Tales and Sketches.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 41, 4 November 1871, Page 16

Tales and Sketches.

THE FREE TRAPPER. [From All the Year Round.] When I first visited the Pacific slope of the Rocky Mountains, I was fortunate enough every now and again to come across some little link which connected me with the past. It was a splendid region into which I had wandered. Everywhere it was patched with noble primeval forests, varied with snowy peaks, and rapid rivers as yet unnamed: a region long interesting to the naturalist, as well as to the mere lover of the stirring life of the fur trader. Was it not in this region were that most veracious of travellers —Captain Lemuel Gulliver, of London —whilom of Lapnta and Lilliput, located the wondrous land of Brobdinguag, and where the old Greek Pilot, Juan De Fuca, was sent to fortify the strait which bears his name, in case —vain thoughts! —the English should pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific ? It was in this land that Cook won some of his laurels, and that John Vancouver grew famous. It was the scene of Lewis and Clark’s famous adventures, and is better known to the general readers as the country which Washington Irving invested with a most delightful romantic interest through his Astorian, and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville. To me, the North-west had even a deeper charm, for I visited it at a time, the like of which can never come back. For years I wandered over many of the wildest and least known parts of the country, and was fortunate enough, in the midst of many misfortunes, to be tlic companion of some of those who have helped to make its history ; and to mingle in many of its wildest and most stirring enterprises. In Resolution Cove, in Nootka Sound, where Cook records that he laid his vessel up for repair, I disintered the bricks of the armorer’s forge, vitrified and fresh as if it had been built but yesterday. The lordly Spanish Dons who once held Nootka, had left their traces in cannon balls and milled dollars, occasionally dug up on the site of the old fort; and the Indians still remembered by tradition the story of tlieir surrendering it to Vancouver, and no historian could have told it in quainter words : ‘ The men began to cultivate the ground and erect a fort and stockade, when one day a ship came with papers for the head man, who was observed to cry, and all the white men became sad. The next day they began moving tlieir goods to the vessel.’ The grandson of old Moquilla, whose name occupies so prominent a place in the records of those stirring times, still ruled Nootka, when with a solitary companion I paid it a visit for the first time, after he had murdered the crew of a trader, six months before. This visit I am likely to remember for some years to come, for it yielded me the dismal satisfaction of hearing a lively discussion on the (to me) rather interesting question, whether it would not be better for State policy to cut off tlic beads of myself and friend, on the principle that headless men are not apt to tell tales. That tlie ‘ ayes’ were in the minority in Moquilla’s council, this record is the proof. Vancouver’s name they pronounced quite distinctly, and I still found in Puget Sound a last connecting link between bis day and ours, in the person of an old chief. Wliat thoughts must have been running through tlie mind of that old man as lie glanced over the wonderful story of tlie seventy years which had come and gone, since John Vancouver had sailed with his stately ships up Puget Sound, I know not; for the leathern countenances of the Indians, like dead men, tell no tales. Tlie medals that Lewis and Clarke distributed among the Indians at the mouth of tlie Columbia River, could still be sometimes seen in the Chinook lodges, though that tribe bad long disappeared, with all tlie Columbia and Willamette tribes, from tlieir old homes. Old Astoria voyagers I sometimes came across. The son of that Pierre Dorion, whose escape with his heroic Indian mother, after the murder of his father, is so graphically portrayed by Irving, was my fellow-traveller for weeks together, before I knew liow historically interesting he was; and the grandson of one-eyed Coiicomoly, chief of the Chinooks, the marriage of whose daughter to tlie fact or of Astor is so amusingly related, trudged side by side with me for many a summer’s day. Captain Bonneville was not, to me, as he is to many, a shadowy abstraction, invented by tlie novelist, on which to hang many a quaint tale of love and war ; but was a hearty, genial veteran, no way backward to figlit liis battles over again, when lie got a ready listener. It was in the palmy days of the fur trade, when beaver was thirty shillings or two pounds per pound, and a good beaver skin would weigh a pound and a quarter, or when Rocky Mountain martens worth three or four guineas apiece piled on either side of it was the price of a trade musket, worth fifteen shillings, that the free trapper flourished. He trapped for no particular company, but was courted by the bourgeois, as the head men of the traders were called, of all, and sold to whom he pleased. In the summer these men would start out in bands, and, as convenient places for their business presented themselves, would drop off in twos and threes, with their squaws and horses, until they came to some great valley, when they would set their traps in the streams, and if sport presented itself, camp there for the whole summer. Their camp usually consisted merely of an Indian leather lodge, or some brush rudely thrown together. If the neighborhood were infested by. Indians they would have to keep concealed during the day, as it was rarely that some high-handed act, or the jealousies of business, did not render a meeting between the trappers and redskins a matter of life and death. For tlie same reason he would generally visit his beaver traps at night, and, fearful of the echo of his rifle alarming the prowling savage, would subsist on beaver flesh : even though buffalo, elk, deer,

