The appearance of the country differed, in many respects, from what we had found it on our preceding visit. The forests were tinged with yellow, or other varied hues; large flights of blackbirds, and numbers of ravens, crows, and magpies, were flying along the skirts of the woods; thrushes were departing in small companies, and some species of finches still animated the thorny bushes; the yellow goldfinch had already put on its winter dress. In the bleak prairie we found the prairie hens singly, or in small flocks, whose crops were full of the red berries of the low rose bushes. The cactus was still green, but the fruit was withered. These plants bear the winter of this climate, which is often severe, extremely well; but their joints generally become wrinkled, and are often frozen, but the roots always produce new shoots. Flocks of ducks and wild geese were in the river, and on the lakes, for instance, one near the mouth of the Yellow Stone, there were always great numbers of water fowl. Our hunters often resorted thither, and returned heavily laden with wild geese, ducks, and musk-rats. The cranes and pelicans passed in large flocks, and Antoine, the negro, killed many of them. The little squirrels were no longer seen in the prairies, having retired for their winter sleep; but we perceived, at the mouth of their burrows, that they had taken in a quantity of prairie grass. The wolves now came very near to the fort, and prowled round it, even in the daytime, so that, while I was there, one of {305} them was shot from the gate of the fort. Troops of thirty or forty antelopes now came nearer to the Missouri, but it seems an exaggeration to say, as Mr. Warden[156] does, that the herds of these animals consist of several hundreds. The little prairie fox was so hungry, and, therefore, so tame, that it often visited the environs of the fort, and we found these pretty little animals among the circles of turf which were left on the removal of the Indian tents. Here they remained in the daytime, and at nightfall came to look for the remains of provisions in the neighbourhood of the buildings. Our dogs frequently pursued them, but their extreme swiftness enabled them to escape, and retreat to their burrows, where they were easily caught by setting snares. The amphibious animals had, for the most part, crept underground. The workmen employed in setting the palisades of the new fort, dug up several snakes of the beautiful variety, Coluber proximus (Say), which I have already mentioned.

As there were now but very few Indians in the vicinity, the wild animals were not disturbed. However, those restless hunters of the prairie gradually arrived, and put an end to our monotonous way of life. When the first tents were set up, I took the opportunity of making myself acquainted with the mode in which they dressed their skins, and discovered what I had not previously known. They scraped the skins very quickly and perfectly with their tooth instruments, threw away the first shavings, but preserved those beneath, which they boiled in water and ate. We learned that, during our absence, the Assiniboins had made peace with the Manitaries. Their principal chief, Uahktahno (the killer), had concluded a convention with the Gros Ventres themselves; but such treaties are seldom of long duration. Several Cree Indians arrived at Fort Union, among whom was the celebrated medicine man, or conjuror, Mahsette-Kuinab (le sonnant), whose portrait Mr. Bodmer took with great difficulty, because he could not get him to sit still.[157] He was suffering severely from an affection of the eyes; complained of his poverty, and wanted to borrow a horse, promising to pay for it at a future time. This man is highly respected among his countrymen, because his incantations are said to be very efficacious; and even the engagés of the Company firmly believe in such mummeries. They relate wonderful anecdotes of this Indian. "Often," say they, "he has caused a small tent to be covered with skins and blankets, and closely shut, he himself having his arms and hands bound, and being fastened to a stake, his whole body closely muffled up. Some time afterwards, sounds of drums, and the schischikué, were heard; the whole tent began to tremble and shake; the voices of bears, buffaloes, and other animals, were heard; and the Indians believed that the evil spirit had come down. When the tent was afterwards opened, the conjuror was found fastened and bound as before, and he related what he had learnt from the spirit whom he had interrogated." The Canadians and Indians affirm, that his predictions invariably come to pass; and it would have been in vain to attempt to convince these superstitious people of the contrary. On one occasion it was said, that Le Sonnant was at Fort Clarke, where all persons present witnessed his performances. He told {306} them, beforehand, that a horseman would arrive upon a grey horse, and be killed; and not long afterwards some Chayenne Indians arrived, of whom one, riding a grey horse, was taken and killed. This circumstance is still quoted as a proof that Le Sonnant has intercourse with supernatural powers. His medicine or charm, which the enchanter upon such occasions wears upon his head, is the skin stripped off the head of a bear. So much is certain, that many of these Indian jugglers are very dextrous in sleight-of-hand, and, by their adroitness and artful tricks, know how to deceive the ignorant multitude.

