I left him without any very good impressions of his character; for I had induced him to open his compressed mouth but once, and then to make the no very agreeable inquiries, "When do you start?" and "What route do you take?" At my second interview, he was more familiar. Having ascertained that he was proud of his learning, I approached him through that medium. He seemed pleased at this compliment to his superiority over those around him, and at once became easy and talkative. His "Alma Mater" was described and redescribed; all the fields, and walks, and rivulets, the beautiful Connecticut, the evergreen primitive ridges lying along its banks, which, he said, "had smiled for a thousand ages on the march of decay;" were successive {196} themes of his vast imagination. His descriptions were minute and exquisite. He saw in every thing all that Science sees, together with all that his capacious intellect, instructed and imbued with the wild fancyings and legends of his race, could see. I inquired the reason of his leaving civilized life for a precarious livelihood in the wilderness. "For reasons found in the nature of my race," he replied. "The Indian's eye cannot be satisfied with a description of things, how beautiful soever may be the style, or the harmonies of verse in which it is conveyed. For neither the periods of burning eloquence, nor the mighty and beautiful creations of the imagination, can unbosom the treasures and realities as they live in their own native magnificence on the eternal mountains, and in the secret, untrodden vale.
"As soon as you thrust the ploughshare under the earth, it teems with worms and useless weeds. It increases population to an unnatural extent; creates the necessity of penal enactments, builds the jail, erects the gallows, spreads over the human face a mask of deception and selfishness, and substitutes villany, love of wealth and power, and the slaughter of millions for the gratification {197} of some individual instead of the single-minded honesty, the hospitality, the honour and the purity of the natural state. Hence, wherever Agriculture appears, the increase of moral and physical wretchedness induces the thousands of necessities, as they are termed, for abridging human liberty; for fettering down the mind to the principles of right, derived, not from nature, but from a restrained and forced condition of existence. And hence my race, with mental and physical habits as free as the waters which flow from the hills, become restive under the rules of civilized life; dwindle to their graves under the control of laws, customs, and forms, which have grown out of the endless vices, and the factitious virtue of another race. Red men often acquire and love the Sciences. But with the nature which the Great Spirit has given them, what are all their truths to them? Would an Indian ever measure the height of a mountain that he could climb? No, never. The legends of his tribe tell him nothing about quadrants, and base lines and angles. Their old braves, however, have for ages watched from the cliffs, the green life in the spring, and the yellow death in the autumn, of their holy forests. Why should he ever calculate an eclipse? He {198} always knew such occurrences to be the doings of the Great Spirit.
"Science, it is true, can tell the times and seasons of their coming; but the Indian, when they do occur, looks through nature, without the aid of science, up to its cause. Of what use is a Lunar to him? His swift canoe has the green embowered shores, and well-known headlands, to guide its course. In fine, what are the arts of peace, of war, of agriculture, or any thing civilized, to him? His nature and its elements, like the pine which shadows its wigwam, are too mighty, too grand, of too strong a fibre, to form a stock on which to engraft the rose or the violet of polished life. No. I must range the hills, I must always be able to out-travel my horses, I must always be able to strip my own wardrobe from the backs of the deer and buffalo, and to feed upon their rich loins; I must always be able to punish my enemy with my own hand, or I am no longer an Indian. And if I am any thing else, I am a mere imitation of an ape."
The enthusiasm with which these sentiments were uttered impressed me with an awe I had never previously felt for the unborrowed dignity and independence of the genuine, original character {199} of the American Indians. Enfeebled, and reduced to a state of dependence by disease and the crowding hosts of civilized men, we find among them still, too much of their own, to adopt the character of another race, too much bravery to feel like a conquered people, and a preference of annihilation to the abandonment of that course of life, consecrated by a thousand generations of venerated ancestors.
This Indian has been trapping among the Rocky Mountains for seventeen years. During that time, he has been often employed as an express to carry news from one trading post to another, and from the mountains to Missouri. In these journeys he has been remarkable for the directness of his courses, and the exceedingly short space of time required to accomplish them. Mountains which neither Indian nor white man dared attempt to scale, if opposing his right-line track, he has crossed. Angry streams, heavy and cold from the snows, and plunging and roaring among the girding caverns of the hills, he has swum; he has met the tempest as it groaned over the plains, and hung upon the trembling towers of the everlasting hills; and without a horse, or even a dog, traversed often the terrible and boundless wastes of mountains, {200} and plains, and desert valleys, through which I am travelling; and the ruder the blast, the larger the bolts, and the louder the peals of the dreadful tempest, when the earth and the sky seem joined by a moving cataract of flood and flame driven by the wind, the more was it like himself, a free, unmarred manifestation of the sublime energies of nature. He says that he never intends again to visit the States, or any other part of the earth "which has been torn and spoiled by the slaves of agriculture." "I shall live," said he, "and die in the wilderness." And assuredly he should thus live and die. The music of the rushing waters should be his requiem, and the Great Wilderness his tomb.
Another of these peculiar men was an Iroquois from Canada; a stout, old man, with a flat nose, broad face, small twinkling black eyes, a swarthy, dirty complexion, a mouth that laughed from ear to ear. He was always relating some wonderful tale of a trapper's life, and was particularly fond of describing his escapes from the Sioux and Blackfeet, while in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. On one occasion he had separated from his fellow-trappers and travelled far up the Missouri {201} into a particularly beautiful valley. It was the very spot he had sought in all his wanderings, as a retreat for himself and his squaw to live in till they should die. It appeared to him like the gateway to the Isles of the Blest. The lower mountains were covered with tall pines, and above and around, except in the east, where the morning sun sent in his rays, the bright glittering ridges rose high against the sky, decked in the garniture of perpetual frosts. Along the valley lay a clear, pure lake, in the centre of which played a number of fountains, that threw their waters many feet above its surface, and sending tiny waves rippling away to the pebbly shores, made the mountains and groves that were reflected from its rich bosom seem to leap and clap their hands for joy, at the sacred quiet that reigned among them.
