Thither the company men, free trappers, and Indians foregathered. The business of exchange and supply was quickly transacted with beaver skins serving as money. Then came the celebration, and what a gala event it was. Trappers sought to indemnify themselves for the sufferings and privations of a year in the wilderness. Squaw men parted with their “hairy bank notes” in order to bedeck their spouses in bright cloth and gewgaws. Here were men with reputations to sustain, proud men with a streak of wild vanity: “Old Knock Him Stiff,” “Old Straightener,” “Dead-Eye Dick,” “Broken Hand,” Kit, Joe, and Jim. Most mountain men were openhanded, and they squandered a year’s earnings in a few days of prodigal indulgence. Coffee and chocolate were prepared; the kegs were emptied; all pipes were kept aglow; free and generous spirits moved by day and night.[85] Truly this burnt and seamy-faced band was an all-American aggregation.
The veterans boasted “most enormous adventures” in mountain experience. Each represented himself as more than a match for any possible array of Indians or grizzlies. Narrations waxed romantic in the desire to astonish the new recruits. Extravagant and absurd as their yarns were, there was always a current of rude, good humor that allowed each listener to believe as little as he liked. There were rollicking, fiery, boisterous, swaggering southerners; quiet, steel-eyed northerners; mercurial French; loquacious Irish; calculating Scots; greedy middlemen; shrewd dealers; squaw men; Indian haters; Indians of many nations; pals; rivals; and enemies. Everyone was invited; no one was missing. It was a self-propelling circus, one show a year, the antecedent of roundup, rodeo, fair, and tournament.
Contests of skill were carried to a point of jeopardizing life. There were William Tell episodes and no mistakes, trials of speed and strength for both horse and man. There was plenty of flirting, feasting, carousing, and outright debauchery. All were on friendly terms today, but each was unconsciously aware that tomorrow their relationships would change, and woe unto him who was caught unaware!
The rendezvous was perhaps the most colorful, spontaneous, lusty, and romantic institution ever known among civilized men. It was conceived, nurtured, and abandoned within a score of years (1824-1840). A fleeting climax to a picturesque band—they came from everywhere, wrote a saga that reads like an epoch from a long-forgotten age, then vanished from the scene.
Actually they did not make a definite exit; they just faded away. Some, like Colter, turned into prosaic farmers; others became guides, only to lag superfluously upon the stage; some turned to trade; some, to government appointments as Indian agents. A few lingered on as trappers, sighing for the life that was gone forever. Trappers of the Great West—they had given their all and there were no regrets. Their levity and valor, their hardships and pleasure, what a medley it made. One of the French Canadians has left this testimonial:
I have now been forty-two years in this country. For twenty-four I was light canoe-man; I required but little sleep, but sometimes got less than I required. No portage was too long for me; all portages were alike. My end of the canoe never touched the ground till I saw the end of it. Fifty songs a day were nothing to me. I could carry, paddle, walk, and sing with any man I ever saw. During that period, I saved the lives of ten Bourgeois, and was always the favourite, because when others stopped to tarry at a bad step, and lost time, I pushed on—over rapids, over cascades, over chutes; all were the same to me. No water, no weather, ever stopped the paddle or the song. I have had twelve wives in the country; and was once possessed of fifty horses, and six running dogs, trimmed in the first style. I was then like a Bourgeois, rich and happy; no Bourgeois had better-dressed wives than I; no Indian chief finer horses; no white man better harnessed or swifter dogs. I beat all Indians at the race, and no white man ever passed me in the chase. I wanted for nothing; and I spent all my earnings in the enjoyment of pleasure. Five hundred pounds, twice told, have passed through my hands; although now I have not a spare shirt to my back, nor a penny to buy one. Yet, were I young again, I should glory in commencing the same career again.[86]
The significance of the fur trade is graphically depicted by the National Park Service with charts, diagrams, illustrations, models, and dioramas in the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, Scotts Bluff, Guernsey Lake, Fort Laramie, Grand Teton and Yellowstone National parks.
Chapter V
WERE INDIANS AFRAID OF YELLOWSTONE?
Beginning with the origin of Yellowstone as a National Park the idea became current that Indians were afraid of the area. The opinion is still widely held that they considered it a cursed domain, unfit for habitation. While it is true that superstition and taboo loomed large in primitive experience, there is no reason to suppose that Indians gave Wonderland a wide berth.[87] Rather, there is an abundance of material evidence that controverts this view. Furthermore, the proposition is at once illogical and untrue historically.
How, then, did this fiction originate? Probably the major reason is found in the fact that, with the exception of a small band of recluse-like Tukuarikas, or Sheepeaters, Indians did not live permanently in Yellowstone. This fact alone suggests that the region was not regarded as an appropriate abode. Only a pygmy tribe of about four hundred timid souls deemed it a suitable homeland.