No. 14.
The exhibition for the evening being over, Bobasheela was taken home with the Indians, to their lodgings, to smoke a pipe with them; and having had the curiosity to be of the party, I was enabled to gather the following further information. This Bobasheela (Mr. J. H., a native of Cornwall) ([Plate No. 14]), who is now spending the latter part of a very independent bachelor’s life amongst his friends in London, left his native country as long ago as the year 1805, and making his way, like many other bold adventurers, across the Alleghany Mountains in America, descended into the great and almost boundless valley of the Mississippi, in hopes by his indefatigable industry, and daring enterprise, to share in the products that must find their way from that fertile wilderness valley to the civilized world.
In this arduous and most perilous pursuit, he repeatedly ascended and descended in his bark canoe—his pirogue or his Mackinaw boat, the Ohio, the Muskingham, the Cumberland, the Tennessee, the Arkansas, the Missouri, and Mississippi rivers; and amongst the thousand and one droll and amusing incidents of thirty years spent in such a sort of life, was the anecdote which the War-chief alluded to, in the unexpected meeting with his old friend in my exhibition-room, and which the two parties more fully related to me in this evening’s interview. The good-natured Mr. H. told me that the tale was a true one, and the awkward predicament spoken of by the War-chief was one that he was actually placed in when his acquaintance first began with his good friend.
Though the exhibition had kept us to a late hour, the greetings and pleasing reminiscences to be gone over by these two reclaimed friends, and (as they called themselves) “brothers” of the “Far West,” over repeatedly charged pipes of k'nick k'neck, were pleasing, and held us to a most unreasonable hour at night. When the chief, amongst his rapid interrogations to Bobasheela, asked him if he had preserved his she-she-quoin, he gave instant relief to the mind of his friend, from which the lapse of time and changes of society had erased the recollection of the chief’s familiar name, She-she-quoi-me-gon, by which his friend had christened him, from the circumstance of his having presented him a she-she-quoin(or mystery rattle), the customary badge bestowed when any one is initiated into the degree of “doctor” or “brother.”
From the forms and ceremonies which my good friend Bobasheela had gone through, it seems (as his name indicates) that he stood in the relationship of brother to the chief; and although the chief’s interrogations had produced him pleasure in one respect, one can easily imagine him much pained in another, inasmuch as he was obliged to acknowledge that his sacred badge, his she-she-quoin, had been lost many years since, by the sinking of one of his boats on the Cumberland river. For his standing in the tribe, such an event might have been of an irretrievable character; but for the renewed and continued good fellowship of his friend in this country, the accident proved to be one of little moment, as will be learned from various incidents recited in the following pages.
In this first evening’s interview over the pipe, my friend Mr. H., to the great amusement of the party of Indians, and of Daniel and the squaws, who had gathered around us, as well as several of my London friends, related the story of “floating down the Mississippi river on two logs of wood,” &c., as follows:—
“This good old fellow and I formed our first acquaintance in a very curious way, and when you hear me relate the manner of it, I am quite sure you will know how to account for his recognizing me this evening, and for the pleasure we have both felt at thus unexpectedly meeting. In the year 1806 I happened to be on a visit to St. Louis, and thence proceeded up the Missouri to the mouth of the ‘Femme Osage’ to pay a visit to my old friend Daniel Boone, who had a short time before left his farm in Kentucky and settled on the banks of the Missouri, in the heart of an entire wilderness, to avoid the constant annoyance of the neighbours who had flocked into the country around him in Kentucky. The place for his future abode, which he had selected, was in a rich and fertile country, and forty or fifty miles from any white inhabitants, where he was determined to spend the remainder of his days, believing that for the rest of his life he would be no more annoyed by the familiarity of neighbours. I spent several weeks very pleasantly with the old pioneer, who had intentionally built his log cabin so small, with only one room and one bed for himself and his wife, that even his best friends should not break upon the sacred retirement of his house at night, but having shared his hospitable board during the day were referred to the cabin of his son, Nathan Boone, about four hundred yards distant, where an extra room and an extra bed afforded them the means of passing the night.