or antelope were abundant in the neighborhood, and the Rocky Mountain goat and sheep skipped on the cliffs around his haunt. Beavers, either smoked or fresh, formed the staple article of food of these mountain men ; and to this day a beaver’s tail is looked upon as prime luxury. 1 He is a devil of a fellow,’ you will hear old grizzled hunters remark of some acquaintance of theirs : ‘ he can eat two beaver tails !’ And I quite agree in the estimate put upon a man who could devour so much of what is about as easily masticated, and not half so digestible, as a mess of whipcord seasoned with train oil and castoreuin! If the trapper were ordinarily successful, he would load his horses with the { packs’ of beaver skins, aud make for the • rendezvous generally some trading port, or sometimes some quiet valley where game and grass abounded. Here, the traders would meet the trappers, business would commence, and the winter would be spent in riotous living and debauchery. Duels were common; the general bone of contention being tlie relative merits and reputation for virtue of the respective squaws. Every trapper had his wife selected from one of the Indian tribes with whom he was on ordinary decent terms, and to whom he was united in Indian fashion. To be a trapper’s bride was looked upon, by an Indian or half-breed damsel, as the height of all good fortune ; and a pretty life she led her husband. Nothing in the trader’s stores was too fine or too expensive for her; and next to being decked out licrself in all sorts of finery, her liorse was her object of solicitude. She was always fretting and running away to her tribe, with her infatuated husband in liot pursuit; or sometimes slie would, to the scandal and delight of the gossips in the rendezvous elope with some Indian buck, or more favored trapper. Often, these men, even despite the exorbitant charges of the traders and tlieir winter debauches, made large sums ; but they never saved. Indeed they thought themselves lucky if they were able to c pull through the winter,’ aud enough remained to them to start out for another summer’s campaign. Even that didn’t trouble them much ; for a good trapper of acknowledged reputation had never any trouble—to such an extent had competition gone, and so large were the traders’ profits—in getting credit for all he wanted. Trapperswere not in the habit of insuring tlieir lives, otherwise learned actuaries would no doubt have been able to tell us exactly what were tlie risks of their business; but some western statistician estimated the life of the Rocky Mountain trapper at an average, after lie had fairly entered the business, of only three years and a half! His life was continually in danger from Indians, from hunger and thirst, from exposure and mode of life. While floating down some turbulent river in liis ‘ dug-out,’ or travelling through a Rocky Mountain pass in tlie depth of winter in an endeavor to reach the rendezvous, lie carried his life in his hands. He disappeared from the rendevous some winter, and little was thought of it. He might have gone to some other trading port. But by-and-bye tlie news oozed round among the squaws, and they told tlieir husbands how such aud such a tribe of Indians killed him; and then liis horse would be seen, and anon liis rifle, and perhaps, years after, liis bones, surrounded by his greasy beaded leather liunting-dress, would be found as the trappers were looking for beaver by the banks of some nameless stream. Then some of his companions would vow to avenge liis death, and the first Indian of that tribe would suffer for it, if met alone in the woods or other solitary place. The Indian would be avenged in like manner by his friends, and so in this manner the endless vendettas of the West originated, and still go on. It may be asked, what could tempt men to follow such a business ? There was a cliarm in the thorough freedom and independence of tlie life, which attracted men to it. Few of these adventurers, I believe, ever seriously intended to follow the calling for life when first they wandered ‘away West.’ They probably intended making a little money, and then settling down to a quiet life tilling the soil. But in nine out of ten cases that time never came. Either they never could scrape enough together, or children grew up around them and united them with strong bonds to tlieir savage mode of life. Most of them lived and died trappers. I have known a few of them go back after many years to the settlements, but soon return again to their wild life, disgusted with the dull conventionalities of society ; the ways of civilised life and cities looked ridiculous to them, and they were half ‘ pizened with the bread, tlie bacon, the sarse, aud the mush’ of a Western farmhouse. Yet a notion seemed to prevail that tlie trappers were longlived. So they were, when they had a fair chance. But the Indians cut it rather short. Some of the trappers whom I know, are old men, and it has been my lot to know among others, such men as the celebrated Kit Carson, Jim Baker, Jim Bridger, and others. Such men were almost universally Americans ; and though they were not at all inimical to the female Indian, yet they invariably entertained implacable feud against some particular tribe. They bad also their favorite tribe, against whom it was rank sedition to say a single word. ‘ Crows kin be trusted,’ an old fellow would say round the camp, his mouth filled with tobacco : ‘ Snakes ain’t no such ’count; but if ye want to get the meanest pizen-bad lot of Injuns, just trap a fall down to the Washoe country, just!’ And immediately afterwards you would hear some other man give exactly an opposite opinion. On closer observation you would generally find that the lauded tribe was the one he had lived longest among, to which his squaw belonged, or which was the easiest to strike a bargain with; for generally speaking, these mountain men are a very unreasonable set when speaking on Indian matters. Old Jim Baker’s opinion on Indians is worth quoting : not only for its inherent truth, but also because it expresses tolerably well, the

general opinions entertained by the mountain men regarding their savage associates. Quoth Jim: 1 They are the most onsartainest verments in all creation, and I reckon tlia’r not mor’n half human; for you never seed a human, arter you’d fed and treated him to the best fixins in your lodge, just turn round and steal all your hosses,' or any other thing he could lay his hands on. No, not adzackly. He would feel kinder grateful, and ask you to spread a blanket in his lodge, of ever you passed that a-way. But the Injun, he don’t care shucks for you, and is ready to do you a mischief as soon as he quits your feed. No, Cap, its not the right way to give um presents to buy peace ; but ef I war guv’ner of these yeerU-nited States, I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d invite um all to a big feast, and make b’lieve I wanted to have a big talk : and as soon as I got um all together, I’d pitch in and scalp half of um, and then t’other half would be mighty glad to make a peace that would stick. That’s the way I’d make a treaty with the red-bellied varments ; and sure as you’re born Cap, that’s the only way. It- ain’t no use to talk of honor with them, Cap; they haint got no such thing in um j and they won’t show fair fight, any way you can fix it. Don’t they kill and skulp a white man, when-ar they get the better on him ? The mean varments! They can’t onderstand white folks’ ways, and they won’t learn um : and ef you treat um decently, they think you’re afeard. You may depend on’t, Cap, the only way to treat Injuns is to thrash um well at fust; then the balance will sorter take to you and behave themselves.’ Of Jim Baker many a good story is told, but about the last I heard (the very last, I am afraid, I ever shall hear’) of him was from General Marcy. He had then established himself in a trading port or store at the crossing of Green River, where he did a pretty lively trade with the Indians and emigrants. He was prospering until he was opposed by a Frenchman, who of course Btirred within Jim the most bitter animosity, until it culminated in a cessation of all social intercourse between them: in fact, the Celt and the Saxon ‘ cut’ each other, though I do not suppose there was another white man within a couple of hundred miles. At the time of General Marey’s arrival, this professional hatred had reached such a point that he found Baker standing in his doorway, with a loaded and cocked pistol in each hand, ‘ pretty drunk and intensely excited. I dismounted and asked him the cause of all this disturbance ? He replied, ‘That tharyaller-bellied toad-eatin’ parley-voo over tliar, and me, we’ve been havin’ a small chance of a skirmmage to-day, we have, Cap.’ I remonstrated with him upon his folly, but he continued : ‘ The sneakin’ polecat! I’ll raise his liar yet; I’ll skulp him, Cap, ef he don’t quit these yeare diggins.’ It appeared that they had an altercation in the morning, which ended in a challenge : when they ran to theirr espective cabins, seized their revolvers, and from their doors, only about one hundred yards apart, fired at each other. They then retired’ into their cabins, took a drink of whisky, reloaded their pistols, and renewed the combat. This peculiar duel had been maintained for several hours when I arrived, but fortnnately for them, the whisky had produced such an effect upon their nerves that their aim was very unsteady, and none of their many shots had taken effect.’ The general, beingan old friend of Jim’s took away his pistols, and administered a severe lecture to him. He acknowledged that when the whisky was in him he had ‘ narry sense.’ Perhaps the most celebrated of all the Rocky Mountain trappers, was Kit Carson—to whose exertions Ferment was deeply indebted, when caught in the winter snows, though the old man used to sometimes complain that the * Pathfinder’ was rather too stinted in the acknowledgement of his services. Born in Kentucky, he came at an early age to this wild region, and his name was soon known among the records of border warfare and dauntless deeds. His nai'ratives were full of interest, and withal related with great modesty—a characteristic by no means common to all these ‘mountain cocks.’ His famous ride of seven hundred miles, from Santa-Fe in New Mexico to Independence in Missouri, carrying despatches regarding the outbreak of the Indian war in the former comity, was by no means the most extraordinary of liis deeds. The distance was accomplished in seven days from the date of starting. When he arrived at his destination the saddle was found stained with blood, and the rider so exhausted that he had to be lifted off his horse. Notwithstanding the great reputation of the man for deeds of daring, the reader may be at first surprised that Carson was by no means formidable in strength. On the contrary, I remember him as a little man, about five feet four inches in height, stout and rather heavily built, but with a frame alertand active. His hair was light brown, sprinkled with grey, thin and long, and brown behind his ears. He was very quite in his manner and spoke in a soft, low voice, such as I have frequently remarked is the case with men who have passed an exciting life. Towards the close of his life, Carson became ‘ Colonel’ of irregular cavalry in New Mexico. He had been frequently married to Indiau wives, and was married a few years before his death to a New Mexican. His children seemed to share both the spirit of their father’s and their mother’s race. One of his daughters, whom I remember (since dead), was a remarkably handsome woman. On one occasion, a half-civilised * Texan Mustang’ insulted her. Instantly the woman’s blood was up, and before the bystanders could interfere, she had ‘ cleaned out’ the ruffian so effectually with a bowie-knife, that I question if he ever recovered from his wounds. Kit died last year, aged sixty. His deeds are recorded in many books and boys’ tales of adventure, with various exaggerations : . though the life of the man required no such embellishments. On* searoely less famous was old * Peg leg

Smith so called to distinguish him from the numerous Smiths of the West on account of a wooden leg, which he had worn ever since anybody remembered him. Old Pegleg’s day was over before I knew him, and all I remember of him was as a garrulous old fellow in San Francisco, no way backward to ‘ take a drink’ when he found any one willing to invite him. His adventures formed the subject mattey of a book published some years ago ; and if I recollect rightly, an article about him appeared in one of the English magazines, about the same period. On one occasion old Pegleg came down to a frontier brandy port, and there in a few weeks not only spent all the earnings of the past season, but had also run so far in debt that his fine white horse, which had been his companion for years, was placed in pawn in the trader’s stable. It was in vain that Smith begged its release. Pleading proving vain, Pegleg tried to get possession of the stable key, but that attempt also proved futile, until at last all pacific methods failing, he resorted as a last expedient to force. Waiting until the trader was asleep, he hopped to the stable door, applied his loadad rifle to the keyhole, and in a crack blew the lock off. In another crack the trader, aroused by the noise, was on the ground; but only just in time to see his debtor careering joyously on the back of the white horse over the prairie, waving his cap, and galloping at such a rate as to put pursuit out of the question. A remarkable man, but one much less known, was Albert Pfeiffer. Like Carson he was in the irregular Mexican cavalry ; indeed, he was lieutenant-colonel of the same regiment. He was a man of a very singular appearance. His red beard grew in patches, the intervening space appearing burnt and discolored. This was owing to his having been poisoned by some of the Indians’ arrow poisons years before. He wore blue goggles to shield his weak eyes ; yet, though they were weak, they were bright, clear, and quick. His face was almost ghastly in its signs of suffering, and he walked stiff, with a cane, being scarred with nearly twenty wounds, carrying in his body some Indian souvenirs of bullets, and bearing two frightful marks where an arrow had pierced directly through his body, just below the heart. A native of Friesland, he came to the United States some thirty years ago, and during all that time served as an Indian pacificator, fighter, and trapper : or as a guide to passes in the mountains known only to himself and the Indians. An acquaintance of mine used to relate an anecdote of Pfeiffer. They had started on a tour together, and as they rode along, ‘ the colonel’ gave him various directions how to behave in case they were attacked by Indians; finishing by saying, in his slightly broken English : ‘ And now don’t forget, if me be wounded, you kill me at once, for I will not fall alive into dere infer naZ hands : dey tor lure one horribly. And if you be wounded, I Icill you , you see. Don’t fail!’ I write of Albert Pfeiffer as he was four years ago. For all I know to the contrary, he is still living : one of the last and bravest of the mountain men.

