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COPHHGHT DEPOSIT.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF

ROCKY MOUNTAIN EXPLORATION

WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE

EXPEDITION OF LEWIS AND CLARK

BY

REUBEN GOLD THWAITES

AUTHOR OF DANIEL BOONE, FATHER MARQUETTE, ON THE STORIED OHIO

THE COLONIES, ETC. ; EDITOR OF JESUIT RELATIONS, CHRONICLES

OF BORDER WARFARE, HENNEPIN' S NEW DISCOVERY, ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

NEW YORK

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1904

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LIBRAE o* CONGRESS Two Copies Received

JAN 27 1904

V" Copyright Entry .

•COPTBIGHT, 1904, BY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Published February, 190%

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Wqt expansion

of tl)e ftepubitc

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN EXPLORATION

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Expansion o! the Republic Series

Each volume nmo. Illustrated. $1.25 net Postage, 12 cents additional

The History of the Louisiana Purchase

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The History of Puerto Rico

By R. A. Van Middeldyk. With an introduction, etc., by Prof. Martin G. Brumbaugh.

Steps in the Expansion of Our Territory

By Oscar Phelps Austin, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, Treasury Department.

Rocky Mountain Exploration

By Reuben Gold Thwaites.

The Conquest of the Southwest

By Cyrus Townsend Brady, Author of " Paul Jones" in the Great Commanders Series. In preparation.

The Purcha.se of Alaska.

By Oscar Phelps Austin, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, Treasury Department. In preparation.

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Go JOHN JOHNSTON, LL. D.

FOR TWELVE YEARS PRESIDENT OF THE WIS- CONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, AND SOMETIME PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, THIS LIT- TLE BOOK OF WESTERN ADVENTURE IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY HIS FRIEND

THE AUTHOR

PEEFACE

It is a long stretch of fruitful years, from Balboa's crossing in Darien to the completion of the transcontinental railways in the United States. Adequately to treat of Rocky Moun- tain Exploration as a whole would require a series of bulky volumes. When, therefore, one is asked to tell of the multitude of ad- venturous expeditions incident to the scaling of the continental divide, within the limits of one small book, the task largely resolves itself into the recitation of a bead-roll of principal events.

And yet the story seems worth telling, even with such restrictions. The records of most, if not all, of the enterprises herein re- lated are somewhere accessible in print, and some of them have been given a popular dress. But nowhere else, so far as I know, has the entire range been treated in connected form

vii

Rocky Mountain Exploration

within the covers of a single volume. It is sincerely hoped that this catalogue of events may prove sufficiently readable, to in- spire youth with adequate appreciation of what has been dared and done for them by their predecessors upon the stage. The deeds of Lewis and Clark, Pike, Long, Fremont, and their compeers, will always stir the blood of those who love to read of noble adventure in the public cause. Hardly less thrilling and inspiring are the daring ex- ploits of those eminent Canadian explorers, Verendrye, McKenzie, Thompson, and Fraser. Far more space within this book is de- voted to the experiences of Lewis and Clark than to those of any others in the roll of American explorers. There is appropriate- ness in this. Their expedition was the first to cross the continent under the auspices of the United States Government; in many ways it was, considering both the occasion and the result, the most important of all — other expeditions but continuing and broad- ening the work of the men who broke the path. It has seemed proper, upon the eve of the centennial celebration of their crossing,

Vlll

Preface

to dwell in as much detail as space would allow, upon an event fraught with momen- tous consequence in the Expansion of the Republic.

R. Gr. T.

Madison, Wisconsin, December, 1903.

