44The fact of this attack on the Sam Gaty has been questioned by some; but there would seem to be no doubt of its truth in all essential details.

45Brother of Susan B. Anthony, and at the present date editor of the Leavenworth Times.

46This was the opinion naturally held by Southern sympathizers in Missouri. The unbending will of this stern and ardent patriot would overbear and crush without compunction anyone who had even a taint of disloyalty about him. Though La Barge had taken a stand which was quite as honorable, and more self-sacrificing than that of Lyon, still the latter could not forget that the Captain’s environment and training had made him more sympathetic with the Southern cause than a Northerner could possibly be. Lyon’s temperament, moreover, aggravated the severity of his patriotism. He was not popular with his associates in the old army on account of his overbearing disposition.

47Fisk repeated the expedition several times. It virtually amounted to emigration at government expense. The military authorities did not think much of either Fisk or his scheme, and officially denounced both. Thus General Sully, September 9, 1864: “Why will the government continue to act so foolishly, sending out emigrant trains at great expense? Do they know that most of the men that go are persons running away from the draft?”

48In 1866 the Deer Lodge, which left Benton about May 20, met the following boats on her way down: St. John and Cora at Fort Benton; Waverly at Eagle Creek; Mollie Dozier and W. J. Lewis at Fort Galpin; Marcella at Fort Charles; Big Horn, above Big Muddy; Only Chance 30 miles below Union; Favorite and Ontario 70 miles below; Tacony and Iron City 130 miles below; Amelia Poe and Walter B. Dance near White Earth River; Jennie Brown, Peter Balen, and Gold Finch in Big Bend; Miner below Fort Clark; Luella above Fort Rice; Helena at Fort Rice; Tom Stevens 40 miles below Fort Rice; Huntsville at Grand River; Lillie Martin at Island below Grand River; Sunset 20 miles below Swan Lake Bend; Agnes at Devil’s Island; Ned Tracy and Mary McDonald above Big Cheyenne; Marion 30 miles above Fort Sully; Jennie Lewis above Pierre; Gallatin below Fort Sully; Rubicon at Cadet Island; Lexington above Great Bend; Montana below Crow Creek; and Ben Johnson at Bon Homme Island.

49The names were N.W. Burroughs, George Friend, Franklin Friend, Abraham Low, James H. Lyons, Harry Martin, Frank Angevine, George Allen, James Andrews, and James Perie (colored).

50This account is taken from the published narrative of Mr. Hubbell in the St. Paul Pioneer Press of December 11, 1898. Mr. Hubbell has published several most interesting and valuable accounts in the St. Paul papers of his early experiences as a Missouri River trader.

51“The Ida Stockdale reached Fort Benton June 29, 1867. She could not have returned to Trover Point before the 1st or 2d of July. The Sunset picked up the boy July 11. The time that he was alleged to have been lost could therefore not have been far wrong, and the distance he traveled is known with accuracy.”

52“The Spread Eagle is just along side of us and we are having a race, probably the first ever run on the upper Missouri. She passed us and then we passed her, when she ran into us, breaking our guard and doing some other damage. There was a good deal of angry talk.”—Harkness’ Journal. (This journal of the voyage of 1862 and of Harkness’ trip to the mines and his return to St. Louis is published in the Proceedings of the Montana Historical Society, vol. ii.)

53See page 122.

54What is now the town of Deer Lodge, Mont., was first named La Barge City, and was so known for about two years. The name was given by two friends of Captain La Barge, John S. Pemberton of St. Louis and Leon Quesnelle, a descendant of the Quesnelle who seems to have been the first permanent settler at Bellevue, Neb. Quesnelle had been in the Deer Lodge Valley for some time, and had a ranch near where the town was afterward built. Two years later the town site was organized by James Stuart and others, surveyed and laid out by W.W. De Lacy, and rechristened Deer Lodge. The original town site plot of La Barge City is in possession of the Montana Historical Society.

55Letter from S.N. Latta, agent, to W.P. Dole, Commissioner Indian Affairs, dated Yankton, Dak., August 27, 1863. See report Com. Ind. Affs., 1863, p. 170.

