upset the geography of earth. The fur traders never at any time exceeded a few thousands in number, faced enemies unbacked by armies and sallied out singly or in pairs; yet they won a continent that has bred a new race.

Like John Colter,[1] whom Manuel Lisa met coming from the wilds a hundred years ago, the trapper strapped a pack to his back, slung a rifle over his shoulder, and, without any fanfare of trumpets, stepped into the pathless shade of the great forests. Or else, like Williams of the Arkansas, the trapper left the moorings of civilization in a canoe, hunted at night, hid himself by day, evaded hostile Indians by sliding down-stream with m.u.f.fled paddles, slept in mid-current screened by the branches of driftwood, and if a sudden halloo of marauders came from the distance, cut the strap that held his craft to the sh.o.r.e and got away under cover of the floating tree. Hunters crossing the Cimarron desert set out with pack-horses, and, like Captain Becknell's party, were often compelled to kill horses and dogs to keep from dying of thirst.

Frequently their fate was that of Rocky Mountain Smith, killed by the Indians as he stooped to scoop out a drinking-hole in the sand. Men who brought down their pelts to the mountain _rendezvous_ of Pierre's Hole, or went over the divide like Fraser and Thompson of the North-West Fur Company, had to abandon both horses and canoes, scaling canon walls where the current was too turbulent for a canoe and the precipice too sheer for a horse, with the aid of their hunting-knives stuck in to the haft.[2] Where the difficulties were too great for a few men, the fur traders clubbed together under a master-mind like John Jacob Astor of the Pacific Company, or Sir Alexander MacKenzie of the Nor' Westers.

Banded together, they thought no more of coasting round the sheeted antarctics, or slipping down the ice-jammed current of the MacKenzie River under the midnight sun of the arctic circle, than people to-day think of running from New York to Newport. When the conflict of 1812 cut off communication between western fur posts and New York by the overland route, Farnham, the Green Mountain boy, didn't think himself a hero at all for sailing to Kamtchatka and crossing the whole width of Asia, Europe, and the Atlantic, to reach Mr. Astor.

The American fur trader knew only one rule of existence--to go ahead without any heroics, whether the going cost his own or some other man's life. That is the way the wilderness was won; and the winning is one of the most thrilling pages in history.

About the middle of the seventeenth century Pierre Radisson and Chouart Groseillers, two French adventurers from Three Rivers, Quebec, followed the chain of waterways from the Ottawa and Lake Superior northwestward to the region of Hudson Bay.[3] Returning with tales of fabulous wealth to be had in the fur trade of the north, they were taken in hand by members of the British Commission then in Boston, whose influence secured the Hudson's Bay Company charter in 1670; and that ancient and honourable body--as the company was called--reaped enormous profits from the bartering of pelts. But the bartering went on in a prosy, half-alive way, the traders sitting snugly in their forts on Rupert and Severn Rivers, or at York Factory (Port Nelson) and Churchill (Prince of Wales). The French governor down in Quebec issued only a limited number of licenses for the fur trade in Canada; and the old English company had no fear of rivalry in the north. It never sought inland tribes, but waited with serene apathy for the Indians to come down to its fur posts on the bay. Young Le Moyne d'Iberville[4] might march overland from Quebec to the bay, catch the English company nodding, scale the stockades, capture its forts, batter down a wall or two, and sail off like a pirate with s.h.i.+p-loads of booty for Quebec. What did the ancient company care? European treaties restored its forts, and the honourable adventurers presented a bill of damages to their government for lost furs.

But came a sudden change. Great movements westward began simultaneously in all parts of the east.

This resulted from two events--England's victory over France at Quebec, and the American colonies' Declaration of Independence. The downfall of French ascendency in America meant an end to that license system which limited the fur trade to favourites of the governor. That threw an army of some two thousand men--_voyageurs, coureurs des bois, mangeurs de lard_,[5] famous hunters, traders, and trappers--on their own resources.

