Early in September, Henry, having passed up Red River as far as the mouth of Park River, decided to build there, and began the work of cutting house logs and erecting his stockades. Game was astonishingly abundant, bears being so plenty that they were killed almost daily. Three men came in with twelve bears; a hunter returned with four bears, and so on. Now that they were settled, Henry began to give out to the Indians their debts; by which is meant that he furnished them the articles that they needed for hunting and for their life during the winter, charging them with the articles, which were to be paid for by skins—that is, the value of a beaver skin. He prepared a seat in a tall oak, which he used as a lookout station, and from which he had an extensive view. Every morning he used to climb to the top of this oak and look over the country, not only to see where the game was, but also to see if people were moving about. After the stockade had been finished, the houses were built, and then came the task of preparing food for the winter. Meantime, the Indians had persuaded Henry again to give them liquor, and they were once more drunk and quarrelling. Happily, when fighting, they did not use their guns or bows, but only their knives; and so, although men and women were frequently severely stabbed and cut, there were no immediate fatalities.
Henry was a good deal of a hunter, and much of his journal is given up to accounts of what he killed. Indian alarms were as frequent as ever, but none of them amounted to anything, being causeless panics. In October Henry made a journey down the river, to look up some of the people that he had sent off to establish small trading-posts. On his return, about the middle of October, he found that his hunter had killed a large grizzly bear, about a mile from the fort, and mentions that these bears are not numerous along Red River, but are more abundant in the Hair Hills. This is one of the most eastern records for the grizzly bear, although Long—Voyages and Travels, London, 1791—speaks as if they were sometimes found a little further eastward, even east of the west end of Lake Superior.
A little later Henry, with one of his hunters and another man, set off in search of the Red Lake Indians, whom he wished to inform that he had established a trading-post here. The journey was long, and much of it through thick woods and underbrush, and it almost proved fruitless. However, he at length came across a young Indian, who was very much frightened at seeing them, but finally realizing that they were friends, talked freely to them. The Indian reported that his people were at Red Lake waiting for traders, and Henry tried to persuade him to bring them into his fort. Henry then returned to his post.
Winter was now approaching. The Indians were making the mats with which they covered their huts in winter, while many of the men were preparing to go to war. An interesting note on wolves appears here, under date of Sunday, November 2: “Last night the wolves were very troublesome; they kept up a terrible howling about the fort, and even attempted to enter Maymiutch’s hut. A large white one came boldly into the door, and was advancing toward a young child, when he was shot dead. Some of them are very audacious. I have known them to follow people for several days, attempt to seize a person or a dog, and to be kept off only by firearms. It does not appear that hunger makes them so voracious, as they have been known to pass carcasses of animals which they might have eaten to their fill, but they would not touch flesh, their object seeming to be that of biting. The Canadians swear that these are mad wolves, and are much afraid of them.”
Another note of interest to the zoologist is this: “We saw a great herd of cows going at full speed southward, but on coming to our track, which goes to Salt Lake, they began to smell the ground, and as suddenly as if they had been fired at, turned toward the mountain. It is surprising how sagacious these animals are. When in the least alarmed, they will smell the track of even a single person in the grass, and run away in the contrary direction. I have seen large herds walking very slowly to pasture, and feeding as they went, come to a place where some persons had passed on foot, when they would instantly stop, smell the ground, draw back a few paces, bellow, and tear up the earth with their horns. Sometimes the whole herd would range along the road, keeping up a terrible noise, until one of them was hardy enough to jump over, when they would all follow, and run some distance.” On November 8, with an Indian, Henry started in search of Indians about Grand Forks. Although the weather had been cold and snowy, it had now turned warm again, and they had much trouble in crossing streams and sloughs. They went south, to what Henry’s Indian told him was the border of the Sioux country, and old camping-grounds were pointed out, which the Indian said were Sioux. Beaver appeared to be very numerous, but they killed nothing, making no fire, and firing no guns, and keeping their horses always close to them.
In describing the country passed over, Henry speaks of the Schian River, a tributary of the Red River, which flows into it about ten miles north of Fargo. This, he says, “takes its name from a formerly numerous tribe of Indians who inhabited its upper part. They were a neutral tribe between the Sioux and Saulteurs for many years, but the latter, who are of a jealous disposition, suspected that they favored the Sioux. A very large party having once been unsuccessful in discovering their enemies, on their return wreaked their vengeance on those people, destroying their village, and murdering most of them. This happened about sixty years ago, when the Saulteurs were at war with their natural enemies, the Sioux, of the plains, who are the only inhabitants of St. Peter’s River. The Schians, having been nearly exterminated, abandoned their old territory, and fled southward across the Missouri, where they are now a wandering tribe.”
This story agrees very well with the traditions related by the Cheyennes to-day, except that the modern stories put back these wars with the Saulteurs much further than 1740. On November 13 Henry reached the post again, having failed to find any of the people that he looked for. Moreover, when he got here he received a messenger from Langlois, one of his clerks at a trading-post at the Panbian (Pembina) Mountains, reporting that a number of more or less turbulent Crees and Assiniboines were gathering there, and that Henry’s presence was needed to quiet them. Two days later he set off, stopping at Bois Percé, where “I remained about an hour with the worthless vagabonds, who do nothing but play at the game of platter. Nothing is heard but the noise of the dish, and children bawling from hunger; their scoundrelly fathers are deaf to their cries until necessity obliges them to kill a bull for their sustenance.” On his arrival at the post, he found all his people well, and the trouble apparently over.
The weather was now very cold. Swans were passing south in astonishing numbers. Now the men took no more raccoons with their traps, for these animals had begun to hibernate in the hollow trees, where they would remain like the bears until spring, without any sustenance.
Some time before, an Indian named Crooked Legs, while drunk, had very severely stabbed his young wife, who now, however, had perfectly recovered. At a drinking-match, held at the post, just after Henry’s return, this woman, in revenge, gave her old husband a cruel beating with a stick, and afterward burned him shockingly with a brand snatched from the fire.
Rum was constantly desired by the Indians, and was begged for on every pretext. If a woman’s husband died, or a man’s wife, they came to Henry to beg, or buy, rum to cheer their hearts in their sorrow. A curious trapping incident is reported November 28. “La Rocque, Sr., came in with his traps, with a skunk, a badger, and a large white wolf, all three caught in the same trap at once, as he said. This was thought extraordinary—indeed a falsehood—until he explained the affair. His trap was made in a hollow stump, in the center of which there was a deep hole in the ground. He found the wolf, just caught, and still alive. He despatched him, and, on taking him out, noticed something stirring and making a noise in the hole in the ground. Upon looking in he perceived the badger, which he killed with a stick, and upon pulling him out, smelt the horrid stench of the skunk, which was in one corner of the hole. He soon despatched him also. From this the Indians all predicted some great misfortune, either to the person to whom the traps belonged, or to our fort.”