IX

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Preface vii

I. Exploration op the Northwest Coast . . 1

II. French Explorations from the East . . 22

III. English Explorations from the East . . 37

IV. The Missouri a Path to the Pacific . . 62

V. The Louisiana Purchase 81

VI. Organization of Lewis and Clark's Expedi- tion 92

VII. From River Dubois to the Mandans . . 109

VIII. At Fort Mandan 127

IX. From the Mandans to the Sea . . . 137

X. At Fort Clatsop, and the Return . = . 162

XI. Thompson, Fraser, The Astorians, and Pike 188

XII. The South Pass 209

XIII. The Conquest of California .... 228

XIV. The Continent Spanned by Settlement . . 244 INDEX 253

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACINO PAGE

Gates of the Rocky Mountains . . . Frontispiece

Map drawn by the Indian Ochagach 28

Portrait of Meriwether Lewis . . , . . 96 '

Portrait of William Clark 96

Page of Clark's Journal ....... 110

Page of Lewis's Journal 130

Grant's Castle, on Columbia River 158 '

Portrait of Zebulon M. Pike 196

Portrait of John C. Fremont 232

Portrait of Kit Carson 232

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN EXPLORATION

OHAPTEK I

EXPLORATION OF THE NORTHWEST COAST

Amid the prayers and the plaudits of Spain, Columbus set sail from the little port of Palos, seeking not a new world, but the shores of old India. It was from the Indus that Europe obtained her silks and gold, her spices and her precious stones ; while of the wealth of ancient China and Japan, the " Sun- rise Land," travelers like Marco Polo had brought glowing though vague accounts. When the Spanish admiral furled his sails in the palm-girt harbor of Cat Island, he was convinced that he had reached but an out- lying portion of those coveted lands ; to him, this was indeed the West Indies. Columbus went to his grave probably unconscious of the fact that he had discovered a new continent ; and the belief that America was merely a

1

Rocky Mountain Exploration

projection of Asia was long after persisted in by geographers. It was two and a half cen- turies later (1741) before Vitus Bering, sailing from the Pacific to the Arctic Ocean, proved to the world that America was insulated.

Another time-worn geographical theory re- garding North America — a theory the origin of which is lost in obscurity — did not die until a half century later : that a waterway some- where extended through the heart of the continent between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific, or South Sea, as it was then named. The Spanish conquerors of Mexi- co, while vainly seeking for gold among the pueblos of our Southwest and along the gloomy shores of the Gulf of California, were early searchers for that transcontinental waterway which was to give them a short route from Europe to India. So, too, the ad- venturous French of Canada, while penetra- ting the heart of the continent by means of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, were seeking to pierce the elusive mystery of the South Sea. John Smith, of Virginia, confi- dently thought to find it by ascending the James ; other Englishmen, little knowing the

2

Montezuma's Strait

breadth of the continent, made similar trials by way of the Potomac and the Roanoke. Hendrik Hudson thought at first that the great river of New York might lead him into a passage to the Western Ocean, and still later fancied he had found it in Hudson Strait and Bay. Transcontinental exploration in North America was for nearly three centuries largely stimulated by this search for a mythic water- way. It is therefore necessary that we famil- iarize ourselves with the history of the long and fruitless quest.

In 1513, a hundred and seven years before the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Bal- boa scaled the continental back-bone at Darien and unfurled the flag of Spain by the waters of the Pacific. With wondrous zeal did Spanish explorers beat up and down the western shore of the Gulf of Mexico, seek- ing for an opening through. Cortez had no sooner secured possession of Mexico, after his frightful slaughter of the Aztecs, than he began pushing out to the west and north- west— along the " upper coasts of the South Sea " — in search of the strait which Monte- zuma told him existed. 2 3

Rocky Mountain Exploration

It is unlikely that Montezuma's knowledge of North American geography was much greater than that of his conqueror. But in every age and land aborigines have first as- certained what visiting strangers most sought, whether it be gold or waterways, and assured them that somewhere beyond the neighbor- ing horizon these objects were to be found in plenty. Spanish, French, and English have each in their turn chased American rainbows that existed only in the brains of imagina- tive tribesmen who had little other thought than a childish desire to gratify their guests.

Cortez undertook, at his own charge, several of these expensive exploring expeditions to discover the strait of which Montezuma had spoken, and one of them he conducted in per- son. In 1528 — the year he visited Spain to meet his accusers — we find him despatching Maldonado northward along the Pacific coast for three hundred miles ; and five years later Grijalva and Jimenez were claiming for Spain the southern portion of Lower California. A full hundred years before Jean Nicolet related to the French authorities at their feeble outpost on the rock of Quebec the

4

Seven Cities of Cibola

story of his daring progress into the wilds of the upper Mississippi Valley, and the rumors he had there heard of the great river which flowed into the South Sea, Spanish officials in the halls of Montezuma were receiving the tales of their adventurers, who had pene- trated to strange lands laved by the waters of this selfsame ocean.

