BOOK IV.

CHAPTER I.

LEWIS AND CLARK'S EXPEDITION, ETC.

Mr. Jefferson, while at Paris as American minister in 1787, met John Ledyard, who came to France to attempt a business arrangement in the fur trade of the northwest coast of America. Failing in this, Mr. Jefferson proposed to him a land expedition through Northern Europe to Kamtschatka and to the Pacific. Russia gave consent, and Ledyard at once set out and went into winter quarters 200 miles from Kamtschatka. Here he was stopped by the Russians and compelled, under arrest, to return.

In 1792, Mr. Jefferson proposed a subscription by the American Philosophical Society to engage a person to go to the northwest coast by land. Captain Meriwether Lewis, then stationed at Charlotteville, Va., was engaged for this purpose. Mr. Micheaux, a French botanist, was to be his fellow explorer. They proceeded as far as Kentucky, when a message from the French minister at Washington recalled Mr. Micheaux, and the journey here terminated.

On the 18th of January, prior to the Louisiana purchase, President Jefferson, in a confidential message to Congress (the act for establishing trading houses among the Indians being about to expire by limitation), recommended that the act be continued and extended to posts among the Indians on the Mississippi river, and that a party of explorers be sent up the Missouri river to its source, then to cross the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. This was approved, an appropriation made, and Captain Lewis at his own

request, was detailed to command the expedition. First Lieut. William Clark, brother of General George Rogers Clark, was afterwards detailed with him. It was an expedition of discovery and inquiry. Its instructions were to notice and detail the geography and character of the country, to enter into negotiations with the Indians for commerce, and to describe their habits, characteristics and history.

The party consisted of Meriwether Lewis, captain U. S. A., First Regiment Infantry (formerly Mr. Jefferson's secretary); William Clark, first-lieutenant U. S. A.; John Ordway, Nathaniel Prior and Patrick Gass, sergeants U. S. A.; Charles Floyd, William Bratton, John Colter, John Collins, Pierre Cruzarte, Robert Frazier, Joseph Fields, George Gibson, Silas Goodrich, Hugh Hall, Richard Worthington, Thomas P. Howard, Peter Wiser, John Baptiste Le Page, Francis Labuiche, Hugh McNeal, John Potts, John Shields, George Shanon, John B. Thompson, William Werner, Alexander Willard, Richard Witcher, Joseph Whitehouse, John Newman, George Drulyard, and Tousaint Chabono (the last two interpreters), the wife of the interpreter Chabono, a Snake squaw and her child, and "York," a colored servant to Captain Clark.

President Jefferson himself prepared the written instruction for Captain Lewis. The party in boats entered the Missouri river, May 4th, 1804. They were the first party of American explorers to ascend the Missouri river into the land of the Dakotas; their printed journal affording to the world the earliest written description of the Northwest of the United States. During their westward journey, on the morning of the 27th of August, 1804, the expedition passed the mouth of the James river, when an Indian swam to their boats and informed them that a large body of Sioux were encamped in their immediate vicinity. Three men with an interpreter, were dispatched to the Sioux camp, while the boats proceeded on about eleven miles, where, on a beautiful plain, near Calumet Bluff, above where Yankton now stands, the party encamped and waited for the arrival

of the Sioux. A speech and appropriate presents were prepared, and here at noon the chiefs and warriors of the Yanktons arrived, and were received in council under a large oak tree, near which the American flag was flying.

Among the Indian nations or tribes enumerated by Mr. Gass, the journalist of the expedition, as then inhabiting Dakota, wholly or in part, were the Great and Little Osages, Canips, Otoes, Pawnees, Loups, Mahas, Poncas, Ricarees, Mandans and Sioux. He says: "The latter nation is not fixed on the banks of the Missouri river, but habitually goes there to hunt."