56The two Indian agents profess in their reports not to have anticipated any trouble. Latta would hardly have ordered the yawl out if he had suspected what actually occurred. Reed, the Blackfoot agent, says that they “continued to hollow to us for some time, and showed great signs of friendship, and wanted us to come ashore.” The sum of it all is that the two men who were officially in charge of the trip entirely failed to understand the gravity of the situation, which was thoroughly appreciated by those, like Culbertson and La Barge, who had had long experience with the Indians. The sending of the yawl and the consequences which followed must ever remain charged to the account of Samuel N. Latta, Indian Agent.

57The account of what happened from the time the yawl left the Robert Campbell until it returned was given to the author in an interview with Andy Stinger, the steersman and rescuer of the party.

58

59There are numerous authorities upon the affair of the Tobacco Garden. The reports of both the agents Latta and Reed describe it. Henry A. Boller, in his “Among the Indians,” describes it at length, as does Larpenteur in his “Forty Years a Fur Trader.” The testimony of Captain La Barge and Andy Stinger, who in each other’s presence related the matter to the author, is here produced for the first time.

In his edition of “Larpenteur’s Journal,” referred to above, p. 352, Dr. Elliott Coues makes the following statement: “I have offered in writing to Captain Joseph La Barge to print in this connection any statement concerning the affair that he might wish to make and would be willing to sign; but up to date of going to press have not heard from him.”

The inference from this is that Captain La Barge could not controvert Larpenteur’s statements, or he would have done so when the opportunity was given. This offer was sent to Captain La Barge through the author of the present work. The old gentleman retained in his old age the same spirit of haughty disdain for willful attempts to injure the reputation of others that characterized his whole life, and he indignantly refused to notice the matter. “Time will set this right,” he said. The truth is that Charles Larpenteur, although very long in the Indian country, was never a man of high standing there, and proved a failure in whatever he undertook. Like all such men, he nursed the delusion that the world was in league against him, and he took advantage of the opportunity offered by the preparation of his memoirs to even matters up. Nearly everyone with whom he deals comes in for a round measure of abuse, until one is led to believe that Larpenteur was a saint, solitary and forlorn, wandering disconsolate among the children of Beelzebub. Larpenteur was probably an honest man in his business relations, but never an able man, and his attempts to account for the consequences of his own deficiencies by attributing them to the rascality of others, does not add to the value of his memoirs as historical material. Bad as the early population of that country was, it was not entirely composed of scoundrels.

60This was the same man who served as clerk to Captain Bonneville in the latter’s celebrated expeditions. He died March 15, 1864.

61Following are the official reports of Agents Latta and Reed upon this event:

Report of Judge Latta, p. 164, Report Com. Ind. Aff., 1863. “The Crow goods, as I have informed you [Commissioner Dole], were stored at Fort Union by the steamer Shreveport. When the Robert Campbell reached the mouth of the Yellowstone, she could get no further, there being only two feet of water in the channel above, it requiring five trips of the steamer Shreveport to convey the Campbell’s freight to Fort Union some six miles above. We found it utterly impossible to proceed any further. The Shreveport, though a light-draught boat, could not have passed up empty.”

Report of Dr. Reed, p. 172, Report Com. Ind. Aff., 1863. “We got to the mouth of the Yellowstone River after the most untiring efforts, especially on the part of Captain La Barge, who seemed to know the only channel in the Missouri, about the 7th of July. After passing the mouth of the Yellowstone, it was found that the Missouri River was extremely low; indeed lower than ever known at this season of the year. It was found that even the Shreveport, a light-draught and small boat, could scarcely get up to Fort Union with any load at all, and as the river has been constantly falling, it was ascertained that there was no hope at all of getting to Milk River, the next fort above. Chouteau, with a light-draught boat and not a large load, had just left his goods on the bank, not being able to get up to Milk River fort. Under these circumstances, especially as there were no teams at Fort Union and the Indians (Sioux) were all through the country, so that no company could go either with a mackinaw boat or by land, with any safety, except under escort, it was thought not only advisable but the only course, to stow away the goods, and leave them until next spring at Fort Union. The man in charge of the fort said there was an abundance of room, and there would be no danger unless the Indians should attack the fort; then the goods would have to share the lot of all the other goods and the people of the fort. The goods are all safely stored and every prospect of everything being right. Of course Captain La Barge is responsible, as the Blackfeet goods are not to their destination nor the bills of lading receipted; though I must say I never saw men more anxious to get up, nor do more night and day, to get along; and could the goods have been at St. Louis by the 10th or 12th of April, they no doubt would have all been distributed by this time.”

