Here the greater part of the company expressed disinclination to following our contemplated route any longer. That is, they conceived the route to the mouth of the Helay, and up Red river of California too long and tedious, and too much exposed to numerous and hostile Indians. They, therefore, determined to quit the Helay, and strike over to Red river by a direct route across the country. My father reminded them of their article. They assured him they did not consider themselves bound by it, and that they were a majority, against which nothing could be said. My father and myself still persevered in following the original plan. Two of the men had been hired on my father's account. He told them he was ready to pay them up to that time, and dismiss them, to go where they chose. They observed, that now that the company had commenced separating, they believed that in a short time, there would be no stronger party together than ours; that they had as good a disposition to risk their lives with us, as with any division of our number, and that they would stay by us to the [137] death. After this speech four others of the company volunteered to remain with us, and we took them in as partners.
On the 27th, we divided the hunt, and all expressing the same regret at the separation, and heartily wishing each other all manner of prosperity, we shook hands and parted! We were now reduced to eight in number. We made the most solemn pledges to stand by each other unto death, and adopted the severest caution, of which we had been too faithfully taught the necessity. We tied our horses every night, and encamped close by them, to prevent their being stolen by the Indians. Their foot-prints were thick and fresh in our course, and we could see their smokes at no great distance north of us. We were well aware that they were hostile, and watching their opportunity to pounce upon us, and we kept ourselves ready for action, equally day and night. We now took an ample abundance of beavers to supply us with meat, in consequence of our reduced numbers. Our horses also fared well, for we cut plenty of cotton-wood trees, the bark of which serves them for food nearly as well as corn. We thus travelled on prosperously, until we reached the junction of the Helay with Red river.—Here we found the tribe of Umeas,[94] who had shown themselves very friendly to the company in which I had formerly passed them, which strongly inspired confidence in them at present. Some of them could speak the Spanish language. We made many inquiries of them, our object being to gain information of the distance of the Spanish settlements. We asked them where they obtained the cloth they wore around their loins? They answered, from the Christians on the coast of the California. We asked if there were any Christians living on Red river? They promptly answered, yes. This information afterwards proved a source of error and misfortune to us, though our motive for inquiry at this time was mere curiosity.
It was now the 1st of December; and at mid-day we began to see the imprudence of spending the remainder of the day and the ensuing night with such numbers of Indians, however friendly in appearance. We had a tolerable fund of experience, in [138] regard to the trust we might safely repose in the red skins; and knew that caution is the parent of security. So we packed up, and separated from them. Their town was on the opposite shore of Red river. At our encampment upwards of two hundred of them swam over the river and visited us, all apparently friendly. We allowed but a few of them to approach our camp at a time, and they were obliged to lay aside their arms. In the midst of these multitudes of fierce, naked, swarthy savages, eight of us seemed no more than a little patch of snow on the side of one of the black mountains. We were perfectly aware how critical was our position, and determined to intermit no prudence or caution. To interpose as great a distance as possible between them and us, we marched that evening sixteen miles, and encamped on the banks of the river. The place of encampment was a prairie, and we drove stakes fast in the earth, to which we tied our horses in the midst of green grass, as high as a man's head, and within ten feet of our own fire. Unhappily we had arrived too late to make a pen for our horses, or a breast work for ourselves. The sky was gloomy. Night and storm were settling upon us, and it was too late to complete these important arrangements. In a short time the storm poured upon us, and the night became so dark that we could not see our hand before us. Apprehensive of an attempt to steal our horses, we posted two sentinels, and the remaining six lay down under our wet blankets, and the pelting of the sky, to such sleep as we might get, still preserving a little fire. We were scarcely asleep before we were aroused by the snorting of our horses and mules. We all sprang to our arms, and extinguished our little fire. We could not see a foot before us, and we groped about our camp feeling our way among the horses and mules. We could discover nothing; so concluding they might have been frightened by the approach of a bear or some other wild animal, some of us commenced rekindling our fires, and the rest went to sleep. But the Indians had crawled among our horses, and had cut or untied the rope by which each one was [139] bound. The horses were then all loose. They then instantly raised in concert, their fiendish yell. As though heaven and earth were in concert against us, the rain began to pour again, accompanied with howling gusts of wind, and the fiercest gleams of lightning, and crashes of thunder. Terrified alike by the thunder and the Indians, our horses all took to flight, and the Indians repeating yell upon yell, were close at their heels. We sallied out after them, and fired at the noises, though we could see nothing. We pursued with the utmost of our speed to no purpose, for they soon reached the open prairie, where we concluded they were joined by other Indians on horseback, who pushed our horses still faster; and soon the clattering of their heels and the yells of their accursed pursuers began to fade, and become indistinct in our ears.