On the 20th of October several distinguished men of the Assiniboins arrived at the fort, among whom were Ajanjan (the son of the tall Frenchman), generally called General Jackson; Manto-Uitkatt (the mad bear); Huh-Jiob (the wounded foot); all three tall, handsome men. Ajanjan, as we were told, was not to be trusted. He showed us, on his body, the scars of several wounds, such as of an arrow in his breast, and a musket-ball in his arm. The handsomest of the three warriors was the Mad Bear. The upper part of his face was painted red, his chin and lower part of the face black, and his breast strongly marked with black tattooed stripes, while on the upper arm and wrist he wore bright metal armlets; his dress was, on the whole, extremely handsome. All these people were Stone Indians (Gens de Roche). Several Assiniboins, whom we had not seen before, arrived successively, so that, on the 21st, General Jackson, with twenty-three of his warriors, was able to make his entry in due form into the fort. They advanced in a line, and were conducted to the Indian apartment, where they smoked their pipes. Among them was a man wearing his winter dress, having on his head a badger's skin, by way of cap, and gloves, which are very rare among the Indians. His name was Pasesick-Kaskutau (nothing but gunpowder), and Mr. Bodmer took an admirable full-length portrait of him. Many women arrived with their loaded dogs, and I never saw such miserable, starved animals. Their backs were quite bent, and they could hardly walk, yet they were cruelly beaten. One of them was lame, and could not go on, and at every blow the poor animal howled most lamentably; another, quite starved, fell down dead near the tent. The Indians themselves frequently suffer hunger, and their dogs, of course, suffer still more; so that the poultry in the fort was in constant danger. Many of these dogs were very handsomely marked; a pale yellow, with greyish-blue, or blackish stripes; there were some of all colours.

The Indians at this time fared very well with us; for the opposition of Fort William, in our neighbourhood, induced our people to pay them higher prices for their goods, in order to draw them away. Endeavours were made by each party to outdo the other in entertaining them, in which the more powerful and firmly established American Fur Company could hold out the longest. The Indians who came to us had, generally, been already treated at Fort William; they were, therefore, extremely merry, and their singing and beating the drum were incessant. A tall chief, Pteh-Skah (the white cow), visited us, and a very good portrait was taken of him. His {307} face was characterized by a long nose, his hair smeared with clay, and his summer robe painted of variegated colours. This chief was commended as a man thoroughly to be depended upon. When the portrait was finished he received a small present. On seeing our stock of snuff, which was laid out to dry, he frequently exclaimed with delight, "Oh! how much! How much!" He then drew out a bottle containing brandy, and drank some, on taking leave, intending to cross the Missouri on this day to hunt buffaloes. The good humour and merriment of the Indians was increased by the circumstance, that a clerk of the Company bought a wife of them, for whom he paid the value of about 250 dollars. The relations sat in a circle round the fire, roasting, eating, and drinking, and kept up their noisy mirth and revelry, with loud music, till late at night. Several beaver hunters arrived, among whom was the Cree Indian, Piah-Sukah-Ketutt (the speaking thunder), who is engaged as a hunter in the service of the Company. He brought me a part of the skin of the head of an original,[158] which he had killed on the Milk River, and affirmed that he had there found the entire skeleton of a colossal serpent. A part of a tooth which he brought proved that these bones belonged to a fossil mastodon, which, unluckily, was at too great a distance for me to be able to go and examine it. He said that he had broken the head to pieces, in order to obtain the piece of the tooth. Mr. Bodmer drew a very good portrait of this Cree in his Indian dress, and likewise of a woman of that nation, who was married to the hunter Dechamp.[159]

