In the spring of 1852 he met in town one day Captain Edward Salt-Marsh, who had just arrived from Ohio with a handsome new boat. She was called the Sonora, as almost everything in those days was given a California name. “Nothing would do but that I should go and inspect his boat,” said La Barge. “I found her an excellent craft, and soon learned that Salt-Marsh was disposed to sell her. A desire to purchase at once took possession of me and led to a lengthy negotiation, which ended in my buying the boat for thirty thousand dollars. Next day I went into town and raised the entire amount.”
The Captain this year made a contract with the Company to take their annual outfit up the river. He went to Union and back, but there were no especial incidents on the trip. After the return of the Sonora he ran in the New Orleans trade for the rest of the season. This was a yellow-fever year in that section, and so many boats had left the river that Captain La Barge found plenty of business.
There were some untoward incidents on the Fort Union trip this season which decided La Barge not to go up for the Company the following year. He sold the Sonora in the fall of 1852, purchased a small boat, the Highland Mary, with which he ran in the lower river the entire season of 1853. He sold his boat in the fall of that year.
CHAPTER XVII.
ICE BREAK-UP OF 1856.
During the season of 1854 Captain La Barge was in the employ of the government most of the time. In the previous winter Colonel Crossman, of the army, Quartermaster at St. Louis, contracted with a company of boat-builders on the Osage River for a steamboat for government use. When the hull was nearly completed Captain La Barge went up and brought the boat down by the use of sweeps. He supervised her completion and remained on her as pilot during the entire season. This boat was called the Mink, from the color selected in painting her.
The American Fur Company chartered a boat to take up the outfit of 1854, but the crew mutinied, and the voyage proved a failure. Mr. Chouteau then asked La Barge to recommend him a boat for the next year’s trade and join with him in purchasing her. It so happened that two St. Louisans, Sam Gaty and a man named Baldwin, had recently won a prize of forty thousand dollars in the Havana lottery, and were using it in building a boat. They sold the boat in her unfinished state, the Company purchasing a half interest and La Barge and John J. Roe each one-fourth. La Barge supervised her completion and named her the St. Mary, after a new town which P. A. Sarpy had just laid out a few miles below the modern Council Bluffs, Ia., and which has been long since entirely washed into the river.
TRANSFER OF FORT PIERRE.
Captain La Barge made the annual voyage of 1855 in this new boat. Mr. Charles P. Chouteau, son of Pierre Chouteau, Jr., accompanied the trip. The only incident of particular moment on this voyage was the transfer of Fort Pierre to the United States Government in accordance with the terms of a sale which had been consummated the previous spring. This important event, which will again be referred to more at length, marked the beginning of the conquest of the upper Missouri country by the army of the United States. The St. Mary was used in making the transfer of the post to the War Department and in moving the Fur Company’s property to a new situation some distance above the old site, near the mouth of Chantier Creek.
General Harney was in command of the troops sent to the upper Missouri in 1855, and La Barge saw him at Fort Pierre. The Captain always liked him, and considered him one of the best friends of the Indians that the army ever produced—a terrible fighter when fight was unavoidable, but always desirous of accomplishing his purposes by peaceful means. The Captain recalled an incident of Harney’s intercourse with the Sioux which created a great deal of mirth on the frontier at the time.