It was about the year 1530 when the Span- iards in Mexico first received word, through an itinerant monk, Marcos de Niza, of certain powerful semi-civilized tribes dwelling some six hundred miles north of the capital of the Aztecs. These strange people were said to possess in great store domestic utensils and ornaments made of gold and silver; to be massed in seven large cities composed of houses built with stone ; and to be proficient in many of the arts of the Europeans. The search for "the seven cities of Cibola," as these reputed communities came to be called by the Spaniards, was at once begun.

Guzman, just then at the head of affairs in New Spain, zealously set forth at the head of four hundred Spanish soldiers and a large following of Indians, to search for this mar-

5

Rocky Mountain Exploration

velous country. But the farther north the army marched the more distant became Ci- bola in the report of the natives whom they met on the way ; until at last the invaders be- came involved in the pathless deserts of New Mexico and the intricate ravines of the foot- hills beyond. The soldiers grew mutinous, and Guzman returned crestfallen to Mexico.

In April, 1528, three hundred enthusiastic young nobles and gentlemen from Spain landed at Tampa Bay, under the leadership of Narvaez, whom Cortez had supplanted in the conquest of Mexico. Narvaez had been given a commission to hold Florida, with its supposed wealth of mines and precious stones, and to become its governor. Led by the cus- tomary fables of the natives, who told only such tales as they supposed their Spanish tor- mentors wished most to hear, the brilliant company wandered hither and thither through the vast swamps and forests, wasted by fatigue, famine, disease, and frequent assaults of savages. At last, after many distressing adventures, but four men were left — Cabeza de Vaca, treasurer of the expedition, and three others. For eight long years did these

6

The Age of Romance

bruised and ragged Spaniards wearily roam across the region now divided into Texas, Indian Territory, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona — through tangled forests, across broad rivers, morasses, and desert stretches beset by wild beasts and men ; but ever spurred on by vague reports of a colony of their countrymen to the southwest. At last (May, 1536) the miserable wanderers, first to make the transcontinental trip in northern latitudes, reached the Gulf of California, where they met some of their fellow country- men, who bore them in triumph to the City of Mexico as the guests of the province.

In that golden age of romance travelers were expected to gild their tales, and in this respect seldom failed to meet the popular de- mand. The Spanish conquistadores, in par- ticular, lived in an atmosphere of fancy. They looked at American savages and their ways through Spanish spectacles ; and know- ing nothing of the modern science of ethnol- ogy, quite misunderstood the import of what they saw. Beset by the national vice of flowery embellishment, they were also par- donably ignorant of savage life and had an

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Rocky Mountain Exploration

indiscriminating thirst for the marvelous. Thus we see plainly how the Cibola myth arose and grew ; and why most official Span- ish reports of the conquest of the Aztecs were so distorted by false conceptions of the conquered people as in some particulars to be of slight value as material for history. It was, then, small wonder that Cabeza de Vaca and his fellow adventurers, in the midst of the hero worship of which they were now re- cipients, should claim themselves to have seen the mysterious seven cities and to have en- larged upon the previous stories.

Coronado, governor of the northern prov- ince of New Galicia, was accordingly sent to conquer this wonderful country, which the adventurers had seen but Guzman had failed to find. In 1540, the year when Cortez again returned to meet ungrateful neglect at the hands of the Spanish court, Coronado set out with a well-equipped following of three hun- dred whites and eight hundred Indians. The Cibola cities were found to be but mud pueb- los in Arizona and New Mexico, with the as- pect of which we are to-day familiar ; while the mild-tempered inhabitants, destitute of

8

Coronado's Expedition

wealth, peacefully practising their crude in- dustries and tilling their irrigated fields, were foemen hardly worthy of Castilian steel.

