University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.

On overtaking the troop, I found it encamping
in a rich bottom of woodland, traversed by a
small stream, running between deep, crumbling
banks. A sharp cracking off of rifles was kept
up for some time in various directions, upon a
numerous flock of turkeys, scampering among
the thickets, or perched upon the trees. We
had not been long at a halt, when a drizzling
rain ushered in the autumnal storm that had
been brewing. Preparations were immediately
made to weather it: our tent was pitched, and
our saddles, saddlebags, packages of coffee,
sugar, salt, and every thing else that could be
damaged by the rain, were gathered under its
shelter. Our men, Beatte, Tonish, and Antoine,
drove stakes with forked ends into the ground,
laid poles across them for rafters, and thus
made a shed or pent-house, covered with bark
and skins, sloping towards the wind, and open
towards the fire. The rangers formed similar

shelters of bark and skins, or of blankets stretched
on poles, supported by forked stakes, with
great fires in front.

These precautions were well-timed. The
rain set in sullenly and steadily, and kept on,
with slight intermissions, for two days. The
brook which flowed peaceably on our arrival,
swelled into a turbid and boiling torrent, and
the forest became little better than a mere
swamp. The men gathered under their shelters
of skins and blankets, or sat cowering round
their fires; while columns of smoke curling up
among the trees, and diffusing themselves in the
air, spread a blue haze through the woodland.
Our poor, way-worn horses, reduced by weary
travel and scanty pasturage, lost all remaining
spirit, and stood, with drooping heads, flagging
ears, and half closed eyes, dozing and steaming
in the rain; while the yellow autumnal leaves,
at every shaking of the breeze, came wavering
down around them.

Notwithstanding the bad weather, however,
our hunters were not idle, but during the intervals
of the rain, sallied forth on horseback to
prowl through the woodland. Every now and
then the sharp report of a distant rifle boded
the death of a deer. Venison in abundance
was brought in. Some busied themselves under
the sheds, flaying and cutting up the carcasses,

or round the fires with spits and camp kettles,
and a rude kind of feasting, or rather gormandizing,
prevailed throughout the camp. The axe
was continually at work, and wearied the forest
with its echoes. Crash! some mighty tree
would come down; in a few minutes its limbs
would be blazing and crackling on the huge
camp fires, with some luckless deer roasting before
it, that had once sported beneath its shade.

The change of weather had taken sharp hold
of our little Frenchman. His meagre frame,
composed of bones and whip-cord, was racked
with rheumatic pains and twinges. He had the
tooth-ache—the ear-ache—his face was tied up
—he had shooting pains in every limb: yet all
seemed but to increase his restless activity, and
he was in an incessant fidget about the fire, roasting
and stewing, and groaning, and scolding,
and swearing.

Our man Beatte returned grim and mortified,
from hunting. He had come upon a bear of
formidable dimensions, and wounded him with
a rifle shot. The bear took to the brook, which
was swollen and rapid. Beatte dashed in after
him and assailed him in the rear with his hunting
knife. At every blow the bear turned furiously
upon him, with a terrific display of white
teeth. Beatte, having a foot hold in the brook,
was enabled to push him off with his rifle, and,

when he turned to swim, would flounder after,
and attempt to hamstring him. The bear, however,
succeeded in scrambling off among the
thickets, and Beatte had to give up the chase.

This adventure, if it produced no game,
brought up at least several anecdotes, round the
evening fire, relative to bear hunting, in which
the grizzly bear figured conspicuously. This powerful
and ferocious animal, is a favourite theme
of hunters' story, both among red and white
men; and his enormous claws are worn round
the neck of an Indian brave, as a trophy more
honourable than a human scalp. He is now
scarcely seen below the upper prairies, and the
skirts of the Rocky Mountains. Other bears
are formidable when wounded and provoked,
but seldom make battle when allowed to escape.
The grizzly bear, alone, of all the animals of our
western wilds, is prone to unprovoked hostility.
His prodigious size and strength, make him a
formidable opponent; and his great tenacity of
life often baffles the skill of the hunter, notwithstanding
repeated shots of the rifle, and wounds
of the hunting knife.