The old Indian pitched his skin tent on the shore, in a little copse of hemlock, and set his traps. Having done this, he explored carefully every part of the neighbouring mountains for ingress and egress, "signs," &c. His object in this was to ascertain if the valley were frequented by human beings; and if there were places of escape, should it be entered by hostile persons {202} through the pass that led himself to it. He found no other pass, except one for the waters of the lake through a deep chasm of the mountain; and this was such that no one could descend it alive to the lower valleys. For as he waded and swam by turns down its still waters, he soon found himself drawn by an increasing current, which sufficiently indicated to him the cause of the deep roar that resounded from the caverns beyond. He accordingly made the shore, and climbed along among the projecting rocks till he overlooked an abyss of fallen rocks, into which the stream poured and foamed and was lost in the mist. He returned to his camp satisfied. He had found an undiscovered valley, stored with beaver and trout, and grass for his horses, where he could trap and fish and dream awhile in safety. And every morning, for three delightful weeks, did he draw the beaver from the deep pools into which they had plunged when the quick trap had seized them, and stringing them two and two together over his pack-horse, bore them to his camp; and with his long side-knife stripped off the skins of fur, pinned them to the ground to dry, and in his camp kettle cooked the much-prized tails for his mid-day {203} repast. "Was it not a fine hunt that?" asked he; "beaver as thick as musquitoes, trout as plenty as water. But the ungodly Blackfeet!" The sun had thrown a few bright rays upon the rim of the eastern firmament, when the Blackfeet war-whoop rang around his tent—a direful "whoop-ah-hooh," ending with a yell, piercing harsh and shrill, through the clenched teeth. He had but one means of escape—the lake. Into it he plunged, beneath a shower of poisoned arrows—plunged deeply—and swam under while he could endure the absence of air; he rose, he was in the midst of his foes swimming and shouting around him; down again, up to breathe, and on he swam with long and powerful sweeps. The pursuit was long, but at last our man entered the chasm he had explored, plunged along the cascade as near as he dared, clung to a shrub that grew from the crevice of the rock, and lay under water for the approach of his pursuers. On they came, they passed, they shrieked and plunged for ever into the abyss of mist.
Another individual of these veteran trappers was my guide, Kelly, a blacksmith by trade, from Kentucky. He left his native State about twelve years ago, and entered {204} the service of the American Fur Company. Since that time, he has been in the States but once, and that for a few weeks only. In his opinion, every thing was so dull and tiresome that he was compelled to fly to the mountains again. The food, too, had well nigh killed him: "The villanous pies and cake, bacon and beef, and the nicknacks that one is obliged to eat among cousins, would destroy the constitution of an ostrich." And if he could eat such stuff, he said he had been so long away from civilization that he could never again enjoy it. As long as he could get good buffalo cows to eat, the fine water of the snowy hills to drink, and good buckskins to wear, he was satisfied. The mountaineers were free; he could go and come when he chose, with only his own will for law.
My intercourse with him, however, led me afterwards to assign another cause for his abandonment of home. There were times when we were encamped at night on the cold mountains about a blazing fire, that he related anecdotes of his younger days with an intensity of feeling which discovered that a deep fountain of emotion was still open in his bosom, never to be sealed till he slumber under the sands of the desert.
{205} We passed the night of the 11th of July at the Puebla. One of my companions who had, previously to the division of my company, used horses belonging to an individual who left us for Santa Fé, and the excellent Mr. Blair, were without riding animals. It became, therefore, an object for them to purchase here; and the more so, as there would be no other opportunity to do so for some hundreds of miles. But these individuals had no money nor goods that the owners of the horses would receive in exchange. They wanted clothing or cash, and as I had a surplus quantity of linen, I began to bargain for one of the animals. The first price charged was enormous. A little bantering, however, brought the owner to his proper senses; and the articles of payment were overhauled. In doing this, my whole wardrobe was exposed, and the vendor of horses became extremely enamoured of my dress-coat, the only one remaining, not out at the elbows. This he determined to have. I assured him it was impossible for me to part with it; the only one I possessed. But he, with quite as much coolness, assured me that it would then be impossible for him to part with his horse. These two {206} impossibilities having met, all prospects of a trade were suspended, till one or the other of them should yield. After a little, the idea of walking cast such evident dissatisfaction over the countenances of my friends, that the coat was yielded, and then the pants and overcoat, and all my shirts save four, and various other articles to the value of three such animals in the States. The horse was then transferred to our keeping. And such a horse! The biography of her mischief, would fill a volume! and that of the vexations arising therefrom to us poor mortals? Would it not fill two volumes of "Pencillings by the Way," whose only deficiency would be the want of a love incident? Another horse was still necessary; but in this, as in the other case, a coat was a "sine quâ non;" and there being no other article of the kind to dispose of among us, no bargain could be made. The night came on amidst these our little preparations. The owners of the horses and mules belonging to El Puebla, drove their animals into the court or quadrangle, around which their houses were built. We gathered our goods and chattels into a pile, in a corner of the most comfortable room we could obtain, and so {207} arranged our blankets and bodies, that it would be difficult for any one to make depredations upon them during the night, without awaking us. After conversing with my Dartmouth friend concerning the mountainous country through which we were to travel, and the incidents of feasting and battle which had befallen him during his trapping excursions, we retired to our couches.