The MacDonalds and MacKenzies and MacGillivrays and Frobishers and MacTavishes--Scotch merchants of Quebec and Montreal--were quick to seize the opportunity. Uniting under the names of North-West Fur Company and X. Y. Fur Company, they re-engaged the entire retinue of cast-off Frenchmen, woodcraftsmen who knew every path and stream from Labrador to the Rocky Mountains. Giving higher pay and better fare than the old French traders, the Scotch merchants prepared to hold the field against all comers in the Canadas. And when the X. Y. amalgamated with the larger company before the opening of the nineteenth century, the Nor'

Westers became as famous for their daring success as their unscrupulous ubiquity.

But at that stage came the other factor--American Independence. Locked in conflict with England, what deadlier blow to British power could France deal than to turn over Louisiana with its million square miles and ninety thousand inhabitants to the American Republic? The Lewis and Clark exploration up the Missouri, over the mountains, and down the Columbia to the Pacific was a natural sequel to the Louisiana Purchase, and proved that the United States had gained a world of wealth for its fifteen million dollars. Before Lewis and Clark's feat, vague rumours had come to the New England colonies of the riches to be had in the west. The Russian Government had organized a strong company to trade for furs with the natives of the Pacific coast. Captain Vancouver's report of the north-west coast was corroborated by Captain Grey, who had stumbled into the mouth of the Columbia; and before 1800 nearly thirty Boston vessels yearly sailed to the Northern Pacific for the fur trade.

Eager to forestall the Hudson's Bay Company, now beginning to rub its eyes and send explorers westward to bring Indians down to the bay,[6]

Alexander MacKenzie of the Nor' Westers pushed down the great river named after him,[7] and forced his way across the northern Rockies to the Pacific. Flotillas of North-West canoes quickly followed MacKenzie's lead north to the arctics, south-west down the Columbia. At Michilimackinac--one of the most lawless and roaring of the fur posts--was an a.s.sociation known as the Mackinaw Company, made up of old French hunters under English management, trading westward from the Lakes to the Mississippi. Hudson Bay, Nor' Wester, and Mackinaw were daily pressing closer and closer to that vast unoccupied Eldorado--the fur country between the Missouri and the Saskatchewan, bounded eastward by the Mississippi, west by the Pacific.

Possession is nine points out of ten. The question was who would get possession first.

Unfortunately that question presented itself to three alert rivals at the same time and in the same light. And the war began.

The Mackinaw traders had all they could handle from the Lakes to the Mississippi. Therefore they did little but try to keep other traders out of the western preserve. The Hudson's Bay remained in its somnolent state till the very extremity of outrage brought such a mighty awakening that it put its rivals to an eternal sleep. But the Nor' Westers were not asleep. And John Jacob Astor of New York, who had acc.u.mulated what was a gigantic fortune in those days as a purchaser of furs from America and a seller to Europe, was not asleep. And Manual Lisa, a Spaniard, of New Orleans, engaged at St. Louis in fur trade with the Osage tribes, was not asleep.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Whom Bradbury and Irving and Chittenden have all conspired to make immortal.]

[Footnote 2: While Lewis and Clark were on the Upper Missouri, the former had reached a safe footing along a narrow pa.s.s, when he heard a voice shout, "Good G.o.d, captain, what shall I do?" Turning, Lewis saw Windsor had slipped to the verge of a precipice, where he lay with right arm and leg over it, the other arm clinging for dear life to the bluff.

With his hunting-knife he cut a hole for his right foot, ripped off his moccasins so that his toes could have the prehensile freedom of a monkey's tail, and thus crawled to safety like a fly on a wall.]

[Footnote 3: Whether they actually reached the sh.o.r.es of the bay on this trip is still a dispute among French-Canadian savants.]

[Footnote 4: 1685-'87; the same Le Moyne d'Iberville who died in Havana after spending his strength trying to colonize the Mississippi for France--one instance which shows how completely the influence of the fur trade connected every part of America, from the Gulf to the pole, as in a network irrespective of flag.]

