The interesting notes of Captain La Barge’s observations of public men with whom he was thrown in contact would fill a volume. His acquaintance with the army was very extensive, owing to the Indian wars along the Missouri, and he personally knew nearly all the principal officers from General Sherman down. The same was true of the Indian agents, Territorial officers, and leading business men of the West. In a time when so much public travel went by steamboat he enjoyed exceptional opportunities of seeing and knowing the men who made the history of the Western country.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE INDIANS OF THE MISSOURI VALLEY.
The course of this narrative has shown that a large portion of the business of the Missouri River steamboats pertained to the Indians who dwelt on the banks of that stream. The great valley had been their home for unknown generations. The tribes were distributed along its course or those of its tributaries, from its mouth to their sources. First came the Missouris, whose name the river still bears—a tribe long since extinct as a separate organization. The Osages and the Kansas likewise bequeathed their names to the rivers in whose valleys they dwelt. The Omahas have lived, since the white man knew them, a short distance above the city which perpetuates their name, while a hundred miles to the westward in the valley of the Loup Fork of the Platte dwelt the four tribes of the Pawnees. From the point where Sioux City now stands, northward nearly to the British line, the great nation of the Sioux held a wide tract of country on both sides of the river. Within their territory dwelt the treacherous Aricaras, near the mouth of the Grand River, and the stalwart Cheyennes at the eastern base of the Black Hills. The unhappy tribe of the Mandans lived near the river some distance north of the modern town of Bismarck, and near them were the Minnetarees, or Grosventres of the Missouri. Along the northern shore of the river from the Mandans to Milk River, and northward far into British territory, roamed the numerous bands of the Assiniboines, one of the most populous of the plains tribes. From Milk River to the sources of the Missouri was the land of the hostile Blackfeet, where dwelt the Piegan, Blood, and Blackfoot bands and the Grosventres of the Prairies. Finally, in the valley of the Yellowstone and its great tributary the Bighorn, was Absaroka, the home of the proud tribe of the Crows.
GRAVITATE TOWARD THE RIVER.
All of these tribes gravitated toward the great watercourses, as man, in every stage of his history has done. It was not in this case the use of the stream as a transportation route that made it attractive. The Missouri Valley tribes, unlike those of the Great Lakes, or the Coast, or the northern rivers, were not good navigators. The stream was a treacherous one, and its shores did not yield a timber suitable to the crude workmanship of the Indian. Skin boats were used to a limited extent, but as a rule the horse and not the boat was the means of travel and transportation. The great importance of the river arose from other considerations. In a region where streams are scarce and where most of them dry up in the summer, this river furnished a never-failing supply of as healthy a drinking water as flows on the surface of the globe. Then its valley was the only timbered region of consequence for hundreds of miles on either side. Groves of cottonwood, walnut, cedar, and willow lined its banks, and the Indian here found all the wood that his simple order of life required. The abundant groves along the bottoms gave splendid shelter from the heat of summer and the cold of winter.
STRANGE VISITORS.
The entire watershed of the river was thus originally occupied by Indians. Considering its extensive area, their numbers were very few—scarcely one to ten square miles. But as they mostly dwelt near the rivers, the country seemed to the early navigators more densely populated than it really was. Into this primeval domain there came, more than two centuries ago, strange visitors who never went away. They were welcomed at first; but every foot of ground they gained was held, farther and farther up the river to its source among the mountains, thence to the River of the West, and down its rugged valleys to the western sea. It was a sad day to the tribes of the Missouri Valley, as to every other, when the white man came, but a far sadder day when the emigrant and settler came. Between these two epochs there was a long interval in which the paleface and his red brother lived in comparative harmony together. It was the era of the trader. Under the fur-trade régime the Indian might have continued his native mode of life indefinitely. The trader never sought to change it. He introduced but few innovations; had no desire to introduce any; and looked with as jealous an eye as the Indian himself upon the approach of civilization. This relation of the two races was ideal, and during its continuance the Indian is seen at his best.
THE COMING OF THE EMIGRANT.
All this was changed when the emigrant came. The traders were few in number and made no permanent settlements. The emigrants came by the thousand and spread themselves all over the country. They made roads, discovered rich mines, laid out cities, and declared their purpose to send the “fire-horse” across the plains, as they had sent the “fire canoe” up the great river. Before this ever-increasing host the game wasted away. It was estimated that in the single year 1853 four hundred thousand buffalo were slain. As the buffalo was the very life of the plains tribes, its extermination meant inevitable starvation or hopeless dependence upon the government.