With Sully into the Sioux Land

by Joseph Mills Hanson

CHAPTER XVI ADRIFT IN A BARGE

Once across the Yellowstone, the little party set out at a good pace, for they had a long, hard day's journey before them. They found the country as destitute of grass as it had been west of the Little Missouri, and the ground seemed to have been fairly burned to powdery dust by the sun. As they travelled over the desolate country, they often thought pityingly of the troops behind them, who would have to traverse it much more slowly than they were doing and would, therefore, feel its discomforts more keenly. But, at least, the army would be near the river, so there would be no more such suffering from thirst as had been experienced in the terrible march out of the Bad Lands. Not an Indian was seen during the day; and the party, dusty and weary, rode up to the bank of the Missouri after nightfall. It was too wide and dangerous a stream to cross in the darkness; so bivouac was made until morning, and then, in response to signals, several skiffs put off from Fort Union and came over. Some of the soldiers stripped and, putting their clothing and equipments in the boats, swam across the river on their horses, but Al and Wallace, as well as most of the men, rode over in the boats, holding the bridles of their horses and letting them swim behind.

On entering Fort Union, Al delivered his letter and then inquired for Captain Lamont.

"He is still down at the wreck of his steamer, about two miles below here," the commanding officer informed him. "But if you are going down with him, you have arrived just in the nick of time. The steamer Belle Peoria came down yesterday from Benton, and she is taking on the engines of the Island City now. You had better get right down there or they may leave without you."

Al and Wallace galloped off down river at once, accompanied by two cavalrymen of their late escort to bring back their horses. Leaving so hastily gave them time for only a glance at Fort Union, though they sincerely wished for an opportunity to examine it more closely, for it was an interesting, and in that wilderness land, even an imposing structure. Built in 1829 as the then most advanced trading post of the American Fur Company, it had become in later years the centre of the fur trade of a vast territory, extending from the Rocky Mountains to the British line. It was larger and more substantially built than any other trading fort in the American West, and those who had seen them declared that no post of the Hudson's Bay Company in the British Possessions compared with it. Its stockade was two hundred and forty by two hundred and twenty feet in size, built of massive timbers and flanked by two large stone bastions, well armed with cannon, while several of its numerous interior buildings were also of stone. George Catlin, the distinguished artist who travelled all over the New World in making up his great collection of paintings of the American Indians, had visited the fort in 1832; Maximilian, Prince of Neuwied, the distinguished Austrian naturalist, had been there in 1833; and in 1843 the equally famous American naturalist, John James Audubon, had made the post his headquarters for some time. But when Al and Wallace passed through it, the days of the old establishment were numbered; two years later it was to be dismantled, the new army post of Fort Buford, two miles below and nearly opposite the spot where the Island City had sunk, taking its place as a military establishment.

The boys had not ridden far across the bottom, which was partly timbered and partly open grass land, when they saw the wreck of the steamer, lying out beyond a shore bar, her smoke stacks and upper works protruding above the water. The Belle Peoria was moored beside her and men could be seen working on both vessels. Al breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that they were not too late. Riding on across the bar, the boys were soon at the water's edge and about one hundred feet from the steamers. In answer to their shouts a small boat immediately put off from the Belle Peoria and came over for them. It was with the regret of parting from an old friend that Al for the last time caressed the rough neck and soft nose of Cottontail, who had borne him so faithfully through many perils and privations. The little horse nuzzled Al's cheek affectionately, as if he realized that they were bidding each other good-bye; then, with a strong hand-clasp from each of the soldiers, the boys stepped into the yawl and were rowed to the Belle Peoria.

It did not take long to explain to Captain Lamont their object in coming, and he seemed heartily glad of their company.

"You didn't get here any too soon," said he. "We shall be off in an hour. When we get to Fort La Framboise I have no doubt the captain of the Belle will stop long enough for you to find out if your brother is there, Al, and if he is, we can all go on together to St. Louis."

The Belle Peoria was under way at the expected time. Though the water was quite low, her pilots were skilful and knew the river so thoroughly that for some time she met with no unusual delays. After their months of strenuous campaigning it was pleasant for the boys to lounge about on the steamer's decks with nothing to do except watch the interweaving ripples of the river's surface, the occasional bitterns and cranes which flopped up from the lonely sandbars and sailed slowly away as the boat approached, and the rise and fall of the endless succession of bluffs along the shores. In a few weeks the Northwestern Indian Expedition would be following the crests of the northward bluffs on its way to Fort Rice, where it would break up; the Second Brigade, with the exceptions of garrisons left at Fort Rice and Fort Berthold, returning to Minnesota; while the First Brigade would go on down to Fort Sully, Fort Randall, and Sioux City.

After the crushing defeats which had been administered to the Indians at Tahkahokuty and the Little Missouri, it did not seem that steamboats on the Missouri ought to be in much danger from them; but the people on the Belle Peoria—both the members of her own crew and those of the Island City—knew that undoubtedly many hostiles had scattered from the broken Sioux camps who might be encountered anywhere along the river, eager for a chance to waylay a steamboat and slaughter a few of her crew in revenge for their own recent losses in battle. So, in laying the steamer up for the night, the men always "sparred her off" from the bank by setting long poles between the gunwale and the shore, so that she could not be boarded; or, if a mid-channel sandbar was convenient, with water on both sides of it, she would be moored there. Such precautions served well enough for night, but in the daytime the boat had to take her chances in following the channel close in against one shore or the other.