BEYOND THE OLD FRONTIER ADVENTURES OF INDIAN-FIGHTERS, HUNTERS, AND FUR-TRADERS BY GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL AUTHOR OF “TRAILS OF THE PATHFINDERS,” “BLACKFEET INDIAN STORIES,” ETC. ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1913 Copyright, 1913, by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS Published September, 1913...

To-day the vast territory lying between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean is occupied by many millions of people. Fifty years ago, except on the Pacific slope, it had few white inhabitants. Then it was the Far West, beyond the frontier, the Indian country—the unknown. A journey into it was believed to be full of peril. In the minds of the general public it was as far away as Central China is to-day. Beyond the great river which bounded it on the east was a fringe of settlements. Scatte

One hundred years ago little more was known of the Pacific coast than that the land ended at the edge of the wide ocean, already furrowed by the keels of explorers, whalers, and traders. On the north, Alexander McKenzie had reached the salt water, and a dozen years later Lewis and Clark had come to the mouth of the Columbia. A few years after that came the Astor settlement at Astoria, soon—in 1813—to be handed over to the British, to the Northwest Company, which remained in control there until i

After the downfall of the Pacific Fur Company, the occupation of Astoria by the Northwesters, and the change of its name to Fort George, Ross took service with the Northwest Company. It is life as a fur trader with the Northwest Company that he describes in his book The Fur Hunters of the Far West . In point of time, these volumes precede most of the books on the far western fur trade, and they give faithful and interesting accounts of the conditions met with at the time. Ross’s books, in fact,

A little later Ross went north to his own post at the She-Whaps, where he made a good trade. From here he decided to go west to the Pacific coast on foot, believing that the distance was not more than two hundred miles, but before he reached the coast a destructive hurricane passed so close to his party that his guide, altogether discouraged by fatigue and failure, deserted during the night, and Ross was obliged to return. One winter, much alarm was caused among the Indians by the depredations o

Fort Nez Percés was stockaded with an enclosure of pickets of sawn timber some twelve or fifteen feet high with four towers or bastions. The pickets were two and one-half feet broad by six inches thick. Near the top of the stockade was a balustrade four feet high, and a gallery five feet broad extended all around it, while the walls were loopholed. At each angle of the fort was a large reservoir holding two hundred gallons of water, and within the stockade were all the buildings, warehouses, sto

The time was now at hand when the Northwest Company should be merged into the Hudson Bay Company. This consolidation naturally cast a gloom over the retainers of the Northwest Company wherever they were situated. The people who had been employed by the Northwest Company were uncertain where they stood. Those who had been promoted prior to the “deed-poll”—March 26, 1821—were provided for by the Hudson Bay Company, whereas all others were excluded from these benefits. Some of them, however, receiv

Whenever the history of the Southwest shall be written, more than one long and interesting chapter must be devoted to the first permanent settlement on its plains and the first permanent settler there. In the accounts of that wide territory through which the old Santa Fé trail passed, William Bent and Bent’s Old Fort have frequent mention. Who were the Bents and whence did they come? Silas Bent was born in the Colony of Massachusetts in 1768. His father is said to have been one of those who atte

Charles Bent was a close rival to his brother William in the esteem of his fellow traders and the trappers and Indians of the Arkansas. He seems from the first, however, to have taken the most active part in the Santa Fé trade of the company, leaving the Indian trade to the other partners. Among the traders and teamsters of the Santa Fé caravans he was as much liked as William Bent was among the trappers and Indians; indeed, on more than one occasion, he was elected captain of the caravan and co

In its best days Bent’s Fort did a business surpassed in volume by only one company in the United States—John Jacob Astor’s great American Fur Company. As already stated, besides Bent’s Fort the Bent partners had a post on the South Platte at the mouth of St. Vrain’s Fork, and one on the Canadian River, called the Fort Adobe, for trade with tribes of Indians hostile to the Cheyennes—trade which Colonel Bent, of course, wished to hold. St. Vrain’s Fork runs into the South Platte from the north an