Our feelings and reflections as we returned to camp were of the gloomiest kind. We were one thousand miles from the point whence we started, and without a single beast to bear either our property or ourselves. The rain had passed. We built us a large fire. As we stood round it we discussed our deplorable condition, and our future alternatives. Something was to be done. We all agreed to the proposition of my father, which was, early in the morning to pursue the trails of our beasts, and if we should overtake the thieves, to retake the horses, or die in the attempt; and that, failing in that, we should return, swim the river, attack their town, and kill as many of the inhabitants as we could; for that it was better to die by these Indians, after we had killed a good number of them, than to starve, or be killed by Indians who had not injured us, and when we could not defend ourselves.
Accordingly, early in the morning of the 2d, we started on the trail in pursuit of the thieves. We soon arrived at a point where the Indians, departing from the plain, had driven them up a chasm of the mountains. Here they had stopped, and caught them, divided them, and each taken a different route with his plundered horses. We saw in a moment that it was impossible to follow them farther to any purpose. We abandoned [140] the chase, and returned to our camp to execute the second part of our plan. When we arrived there, we stopped for a leisure meal of beaver meat. When we had bestowed ourselves to this dainty resort, a Dutchman with us broke the gloomy silence of our eating, by observing that we had better stuff ourselves to the utmost; for that it would probably, be the last chance we should have at beaver meat. We all acquiesced in this observation, which though made in jest, promised to be a sober truth, by eating as heartily as possible. When we had finished our meal, which looked so likely to be the last we should enjoy together, we made rafts to which we tied our guns, and pushing them onward before us, we thus swam the river. Having reached the opposite shore, we shouldered our rifles, and steered for the town, at which we arrived about two in the afternoon. We marched up to the numerous assemblage of huts in a manner as reckless and undaunted as though we had nothing to apprehend. In fact, when we arrived at it, we found it to contain not a single living being, except one miserable, blind, deaf, and decrepid old man, not unlike one that I described in a hostile former visit to an Indian village. Our exasperation of despair inclined us to kill even him. My father forbade. He apparently heard nothing and cared for nothing, as he saw nothing. His head was white with age, and his eyes appeared to have been gouged out. He may have thought himself all the while in the midst of his own people. We discovered a plenty of their kind of food, which consisted chiefly of acorn mush. We then set fire to the village, burning every hut but that which contained the old man. Being built of flags and grass, they were not long in reducing to ashes. We then returned to our camp, re-swimming the river, and reaching the camp before dark.
We could with no certainty divine the cause of their having evacuated their town, though we attributed it to fear of us. The occurrences of the preceding day strengthened us in this impression. While they remained with us, one of our men happened to fire off his gun. As though they never had heard [141] such a noise before, they all fell prostrate on the earth, as though they had all been shot. When they arose, they would all have taken to flight, had we not detained them and quieted their fears.
Our conversation with these Indians of the day before, now recurred to our recollections, and we congratulated ourselves on having been so inquisitive as to obtain the now important information, that there were Spanish settlements on the river below us. Driven from the resource of our horses, we happily turned our thoughts to another. We had all the requisite tools to build canoes, and directly around us was suitable timber of which to make them. It was a pleasant scheme to soothe our dejection, and prevent our lying down to the sleep of despair. But this alternative determined upon, there remained another apprehension sufficient to prevent our enjoying quiet repose. Our fears were, that the unsheltered Indians, horse-stealers and all, would creep upon us in the night, and massacre us all. But the night passed without any disturbance from them.
On the morning of the 3d, the first business in which we engaged, was to build ourselves a little fort, sufficient for defence against the Indians. This finished, we cut down two trees suitable for canoes, and accomplished these important objects in one day. During this day we kept one man posted in the top of a tall tree, to descry if any Indians were approaching us in the distance. On the morning of the fourth we commenced digging out our canoes, and finished and launched two. These were found insufficient to carry our furs. We continued to prepare, and launch them, until we had eight in the water. By uniting them in pairs by a platform, we were able to embark with all our furs and traps, without any extra burden, except a man and the necessary traps for each canoe. We hid our saddles, hoping to purchase horses at the settlements, and return this way.
We started on the 9th, floating with the current, which bore us downward at the rate of four miles an hour. In the evening we passed the burnt town, the ruins of which still threw up [142] smouldering smoke. We floated about 30 miles, and in the evening encamped in the midst of signs of beavers. We set 40 traps, and in the morning of the 10th caught 36 beavers, an excellent night's hunt. We concluded from this encouraging commencement, to travel slowly, and in hunters' phrase, trap the river clear; that is, take all that could be allured to come to the bait. The river, below its junction with the Helay, is from 2 to 300 yards wide, with high banks, that have dilapidated by falling in. Its course is west, and its timber chiefly cotton-wood, which in the bottoms is lofty and thick set. The bottoms are from six to ten miles wide. The soil is black, and mixed with sand, though the bottoms are subject to inundation in the flush waters of June. This inundation is occasioned by the melting of the snow on the mountains about its head waters.