Another specimen of the mountain man, ■was an old fellow whom I may call Seth Baillie. Seth was rather an intelligent man, and during our rambles I used to be amused to hear his opinions on men and things, all of which he pronounced with the utmost confidence, though his education (as far as book learning was concerned) was limited, and his range of observation equally so. Still, like all Western folk, he looked upon himself as ‘particular smart,’ and a ‘ right smart chance’ of an ‘ argifier.’ In the rough settlement of the Willamette, in Oregon, I had been asked to stand umpire in the following case. One day an old settler’s boy had come home from the backwoods district school, and told his parents that the sun was many millions of miles away from the earth. The father was a school guardian and was horror struck at Avhat lie styled, ‘ sich infidel talk;’ so the poor schoolmaster was discharged. ‘ Who was ever thar’ to measure it, I’d like to know !’ the old farmer remarked to me when telling of the atrocious ‘ infidel talk’ of the quondam schoolmaster. Thinking the story would amuse Baillie, I told it him : without, however, venturing an opinion on the merits of the case. Mr Baillie remarked, ‘he raytlier thought the old coon’s head was level oil that air question.’ He proceeded to give liis reasons for the faith that was in him : ‘ I once heern talk like that iifore, down to the settlements. One fall I was down thar’ to do tradin’, and when sefctin’ in the store thar’ I heern a kind uv half schoolmaster talkin’ like that. Sez Ito him, ‘ Mister, do you say the ’arth is round ?’ ‘ Wal,’ sez he, kind o’ laughin’ like, ‘ men uv science say so.’ ‘ Men uv science,’ sez I, ‘be darned. I know a sight better. Did you ever come across the plains ?’ # ‘ No,’ sez the schoolmaster. ‘ Then,’ sez I, ‘ you don’t know nothin’ about it; for I corn’d across the plains and see’d so fur furnenst me, you couldn’t see on furder. Neow, ef the 'arth war round, heow would that have bin ? Neow, once before I heern a darned fool, like you’ (sez I to the schoolmaster, and the boys in the store larfed like mad), ‘ talk like that, and I didn’t say much, but went to hum, and put a tatur on a stump outside my lodge. Neow in the mornin,’ that tatur was just whar’ I put it. Neow, ef the ’artli had turned eound, whar’ ud that tatur liev’ bin ?’ But he didn’t say nothin’, but giv’ a kind of laugh. ‘ No,’ sez I, ‘ ef the ’arth turned reound thar’ would be the tallest scatterin’ uv the nations you ever did see. No, mister,’ sez I, ‘ the ’arth’s as flat as a pancake, and I know it.’ And with that he vamoozed.’ Baillie had been a good deal employed as guide to emigrants (or, as he called them, ‘ emigranters’), for whom he had a supreme contempt. The only job of that sort he ever looked back upon with pleasure was the piloting of a troop of United States cavalry for ser-

vice in the Indian war of 1855. He greatly admired the ‘ smartness’ of the major in commaud, and the way he settled a troublesome account. They had lost a waggon here, and sold a horse there. A soldier had sold or battered his carbine now and then; and, in fact, their accounts were in such a state that to present a report and to account for everything to the quartermaster-general was impossible. At last they came to the Columbia River, and to a place where there was a good deal of dry. timber. ‘ Are the any falls about here, Baillie ?’. the major asked. Oh, yes; the falls of the Columbia were not over a mile. ‘ Well, then,’ the major thought, ‘ we’ll build a raft: the roads pretty bad.’ On the raft was placed a broken waggon an tliree-leged mule, five or six broken carbines, a empty cask, and a few more such valuables. The major wished to guide it along with ropes, and though Baillie assured him that the current was so strong that this was impracticable, he insisted. At last the men shouted that they could hold on no longer. ‘ Well, then, let go!’ was the answer ; and over the falls in a few minutes went the raft and its contents. ‘ The major cussed a small chance for show sake,’ Baillie remarked, ‘ but arter a while he winked, and sed to me, ‘ I guess that’s an A. Q. G. way o’ squarin’ accounts!’ Everything and something more, too —that was missing, got scored opposite to it in his book: “ Lost on a raft in the Columbia River!” ’ The fall of beaver sounded the death knell of the old free trapper. One day a pestilent fellow discovered silk to be a substitute for the napping of ‘ beaver hats,’ and so beaver was ‘ quoted, at a reduced figure. That ’Change announcement, simple as it was, may be said to have echoed through the Rocky Mountain region, and to have destroyed a class of menj who, with all their faults, were a manly and a generous race. Beaver has now fallen to about five shillings per pound, and is hardly worth trapping. The business of trapping has fallen almost entirely into the hands of half-breeds and Indians, who pursue it after their stolid and lazy fashion. A few free trappers like Baillie, still pursue the business, more, however, from old habit than for any real profit they derive from it. Most of them are scattered, or have taken up some of the employments which the spread of the white settlements have brought to their lodge doors. They have become small traders, or store-keepers, farmers on the borders of civilisation, or hangers-on of trading ports living on the memories of the past. The new impetus given to civilisation will soon clear them off entirely, and the place which once knew them will know them no more.