Disappointed, but still hoping to find the country of gold, Coronado's gallant little army, frequently thinned by death and deser- tion, for three years beat up and down the southwestern wilderness : now thirsting in the deserts, now penned up in gloomy canons, now crawling over pathless mountains, suffer- ing the horrors of starvation and of despair, but following this will-o'-the-wisp with a mel- ancholy perseverance seldom seen in man save when searching for some mysterious treasure. Coronado apparently twice crossed the State of Kansas. "Through mighty plains and sandy heaths," says the chronicler of the ex- pedition, " smooth and wearisome and bare of wood. . . . All that way the plains are as full of crookback oxen [buffaloes] as the mountain Serena in Spain is of sheep. . . . They were a great succor for the hunger and want of bread which our people stood in. One day it rained in that plain a great shower of hail as big as oranges, which caused many tears, weaknesses, and vows." The wanderer

9

Rocky Mountain Exploration

ventured as far as the Missouri, and would have gone still farther eastward but for his inability to cross the swollen river. Co-oper- ating parties explored the upper valleys of the Rio Grande and Gila, ascended the Colo- rado for two hundred and forty miles above its mouth, and visited the Grand Canon of the same river. Coronado at last returned, satisfied that he had been victimized by the idle tales of travelers. He was rewarded with contumely, and lost his place as govern- or of New Galicia ; but his romantic march stands in history as one of the most remark- able exploring expeditions of modern times.

Meanwhile, explorers did not forget the sup- posed transcontinental waterway — the " Strait of Anian," as some European geographers now called it; the "Northwest Passage," as it was generally styled by the English. The latter were not long in exploring the in- lets of the Atlantic coast south of the St. Lawrence, and in consequence relegating to the extreme north the eastern end of the mythic strait. The Spanish on their part ascended but slowly along the Pacific coast, their successive maps locating the strait

10

Spanish Coast Voyages

at varying distances northward of the latest exploration ; although there were not lacking those who claimed actually to have sailed upon it, their fabrications gaining wide popu- lar acceptance. We have seen that in 1533 they claimed Lower California. Ten years later, one of Cabrillo's ships reached Cape Men- docino ; but it was long before this record was broken — indeed, the well-equipped expedi- tion of Vizcaino, which came to anchor in Monterey Bay in 1602-03, was little more than a repetition of Cabrillo's, and Oregon was still practically an undiscovered country. In fact, now that India was found to be so far away, and large Spanish interests had be- come established in the Philippines and else- where in the South Seas, concern in the American north quickly waned ; save that it was deemed important to find a port of refuge on the American coast, in the in- terest of the Manila traders, which was in part the occasion of Vizcaino's voyage. As regarded the much-sought-for strait, it came to be recognized that a short route from Europe to India through the American con- tinent might well prove a positive disad-

11

Rocky Mountain Exploration

vantage to Spain, by making it more con- venient for rivals to reach her markets and prey upon her commerce ; although many argued that in that event it would be well for Spain herself to discover the strait in order to close it to others. Now that Eng- lish piratical cruisers, officered by Drake (1579) and Cavendish (1587), had rounded Cape Horn and enriched themselves with the spoils of her galleons, Spain's plight might have been serious indeed had the Pacific been also accessible through Hudson Bay. As it was, a hundred and seventy years elapsed after Vizcaino's enterprise, with practically nothing discovered by Spanish sailors north of the Gulf of California.

During this long period of inaction in maritime discovery, New Spain exhibited a certain degree of enterprise within the in- terior. In 1582, some forty years after Coro- nado's march, two Franciscan friars ascended the valley of the Rio Grande, and went down the valley of the Gila, making a transcon- tinental tour, and securing a temporary re- newal . of interest in the pueblos. Sixteen years later, near the close of the sixteenth

12

Spanish Missions

century, Juan de Onate invaded what is now New Mexico, and Santa Fe was established as the seat of Spanish power in the north. In 1604-05 Onate made extensive explorations among the Zuni and Moqui towns, and de- scended the Colorado to the sea ; while about the same time several entradas were planted among the Texan tribes far to the east. By 1630 the Roman Catholics had fifty missions in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas, admin- istering religious instruction to ninety pueblos. This was the high-water mark of Spanish power in our Southwest. In 1680 the na- tives, rendered desperate by the harsh rule of their military taskmasters, drove them from the land of Cibola ; but by the close of the century the Spaniards were again in posses- sion.