In this manner we continued to employ ourselves, and were sometimes agreeably interrupted by the arrival of fresh Indians. On the 25th of October, a party of twenty-four warriors arrived, who, as usual in such cases, were meanly dressed; some had painted their faces black, others red. Most of them wore leather caps, or an old piece of skin over their heads, and carried on their backs small bundles containing their effects—pieces of meat, generally a pair of shoes, and a large quantity of the plant Arbutus uva ursi, as a substitute for tobacco. Most of them wore wolf's skins. Their arms consisted of lances ornamented with feathers, a gun in its case, and bows and arrows on their shoulders. The chief of this savage band was Uatschin-Tonshenih (the fool); and there was among them a young Indian, whom his father, Uitchasta-Juta (the cannibal, a chief much devoted to the Company, and who lived at the distance of six days' journey), had sent to Mr. Mc Kenzie, to inform him that a war party of the Assiniboins was approaching, with the intention of stealing the horses belonging to the fort, and warning him to take the necessary precautions. He further informed him, that another chief, the Knife-holder,[160] being offended on account of the battle at Fort Mc Kenzie had gone northwards with a hundred tents to the English, in order to trade with the Hudson's Bay Company. The young man added, that he had several other messages, but that he had forgotten them by the way, as the journey was so long. The intention of this war party to do some injury to the Manitaries was no agreeable news for us travellers, because, in our voyage {308} down the river, we should have to take that very direction. As Mr. Mc Kenzie would soon return to Fort Pièrre, it was intimated to the leader, that it would be advisable to go another way with his people; for, if he met the travellers, his young people might, perhaps, be tempted to steal the horses. The Indian immediately expressed his willingness to follow this advice. Most of the Assiniboins now gradually withdrew, and only a couple of tents remained near the fort, so that the prairie, already naked and desolate, was scarcely animated by a living creature, except that a hungry wolf or dog sometimes prowled about in search of food. The forests, too, had entirely lost their foliage; a cold wind swept the country; and, as early as the 27th of October, we had a heavy fall of snow, and the cold was so intense, that we did not willingly leave the fireside. On the following day the weather was again bright, calm, and cold, and the forest thickly covered with hoar frost. We now, for the first time, saw the prairie in its winter dress; all was drear and cheerless; only the smoke of the fires of the men that guarded the horses rose in the distant horizon. The horses could now find no food, except the bark of the poplar trees, and appeared to be quite ravenous; for, during the night, when they were always driven into the fort, they completely gnawed off the oil paint on the wooden palisades.

The four weeks that I lived at Fort Union passed rapidly away, to which the agreeable conversation of Mr. Hamilton, a well-informed Englishman, greatly contributed.[161] Every evening we formed a circle round the fire, where the conversation turned as well on our distant native land as on the wildernesses of America. As the time for our departure approached, the necessary preparations were made. I had exchanged my boat, which was too small, for a larger one, which was old and in bad condition, but which Mr. Hamilton quickly had repaired. Mr. Chardon had caused a stone hearth to be fixed in this boat, but we were obliged to remove it, as it proved too heavy. A deck or covering of Indian tent skins was put up as a protection against the weather. The people whom I obtained from the Company for this voyage, were, besides my steersman, Henry Morrin, four Canadians, two of whom were inexperienced young men. Mr. Hamilton had the kindness to provide us with many necessaries and comforts. I shall always be grateful to him for his friendliness, and remember, with pleasure, the time passed at Fort Union. We took a cordial farewell of our obliging and courteous host, and of Mr. Chardon, who had likewise given himself much trouble for my accommodation.

FOOTNOTES:

[144] François A. Chardon had lived among the Osage for many years and later entered the American Fur Company's employ. In 1837 he was at Fort Clark when the steamer arrived with smallpox aboard. He himself, after warning the Indians against exposure, contracted the disease and was left for dead, but later recovered. In 1843 he was chosen to succeed Culbertson at Fort Mc Kenzie, and there perpetrated the massacre which led to the abandonment of that post and the building of Fort Chardon at Judith River (see notes 51 and 75, ante, pp. [70], [87]). When Culbertson returned to the Blackfoot territory (1845), Chardon was sent to a lower post. Palliser found him at Fort Berthold in 1848, where he died in that year.

J. E. Brazeau belonged to the prominent Creole family of that name in St. Louis, who removed thither from Kaskaskia before 1782. He entered the fur-trade about 1830 and was for many years upon both the Yellowstone, where there were trading-houses called by his name, and the upper Missouri. He finally entered the Hudson's Bay Company, and in the summer of 1859 was met by the Earl of Southesk at Edmonton, where he gave that nobleman much information concerning American conditions in the fur-trade. See Southesk, Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains (Edinburgh, 1875). Brazeau should not be confused with the negro of the same name, frequently mentioned by Larpenteur.

According to the account of his rival clerk, Larpenteur (see Journal, i, p. 76), Jean Baptiste Montcrévier was discharged from the company's employ in 1835. He was, however, with Culbertson at Fort Union in 1843, at the time of Audubon's visit. See Audubon and his Journals, index.—Ed.