With Sully into the Sioux Land

by Joseph Mills Hanson

He ascended to the pilot-house and jerked the whistle rope. A warning bellow roared out over the river, re-echoing from the forest-clad bluffs on either side. One by one the steamboats behind them took up the refrain, until the noise resembled that of a manufacturing city at the noon hour.

"What on earth is all that whistling for?" asked Al. "Are they trying to scare the bar out of the river?"

"No," laughed Captain Feilner. "That is a signal that we are going to back up. There isn't room to turn in this channel and all the others must back up, too, so that we won't run into each other."

The fleet backed for a half mile, then the Island City reversed her wheel and started up again, running this time, however, close in by the north shore. As she went ahead the strokes of her pistons became more and more rapid until, as she approached the crossing, she was going at a great speed for a steamboat.

"He's going to try to belt her through," exclaimed Lieutenant Dale, coming up at this moment. "We'll get a jolt. I hope nothing breaks."

Hardly had he finished speaking when there came a loud grating sound from the bow as the boat's flat bottom began to scrape over the sand. Her timbers quivered and groaned, her speed diminished so quickly that those who were standing on her decks were nearly thrown down, and then, after scraping along for a few feet slowly and painfully she came to a full stop. For a moment the stern wheel continued to churn the water into white foam; then the pilot, with an impatient gesture, jerked the wire to the stopping-bell down in the engine room, and the ponderous wheel came to a halt.

"No use," he cried to Captain Lamont, leaning out of the pilot-house window. "She's nearly over but you'll have to set the spars!"

There was a great shouting and commotion on the lower deck as the spars, two long, heavy timbers like telegraph poles, one on each side of the bow, were swung out and erected in position, their lower extremities resting on the river bottom, the upper, fitted with tackle blocks, rising high above the level of the boat's top deck. Through the tackle blocks ran heavy cables fastened at one end to the boat's gunwale and at the other to the steam capstan. When the spars had been set, the capstan began to revolve, winding up the cable and thus hoisting the bow of the boat until it hung suspended on the spars. At the same time the wheel was slowly revolved, forcing the boat ahead until the spars had tilted forward so far as to let the bow down again into the sand. Then they were dragged forward and set upright once more, and the process was repeated. Before a great while the crest of the bar was passed, and the Island City floated on into deeper water and continued her journey. But though it had not been what river men would consider a hard crossing, she had lost nearly six hours in sounding and sparring, and it was noon by the time she had left the Gasconade out of sight behind her. The vessels following her each forced its way across the bar in the same manner as she had done, excepting the Chippewa Falls and the Alone, boats of smaller dimensions and lighter draft, which were able to slip over without sparring. By the time the last one had passed the Gasconade, it was evening again, and the fleet was strung out for miles up the river. The Island City anchored out for the night to a bar just below Kate Howard Chute, so called for a beautiful packet of that name which had sunk there in 1859. The point was only thirty miles above the Gasconade, so that twenty-four hours had been consumed in covering that insignificant distance. The Island City was towing a large barge, intended for use when they should reach the Indian country, but it was very much in the way and retarded her progress considerably.

That evening Al asked Captain Lamont how far it was from St. Louis to the mouth of Cannonball River, Dakota, where it was expected that the actual campaign against the Indians would begin, and was told that it was about fourteen hundred miles. He did some figuring and found that if they continued to progress at the same rate as they had done that day it would be more than six weeks, or past the middle of June, before they would reach their destination. It seemed an astonishingly long time to him but, as the event proved, he had considerably overestimated the average speed which the fleet could maintain. For days they continued travelling through the State of Missouri, contending with sandbars and head winds. The interior of the State was in a deplorable condition as a result of the war. Guerillas were overrunning it everywhere, and the boats rarely landed at a town without hearing either that some of the marauders had just left on the approach of the fleet or that they had been raiding there a day or two before. General Sully's vessels were so numerous and well armed that the guerillas did not dare attack them. All Missouri River boats at that time were more or less fortified around the pilot-house with timber or boiler-iron bulwarks, to protect the pilots from the bullets of guerillas on the lower river and from those of Indians in the upper country, while the piles of cordwood on the main deck afforded some protection to the men there. Yet the fleet seldom passed a downward-bound boat which had not been fired into or boarded, and fortunate was the vessel which had escaped without the loss of one or more people on board killed or wounded.