In 1697-1702 the Jesuits Kino and Sal- vatierra, worthily imitating the deeds of their French brethren in Canada, founded missions along the Gila and Colorado Rivers — connect- ing links between New Mexico and the western coast. The Spaniards moved more slowly than the French, and it was nearly a century after Kino's notable expedition be-

13

Rocky Mountain Exploration

fore an attempt was made to extend Indian missions into Upper or Alta California. But they were then pushed vigorously by the Franciscans, headed by Father Junipero Serra, at favorable points along the shore — San Diego in 1769, Monterey the following year, San Francisco in 1776, until by the end of the century there were eighteen missions, with forty priests, and 13,500 Indians living at the convert villages.

It has been the fashion to charge the Span- ish fathers with having practically enslaved their dusky neophytes, in order to enrich themselves from their labor. This conclu- sion is not warranted by the facts. Like the French Jesuits in Canada, the Spanish mis- sionaries soon found it impracticable to suc- ceed in the work of religious training and oversight so long as their parishioners were semi-nomads. Villages or compounds were therefore formed in New Spain as in New France, wherein it was thought the converts might become accustomed to communal life, and by continuous though moderate labor also secure freedom from the taunts and tempta- tions of the unconverted. While the Spanish

14

Missionary Methods

army was undoubtedly cruel to the natives, the laws of both Church and State were models of benevolence toward these de- pendent people. The sanitation in the con- vert villages was inadequate, as it also was in the towns of Spain, and the death-rate was excessive ; the Indians chafed under sustained labor in the communal fields ; they sometimes rebelled against the modest tribute required of them to meet the common expenses ; and the minute rules and observances of the Church, with corporal punishment meted out at the sanctuary door to all offenders, were not always to their liking. But these condi- tions were such as Spaniards lived under at home in that period when modern science was unknown, when superstition prevailed, and the Church ruled with the discipline of a stern parent. The Indian, however, was less prepared for this sort of thing than the Euro- pean. We may now properly adjudge these missionary methods as in some particulars inapt, but they were born of the best Spanish thought of their day, and were intended to be philanthropic. That a mere handful of priests could for so long a period firmly hold

15

Rocky Mountain Exploration

in hand and to an appreciable degree soften the fierce temper of so large a population of sturdy savages, is an evidence that their rule was not altogether that of the taskmaster.

In 1773, alarmed by the reports of Russian coast explorations in the far north, Spain sent out Juan Perez, who, doubtless first of white men, examined the shore as far up as latitude 55°. In 1774-75, Heceta, Perez, and Cuadra explored the whole extent of the Northwest Coast from 42° to about 58° — the latter near the modern Sitka. On July 17th of the latter year Heceta's ship was buffeted by the strong cross-currents of the bay which forms the mouth of the Columbia ; but no landing was made, and the existence of the river was only surmised. Meanwhile, exploration of the interior was not wholly neglected by the Spaniards, for in 1776-77 Fathers Dominguez and Escalante journeyed from New Mexico to Utah Lake, in the Great Basin, which Father Font also visited in 1777.

Captain James Cook, the famous English navigator, was, in 1778, on his third and final voyage, searching the coast to the north of Vizcaino's discoveries for the Northwest

16

Perouse's Voyage

Passage, and in the course of his voyage ex- plored between latitude 43° and 50°. The following year, Cook's discoveries having be- come widely known, Heceta and Cuadra con- ducted extensive explorations as far up as Alaska, and Spain now regarded the entire Northwest Coast as her own ; indeed, further voyages of discovery were the following year forbidden by the king, although within a few years the order was abrogated.