[Footnote 5: The men employed in mere rafting and barge work in contradistinction to the trappers and _voyageurs_.]

[Footnote 6: This was probably the real motive of the Hudson's Bay Company sending Hearne to explore the Coppermine in 1769-'71. Hearne, unfortunately, has never reaped the glory for this, owing to his too-ready surrender of Prince of Wales Fort to the French in La Perouse's campaign of 1782.]

[Footnote 7: To the mouth of the MacKenzie River in 1789, across the Rockies in 1793, for which feats he was knighted.]

CHAPTER II

THREE COMPANIES IN CONFLICT

If only one company had attempted to take possession of the vast fur country west of the Mississippi, the fur trade would not have become international history; but three companies were at strife for possession of territory richer than Spanish Eldorado, albeit the coin was "beaver"--not gold. Each of three companies was determined to use all means fair or foul to exclude its rivals from the field; and a fourth company was drawn into the strife because the conflict menaced its own existence.

From their Canadian headquarters at Fort William on Lake Superior, the Nor' Westers had yearly moved farther down the Columbia towards the mouth, where Lewis and Clark had wintered on the Pacific. In New York, Mr. Astor was formulating schemes to add to his fur empire the territory west of the Mississippi. At St. Louis was Manuel Lisa, the Spanish fur trader, already reaching out for the furs of the Missouri. And leagues to the north on the remote waters of Hudson Bay, the old English company lazily blinked its eyes open to the fact that compet.i.tion was telling heavily on its returns, and that it would be compelled to take a hand in the merry game of a fur traders' war, though the real awakening had not yet come.

Lisa was the first to act on the information brought back by Lewis and Clark. Forming a partners.h.i.+p with Morrison and Menard of Kaskaskia, Ill., and engaging Drouillard, one of Lewis and Clark's men, as interpreter, he left St. Louis with a heavily laden keel-boat in the spring of 1807. Against the turbulent current of the Missouri in the full flood-tide of spring this unwieldy craft was slowly hauled or "cordelled," twenty men along the sh.o.r.e pulling the clumsy barge by means of a line fastened high enough on the mast to be above brushwood.

Where the water was shallow the _voyageurs_ poled single file, facing the stern and pus.h.i.+ng with full chest strength. In deeper current oars were used.

Launched for the wilderness, with no certain knowledge but that the wilderness was peopled by hostiles, poor Bissonette deserted when they were only at the Osage River. Lisa issued orders for Drouillard to bring the deserter back dead or alive--orders that were filled to the letter, for the poor fellow was brought back shot, to die at St. Charles.

Pa.s.sing the mouth of the Platte, the company descried a solitary white man drifting down-stream in a dugout. When it was discovered that this lone trapper was John Colter, who had left Lewis and Clark on their return trip and remained to hunt on the Upper Missouri, one can imagine the shouts that welcomed him. Having now been in the upper country for three years, he was the one man fitted to guide Lisa's party, and was promptly persuaded to turn back with the treasure-seekers.

Past Blackbird's grave, where the great chief of the Omahas had been buried astride his war-horse high on the crest of a hill that his spirit might see the canoes of the French _voyageurs_ going up and down the river; past the lonely grave of Floyd,[8] whose death, like that of many a New World hero marked another milestone in the westward progress of empire; past the Aricaras, with their three hundred warriors gorgeous in vermilion, firing volleys across the keel-boat with fusees got from rival traders;[9] past the Mandans, threatening death to the intruders; past five thousand a.s.siniboine hostiles ma.s.sed on the bank with weapons ready; up the Yellowstone to the mouth of the Bighorn--went Lisa, stopping in the very heart of the Crow tribe, those thieves and pirates and marauders of the western wilderness. Stockades were hastily stuck in the ground, banked up with a miniature parapet, flanked with the two usual bastions that could send a raking fire along all four walls; and Lisa was ready for trade.