THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER

VII.—JOHN COLTER, THE FREE TRAPPER

By A. C. LAUT 1.

ARLY one morning two white man suffered heavy loss owing to Colter’s prowess. slipped out of their sequestered cabin That made the Blackfeet sworn enemies to E built in hiding of the hills at the head- Colter. waters of the Missouri. Under covert of Turning off the Jefferson, the trappers brushwood lay a long, odd-shaped canoe, headed their canoe up a side stream, prob- sharp enough at the prow to cleave the nar- ably one of those marshy reaches where bea- rowest waters between rocks, so sharp that vers have formed a swamp by damming up French voyageurs gave this queer craft the the current of a sluggish stream. Such quiet name—“canot à bec d’esturgeon,” that is, a waters are favorite resorts for beaver and canoe like the nose of a sturgeon. This Amer- mink and marten and pekan. Setting their ican adaptation of the Frenchman’s craft traps only after nightfall, the two men could was not a birch bark. That would be too not possibly have put out more than forty frail to essay the rock-ribbed cañons of the or fifty. Thirty traps are a heavy day’s work mountain streams. It was usually a common for one man. Six prizes out of thirty are dug-out, hollowed from a cottonwood, or considered a wonderful run of luck; but the other light timber, with such an angular nar- empty traps must be examined as carefully row prow it could take the sheerest dip as the successful ones. Many that have been and mount the steepest wave-crest where a mauled, scented by a beaver scout, and rounder boat would fill and swamp. Drag- left, must he replaced. Others must have ging this from cover, the two white men fresh bait; others again must be carried to pushed out on the Jefferson Fork, dipping better grounds where there are more game now on this side, now on that, using the signs. reversible double-bladed paddles which only Either this was a very lucky morning and an amphibious boatman can manage. The the men were detained taking fresh pelts, two men shot out in mid-stream, whom the or it was a very unlucky one and they had mists would hide them from each shore—a decided to trap farther up stream; for when moment later the white fog had enfolded the mists began to rise the hunters were still them, and there was no trace of human pres- in their canoe. Leaving the beaver meadow, ence but the trail of dimpling ripples in the they continued paddling up stream away wake of the canoe. from the Jefferson. A more hidden water- No talking, no whistling, not a sound to course they could hardly have found. The betray them! And there were good rea- swampy beaver-runs narrowed; the shores sons why these men did not wish their pres- rose higher and higher into rampart walls; ence known. One was Potts, the other, John and the dark-shadowed waters came leap- Colter; both had been with the Lewis and ing down in the lumpy, uneven runnels of a Clark exploring party of 1804-5, when a small cañon. You can always tell whether Blackfoot brave had been slain for horse- the waters of a cañon are compressed or thieving by the first white men to cross the not, whether they come from broad, swampy upper Missouri. Besides, the year before meadows or clear snow streams smaller than coming to the Jefferson, Colter had been the cañon. The marsh waters roll down with the Missouri company’s fur brigade swift and black and turbid, raging against under Manuel Lisa, and had gone to the the crowding walls; the snow streams leap Crows as an emissary from the fur company, clear and foaming as champagne, and are in While with the Crows a battle had taken too great a hurry to stop and quarrel with place against the Blackfeet in which they the rocks. It is altogether likely that these “The Blackfeet searched the island for Colter, running from log to log of the drift.” 360 The Story of the Trapper men recognized swampy water and were as- have more effective arguments. A bow- cending the cañon in search of a fresh bea- string twanged; and Potts screamed out— ver-marsh, or they would not have continued “Colter! I am wounded!” paddling six miles above the Jefferson with Again Colter urged him to land. The daylight growing plainer at every mile. wound turned Pott’s momentary fright to a The men paused. What was that noise? paroxysm of rage. Aiming his rifle, he shot “Like buffalo” said Potts. his Indian assailant dead. If it was torture “Might be Blackfeet,” answered Colter. that he feared, that act assured him at least No; what would Blackfeet be doing, rid- a quick death; for, in Colter’s language, man ing at a pace to make that thunder so close and boat were instantaneously “made a rid- to a cañon? It was only a buffalo herd dle of.” stampeding on the annual southern run. No man admires courage more than the Again Colter urged that the noise might be Indian; and the Blackfeet recognized in their from Indians. It would be safer for them to captive one who had been ready to defend retreat at once. At which Potts wanted to his comrade against them all, and who had know if Colter were afraid. led the Crows to victory against their own Afraid? Coltor afraid? Colter who had band a few years before. remained behind Lewis and Clark’s men to The prisoner surrendered his weapons. He trap alone in the wilds for nearly two years, was stripped