Speaking of the Black Hills the Indians said: "The Evil Spirit was mad at the red people and caused the mountains to vomit fire, sand, gravel and large stones, to terrify and destroy them, but the Good Spirit had compassion and put out the fire, chased the Evil Spirit out of the mountains and left them unhurt, but when they returned to their wickedness the Great Spirit permitted the Evil Spirit to return to the mountains again and vomit forth fire; but on their becoming good and making sacrifices the Great Spirit chased away the Evil Spirit from disturbing them, and for forty snows he has not permitted him to return."

On the 24th of September they reached the mouth of Teton, now Bad River. Here they remained over one day for the purpose of holding a council with the Indians, who visited them to the number of fifty, and were very insolent and hostile, refusing to let the party depart; but they finally let them go when the officers told them they had small-pox enough on board to kill twenty such nations in a single day. Of all things the savages feared this deadly disease. They were so mischievous and hostile that the party did not venture on shore but anchored in the stream. This may have been the reason why the Indians called the river “Bad River.”

On the 1st of October they passed a river corruptly called Dog River, as if from the French "chien;" its true appellation is Chayenne, from the Indians of that name.

This river rises in the Black Mountains; and Mr. Valle, one of three French traders whom they found here waiting for the Sioux coming down from the Ricaras, informed them that he had passed the last winter in those mountains. They were very high, he said, covered with a great quantity of pine and an abundance of game was found there.

Soon after the Lewis and Clark expedition, American traders and adventurers began to push their way into the hitherto unknown Northwest, establishing posts for the trade in furs with the natives. The goods for the trade with the Dakotas were brought up the river in open boats propelled by oars and wind, and "cordalled" over the bars with long tow ropes fastened to the boats and drawn by men walking along the shores. The furs and peltries were taken to the distant St. Louis market in the spring, the journeys down the upper tributaries being often made in circular boats of skins, with which the channel could be followed, regardless of the sand-bars, snags and darkness.

The Missouri Fur Company was established in 1808; the American Fur Company by John Jacob Astor, of New York, in 1809, and about this time the first trading posts were established in the country drained by the Missouri river, one of these posts being at the junction of the north and south fork of the Cheyenne river, close to where the Smithville post-office now is. Astor fitted out the first overland fur party in 1811, who voyaged in oar boats up the Missouri river to the Arikaree Indian villages, and from thence Messrs. Hunt and Crook went overland across the country north of the Black Hills, through the Wind river and Rocky Mountains to Astoria, on the Pacific coast.

The Rocky Mountain Fur Company commenced to make annual expeditions to the head-waters of the Missouri in 1826. The American Fur Company, stimulated by this competition, extended their operations, until, in 1832, it had become the controlling corporation in the whole Northwest.

It is claimed that Pierre Chouteau, of this company, was the first man to run a steamboat up the Missouri river into Dakota, and under his pilotship the steamer Antelope and

Yellowstone, in 1832 and 1833, were the first to plow Dakota's waters.

In 1833 Prince Maximilian of Neunvied, Germany, was on the steamer Yellowstone, and from the 15th to 19th of June stopped at the mouth of Bad river. He says: "Upon the Cheyenne river towards the Black Hills are found the Cheyenne Indians, and Dr. Morse says they number about 3,250 souls."

From the year 1837, when the scheme for a Northern Pacific Railroad was first projected, up to the 2d of July, 1864, when President Lincoln signed the charter for the proposed Northern Pacific Railroad, the newspapers gave glowing accounts of the rich land west of the Missouri, to be opened up by the enterprise to the agriculturist, and of the beds of coal and mines of gold and silver, and the richness of the country which the Sioux occupied. These matters were discussed in meetings held in Eastern cities and in newspapers, without the slightest reference to the rights and possession of the Indians, guaranteed by solemn treaty. The speakers at those meetings often drew on their imagination for facts, exaggerating in proportion to their ignorance of the resources of the country. They pictured a new El Dorado in the Big Horn Mountains and in the Black Hills, and called upon the adventurers to join expeditions which were to start from the neighboring cities and fight their way through to their destination in spite of hostile Indians.