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[2] Since the above was written, I have had the very great pleasure of reading the notes of the Honourable Charles A. Murray, (who was for several months a guest amongst the Pawnees), and also of being several times a fellow-traveller with him in America; and at last a debtor to him for his signal kindness and friendship in London. Mr. Murray’s account of the Pawnees, as far as he saw them, is without doubt drawn with great fidelity, and he makes them out a pretty bad set of fellows. As I have before mentioned, there is probably not another tribe on the Continent, that has been more abused and incensed by the system of trade, and money-making, than the Pawnees; and the Honourable Mr. Murray, with his companion, made his way boldly into the heart of their country, without guide or interpreter, and I consider at great hazard to his life: and, from all the circumstances, I have been ready to congratulate him on getting out of their country as well as he did.
I mentioned in a former page, the awful destruction of this tribe by the small-pox; a few years previous to which, some one of the Fur Traders visited a threat upon these people, that if they did not comply with some condition, “he would let the small-pox out of a bottle and destroy the whole of them.” The pestilence has since been introduced accidentally amongst them by the Traders; and the standing tradition of the tribe now is, that “the Traders opened a bottle and let it out to destroy them.” Under such circumstances, from amongst a people who have been impoverished by the system of trade, without any body to protect him, I cannot but congratulate my Honourable friend for his peaceable retreat, where others before him have been less fortunate; and regret at the same time, that he could not have been my companion to some others of the remote tribes.
LETTER—No. 35.
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI.
My little bark has been soaked in the water again, and Ba’tiste and Bogard have paddled, and I have steered and dodged our little craft amongst the snags and sawyers, until at last we landed the humble little thing amongst the huge steamers and floating palaces at the wharf of this bustling and growing city.
And first of all, I must relate the fate of my little boat, which had borne us safe over two thousand miles of the Missouri’s turbid and boiling current, with no fault, excepting two or three instances, when the waves became too saucy, she, like the best of boats of her size, went to the bottom, and left us soused, to paddle our way to the shore, and drag out our things and dry them in the sun.