naked, but neither showed sign who had left Manuel Lisa’s brigade to go of fear nor made a move to escape. Evi- alone among the thieving Crows, whose lead- dently the Blackfeet could have rare sport ership had helped the Crows to defeat the with this game white man. His life in the Blackfeet? Indian country had taught him a few words Anyway, it would now be as dangerous to of the Blackfoot language. He heard them go back as forward. They plainly couldn’t conferring as to how he should be tortured land here. Let them go ahead where the to atone for all the Blackfeet had suffered walls seemed to slope down to the shore. at white men’s hands. One warrior suggested Two or three strokes sent the canoe round that the hunter be set up as a target and an elbow of rock into the narrow course shot at—then see whether he would be so of a creek. Instantly, out sprang five brave! or six hundred Blackfeet warriors with But the chief shook his head. That was weapons leveled, guardiug both sides of the not game enough sport for Blackfeet braves. stream. That would be letting a man die passively. An Indian scout had discovered the trail And how this man could fight if he had a of the white men and sent the whole band chance! How he could resist torture if he scouring ahead to intercept them at this nar- had any chance of escaping the torture! row pass. The chief stepped forward and But Colter stood impassive, and listened. with signals that were a command beckoned Doubtless he regretted having left the well- the hunters ashore. defended brigades of the fur companies to As is nearly always the case, the rash man hunt thus alone in the wilderness. But the was the one to lose his head—the cautious fascination of the wild life is as a gambler’s man the one to keep his presence of mind. vice—the more a man has, the more he Potts was for an attempt at flight, when every wants. Had not Colter crossed the Rockies bow on both sides of the river would have with Lewis and Clark and spent two years let go a shot. Colter was for accepting the in the mountain fastnesses? Yet when he situation, trusting to his own wit for subse- reached the Mandans, on the way home, he quent escape. could not bear to go on to civilization but Colter, who was acting as steersman, sent asked permission to return to the wilderness, the canoe ashore. Bottom had not grated where he spent two more years. Had he before a savage snatched Pott’s rifle from not set out for St. Louis a second time, met his hands. Springing ashore, Colter forcibly Lisa coming up the Missouri with a brigade wrested the weapon back and coolly handed of hunters, and for the third time turned his it to Potts. face to the wilderness? Had he not wandered But Potts had lost all his rash courage of with the Crows, fought the Blackfeet, gone a moment before, and with one push sent down to St. Louis, and been impelled by that the canoe into mid-stream. Colter shouted strange impulse of adventure which was to at him to come back—come back! Indians the hunter what the instinct of migration is The Story of the Trapper 361 to bird and fish and buffalo and all wild with their young. Famine had taught them things—to go yet again to the wilderness? the punishment that follows reckless hunt- ing. But the free trappers were here to-day 11. and away to-morrow, like a Chinaman, to The free trappers formed a class by them- take all they could get regardless of results; selves. and the results were the rapid extinction of Other trappers either hunted on a salary fur-bearing game. of $200, $300, $400, a year or on shares like Always there were more free trappers in fishermen of the Grand Banks, outfitted by the United States than in Canada. Before “planters,” or, like Western prospectors, out- the union of Hudson’s Bay and Nor’-Wester fitted by companies that supply provisions, in Canada, all classes of trappers were ab- boats, and horses, expecting in return the sorbed by one of the two great companies. major share of profits. The free trappers After the union, when the monopoly enjoyed fitted themselves out, owed allegiance to no by the Hudson’s Bay did not permit it lit- man, hunted where and how they chose, and erally to drive a free trapper out, it could refused to carry their furs to any fort but always “freeze” him out by withholding the one that paid the highest prices. For supplies in its great white northern wilder- the manageurs de lard—as they called the fur nesses, or by refusing to give him transport. company raftsmen—they had a supreme con- When the monopoly passed away in 1871, tempt. For the methods of the fur companies, free trappers pressed north from the Mis- putting rivals to sleep with laudanum or bul- souri, where their methods had exterminated let, and ever stirring the savages up to war- game, and carried on the same ruthless war- fare, the free trappers had infinite loathing. fare on the Saskatchewan. North of the Sas- The crime of corrupting natives can never katchewan, where very remoteness barred be laid to the free trapper. He carried strangers out, the Hudson’s Bay Company neither poison, nor what was worse than still held undisputed sway; and Lord Strath- poison to the Indian—whisky—among na- cona, the governor of the company, was able tive tribes. The free trapper lived on good to say, only two years ago—“the fur trade terms with the