In 1786, a famous French navigator and scientist, Count de la Perouse, visited these shores and gave to the world its first defi- nite knowledge of the California missions. Within the next three years several English fur-trading vessels were operating along the coast, but added nothing to the record of discoveries. Two and three vears later there were new Spanish expeditions to watch the Russians, who were contemplating establish- ments in the north, also the adventurous English, whose movements were alike sus- picious; for while ostensibly only engaged in carrying American furs to China, where they were bartered for teas, silks, spices, and other Oriental goods, the British captains

17

Rocky Mountain Exploration

were suspected of entertaining designs of permanent settlement on the American shore. Irritation over the presence of small English settlements at Nootka Sound occasioned a diplomatic flurry between the two nations. In 1789 Spanish naval officers seized at Nootka two English trading vessels and their crews, alleging trespass. After a long and spirited controversy, which led almost to war, Spain in 1795 agreed to abandon Ebotka and substantially all of the shore lying north of the Columbia ; thus enabling English and American fur-traders to obtain a firm hold upon the Northwest Coast.1

1 Nootka Sound is on the west coast of Vancouver Island, now Canadian territory. In August, 1903, upon the shore of Friendly Cove, the Washington University State Historical So- ciety erected " a fine monument of native granite " bearing this inscription : " Vancouver and Quadra met here in August, 1792, under the treaty between Spain and Great Britain of October, 1790. Erected by the Washington University State Historical Society, August, 1903." The address of presentation was made by Prof. Edmond S. Meany, of Washington University; that of acceptance by Sir Henri Joly de Lotbiniere, Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia. A picture of the monument appears in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for August 30, 1903. During his visit Professor Meany exhumed numerous " flat Spanish bricks " used in the foundations of the old Spanish fort. For a half cen- tury after the meeting the island bore the name, " Quadra and Vancouver's Island."

18

American Coast Traders

American fur- trading vessels, chiefly from New England, appeared upon the scene within the year following the treaty with England under which the United States was recog- nized as a nation. Like the English, they sought to secure furs from the Pacific Coast Indians and trade them in China and India for goods salable in the Atlantic towns. The leaders in this venture were a company of Boston merchants who had read the reports of Cook's voyages. In 1788 they sent out the Columbia and Lady Washington, small vessels with cargoes of blankets, gaily col. ored cloths, beads, hatchets, and other ar- ticles commonly used in traffic with the abo- rigines ; and thereafter New England naviga- tors were visitors frequently seen upon the shores of what are now California, Oregon, and Washington.

Upon the eleventh of May, 1792, Captain Robert Gray, commanding the Columbia, entered the mouth of the great river to which he gave the name of his vessel, a stream des- tined to play a conspicuous part in the roman- tic story of Rocky Mountain exploration. In this same year some thirty vessels visited the 3 19

Rocky Mountain Exploration

Northwest Coast — French, Portuguese, Eng- lish, and American — most of them engaged in trafficking for furs with the natives, others upon errands either of diplomacy or explora- tion. Most prominent of the English captains was George Vancouver, probably the best equipped navigator who had yet visited the region. His surveys and reports did much to open the way to subsequent English claims in this quarter.

Owing to the fact that the East India Com- pany enjoyed practically a monopoly of Eng- lish trade upon the Pacific, especially that with China and India, nearly all the vessels of independent English traders had by the close of the century abandoned the North- west Coast. Thus the Americans were for nearly twenty years left almost alone in this important trade, an opportunity not neglected by our adventurous marines. Leaving some New England port with a diversified store of "Yankee notions" for bartering with Poly- nesians and Indians, a skipper would stop en route at the West Indies and the South Sea islands. There he would pick up molasses, sugar, shells, cocoanuts, and other articles

20

An Important Factor

suitable for traffic, with them proceeding to the Northwest Coast, perhaps making Nootka his chief port, where he quickly acquired a stock of furs from the natives. Running down with his peltries to the Sandwich Islands at the close of the season, he would leave them to be dressed on land by the greater part of his ship's company, engage a fresh crew of islanders, and return to Nootka for another cargo of furs. Adding enough san- dalwood at Hawaii to make a full cargo, he would now sail for China, to exchange his holdings for teas, silks, and Oriental cloths, with which he would return to the Atlantic coast after a profitable absence of three or four years.

It will be seen in the course of this narra- tive that the desire to cultivate the fur-trade was, under the American regime, an important factor in Rocky Mountain exploration.

