CHAPTER I.
In 1858, under existing treaties with the western Indian tribes, the national Government sent out to them annually large consignments of merchandise. The superintendent of Indian affairs, whose office was in St. Louis, chartered a steamboat to transport these annuities to all the tribes in the country drained by the Missouri—beginning with the Omahas and Winnebagoes in Nebraska and ending with the Blackfoot, at the base of the Rocky Mountains, around the sources of the Missouri. Nearly one-half of the cargo of this boat, however, consisted of the trading merchandise of Frost, Todd & Company, a fur-trading concern, whose headquarters were at St. Louis, and whose trading posts were established along the Missouri from Yankton to Fort Benton. The whole of the territory of the United States then north of Nebraska was without any legal name or designation; at least there were no such territories as Dakota or Montana shown on the maps. At that time, and for many years before, a steamboat load of merchandise was sent up as far as Fort Benton by the American Fur Company, having its headquarters also in St. Louis, and controlled mainly by the Chouteaus, to replenish the stocks of their trading posts along the river. The trade of these companies was exclusively with the Indians, the exchange being for buffalo robes, furs of the beaver, otter, mink, etc., used for making clothes, gloves, etc.
Colonel Redfield, of New York, was the agent for the Indian tribes along the river from the Omahas in Nebraska to Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Colonel Vaughn, of St. Joseph, Mo., was agent for the Blackfoot tribe, and that year had special orders to take up to his agency, on Sun River, forty miles above Fort Benton (now Montana), farming implements, horses and oxen, and to make an effort to teach the tribe the peaceful art of agriculture. These Blackfoot Indians, however, regarded agriculture a good deal as it is defined by our humorous friend, Josh Billings, who defined it as “an honest way of making a d—md poor living.” The Indians fully sanctioned and concurred in this definition. I had received at the hands of Colonel Vaughn the appointment of attaché to his agency, pretty nearly a sinecure, but affording transportation from St. Louis to Fort Benton and back, if I choose to come back.
The boat was a medium-sized Missouri River packet, nearly new, with side wheels and powerful engines. Steamboating on the Missouri had then reached the highest stage of prosperity. A line of splendidly furnished and equipped passenger boats ran from St. Louis to St. Joseph, providing almost every comfort and luxury a traveler could ask. The table was elegant and the cuisine excellent, the cabin and state-rooms sumptuously furnished, and last but not least, there was always a bar where any kind of liquor could be found by those who preferred it to Missouri River water. There were good facilities for card-playing either with or without money, and no restraint in either case. There was usually a piano in the cabin, and frequently a fair band of musicians among the waiters and cabin-boys. These great passenger-boats ran all night, up and down the most treacherous and changeable of all the navigable streams. To be a first-class pilot on the Missouri River was equivalent to earning the highest wages paid in the West at that time. The chief pilot of our boat, R. B—, was of that class. Just before he took service on this boat he had forfeited a contract for the season at $1,000 a month with the “Morning Star,” a large passenger-packet, running from St. Louis to St. Joseph, from the fact that he was on one of his periodical sprees when she was ready to embark from St. Louis.
After the boat got under way, I spent a great deal of time in the pilot-house with R. B—, who I found a man of fair education and considerable culture, a devotee of Shakespeare, quoting or reciting page after page of his “Tragedies” without interruption of his duties at the helm of the boat, a position requiring great courage and steady nerves. R. B— knew every twist and turn of the channel of the Missouri from St. Louis to St. Joseph, knew every bar where the river was either cutting out its bed or filling it up, knew precisely the location of every snag protruding above water, and of many that were invisible except at a low stage of water—in short, knew at all times, night or day, exactly the position of the boat and its bearings.
The passengers formed a motley congregation. The two Indian agents, their clerks and attachés, the agents, trappers and voyageurs of the fur companies, mostly Canadian Frenchmen intermixed with Indians; a few, however, were native Americans, a young English sportsman, Lace, and his traveling companion from Liverpool, going up to the mountains to kill big game. A young gentleman, Mr. Holbrook from New England, who had just graduated at Harvard and was traveling for health, Carl Wimar, an artist of St. Louis whose object was to get pictures of the Indians, and a young man of great genius and promise in his profession, a captain, two pilots, two engineers, two cooks, cabin-boys, etc., twenty regular deck hands and, in addition to these, about seventy-five stout laboring men to cut wood to supply fuel for the boat’s furnaces after we had gotten up above the settlements.
We commenced cutting wood soon after passing Omaha, although we found occasional piles of wood already cut on the river bank above Sioux City, Iowa.
There were no female passengers and the boat had been stripped of carpets, mirrors, etc.
Colonel Redfield was a staid, straight-laced gentleman from the East, while Colonel Vaughn was a jolly frolicsome fellow of sixty-five years, who had been thoroughly enjoying western life among the Indians on the upper Missouri for many years, and no matter how late at night the bar was patronized, the following morning, when one would enquire as to the state of his health, he would answer with inimitable gusto, “Erect on my pasterns, bold and vigorous.”