Indian because his safety de- is quite as large as ever it was.” pended on the Indian. Renegades like Bird, Among free hunters Canada has only one the deserter from the Hudson’s Bay Com- commanding figure—John Johnston of the pany, or Rose, who abandoned the Astorians, Soo, who settled at La Pointe on Lake Su- or Beckwourth of apocryphal fame, might perior in 1792, formed league with Wabogish, cast off civilization and become Indian chiefs; “the White Fisher,” and became the most but after all, these men were not guilty of famous trader of the lakes. His life, too, was half so heinous crimes as the great fur com- almost as eventful as Colter’s. A member panies of boasted respectability. Wyeth of of the Irish nobility, some secret which he Boston, and Captain Bonneville of the Army, never chose to reveal drove him to the wilds. whose underlings caused such murderous Wabogish, the “White Fisher,” had a daugh- slaughter among the Root Diggers, were not ter who refused the wooings of all her tribe’s free trappers in the true sense of the term. warriors. In vain Johnston sued for her hand. Wyeth was an enthusiast who caught the Old Wabogish bade the white man go sell fever of the wilds; and Captain Bonneville, his Irish estates and prove his devotion by a gay adventurer, whose men shot down more buying as vast estates in America. Johnston Indians in one trip than all the free trappers took the old chief at his word and married of America shot in a century. McLellan and the haughty princess of the lake. When the Crooks and John Day—before they joined war of 1812 set all the tribes by the ears, the Astorians—and Boone and Carson and Johnston and his wife had as thrilling ad- Colter, are names that stand for the true ventures as ever Colter knew among the type of free trapper. Blackfeet. One crime the free trappers may be charged Many a free trapper—and partner of the with—a reckless waste of precious furs. The fur companies, as well—secured his own great companies always encouraged the safety by marrying the daughter of a chief, Indians not to hunt more game than they as Johnston had. Those were not the lightly- needed for the season’s support. And no come lightly-go affairs of the vagrant adven- Indian hunter, uncorrupted by white men, turer. If the husband had not cast off civil- would molest game while the mothers were ization like a garment, the wife had to put 362 The Story of the Trapper it on like a garment; and not an ill-fitting dary, through that narrow defile overtowered garment, either, when one considers that the by the lonely flat-crowned peak called Crow’s convents of the quiet nuns dotted the wilder- Nest Mountain—that is, where the fugitive ness like oases in a desert almost contem- crows took refuge from the pursuing Black- poraneous with the fur trade. If the trapper feet. had not sunk to the level of the savages, In the United States the free hunters also the little daughter of the chief was educated approached the mountains by three main by the nuns for her new position. I recall routes—(l) up the Platte; (2) westward from several cases where the child was sent across the Missouri across the plains; (3) by the the Atlantic to an English governess, so that Three Forks of the Missouri. For instance, the equality would be literal and not a senti- it was coming down the Platte that poor mental fiction. And yet on no subject has Scott’s canoe was overturned, his powder lost, the Western fur trader received more per- and his rifles rendered useless. Game had sistent and unjust misjudgment. The hero- retreated to the mountains with spring’s ad- ism that culminated in the union of Poca- vance. Berries were not ripe by the time hontas with a noted Virginian won applause; trappers were descending with their winter’s and almost similar circumstances dictated hunt. Scott and his famishing men could the union of fur traders with the daughters not find edible roots. Each day Scott weak- of Indian chiefs, but because the fur trader ened. There was no food. Finally Scott had has not posed as a sentimentalist, he has strength to go no farther. His men had become more or less of a target for the index found tracks of some other hunting party finger of the Pharisee (*) far to the fore. They thought that in any North of the boundary, the free trapper case he could not live. What ought they had small chance against the Hudson’s Bay to do? Hang back and starve with him, or Company. As long as the slow-going Mack- hasten forward, while they had strength, to inaw Company, itself chiefly recruited from the party whose tracks they had espied? On free trappers, ruled at the junction of the pretense of seeking roots, they deserted the lakes, the free trappers held the hunting helpless man. Perhaps they did not come grounds of the Mississippi; but after the up with the advance party till they were sure Mackinaw was absorbed by the aggressive that Scott must have died; for they did not American Fur Company, the free hunters go back to his aid. The next spring, when were pushed westward. On the lower Mis- these same hunters went up the Platte, they souri, competition raged from 1810, so that found the skeleton of poor Scott sixty miles circumstances drove the free trapper west- from the place where they had left him. ward to the mountains—where he is hunting The terror that spurred the