21

CHAPTEE II

FRENCH EXPLORATIONS FROM THE EAST

In common with the English colonists upon the Atlantic slope, the men of New France had no conception of the immense breadth of the North American continent. When, prob- ably in 1634, Champlain's agent, Jean Nicolet, penetrated to the far-away wilds of Wiscon- sin, he hoped to meet Chinamen upon the shores of Green Bay. Before landing at the principal Indian village there, he robed himself in a gorgeous damask gown decorated with gaily colored birds and flowers, a ceremonial garment with which he had taken care to pro- vide himself at Quebec, expecting to meet mandarins similarly attired. In the name La Chine, as applied to the settlement at the great rapids of the St. Lawrence just above Montreal, we have a memorial of the hope entertained by La Salle that the road to

22

Width of the Continent

China lay in this direction. These incidents amuse us now. But we have seen that it was somewhat over a century after Nicolet's visit before Bering established the fact that Amer- ica was insulated and not a part of Asia ; and still another half century of spasmodic ex- ploration was required before the facts rela- tive to the width of the continent were at last known.

Although the hope that Asiatics might be found in the Mississippi Valley does not appear to have been long entertained, the old theory of a short-cut transcontinental water- way was held by the French throughout their occupancy of North America. Jolliet, Mar- quette, and La Salle, as had many explorers before them, thought at first that the Missis- sippi itself might pour into the South Sea. When they found this untrue, it was there- after the dream of adventurers to discover some stream flowing westerly to the Pacific, which might prove a convenient waterway for the portable craft then used by the explorers of the interior.

For a long period the French were satisfied not to penetrate far beyond Lakes Superior

23

Rocky Mountain Exploration

and Nepigon, a region wherein Du Luth was for many years the principal trader. The In- dians were able to draw fairly correct maps either on birch-bark or with a stick upon the sand, and were fond of dilating upon the size and length of the lakes and rivers by which they had journeyed. Thus, from them, the traders, settled in their little waterside forts of logs, became in a general way well ac- quainted with the interior ; but they did not at first care to explore it to any great depth, for the natives, eager for trade, brought in furs from far-distant regions.

With the revival of European interest in the Northwest Passage, some of the officials of New France became imbued with an ambi- tion to foster the search, and here and there among the hardy Western forest traders were men who expressed eagerness to undertake it. The court at Paris, however, looked askance at any scheme to divert public money to Can- ada. If the colony across seas were not to be a source of revenue, it at least must not, if possible to prevent, prove a burden to the motherland. When in 1719 Vaudreuil, then Governor of New France, was authorized

24

Fur-Trading Explorers

to establish a line of posts through the coun- try to the west of Lake Superior, it was ex- pressly stipulated by the court that they must be planted " without any expense to the king — as the person establishing them would be remunerated by the trade." Thus Canadian explorers under the French regime were, as a rule, expected to turn fur-traders en route, and support themselves from the country through which they passed, being armed with the often doubtful privilege of throttling the trade of competitors in the field. Under such conditions it is small wonder that some ex- ploring parties soon developed into mere tyran- nous trade monopolies, operating through wide districts, and maintaining their grasp by cor- rupt manipulation of court favorites; while others, honestly bent on discovery, were in the long absences of their leaders from home ruined by enemies at court and in trade, and came to sad ends.

In 1720 the Jesuit historian and traveler Father Charlevoix was sent to New France on a tour of observation, to inform the Coun- cil of the Marine at Paris relative to a suit- able route to the Pacific. He made two sug-

25

Rocky Mountain Exploration

gestions : either to send an expedition up the Missouri to its source, and then explore to the westward, exactly what Jefferson planned in the two closing decades of the century, or to establish a line of fur-trade posts among the Sioux, and thus gradually creep into and across the interior. The second of these prop- ositions, which he reported to be the less ex- pensive and perhaps more certain, was chosen by the French authorities.

It was, nevertheless, several years before the resolution was carried into effect. Fort Beauharnois, a stockaded trading station, was built (1727) upon the Minnesota shore of Lake Pepin, on the upper Mississippi, with Bene Boucher de la Perriere in charge, and the Jesuits Guignas and De Gonnor to look after the missionary field ; for in New France the service of the Church went hand in hand with that of the king. A fresh uprising of the Foxes in Wisconsin — they gave the French no end of trouble in those days — caused the abandonment of the post, where little but discouragement had been heard con- cerning the Western Sea.