One of the anecdotes related on this occasion,
gave a picture of the accidents and hard shifts,
to which our frontier rovers are inured. A hunter,
while in pursuit of a deer, fell into one of
those deep funnel-shaped pits, formed on the

prairies by the settling of the waters after heavy
rains, and known by the name of sink-holes.
To his great horror, he came in contact, at the
bottom, with a huge grizzly bear. The monster
grappled him; a deadly contest ensued in which
the poor hunter was severely torn, and bitten,
and had a leg and an arm broken, but succeeded
in killing his rugged foe. For several days
he remained at the bottom of the pit, too much
crippled to move, and subsisting on the raw flesh
of the bear, during which time he kept his
wounds open, that they might heal gradually
and effectually. He was at length enabled to
scramble to the top of the pit, and so out upon
the open prairie. With great difficulty he crawled
to a ravine, formed by a stream, then nearly
dry. Here he took a delicious draught of water,
which infused new life into him; then drag
ging himself along from pool to pool, he supported
himself by small fish and frogs.

One day he saw a wolf hunt down and kill a
deer in the neighbouring prairie. He immediately
crawled forth from the ravine, drove off
the wolf, and, lying down beside the carcass of
the deer, remained there until he had made several
hearty meals, by which his strength was
much recruited.

Returning to the ravine, he pursued the course
of the brook, until it grew to be a considerable

stream. Down this he floated, until he came to
where it emptied into the Mississippi. Just at
the mouth of the stream, he found a forked tree,
which he launched with some difficulty, and, getting
astride of it, committed himself to the current
of the mighty river. In this way he floated
along, until he arrived opposite the fort at
Council Bluffs. Fortunately he arrived there in
the day time, otherwise he might have floated
unnoticed, past this solitary post, and perished in
the idle waste of waters. Being descried from
the fort, a canoe was sent to his relief, and he
was brought to shore more dead than alive,
where he soon recovered from his wounds, but
remained maimed for life.

Our man Beatte had come out of his contest
with the bear, very much worsted and discomfited.
His drenching in the brook, together
with the recent change of weather, had brought
on rheumatic pains in his limbs, to which he is
subject. Though ordinarily a fellow of undaunted
spirit, and above all hardship, yet he
now sat down by the fire, gloomy and dejected,
and for once gave way to repining. Though in
the prime of life, and of a robust frame, and apparently
iron constitution, yet, by his own account
he was little better than a mere wreck.
He was, in fact, a living monument of the hardships
of wild frontier life. Baring his left arm,

he showed it warped and contracted by a former
attack of rheumatism; a malady with which the
Indians are often afflicted; for their exposure
to the vicissitudes of the elements, does not produce
that perfect hardihood and insensibility to
the changes of the seasons that many are apt to
imagine. He bore the scars of various maims
and bruises; some received in hunting, some in
Indian warfare. His right arm had been broken
by a fall from his horse; at another time his
steed had fallen with him, and crushed his left
leg.

“I am all broke to pieces and good for nothing;”
said he, “I no care now what happen to
me any more.” “However,” added he, after a
moment's pause, “for all that, it would take a
pretty strong man to put me down, any how.”

I drew from him various particulars concerning
himself, which served to raise him in my estimation.
His residence was on the Neosho, in
an Osage hamlet or neighbourhood, under the superintendence
of a worthy missionary from the
banks of the Hudson, by the name of Requa,
who was endeavouring to instruct the savages in
the art of agriculture, and to make husbandmen
and herdsmen of them. I had visited this agricultural
mission of Requa in the course of my
recent tour along the frontier, and had considered
it more likely to eventuate in solid advantages

to the poor Indians, than any of the mere
praying and preaching missions along the border.

In this neighbourhood, Pierre Beatte had his
little farm, his Indian wife, and his half-breed
children; and aided Mr. Requa in his endeavours
to civilize the habits, and meliorate the
condition of the Osage tribe. Beatte had been
brought up a Catholic, and was inflexible in his
religious faith; he could not pray with Mr.
Requa he said, but he could work with him,
and he evinced a zeal for the good of his savage
relations and neighbours. Indeed, though his
father had been French, and he himself had been
brought up in communion with the whites, he
evidently was more of an Indian in his tastes,
and his heart yearned towards his mother's nation.
When he talked to me of the wrongs and
insults that the poor Indians suffered in their intercourse
with the rough settlers on the frontiers;
when he described the precarious and
degraded state of the Osage tribe, diminished in
numbers, broken in spirit, and almost living on
sufferance in the land where they once figured
so heroically, I could see his veins swell, and
his nostrils distend with indignation; but he
would check the feeling with a strong exertion
of Indian self-command, and, in a manner,
drive it back into his bosom.

He did not hesitate to relate an instance

wherein he had joined his kindred Osages, in
pursuing and avenging themselves on a party of
white men who had committed a flagrant outrage
upon them; and I found, in the encounter
that took place, Beatte had shown himself the
complete Indian.

