Volume I Part 17 (1/2)
”Ho!” says I.
”An American, in the fort, has tried hard to obtain this dress from us; he offered us two barrels of flour, and other things. You know that we have no game, and we are hungry; but if he had offered twelve barrels of flour, we would not have parted with them. (This was true.) But our father, Rainville, has spoken; and we have pleasure in giving them to an English warrior. I have spoken.”
”Ho!” says I; upon which the Indian took his seat with the other; and it was my turn to speak. I was very near beginning, ”Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking;” but I knew that such an acknowledgment would in their estimation, have very much lessened my value as a warrior; for, like the Duke of Wellington, one must be as valuable in the council as in the field, to come up to their notions of excellence. So I rose, and said--
”I receive with great pleasure the dress which you have given me.--I know that you do not like to part with it, and that you have refused the American at the fort, and I therefore value it the more. I shall never look upon it, when I am on the other side of the great waters, without thinking of my friends the Sioux; and I will tell my nation that you gave them to me because I was an English warrior, and because you liked the English.”
”Ho!” grunted the whole conclave, after this was interpreted.
”I am very glad that you do not forget the English, and that you say they kept their word, and that their rifles and blankets were good. I know that the blankets of the Americans are thin and cold. (I did not think it worth while to say that they were all made in England.) We have buried the hatchet now; but should the tomahawk be raised again between the Americans and the English, you must not take part with the Americans.”
”Ho!” said they.
”In the Fur Company's store you will find many things acceptable to you.
I leave Mr Rainville to select for you what you wish; and beg you will receive them in return for the present which you have made me.”
”Ho!” said they; and thus ended my first Indian council.
It is remarkable that the Sioux have no expression to signify, ”I thank you,” although other Indians have. When they receive a present, they always say, _Wash tay_: it is good.
Of all the tribes I believe the Sioux to be the most inimical to the Americans. They have no hesitation in openly declaring so; and it must be acknowledged that it is not without just grounds. During the time that I was at St Peters, a council was held at the Indian agent's. It appears that the American Government, in its paternal care for the Indians, had decided that at any _strike_ taking place between tribes of Indians near to the confines, no war should take place in consequence: that is to say, that should any Indians of one tribe attack or kill any Indians belonging to another, that instead of the tribes going to war, they should apply for and receive redress from the American Government.
Some time back, a party of Chippeways came down to a trader's house, about half a mile from Port Snelling. Being almost hereditary enemies of the Sioux, they were fired at, at night, by some of the young men of the Sioux village close by, and two of the Chippeways were wounded. In conformity with the intimation received, and the law laid down by the American Government, and promulgated by the Indian agent, the Chippeways applied for redress. It was granted--four Sioux were taken and shot.
This summary justice was expected to produce the best effects, and, had it been followed up, it might have prevented bloodshed: but, since the above occurrence, some Chippeways came down, and meeting a party of Sioux, were received kindly into their lodges; they returned this hospitality by treacherously murdering eleven of the Sioux, while they were asleep. This time the Sioux brought forward their complaint. ”You tell us not to go to war; we will not; you shot four of our people for wounding two Chippeways; now do us justice against the Chippeways, who have murdered eleven of our Sioux.” As yet no justice has been done to the Sioux. The fact is, that the Chippeways live a long way off; and there are not sufficient men to garrison the fort, still less to send a party out to capture the Chippeways; and the Sioux are, as may well be supposed, indignant at this partial proceeding.
I was at the council, and heard all the speeches made by the Sioux chiefs on the occasion. They were some of them very eloquent, and occasionally very severe; and the reply of the Indian agent must have rendered the American Government very contemptible in the eyes of the Indians--not that the agent was so much in fault as was the American Government, which, by not taking proper measures to put their promises and agreements into force, had left their officer in such a position.
First, the Indian agent said, that the wounding of the two Chippeways took place close to the fort, and that it was on account of the insult offered to the _American flag_ that it was so promptly punished--a very different explanation, and quite at variance with the principle laid down by the American Government. The Indians replied; and the agent then said, that they had not sufficient troops to defend the fort, and, therefore, could not send out a party; an admission very unwise to make, although strictly true. The Indians again replied; and then the agent said wait a little till we hear from Was.h.i.+ngton, and then, if you have no redress, you are brave men, you have arms in your hands, and your enemies are before you. This was worse than all, for it implied the inability or the indifference of the American Government to do them justice, and told them, after that government had distinctly declared that they should fight no longer, but receive redress from it, that they now might do what the government had forbidden them to do, and that they had no other chance of redress. The result of this council was very unsatisfactory. The Indian chiefs declared that they were ashamed to look their people in the lace, and walked solemnly away.