62

63Galpin’s mission to Washington was to secure reimbursement of a ransom which he had paid for the liberation of a white female prisoner, who had been captured the year before at the time of the Minnesota massacres. Galpin had been sent by La Barge from Fort La Framboise to rescue the prisoner, and had been compelled to pay fifteen hundred dollars. Captain La Barge took her down in his boat to Sioux City, whence she was sent home. He had Galpin go with him to Washington to assist in presenting the matter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The ransom money was reimbursed in full.

64“What consideration will induce you to give up war and remain at peace?” is the hypothetical question of a certain Indian agent to a tribe of the Sioux in 1867. And the hypothetical answer, based upon his many talks with them, was this: “Stop the white man from traveling across our lands; give us the country which is ours by right of conquest and inheritance, to live in and enjoy unmolested by his encroachments, and we will be at peace with all the world.”

65Gruff old General Harney had his own views upon this treaty business. When Commissioner Cummings came down the river from the council with the Blackfeet, and, having lost his mules at Fort Pierre, besought the General to give him some others to complete his journey with, the General replied: “Yes, Colonel, I have plenty of mules, but you can’t have one; and I only regret that when the Indians got your mules they didn’t get your scalp also. Here all summer I and my men have suffered and boiled to chastise these wretches, while you have been patching up another of your sham treaties to be broken to-morrow and give us more work.”

“It is beyond question that such a system of treaty-making is, of all others, the most unpolitic, whether negotiated with savage or civilized peoples, and ... aside from its effect in encouraging and stimulating breaches of treaties of peace, is always attended with fraud upon the government and upon the Indian.”—General John Pope, Report of August 3, 1864.

66“Send me one man who will tell the truth and I will talk with him,” was the laconic reply of a celebrated chief who had been asked to meet a government commission in council.

67“Traders in former years have run the only boats to that region, and had connected with their stores the only safe places for deposit; hence a convenient mixture of government and traders’ goods has so amalgamated matters as to have converted government annuities into mercantile supplies.

“Our further progress up to the more remote tribes has disclosed to us more mortifying evidence of negligence by former agents, and most probably stupendous frauds and outrages.... Immediate arrangements should be made to place the present agents independent of traders and also to enable them to build safe storehouses, where the goods can be properly protected and preserved....

“Deliveries of goods should be witnessed by some Federal officer who should certify that he saw the delivery.”—Report of the Northwestern Treaty Commission to the Sioux of the Upper Missouri, 1866.

“The government appropriations are supposed to be liberal; but it so happens that by the time they reach their destination, they have, and not mysteriously either, dwindled down into a paltry present.”—Henry A. Boller, in “Among the Indians.”

“This system of issuing annuity goods is one grand humbug.”—Report of Gen. Alfred Sully, August 18, 1864.

Evidence like the foregoing could be presented by the volume.

68“I saw, while at Sioux City, Captain La Barge, who had just returned with his boat from the upper Missouri. Captain La Barge has been in the American Fur Company employment for twenty-five years, and says that never before this trip have the Indians been unusually hostile. He says that now the whole Sioux nation is bound for a war of extermination against the frontier, ... and that the British government, through the Hudson Bay Company, are in his opinion instigating all the Indians to attack the whites. He says British rum from Red River comes over to the Missouri, and British traders are among them [the Indians] continually. I have great confidence in his judgment and opinion.”—H.C. Nutt, Lieutenant Colonel Iowa State Militia, to Hon. S.J. Kirkwood, Iowa City, dated Council Bluffs, September 15, 1862.

69See page 277 for an account of the massacre of a party of miners from Montana by these Indians.

70It has been asserted that the Far West bore the first news of the Custer massacre to the world; but this is not so. General Terry’s dispatch to General Sheridan, written in camp on the Little Big Horn June 27, was sent by courier to Fort Ellis, 240 miles distant, and there put on the wire.