emaciated man in the twentieth century as his prototype to drag himself all this weary distance can hunted two hundred years ago. barely be conceived; but such were the fear- In Canada—of course after 1870—he en- ful odds taken by every free trapper who tered the mountains chiefly by three passes: went up the Platte, across the parched plains, (1) Yellow Head Pass southward of the Atha- or to the headwaters of the Missouri. basca; (2) the narrow gap where the Bow Going out alone, or with only one partner, emerges to the plains—that is, the river the free hunter encumbered himself with where the Indians found the best wood for few provisions. Two dollars’ worth of tobacco the making of bows; (3) north of the boun- would buy a thousand pounds of “jerked” buffalo meat, and a few gaudy trinkets for (*)Would not such critics think twice before passing a squaw all the pemmican white men could judgment if they recalled that General Parker was a full-blood Indian; that if Johnson had not married use. Wabogish’s daughter and if Johnson’s daughter had not Going by the river routes, four days out preferred to marry Schoolcraft instead of going to her relatives of the Irish nobility, Longfellow would have from St. Louis brought the trapper into re- writted no Hiawatha? Would they not hestitate before gions of danger. Indian scouts hung on the slurring men like Premier Norquay of Manitoba and the famous Mac Kenzies, those princes of fur trade from St. watch among the sedge of the river bank. Louis to the Arctic, and David Thompson, the great ex- One thin line of upcurling smoke, or a piece plorer? Do they forget that Lord Strathcona, one of the of string, babiche (leather cord called by the foremost peers of Britain, is related to the proudest race of plain-rangers that ever scoured the West from the Indians assapapish), fluttering from a shrub, Bois-Brules? The writer knows the West from only or little sticks casually dropped on the river fifteen years of life and travel there; yet with that im- perfect knowledge cannot recall a single fur post without bank pointing one way—all were signs that some tradition of an unfamed Pocahontas. told of marauding bands. Some birch tree The Story of the Trapper 363 was notched with an Indian cypher—a hunter first, like the peak of a sail, or emerging had passed that way and claimed the bark from the “coolies”—dried sloughs—like for his next year’s canoe. Or the mark might wolves from the earth. Enemies could be be on a cottonwood—some man wanted seen soon enough; but where could the trap- this tree for a dug-out. Perhaps a stake per hide on bare prairie?) He didn’t attempt stood with a mark at the entrance to a bea- to hide. He simply set fire to the prairie ver-marsh—some hunter had found this and took refuge on the lee side. That de- ground first and warned all other trappers vice failing, he was at his enemies’ mercy. off by the code of wilderness honor. Notched On the plains, the greatest danger was tree-trunks told of some runner gone across from lack of water. At one season, the trap- country, blazing a trail by which he could per might know where to find good camping return. Had a piece of fungus been torn streams. The next year, when he came to from a hemlock log? There were Indians those streams, they were dry. near and a squaw had taken the thing to “After leaving the buffalo meadows, a dread- whiten leather. If a sudden puff of black ful scarcity of water ensued,” wrote Charles smoke spread out in a cone above some dis- Mackenzie of the famous Mackenzie clan, jour- tant tree, it was an ominous sign to the trap- neying north from the Missouri. “We had to per. The Indians had set fire to the inside alter our course and steer to a distant lake. of a punky trunk, and the shooting flames When we got there, we found the lake dry. How- were a rallying call. ever, we dug a pit, which produced a kind of In the most perilous regions, the trapper stinking liquid which we all drank. It was salt traveled only after nightfall with muffled and bitter, caused an inflammation of the mouth, left a disagreeable roughness of the throat, and paddles, that is—muffled where the handle seemed to increase our thirst. * * * We might strike the gunwale. Camp fires warned passed the night under great uneasiness. Next him which side of the river to avoid; and day we continued our journey, but not a drop of often a trapper slipping past under the water was to be found * * * and our dis- shadow of one bank saw hobgoblin figures tress became insupportable. * * * All at dancing round the flames of the other bank once our horses became so unruly that we could —Indians celebrating their scalp dance. In not manage them. We observed that they these places the white hunter ate cold meals showed an inclination towards a hill which was to avoid lighting a fire; or, if he lighted a close by. It struck me that they might have scented water. * * * I ascended to the top, fire, after cooking his meal he withdrew where to my great joy, I discovered a small pool. and slept at a distance from the light that * * * My horse plunged in before I could might betray him. prevent him * * * and all horses drank to Incidents that meant nothing to other men excess.” were full of significance to the lone voy- 111. ageur through hostile lands. Always the Such were the very real adventures of the