Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

PIKE’S VOYAGE UP THE MISSISSIPPI, AND DISCOVERY OF THE SOURCE OF THE ARKANSAS; THE DISCOVERY OF THE SOURCES OF THE MISSOURI BY LEWIS AND CLARKE, AND THEIR VOYAGE DOWN THE COLUMBIA TO THE PACIFIC.

THUS far our heroes have, with few exceptions, been pioneers rather of Christianity, emigration or commerce, than of discovery properly so called. Early colonization in America was not, as in Africa, preceded by scientific exploration. We have no trans-Atlantic Park or Bruce, no Lander Oudney, or Clapperton; the white martyrs who baptized the soil of the New World with their blood fell, not in the cause of geography, but in that of their homes or their religion. Only in the extreme North have we any romance in American travel which can at all compare with that so inseparably connected with the winning of each of the secrets of that sister continent so aptly named the Dark.

The great lakes, rivers, and mountains of America, which we will in our turn call the “Fair Continent,” were rather found than discovered. The emigrant, seeking water for his cattle, or timber for his log hut and his fire, pitched his tent by some vast inland sea or rushing stream, unconscious that he had done more than choose well for his immediate temporal needs. Other log huts rose beside his own; the neighboring lake or river or forest received the name of the first person who turned its resources to account, or retained a corrupted form of its original Indian denomination. Peculiarities in the manners, customs, or appearance of the natives, which would have been full of significance to men such as Park or Bruce, Livingstone or Stanley, passed unnoticed by the lonely squatter of the woods, and whole chapters of discovery were left unwritten by the unconscious agents in the opening up of new tracks.

Not until the beginning of the present century can we be said to have possessed a literature of inland North American discovery, and our narrative has hitherto been culled little by little from piles of volumes dealing with other subjects than ours, and referring en passant only to geographical problems. The young states forming the infant republic had too much to do in welding into one whole the varied and often incongruous elements of which they were themselves composed, to be able to pay much attention to the enterprising spirits who went forth from among them to found new homes in the wilderness. But when the turbulent infancy was over, and what we may call the young manhood of America began under the enlightened guidance of the great Washington, first President of the United States, a new era of discovery was ushered in. The republic, no longer content with its ignorance of the course of its rivers, the height of its mountains, and the resources of its vast tracts of prairie and forest lands, began the organization of exploring expeditions. The first of these was that sent out, under Major Pike, in 1805, with instructions “to explore the Upper Mississippi, to inquire into the nature and extent of the fur-trade, with the residence and population of the several Indian nations, and to make every effort to conciliate their friendship.”

Pike embarked on the Mississippi at Fort Louis, a little below the mouth of the Missouri, on the 9th August, 1805, in a keel-boat about seventy feet long, accompanied by an escort of twenty soldiers, and after successfully navigating the somewhat difficult current, then much impeded by sandbars, he reached the mouth of the Missouri in safety. Above its junction with its chief affluent, the name of which signifies the Mud River, the course of the Father of Waters is comparatively smooth, and no incident of importance occurred till, on the 6th September, the mouth of the Wisconsin was reached, where the arduous portion of the young officer’s work began.

SIOUX VILLAGE.

Having obtained guides at the Indian village of Prairie des Chiens, then an important outpost of the French fur-trade, Pike continued the ascent of the great river till he came to the mouth of the Iowa. Here he was met by a party of Sioux or Dacotah Indians, whose chief gave him a hearty welcome, assuring him that the redskins had tried to keep themselves sober in his honor. In this, says Pike, they had not been very successful, and in their unsteady gait and wild salute of three rounds of ball fired at random, to the great risk of their guests, the young leader noted some of the first symptoms of the fatal effect of the influence of the whites on the once simple and manly natives. At a dinner of a semi-civilized description, the Sioux chief gave Pike the pipe of peace, telling him that it would insure his friendly reception among the “upper bands” of his tribes, and begging him to try and bring about peace between his people and the Minnesota Indians of the East.

Thanking his host for the pipe of peace, the power of which had already been proved by his French predecessors on the Mississippi, and promising to do his best with the Minnesotas, Pike pursued his way, between hilly country and prairies dotted with the encampments of the Sioux, till he came to the mouth of the majestic Chippeway on the east, succeeded, a few miles further up, by the yet more beautiful Minnesota, or St. Peters River, on the west.

The explorers were now approaching the summit of the central table land of the North American continent, where, 1,680 feet above the sea-level, are situated the sources alike of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the Red River of the North, the three great arteries, bound, the first for the Atlantic Ocean, the second for the Gulf of Mexico, and the third for Hudson’s Bay. As the common home of the infant streams was neared, the navigation of the Mississippi became more difficult, the river between the mouth of the Minnesota and the Falls of St. Anthony consisting of a series of rapids dashing over huge rocks encumbering the bed of the stream. Pike persevered, however, in his work of navigation, his little bark experiencing many a narrow escape in its passage between the frowning precipices, until the Falls themselves were reached, when he was compelled to leave his own boat and take to small canoes.