Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

“Fort Platte, July 1st, 1842.

“Mr. Fremont,—The chiefs, having assembled in council, have just told me to warn you not to set out before the party of young men which is now out shall have returned. Furthermore, they tell me that they are very sure to fire upon you as soon as they meet you. They are expected back in seven or eight days. Excuse me for making these observations, but it seems my duty to warn you of danger. Moreover, the chiefs who prohibit your setting out before the return of the warriors are the bearers of this note.

“I am your obedient servant,

“Joseph Bissouette.”

This Joseph Bissouette was the interpreter engaged for the passage of the country between Fort Laramie and the Rocky Mountains, and the warning was therefore not to be neglected. The chiefs, whose names were given as Otter Hat, Breaker of Arrows, Black Night, and Bull’s Tail, maintained silence while Fremont read and explained the letter to his men. Then one of them advanced, and, having shaken hands—a ceremony all Indians who have had any thing to do with white men are careful not to neglect—he made a speech to the effect that he and his people were glad to see their white brothers ... they looked upon their coming as the light which goes before the sun, for they would tell their great father (so they called the President of the United States) that they had seen them, and that they were naked and poor. But these dear white brothers had come at a bad time. Some of the Indians had been killed by emigrants from the great father’s lands far away in the East, and the young warriors in the mountains would avenge the blood of their relations, etc., etc.

To this harangue, which from the point of view of the poor dispossessed owners of the soil was really very moderate, Fremont, after a few general remarks, made answer—“We have thrown away our bodies, and will not turn back. When you told us that your young men would kill us, you did not know that our hearts were strong, and you did not see the rifles which my young men carry in their hands. We are few, and you are many, and may kill us all; but there will be much crying in your villages, for many of your young men will stay behind, and forget to return with your warriors from the mountains. Do you think that our great chief will let his soldiers die, and forget to cover their graves? Before the snows melt again, his warriors will sweep away your villages, as the fire does the prairie in the autumn. See! I have pulled down my white houses, and my people are ready; when the sun is ten paces higher, we shall be on the march. If you have any thing to tell us, you will say it soon.”

The chiefs withdrew in sullen silence, the preparations for the march were resumed, and the expedition was again just starting, when Bull’s Tail came back with a message that a young man should be sent as guide to the first stopping place. This apparently slight concession meant every thing. The presence of one warrior would, as all knew, protect the whole of the whites from the savages out on the hills; and, naming the place for the pitching of the camp that evening, Fremont cordially thanked the emissary, who returned at once to his comrades.

Following the north fork of the Platte, the explorers soon entered a desolate country, laid waste by the combined evils of drought and war. The interpreter urged Fremont to turn back, assuring him that death from starvation was all but inevitable. Again calling his men together, the leader once more gave them their choice of pushing on or returning, and all but six decided for the latter course. These six cried with one voice, “We’ll eat the mules if buffalo are not to be had;” and, shaking hands with their comrades, the brave little remnant pressed on.

On the 31st July the Platte was left behind, and a short march brought the expedition to the banks of its affluent, the Sweet Water River, which flows in a gentle descent from the most picturesque gorge of the Rocky Mountains, now called the South Pass, but then practically unknown to the white man. Now climbing some rugged height, now pausing to rest on the banks of the river, the gigantic ridge called the Devil’s Gate was left behind, and on the 7th August the South Pass itself was entered.

Instead of the arduous climb associated as a matter of course with the scaling of the Rocky Mountains, Fremont now found himself ascending a sandy plain, which brought him, imperceptibly as it were, to the primal home of many a river flowing into the Pacific. The watershed—as unique in its character as the swamps which nurse the infancy of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence—left behind, Fremont led his little band up a long and beautiful ravine, discovering, a few miles further on, a lake “set like a gem in the mountains.”