There were two or three employees at the fort whose labors never ceased. These were the hunters who were obliged constantly to provide meat for the employees. Though the number of these varied, there might be from sixty to a hundred men employed at the fort, and many of these had families, so that the population was considerable. For a number of years the principal hunter for the fort was Kit Carson, who was often assisted by a Mexican or two, though in times when work was slack many of the trad

Bent’s Old Fort was a stopping-place for all travellers on the Santa Fé trail, and visitors often remained there for weeks at a time, for Colonel Bent kept open house. On holidays, such as Christmas and the Fourth of July, if any number of people were there, they often had balls or dances, in which trappers, travellers, Indians, Indian women, and Mexican women all took part. Employed about the post there was always a Frenchman or two who could play the violin and guitar. On one occasion Frank P.

Some time about 1840 George Frederick Ruxton, a young Englishman, was serving in Canada as an officer in a British regiment. In 1837, when only seventeen years of age, he had left Sandhurst to enlist as a volunteer in the service of Spain, where he served with gallantry and distinction in the civil wars and received from Queen Isabella II the cross of the first class of the Order of San Fernando. The monotony of garrison duty in Canada soon palled on one who had taken part in more stirring scene

One of the most charming books written about the early plains is Lewis H. Garrard’s Wah-To-Yah and the Taos Trail . It is the narrative of a boy, only seventeen years old, who, in 1846, travelled westward from St. Louis with a train led by Mr. St. Vrain, of the firm of Bent, St. Vrain & Co., and after some time spent on the plains and in Cheyenne camps, proceeded westward to New Mexico and there saw and heard of many of the events just antecedent to the Mexican War. It is an interesting

Although Garrard had seen plenty of Indians, and had been present at more than one skirmish, he had not yet taken part in a real Indian fight, though he had long wished to do so. On the way back this desire was gratified, and the boy, with his eighteenth birthday only just behind him, paints in one of the last chapters of his book a spirited picture of the alarms, surprises, narrow escapes, and swift changes of an Indian raid on the moving wagon-trains near the Pawnee Fork of the Arkansas. His t

In the year 1847 John Palliser, an Irishman, sailed from Liverpool by the good ship “Cambria” for an extended trip in America to make acquaintance with “our Trans-Atlantic brethren, and to extend my visit to the regions still inhabited by America’s aboriginal people—now, indeed, driven far westward of their rightful territories and pressed backward into that ocean of prairies extending to the foot of the great Rocky Mountains.” Palliser was a young man of good family, the son of Colonel Wray Pal

Buffalo were plenty and here Palliser had his first run. His views on buffalo-hunting—that extinct sport—are quite worth quoting: “Buffalo-hunting is a noble sport, the animal being swift enough to give a good horse enough to do to close with him; wheeling round with such quickness as to baffle both horse and rider for several turns before there is any certainty of bringing him down. Added to which, there is the danger of being charged by one old bull while in pursuit of another; this, however,

The ice broke up in the Missouri on the 17th of April, and as the rising water forced up the ice, the explosion was like distant thunder. For over thirty hours the river rushed by in a furious torrent, carrying enormous blocks of ice and roaring with a splendid sound as the masses passed along, forcing everything before them. Soon after this the party started for Fort Union. They had very little food; some dried meat, a little bag of biscuits, some coffee, and a quart bottle of molasses to sweet

William T. Hamilton, who died in 1908, was perhaps the very last survivor of that old-time race of trappers whose courage, skill, and endurance led to the discovery, exploration, and settlement of that vast territory which we now call the Empire of the West. He left St. Louis in 1842 with a company of free trappers led by Bill Williams—famous in those days—and for many years thereafter led the wild, adventurous, and independent life of the mountain man. With the coming of the railroads and the s

Beyond the Old Frontier Adventures of Indian Fighters, Hunters, and Fur Traders By GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL A series of personal narratives of hunting, Indian fighting, and exploration in the early pioneer days. Missionary Explorers Among the American Indians By MARY GAY HUMPHREYS The stories of the first and greatest of American missionaries to the American Indians, told largely in their own words. True Tales of Arctic Heroism in the New World By MAJOR-GENERAL A. W. GREELY, U. S. A. The true storie