To make this matter still worse, after I left St Peters, I read in the St Louis Gazette a report of some Chippeways having come down, and that, in consequence of the advice given by the Indian agent, the Sioux had taken the law into their own hands and murdered some of the Chippeways; and that although they had never received redress for the murder of their own people, some of the Sioux were again taken and executed.
The arms of the Sioux are the rifle, tomahawk, and bow; they carry spears more for parade than use. Their bows are not more than three feet long, but their execution with them is surprising. A Sioux, when on horseback chasing the buffalo, will drive his arrow which is about eighteen inches long, with such force that the barb shall appear on the opposite side of the animal. And one of their greatest chiefs, _Wanataw_, has been known to kill two buffaloes with one arrow, it having pa.s.sed through the first of the animals, and mortally wounded the second on the other side of it. I was about two hundred yards from the fort, and asked a Sioux if he could send his arrow into one of the apertures for air, which were near the foundation, and about three inches wide. It appeared more like a thread from where we stood. He took his bow, and apparently with a most careless aim he threw the arrow right into it.
The men are tall and straight, and very finely made, with the exception of their arms, which are too small. The arms of the squaws, who do all the labour, are much more muscular. One day, as I was on the prairie, I witnessed the effect of custom upon these people. A Sioux was coming up without perceiving me; his squaw followed very heavily laden, and to a.s.sist her he had himself a large package on his shoulder. As soon as they perceived me, he dropped his burden, and it was taken up by the squaw and added to what she had already. If a woman wishes to upbraid another, the severest thing she can say is, ”You let your husband carry burthens.”
VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.
Left St Peters. Taking the two varieties in the ma.s.s, the Indians must be acknowledged the most perfect gentlemen in America, particularly in their deportment. It was with regret that I parted with my friends in the fort, my kind host, Mr Sibley, and my n.o.ble-minded warrior Sioux.
I could have remained at St Peters for a year with pleasure, and could only regret that life was so short, and the Mississippi so long.
There is, however, one serious drawback in all America to life in the woods, or life in cities, or every other kind of life; which is the manner, go where you will, in which you are pestered by the mosquitoes.
Strangers are not the only sufferers; those who are born and die in the country are equally tormented, and it is slap, slap, slap, all day and all night long, for these animals bite through everything less thick than a buffalo's skin. As we ascended the river they attacked us on the crown of the head--a very unusual thing,--and raised swellings as large as pigeons' eggs. I must have immolated at least five hundred of them upon my b.u.mp of benevolence. Whatever people may think, I feel that no one can be very imaginative where these animals are so eternally tormenting them. You meditate under the shady boughs of some forest-king (slap knee, slap cheek), and farewell to anything like concentration of thought; you ponder on the sailing moon (clap again, right and left, above, below), always unpleasantly interrupted. It won't do at all: you are teased and phlebotomised out of all poetry and patience.
It is midnight, the darkness is intense, not even a star in the heavens above, and the steamboat appears as if it were gliding through a current of ink, with black ma.s.ses rising just perceptible on either side of it; no sound except the reiterated note of the ”Whip poor Will,” answered by the loud coughing of the high-pressure engine. Who, of those in existence fifty years ago, would have contemplated that these vast and still untenanted solitudes would have had their silence invaded by such an unearthly sound? a sound which ever gives you the idea of vitality.
It is this appearance of breathing which makes the high-pressure engine the nearest approach to creation which was ever attained by the ingenuity of man. It appears to have respiration, and that short, quick respiration occasioned by exertion; its internal operations are performed as correctly and as mechanically as are our own; it is as easily put out of order and rendered useless as we are; and like us, it can only continue its powers of motion by being well supplied with aliment.
Ran up Fever River to Galena, the present emporium of the Mineral Country. There is an unpleasant feeling connected with the name of this river; it is, in fact, one of the American translations. It was originally called Feve, or Bean River, by the French, and this they have construed into Fever. The Mineral district comprehends a tract of country running about one hundred miles North and South, and fifty miles East and West, from the River Wisconsin to about twenty miles south of Galena. It was purchased by the American Government about fifteen years ago, the northern portion from the Winnebagos, and the southern from the Sioux and Fox Indians. The Indians used to work the diggings to a small extent, bringing the lead which they obtained to exchange with the traders. As may be supposed, they raised but little, the whole work of digging and smelting being carried on by the squaws. After the land was surveyed a portion of it was sold, but when the minerals made their appearance the fact was notified by the surveyors to the government, and the remaining portions were withdrawn from the market. A licence was granted to speculators to dig the ore and smelt it, upon condition of their paying to the government a percentage on the mineral obtained.
Those who found a good vein had permission to work it for forty yards square on condition that they carried the ore to a licensed smelter.