The following graphic account of the voyage of the Far West is well worth preserving in spite of its many errors of fact. As a word picture of what was really a notable performance, it is a fine example of journalistic writing. It is from the pen of M.E. Terry, and was published in the Pioneer Press of St. Paul in May, 1878:

“The steamer Far West was moored at the mouth of the Little Big Horn. The wounded were carried on board the steamer and Dr. Porter was detailed to go down with them. Terry’s adjutant general, Colonel Ed Smith, was sent along with the official dispatches and a hundred other messages. He had a traveling-bag full of telegrams for the Bismarck office. Captain Grant Marsh, of Yankton, was in command of the Far West. He put everything in the completest order and took on a large amount of fuel. He received orders to reach Bismarck as soon as possible. He understood his instructions literally, and never did a river man obey them more conscientiously. On the evening of the 3d of July the steamer weighed anchor. In a few minutes the Far West, so fittingly named, was under full head of steam. It was a strange land and an unknown river. What a cargo on that steamer! What a story to carry to the government, to Fort Lincoln, to the widows!

“It was running from a field of havoc to a station of mourners. The steamer Far West never received the credit due her. Neither has the gallant Marsh; nor the pilots, David Campbell and John Johnson. Marsh, too, acted as pilot. It required all their endurance and skill. They proved the men for the emergency. The engineer, whose name is not known to me, did his duty. Every one of the crew is entitled to the same acknowledgment. They felt no sacrifice was too great upon that journey, and in behalf of the wounded heroes. The Big Horn is full of islands, and a successful passage, even on the bosom of a ‘June rise,’ is not an easy feat. The Far West would take a shoot on this or that side of an island, as the quick judgment of the pilot would dictate. It is no river, in the Eastern sense of that word. It is only a creek. A steamboat moving as fast as a railway train in a narrow, winding stream is not a pleasure. It was no pleasant sensation to be dashing straight at a headland, and the pilot the only power to save. Occasionally the bank would be touched and the men would topple over like ten-pins. It was a reminder of what the result would be if a snag was struck. Down the Big Horn the heroine went, missing islands, snags, and shore. It was a thrilling voyage. The rate of speed was unrivaled in the annals of boating. Into the Yellowstone the stanch craft shot, and down that sealed river to pilots she made over twenty miles an hour. The bold Captain was taking chances, but he scarcely thought of them. He was under flying orders. Lives were at stake. His engineer was instructed to keep up steam at the highest pitch. Once the gauge marked a pressure that turned his cool head and made every nerve in his powerful frame quiver. The crisis passed and the Far West escaped a fate more terrible than Custer’s. Once a stop was made, and a shallow grave explained the reason. He still rests in that lone spot. Down the swift Yellowstone, like shooting the Lachine Rapids, every mile a repetition of the former. From the Yellowstone she sped into the broad Missouri, and then there was clear sailing. There was a deeper channel and more confidence. A few minutes were lost at Buford. Everybody at the fort was beside himself. The boat was crowded with inquirers, and their inquiries were not half answered when the steamer was away. At Berthold a wounded scout was put off, and at Fort Stevenson a brief stop to tell in a word what had happened. There was no difference in the speed from Stevenson to Bismarck. The same desperate rate was kept up to the end. They were approaching home with something of that feeling which always moves the human heart. At eleven o’clock on the night of the 5th of July they reached Bismarck and Fort A. Lincoln. One thousand miles in fifty-four hours was the proud record.”

71Charles Larpenteur, who was interpreter for the Commission in their negotiations with the Assiniboines at Fort Union, says in his journal, “The great Peace Commission was a complete failure.” Such was the general sentiment along the valley.

72The Montana Post is authority for the statement that this voyage of the Octavia was the quickest ever made from St. Louis to Fort Benton.

73See footnote at end of chapter xxxviii.

74On the 13th of June, 1902, Congress passed an Act abolishing the Missouri River Commission, and virtually abandoning the river as a commercial highway.

On the 17th of the same month it passed an act inaugurating a government policy of reclamation of the arid lands. This policy will eventually result in an extensive use of the waters of the Missouri in irrigation.