He had more than once accompanied his
Osage relations in their wars with the Pawnees,
and related a skirmish which took place on the
borders of these very hunting grounds, in which
several Pawnees were killed. We should pass
near the place, he said, in the course of our tour,
and the unburied bones and sculls of the slain
were still to be seen there. The surgeon of
the troop, who was present at our conversation,
pricked up his ears at this intelligence. He was
something of a phrenologist, and offered Beatte
a handsome reward if he would promise him
one of the sculls.

Beatte regarded him for a moment with a
look of stern surprise.

“No!” said he at length, “dat too bad! I
have heart strong enough—I no care kill, but let
the dead alone!”

He added, that once in travelling with a
party of white men, he had slept in the same
tent with a doctor, and found that he had
a Pawnee scull among his baggage: he at
once renounced the doctor's tent, and his fellowship.

“He try to coax me,” said Beatte, “but I
say no, we must part—I no keep such company.”

In the temporary depression of his spirits,
Beatte gave way to those superstitious forebodings
to which Indians are prone. He had sat
for some time, with his cheek upon his hand,
gazing into the fire. I found his thoughts were
wandering back to his humble home, on the
banks of the Neosho; he was sure, he said, that
he should find some one of his family ill, or dead,
on his return: his left eye had twitched and
twinkled for two days past; an omen which
always boded some misfortune of the kind.

Such are the trivial circumstances which, when
magnified into omens, will shake the souls of these
men of iron. The least sign of mystic and sinister
portent, is sufficient to turn a hunter or a warrior
from his course, or to fill his mind with apprehensions
of impending evil. It is this superstitious
propensity, common to the solitary and savage
rovers of the wilderness, that gives such
powerful influence to the prophet and the
dreamer.

The Osages, with whom Beatte had passed
much of his life, retain these superstitious fancies
and rites in much of their original force.
They all believe in the existence of the soul after
its separation from the body, and that it carries

with it all its mortal tastes and habitudes. At
an Osage village in the neighbourhood of Beatte,
one of the chief warriors lost an only child, a
beautiful girl, of a very tender age. All her
playthings were buried with her. Her favourite
little horse, also, was killed, and laid in the grave
beside her, that she might have it to ride in the
land of spirits.

I will here add a little story, which I picked
up in the course of my tour through Beatte's
country, and which illustrates the superstitions
of his Osage kindred. A large party of Osages
had been encamped for some time on the borders
of a fine stream, called the Nickanansa.
Among them was a young hunter, one of the
bravest and most graceful of the tribe, who was
to be married to an Osage girl, who, for her
beauty, was called the Flower of the Prairies.
The young hunter left her for a time among her
relatives in the encampment, and went to St.
Louis, to dispose of the products of his hunting,
and purchase ornaments for his bride. After
an absence of some weeks, he returned to the
banks of the Nickanansa, but the camp was no
longer there: the bare frames of the lodges and
the brands of extinguished fires alone marked
the place. At a distance he beheld a female
seated, as if weeping, by the side of the stream.
It was his affianced bride. He ran to embrace

her, but she turned mournfully away. He dreaded
lest some evil had befallen the camp.

“Where are our people?” cried he.

“They are gone to the banks of the Wagrushka.”

“And what art thou doing here alone?”

“Waiting for thee.”

“Then let us hasten to join our people on the
banks of the Wagrushka.”

He gave her his pack to carry, and walked
ahead, according to Indian custom.

They came to where the smoke of the distant
camp was seen rising from the woody margin
of the stream. The girl seated herself at
the foot of a tree. “It is not proper for us to
return together,” said she; “I will wait here.”

The young hunter proceeded to the camp
alone, and was received by his relations with
gloomy countenances.

“What evil has happened,” said he, “that ye
are all so sad.”

No one replied.

He turned to his favourite sister, and bade her
go forth, seek his bride, and conduct her to the
camp.

“Alas!” cried she, “how shall I seek her?
She died a few days since.”

The relations of the young girl now surrounded
him, weeping and wailing; but he refused

to believe the dismal tidings. “But a few moments
since,” cried he, “I left her alone and in
health; come with me, and I will conduct you
to her.”

He led the way to the tree where she had
seated herself, but she was no longer there, and
his pack lay on the ground. The fatal truth
struck him to the heart: he fell to the ground
dead.

I give this simple little story almost in the
words in which it was related to me, as I lay by
the fire in an evening encampment on the banks
of the haunted stream where it is said to have
happened.