Among the recruits who had enlisted he distributed
feathers and ostrich plumes.
These they put in their hats, and
thus figured about Mackinaw, assuming airs of vast importance, as
"voyageurs" in a new company, that was to eclipse the Northwest.
The effect was complete. A French Canadian is too vain and
mercurial a being to withstand the finery and ostentation of the
feather. Numbers immediately pressed into the service. One must
have an ostrich plume; another, a white feather with a red end; a
third, a bunch of cock's tails. Thus all paraded about, in
vainglorious style, more delighted with the feathers in their
hats than with the money in their pockets; and considering
themselves fully equal to the boastful "men of the north."
While thus recruiting the number of rank and file, Mr. Hunt was
joined by a person whom he had invited, by letter, to engage as a
partner in the expedition. This was Mr. Ramsay Crooks, a young
man, a native of Scotland, who had served under the Northwest
Company, and been engaged in trading expeditions upon his
individual account, among the tribes of the Missouri. Mr. Hunt
knew him personally, and had conceived a high and merited opinion
of his judgment, enterprise, and integrity; he was rejoiced,
therefore, when the latter consented to accompany him. Mr.
Crooks, however, drew from experience a picture of the dangers to
which they would be subjected, and urged the importance of going
with a considerable force. In ascending the upper Missouri they
would have to pass through the country of the Sioux Indians, who
had manifested repeated hostility to the white traders, and
rendered their expeditions extremely perilous; firing upon them
from the river banks as they passed beneath in their boats, and
attacking them in their encampments. Mr. Crooks himself, when
voyaging in company with another trader of the name of M'Lellan,
had been interrupted by these marauders, and had considered
himself fortunate in escaping down the river without loss of life
or property, but with a total abandonment of his trading voyage.
Should they be fortunate enough to pass through the country of
the Sioux without molestation, they would have another tribe
still more savage and warlike beyond, and deadly foes of white
men.
These were the Blackfeet Indians, who ranged over a wide extent
of country which they would have to traverse. Under all these
circumstances, it was thought advisable to augment the party
considerably. It already exceeded the number of thirty, to which
it had originally been limited; but it was determined, on
arriving at St. Louis, to increase it to the number of sixty.
These matters being arranged, they prepared to embark; but the
embarkation of a crew of Canadian voyageurs, on a distant
expedition, is not so easy a matter as might be imagined;
especially of such a set of vainglorious fellows with money in
both pockets, and cocks' tails in their hats. Like sailors, the
Canadian voyageurs generally preface a long cruise with a
carouse. They have their cronies, their brothers, their cousins,
their wives, their sweethearts, all to be entertained at their
expense. They feast, they fiddle, they drink, they sing, they
dance, they frolic and fight, until they are all as mad as so
many drunken Indians. The publicans are all obedience to their
commands, never hesitating to let them run up scores without
limit, knowing that, when their own money is expended, the purses
of their employers must answer for the bill, or the voyage must
be delayed. Neither was it possible, at that time, to remedy the
matter at Mackinaw. In that amphibious community there was always
a propensity to wrest the laws in favor of riotous or mutinous
boatmen. It was necessary, also, to keep the recruits in good
humor, seeing the novelty and danger of the service into which
they were entering, and the ease with which they might at anytime
escape it by jumping into a canoe and going downstream.
Such were the scenes that beset Mr. Hunt, and gave him a
foretaste of the difficulties of his command. The little cabarets
and sutlers' shops along the bay resounded with the scraping of
fiddles, with snatches of old French songs, with Indian whoops
and yells, while every plumed and feathered vagabond had his
troop of loving cousins and comrades at his heels. It was with
the utmost difficulty they could be extricated from the clutches
of the publicans and the embraces of their pot companions, who
followed them to the water's edge with many a hug, a kiss on each
cheek, and a maudlin benediction in Canadian French.
It was about the 12th of August that they left Mackinaw, and
pursued the usual route by Green Bay, Fox and Wisconsin rivers,
to Prairie du Chien, and thence down the Mississippi to St.
Louis, where they landed on the 3d of September.
CHAPTER XIV.
St. Louis.- Its Situation.- Motley Population.- French Creole
Traders and Their Dependants.- Missouri Fur Company- Mr. Manuel
Lisa. - Mississippi Boatmen. - Vagrant Indians. - Kentucky
Hunters - Old French Mansion- Fiddling- Billiards- Mr. Joseph
Miller - His Character- Recruits- Voyage Up the Missouri. -
Difficulties of the River.- Merits of Canadian Voyageurs.-
Arrival at the Nodowa.- Mr. Robert M'Lellan joins the Party- John
Day, a Virginia Hunter. Description of Him.- Mr. Hunt Returns to
St. Louis.
ST. LOUIS, which is situated on the right bank of the Mississippi
River, a few miles below the mouth of the Missouri, was, at that
time, a frontier settlement, and the last fitting-out place for
the Indian trade of the Southwest. It possessed a motley
population, composed of the creole descendants of the original
French colonists; the keen traders from the Atlantic States; the
backwoodsmen of Kentucky and Tennessee; the Indians and half-
breeds of the prairies; together with a singular aquatic race
that had grown up from the navigation of the rivers - the
"boatmen of the Mississippi;- who possessed habits, manners, and
almost a language, peculiarly their own, and strongly technical.
They, at that time, were extremely numerous, and conducted the
chief navigation and commerce of the Ohio and the Mississippi, as
the voyageurs did of the Canadian waters; but, like them, their
consequence and characteristics are rapidly vanishing before the
all-pervading intrusion of steamboats.
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