“The old hunter and his son were thus living very happily, and made me comfortable and happy whilst I was with them. The anecdotes of his extraordinary life, which were talked over for amusement during that time, were enough to fill a volume. The venerable old man, whose long and flowing locks were silvery white, was then in his 78th year, and still he almost daily took down his trusty rifle from its hooks in the morning, and in a little time would bring in a saddle of venison for our breakfast, and thus he chiefly supported his affectionate old lady and himself, and the few friends who found their way to his solitary abode, without concern or care for the future. The stump of a large cotton-wood tree, which had been cut down, was left standing in the ground, and being cut square off on the top, and his cabin being built around it, answered the purpose of a table in the centre of his cabin, from which our meals were eaten. When I made my visit to him, he had been living several years in this retired state and been perfectly happy in the undisturbed solitude of the wilderness, but told me several times that he was becoming very uneasy and distressed, as he found that his days of peace were nearly over, as two Yankee families had already found the way into the country, and one of them had actually settled within nine miles of him.
“Having finished my visit to this veteran and his son, I mounted my horse, and taking leave followed an Indian trail to the town of St. Charles, some thirty or forty miles below, on the north banks of the Missouri. I here visited some old friends with whom I had become acquainted on the lower Mississippi in former years, and intending to descend the river from that to St. Louis by a boat had sold my horse when I arrived there. Before I was ready to embark, however, an old friend of mine, Lieutenant Pike, who had just returned from his exploring expedition to the Rocky Mountains, had passed up from St. Louis to a small settlement formed on the east bank of the Mississippi, and a few miles below the mouth of the Missouri, to attend a wedding which was to take place on the very evening that I had received the information of it, and like himself, being intimately acquainted with the young man who was to be married, I resolved to be present if possible, though I had had no invitation to attend, it not being known to the parties that I was in that part of the country. The spot where the wedding was to take place being on the bank of the river, and on my route to St. Louis, I endeavoured to procure a canoe for the purpose, but not being able to get such a thing in St. Charles at that time for love or money, and still resolved to be at the wedding, I succeeded in rolling a couple of large logs into the stream, which laid upon the shore in front of the village, and lashing them firmly together, took a paddle from the first boat that I could meet, and seating myself astride of the two logs I pushed off into the muddy current of the Missouri, and was soon swept away out of sight of the town of St. Charles. My embarkation was a little before sundown, and having fifteen or twenty miles to float before I should be upon the waters of the Mississippi, I was in the midst of my journey overtaken by night, and had to navigate my floating logs as well as I could among the snags and sandbars that fell in my way. I was lucky, however, in escaping them all, though I sometimes grazed them as I passed, and within a few inches of being hurled to destruction. I at length entered the broad waters of the Mississippi, and a few miles below on the left bank saw the light in the cabins in which the merry circle of my friends were assembled, and with all my might was plying my paddle to propel my two logs to the shore. In the midst of my hard struggle I discovered several objects on my right and ahead of me, which seemed to be rapidly approaching me, and I concluded that I was drifting on to rocks or snags that were in a moment to destroy me. But in an instant one of these supposed snags silently shot along by the side of my logs, and being a canoe with four Indians in it, and all with their bows and war-clubs drawn upon me, they gave the signal for silence, as one of them, a tall, long-armed, and powerful man, seized me by the collar. Having partially learned several of the languages of the Indian tribes bordering on the Mississippi, I understood him as he said in the Ioway language, ‘Not a word! if you speak you die!’ At that moment a dozen or more canoes were all drawn close around my two logs of wood, astride of which I sat, with my legs in the water up to my knees. These canoes were all filled with warriors with their weapons in their hands, and no women being with them, I saw they were a war party, and preparing for some mischief. Finding that I understood their language and could speak a few words with them, the warrior who still held me by the collar made a sign to the other canoes to fall back a little while he addressed me in a low voice. ‘Do you know the white chief who is visiting his friends this night on the bank yonder where we see the lights?’ to which I replied ‘Yes, he is an old friend of mine.’ ‘Well,’ said he, ‘he dies to-night, and all those wig-wams are to be laid in ashes. Stet-e-no-ka was a cousin of mine, and Que-tun-ka was a good man, and a friend to the white people. The pale faces hung them like two dogs by their necks, and the life of your friend, the white warrior, pays the forfeit this night, and many may be the women and children who will die by his side!’ I explained to him as well as I could that my friend, Lieutenant Pike, had had no hand in the execution of the two Indians; that they were hung below St. Louis when Lieutenant Pike was on his way home from the Rocky Mountains. I told him also that Lieutenant Pike was a great friend of the Indians, and would do anything to aid or please them; that he had gone over the river that night to attend the wedding of a friend, and little dreamed that amongst the Indians he had any enemies who would raise their hands against him.