Soon after De Gonnor's return to Quebec,

26

Verendrye's Career

there arrived at the little capital of New France one the remainder of whose life was to be spent in searching for the Pacific Ocean from the east — Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de la Verendrye. Son of the governor of the colony of Three Rivers, on the St. Lawrence, Verendrye had had early experience as a fur- trader. Upon the opening of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13) he went to France and obtained a lieutenant's commis- sion in the royal army. Left for dead on the bloody field of Malplaquet, where he was wounded by both shots and saber cuts, he re- covered, and returning to Canada re-entered the woods as a trader, a pursuit then enlisting the services of the most daring spirits in New France.

Obtaining the command of the French out- post on Lake Nepigon, and there also con- ducting a fur-trade on his own behalf, Ve- rendrye had opportunity for meeting Indians representing many widely differing tribes, scattered throughout a vast wilderness; for this was the headquarters of the extensive trade which was conducted in opposition to that of the great English company on Hudson Bay.

27

Rocky Mountain Exploration

From these Indians he heard many strange tales of adventure and geography. One chief, in particular, told him of a certain river flow- ing westward out of a great lake which the narrator had himself descended until he came to a tide which so terrified him that he turned back ; also of a salt lake with many villages upon it. Warming with his story, Ochagach drew on birch-bark a rude map of the route to these regions, and set Veren- drye's heart afire with a yearning to discover the long-sought sea.

Acting upon the impulse of this desire, he descended to Quebec in his birch canoe — a long and dangerous journey, but one which these Western traders undertook almost yearly, in order to keep in touch with the Government and the fur market. He there laid before the governor, Beauharnois, this Indian map and his scheme for reaching the Pacific by way of the network of northern lakes and rivers — chiefly Pigeon River, Lake of the Woods, Rainy Lake and River, Lake Winnipeg, and the Assiniboin. De Gonnor, being convinced that the route thither was not through the Sioux country, indorsed his

28

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Ochagach's Waterway

friend's theory as at least probable. The chief engineer of New France, Chaussegros de Lery, an official of high repute, also thought well of Verendrye's belief that by this path he could find the ocean within five hundred leagues from Lake Superior.

Having won the powerful backing of these officers, the adventurous commandant asked the king for a military force of a hundred men, with canoes, arms, and provisions ; but, as usual, the ministry would give nothing further than a parchment with a great seal, granting him a monopoly of the fur-trade north and west of Lake Superior, upon the supposed profits of which he was to reim- burse himself. Possessing but small capital, he was now chiefly dependent on what credit he could obtain on the strength of his mo- nopoly. Quebec merchants appear to have had some doubts of the cash value of trade privileges, and granted goods and equipment to the expedition only on terms highly dis- advantageous to Verendrye. With these, however, he set forth upon his quest (June 8, 1731) in good heart, accompanied by his three sons and his nephew La Jemeraye. At

29

Rocky Mountain Exploration

Mackinac the Jesuit Father Charles Michel Mesaiger joined the expedition, and at the close of the season Verendrye built his first fort, St. Pierre, three miles above the falls of Eainy River. The earthwork which sup- ported the palisade of this establishment is still to be seen.

The following year the explorers built their second fort, St. Charles, upon the south- west shore of the Lake of the Woods, where they hoped to reap profits from the trade of the Sioux, who visited this region in consid- erable numbers for fishing and intertribal barter. A year later the expedition reached Lake Winnipeg. By this time Verendrye's finances were in sad condition. The ex- penses of his enterprise, in which the cost of maintaining the posts was a large item, had so far outweighed the receipts of the uncertain fur-trade that he had lost the then large sum of 43,000 livres. La Jemeraye returned to Quebec to report the situation to the govern- or, who represented to the king that the ex- pedition must stop if unaided. As usual, the court gave an unfavorable reply, merely reiter- ating its proffer of the fur-trade monopoly.

30