The business within the walls of the post is done by clerks and traders. The former of these are more commonly young gentlemen {188} from the cities of the States; their duty is to keep the books of the establishment. The traders are generally selected from among those daring individuals who have traversed the Prairie and Mountain Wilderness with goods or traps, and understand the best mode of dealing with the Indians. Their duty is to weigh sugar, coffee, powder, &c., in a Connecticut pint-cup; and measure red baize, beads, &c., and speak the several Indian languages that have a name for beaver skins, buffalo robes, and money. They are as fine fellows as can anywhere be found.
Fort William is owned by three brothers, by the name of Bent, from St. Louis. Two of them were at the post when we arrived. They seemed to be thoroughly initiated into Indian life; dressed like chiefs—in moccasins thoroughly garnished with beads and porcupine quills; in trousers of deer skin, with long fringes of the same extending along the outer seam from the ankle to the hip; in the splendid hunting-shirt of the same material, with sleeves fringed on the elbow seam from the wrist to the shoulder, and ornamented with figures of porcupine quills of various colours, and leathern fringe around the lower edge of the body. And {189} chiefs they were in the authority exercised in their wild and lonely fortress.
A trading establishment to be known must be seen. A solitary abode of men, seeking wealth in the teeth of danger and hardship, rearing its towers over the uncultivated wastes of nature, like an old baronial castle that has withstood the wars and desolations of centuries; Indian women tripping around its battlements in their glittering moccasins and long deer skin wrappers; their children, with most perfect forms, and the carnation of the Saxon cheek struggling through the shading of the Indian, and chattering now Indian, and now Spanish or English; the grave owners and their clerks and traders, seated in the shade of the piazza, smoking the long native pipe, passing it from one to another, drawing the precious smoke into the lungs by short hysterical sucks till filled, and then ejecting it through the nostrils; or it may be, seated around their rude table, spread with coffee or tea, jerked buffalo meat, and bread made of unbolted wheaten meal from Taos; or, after eating, laid comfortably upon their pallets of straw and Spanish blankets, and dreaming to the sweet notes of a flute; the old trappers withered with {190} exposure to the rending elements, the half-tamed Indian, and half civilized Mexican servants, seated on the ground around a large tin pan of dry meat, and a tankard of water, their only rations, relating adventures about the shores of Hudson's Bay, on the rivers Columbia and Mackenzie, in the Great Prairie Wilderness, and among the snowy heights of the mountains; and delivering sage opinions about the destination of certain bands of buffalo; of the distance to the Blackfoot country, and whether my wounded man was hurt as badly as Bill the mule was, when the "meal party" was fired upon by the Cumanches—present a tolerable idea of every thing within its walls.
If we add, the opening of the gates on a winter's morning—the cautious sliding in and out of the Indians whose tents stand around the fort, till the whole area is filled six feet deep with their long hanging black locks, and dark watchful flashing eyes; and traders and clerks busy at their work; and the patrols walking the battlements with loaded muskets; and the guards in the bastions standing with burning matches by the carronades; and when the sun sets, the Indians retiring again to their camp outside, to talk over their newly purchased blankets {191} and beads, and to sing and drink and dance; and the night sentinel on the fort that treads his weary watch away; we shall present a tolerable view of this post in the season of business.
It was summer time with man and beast when I was there. The fine days spent in the enjoyment of its hospitalities were of great service to ourselves, and in recruiting our jaded animals. The man, too, who had been wounded on the Santa Fé trade, recovered astonishingly.
The mutineers, on the 11th of July, started for Bent's Fort, on the Platte;[112] and myself, with three sound and good men, and one wounded and bad one, strode our animals and took trail again for the mountains and Oregon Territory. Five miles above Fort William, we came to Fort El Puebla. It is constructed of adobies, and consists of a series of one-story houses built around a quadrangle, in the general style of those at Fort William. It belongs to a company of American and Mexican trappers, who, wearied with the service, have retired to this spot to spend the remainder of their days in raising grain, vegetables, horses, mules, &c., for the various {192} trading establishments in these regions. And as the Arkansas, some four miles above the post, can be turned from its course over large tracts of rich land, these individuals might realize the happiest results from their industry;—for, as it is impossible, from the looseness of the soil and the scarcity of rain, to raise any thing thereabout without irrigation; and, as this is the only spot, for a long distance up and down the Arkansas, where any considerable tracts of land can be watered, they could supply the market with these articles without any fear of competition.[113]
But these, like the results of many honest intentions, are wholly crippled by want of capital and a superabundance of whisky. The proprietors are poor, and when the keg is on tap, dream away their existence under its dangerous fascinations. Hence it is that these men, destitute of the means to carry out their designs in regard to farming, have found themselves not wholly unemployed in drunkenness; a substitute which many other individuals have before been known to prefer. They have, however, a small stock; consisting of horses and mules, cattle, sheep, and goats; and still maintain their original intention of irrigating and cultivating {193} the land in the vicinity of their establishment.
We arrived here about four o'clock in the afternoon; and, being desirous of purchasing a horse for one of the men, and making some farther arrangements for my journey, I determined to stop for the night. At this place I found a number of independent trappers, who after the spring-hunt had come down from the mountains, taken rooms free of rent, stored their fur, and opened a trade for whisky. One skin, valued at four dollars, buys in that market one pint of whisky; no more, no less. Unless, indeed, some theorists in the vanity of their dogmas, may consider it less, when plentifully mollified with water; a process that increases in value, as the faucet falters in the energy of its action; for the seller knows, that if the pure liquid should so mollify the whisky, as to delay the hopes of merriment too long, another beaver-skin will be taken from the jolly trapper's pack, and another quantity of the joyful mixture obtained. Thus matters will proceed, until the stores of furs, the hardships of the hunt, the toils and exposures of trapping, the icy streams of the wilderness, the bloody fight, foot to foot, with the knife and tomahawk, {194} and the long days and nights of thirst and starvation are satisfactorily cancelled in the dreamy felicity which whisky, rum, gin, brandy and ipecacuanha, if properly administered, are accustomed to produce.
One of these trappers was from New Hampshire; he had been educated at Dartmouth College, and was altogether one of the most remarkable men I ever knew. A splendid gentleman, a finished scholar, a critic on English and Roman literature, a politician, a trapper, an Indian! His stature was something more than six feet; his shoulders and chest were broad, and his arms and lower limbs well formed, and very muscular. His forehead was high and expansive; Causality, Comparison, Eventuality, and all the perceptive organs, (to use a phrenological description), remarkably large. Locality was, however, larger than any other organ in the frontal region. Benevolence, Wonder, Ideality, Secretiveness, Destructiveness, and Adhesiveness, Combativeness, Self-Esteem and Hope were very high. The remaining organs were low. His head was clothed with hair as black as jet, two and a half feet in length, smoothly combed, and hanging down his back. He {195} was dressed in a deer-skin frock, leggings and moccasins; not a shred of cloth about his person. On my first interview with him, he addressed me with the stiff, cold formality of one conscious of his own importance; and, in a manner that he thought unobserved, scrutinized the movement of every muscle of my face, and every word which I uttered. When any thing was said of political events in the States or Europe, he gave silent and intense attention.