spring floods drifted down numbers of dead trapper’s life, a life whose fascinations lured buffalo; and the carrion birds sat on the John Colter from civilization to the wilds trees of the shore with their wings spread again and again till he came back once too out to dry in the sun. The sudden flacker often and found himself stripped, helpless, of a rising flock betrayed something prowl- captive, in the hands of the Blackfeet. ing in ambush on the bank; so did the splash It would be poor sport torturing a pris- of a snake from overhanging branches into oner who showed no more fear than this im- the water. passive white man coolly listening and wait- The fur company brigades always had es- ing for them to compass his death. So the cort of armed guard and provision packers. chief dismissed the suggestion to shoot at The free trappers wont alone or in pairs, him as a target. Suddenly, the Blackfoot picketing horses to the saddle overlaid with leader turned to Colter. “Could the white a buffalo robe for a pillow, cooking meals man run fast?” he asked. In a flash, Colter on chip fires, using a slow-burning worm- guessed what was to be his fate. He, the wood bark for matches, and trusting their hunter, was to be hunted. No, he cunningly horses or dog to give the alarm if the bands signaled, he was only a poor runner. of coyotes hovering through the night dusk Bidding his warriors stand still, the chief approached too near. On the high rolling roughly led Colter out three hundred yards. plains, hostiles could be descried at a dis- Then he set his captive free, and the exultant tance, coming over the horizon head and top shriek of the running warriors told what 364 The Story of the Trapper manner of sport this was to be. It was a warriors, to rescue their brave, and gave Col- race for life. ter time to reach the river. The white man shot out with all the power In he plunged, fainting and dizzy, swim- of muscles hard as iron-wood and tense as a ming for an island in mid-current, where bent bow. Fear winged the man running driftwood had formed a sheltered raft. Un- for his life to out-race the winged arrows der this he dived, coming up with his head coming from the shouting warriors three among branches of trees. hundred yards behind. Before him stretched a plain six miles wide, the distance he had All that day the Blackfeet searched the so thoughtlessly paddled between the ram- island for Colter, running from log to log of part walls of the cañon but a few hours ago. the drift; but the close-grown brushwood At the Jefferson was a thick forest growth hid the white man. At night he swam down where a fugitive might escape Somewhere stream like any other hunted animal that along the Jefferson was his own hidden cabin. wants to throw pursuers off the trail, went Across this plain sped Colter, pursued by ashore, and struck across country, seven days’ a band of six hundred shrieking demons. journey, for the Missouri Company’s fort on Not one breath did he waste looking back the Bighorn River. over his shoulder till he was more than half Naked and unarmed, he succeeded in way across the plain, and could tell from the reaching the distant fur post, having sub- fading uproar that he was outdistancing his sisted on roots and berries. hunters. Perhaps it was the last look of de- spair; but it spurred the jaded racer to re- iv. doubled efforts. All the Indians had been Chittenden says that poor Colter’s adven- left to the rear but one who was only a hun- ture only won for him in St. Louis the rep- dred yards behind. utation of a colossal liar. But traditions of There was, then, a racing chance of escape! his escape were current among all hunters Colter let out in a burst of renewed speed and Indian tribes on the Missouri, so that that brought blood gushing over his face, when Bradbury, the English scientist, went while the cactus spines cut his naked feet west with the Astorians in 1811, he sifted like knives. The river was in sight. A mile the matter, accepted it as truth, and preserved more, he would be in the wood! But the the episode for history in a small-type foot Indian behind was gaining at every step. note to his book, published in London in 1817. Another backward look! The savage was not Two other adventures are on record sim- thirty yards away! He had poised his spear ilar to Colter’s; one of Oskononton’s escape to launch it in Colter’s back, when the white by diving under a raft, told in Ross’ “Fur man turned, fagged and beaten, threw up his Hunters;” the other of a poor Indian flee- arms, and stopped! ing up the Ottawa from pursuing Iroquois This is an Indian ruse to arrest the pur- of the Five Nations and diving under the suit of a wild beast. By force of habit, it broken bottom of an old beaver dam, told stopped the Indian, too, and disconcerted him in the original “Jesuit Relations.” so that instead of launching his spear, he And yet, when the Astorians went up the fell flat on his face, breaking the shaft in Missouri a few years later, Coulter could his hand. With a leap, Colter had snatched scarcely resist the impulse to go a fourth up the broken point and pinned the savage time to the wilds. But fascinations stronger through the body to the earth. than the wooings of the wilds had come to That interrupted the foremost of the other his life—he had taken to himself a bride.