All Over The Small Area Of The United States Then Existed A Deep
Interest In The Proposed Explorations Of The Course And Sources Of The
Missouri River.
The explorers were about to plunge into vast solitudes of
which white people knew less than we know now about the North Polar country.
Wild and extravagant stories of what was to be seen in those trackless
regions were circulated in the States.
For example, it was said that Lewis
and Clark expected to find the mammoth of prehistoric times still living
and wandering in the Upper Missouri region; and it was commonly reported
that somewhere, a thousand miles or so up the river, was a solid mountain
of rock salt, eighty miles long and forty-five miles wide, destitute of
vegetation and glittering in the sun! These, and other tales like these,
were said to be believed and doted upon by the great Jefferson himself.
The Federalists, or "Feds," as they were called, who hated Jefferson,
pretended to believe that he had invented some of these foolish yarns,
hoping thereby to make his Louisiana purchase more popular in the Republic.
In his last letter to Captain Lewis, which was to reach the explorers
before they started, Jefferson said: "The acquisition of the
country through which you are to pass has inspired the country
generally with a great deal of interest in your enterprise.
The inquiries are perpetual as to your progress. The Feds alone
still treat it as a philosophism, and would rejoice at its failure.
Their bitterness increases with the diminution of their numbers
and despair of a resurrection. I hope you will take care
of yourself, and be a living witness of their malice and folly."
Indeed, after the explorers were lost sight of in the wilderness
which they were to traverse, many people in the States declaimed
bitterly against the folly that had sent these unfortunate men
to perish miserably in the fathomless depths of the continent.
They no longer treated it "as a philosophism," or wild prank,
but as a wicked scheme to risk life and property in a search
for the mysteries of the unknown and unknowable.
As a striking illustration of this uncertainty of the outcome
of the expedition, which exercised even the mind of Jefferson,
it may be said that in his instructions to Captain Lewis he said:
"Our Consuls, Thomas Hewes, at Batavia in Java, William Buchanan
in the isles of France and Bourbon, and John Elmslie at the Cape of
Good Hope, will be able to supply your necessities by drafts on us."
All this seems strange enough to the young reader of the present day;
but this was said and done one hundred years ago.
Chapter III
From the Lower to the Upper River
The party finally set sail up the Missouri River on Monday, May 21,
1804, but made only a few miles, owing to head winds.
Four days later they camped near the last white settlement on
the Missouri, - La Charrette, a little village of seven poor houses.
Here lived Daniel Boone, the famous Kentucky backwoodsman,
then nearly seventy years old, but still vigorous, erect, and strong
of limb. Here and above this place the explorers began
to meet with unfamiliar Indian tribes and names. For example,
they met two canoes loaded with furs "from the Mahar nation."
The writer of the Lewis and Clark journal, upon whose notes
we rely for our story, made many slips of this sort.
By "Mahars" we must understand that the Omahas were meant.
We shall come across other such instances in which the strangers
mistook the pronunciation of Indian names. For example,
Kansas was by them misspelled as "Canseze" and "Canzan;" and there
appear some thirteen or fourteen different spellings of Sioux,
of which one of the most far-fetched is "Scouex."
The explorers were now in a country unknown to them and almost
unknown to any white man. On the thirty-first of May, a messenger
came down the Grand Osage River bringing a letter from a person
who wrote that the Indians, having been notified that the country
had been ceded to the Americans, burned the letter containing
the tidings, refusing to believe the report. The Osage Indians,
through whose territory they were now passing, were among the largest
and finest-formed red men of the West. Their name came from the
river along which they warred and hunted, but their proper title,
as they called themselves, was "the Wabashas," and from them,
in later years, we derive the familiar name of Wabash. A curious
tradition of this people, according to the journal of Lewis and Clark,
is that the founder of the nation was a snail, passing a quiet
existence along the banks of the Osage, till a high flood swept
him down to the Missouri, and left him exposed on the shore.
The heat of the sun at length ripened him into a man;
but with the change of his nature he had not forgotten his native
seats on the Osage, towards which he immediately bent his way.
He was, however, soon overtaken by hunger and fatigue, when happily,
the Great Spirit appeared, and, giving him a bow and arrow,
showed him how to kill and cook deer, and cover himself with the skin.
He then proceeded to his original residence; but as he approached
the river he was met by a beaver, who inquired haughtily who he was,
and by what authority he came to disturb his possession. The Osage
answered that the river was his own, for he had once lived on its borders.
As they stood disputing, the daughter of the beaver came, and having,
by her entreaties, reconciled her father to this young stranger,
it was proposed that the Osage should marry the young beaver,
and share with her family the enjoyment of the river.
The Osage readily consented, and from this happy union there
soon came the village and the nation of the Wabasha, or Osages,
who have ever since preserved a pious reverence for their ancestors,
abstaining from the chase of the beaver, because in killing that
animal they killed a brother of the Osage.
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