It was a long time before their work was taken up, and it remained for a man of another race to accomplish what they had so bravely striven for. Alexander Mackenzie, a Scotch Highlander by birth, was an energetic young agent of the Montreal Company in the Athabasca region. He determined to undertake certain explorations. In June, 1789, he set out from Fort Chippewyan, on the south shore of Lake Athabasca, with four birch canoes and a party of white men and several Indians, including a guide and interpreter. Going down Snake River, the explorers reached Great Slave Lake, then entered a heretofore unknown river, the one which now bears the name of its discoverer, and followed it until, on July 12, they sighted the Arctic Ocean, filled with ice-floes, with spouting whales between.
In October, 1792, he set out, determined this time to reach the Pacific Ocean. He left Fort Chippewyan, skirted the lake to Slave River, then ascended its southwest tributary, Peace River. He wintered on this stream in a trading-house which he had sent an advance party to build, employed in hunting and trading. In May, having sent back a large cargo of furs to Fort Chippewyan, he started up the river with a party of seven white men and two Indians. The voyagers traveled in a birch canoe twenty-five feet long, "but so light that two men could carry her on a good road three or four miles without resting." "In this slender vessel," he says, "we shipped provisions, goods for presents, arms, ammunition, and baggage, to the weight of thirty thousand pounds, and an equipage of ten people."
The difficulties and dangers were tremendous. Paddling and pushing and poling up the rocky bed of a swift stream abounding in rapids, they made slow progress. More than once the canoe was broken. Portages were often necessary. Again and again the crew, exhausted and their clothing in tatters, sullenly insisted that there was no choice but to turn back. But Mackenzie was a man of indomitable courage and all the persistency of the Scotch race. He had already shown this quality by taking the long journey and voyage from the wilds of Athabasca to London, in order to study the use of astronomical instruments, so that he might be qualified to make scientific observations. Now he would not hear of turning back.
So the discouraged party, animated by Mackenzie, pushed on, climbed over the dividing mountains, and came upon the head-waters of a stream flowing westward, the one now called Fraser River. After following it for several days, they struck off through dense forests, sometimes on dizzy trails over snow-clad mountains, until they reached a rapid river. On this they embarked in two canoes with several natives, and thus reached the ocean—the Pacific!
Vérendrye's dream was realized at last. The continent had been spanned from East to West.
Twelve years later the same thing was done within the territory of the United States by Lewis and Clark, at the head of an expedition sent out by President Jefferson. They spent the winter among the Mandan Indians, the interesting people with whom the Vérendryes had come in contact. A note is added in which some information is given about them.
NOTE ON THE MANDANS
These Indians first became known to white men through the expedition of the elder Vérendrye. They showed themselves hospitable and friendly to him, as they always have been to our race, and they aided his sons in their efforts to reach the Western Sea. Next we have quite full references to them in the journals of Lewis and Clark. These explorers were sent out by President Jefferson in 1803, immediately on the completion of the Louisiana Purchase, to get a better knowledge of the northern portion of the vast territory recently acquired, with a particular view to developing the fur-trade and to opening a route to the Pacific. All these ends were accomplished with a degree of success that made the enterprise one of the greatest achievements in our history. The explorers, having ascended the Missouri in their boats, and finding themselves, as winter came on, near the Mandan villages, decided to remain there until the spring. Accordingly they passed the winter, 1803-4, among these interesting tribesmen. It being a part of their prescribed duty to keep full journals of all that they experienced or saw, they have left extended accounts of the people and their customs.
Thirty-four years later George Catlin, a famous artist and student of Indian life, who spent many years in traveling among the wild tribes of the West and in describing them with pen, pencil, and brush, came among the Mandans. He was so much impressed with them as a singular and superior people that he remained among them a considerable time, painted many of their men and women, studied and made drawings of some of their singular ceremonies, and devoted a large part of his two volumes to a highly interesting account of what he saw among them.
Catlin certainly was wholly free from the silly prejudice expressed in the familiar saying, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." His two volumes, "The North American Indians," furnish "mighty interesting reading." As we accompany him in his long journeys by canoe and on horseback and read his descriptions of the tribes he visited and the warriors and chiefs he learned to know, and of whom he has left us pictures, it is a satisfaction to feel that we are traveling with a man who looked on the Indian as a human being. Sometimes we are inclined to suspect that, in the enthusiasm of his artistic nature, he idealized his subject and viewed him with a degree of sentiment as remote from the truth in one direction as was the hostile prejudice of the average white man in the other. We know that he either did not see or purposely ignored certain aspects of Indian life, notably the physical dirt and the moral degradation.