Explorers and Travellers. Greely Adolphus Washington

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СКАЧАТЬ his association with scouts and camp-followers, largely consisting of fur-traders and frontiersmen, induced a lively interest in their accounts of the western country held by their enemies, the Indian and the Frenchman. Certain it is that Carver acquired such ideas of the extent, fertility, natural wealth, and possibilities of the great and unknown West as fired his adventurous spirit with a firm determination to solve the important geographical problems connected therewith.

      His objects, he states, were to gain knowledge concerning the Indian tribes to the west of the Mississippi, to ascertain the natural resources of the country, and to cross the American continent between the forty-third and forty-sixth degrees of north latitude. Ultimately he contemplated the establishment of a trading-post at some suitable point on the Pacific Coast.

      Carver was not ignorant of the great danger involved in such an undertaking, where he was obliged to intrust his life to the mercy of unknown Indians for a prolonged time. Indeed, considering his experiences at the massacre of Englishmen and provincials at Fort Henry, it seems surprising that he would ever trust a savage or a Frenchman. In the campaign of 1757, Carver volunteered to accompany the detachment of fifteen hundred men which General Webb sent forward to reinforce the garrison at Fort Henry, then anticipating an attack from Montcalm. The garrison, commanded by the gallant Monro, who resisted until his guns burst and his ammunition was nearly exhausted, surrendered to the combined force of Indians and French under Montcalm, who promised safe conduct and private property. As the English force moved out the next morning the Indians, inflamed by liquor, song, and dance, butchered the sick and wounded and then fell upon the helpless captives, of whom there were, according to French accounts, about sixty killed and four hundred robbed and maltreated. Montcalm and Levi, to their credit, though too late, made heroic personal efforts which mitigated the horrors of the situation.

      Among the unfortunates was Carver, who, robbed and stripped by the savages, appealed to a French sentry for protection only to be repelled with abuse. Realizing finally that to remain quiet was to meet certain death, Carver and a few others attempted to escape by breaking unarmed through the surrounding lines of Indian fiends. In this desperate effort for life Carver was twice wounded, badly beaten, seized by two Indians, and led away to death, which he escaped by the appearance of a British officer in full uniform, who was such a prize that his captors left Carver to secure a more valuable victim. Profiting by the respite Carver fled to the nearest woods, where, exhausted and nearly naked, he concealed himself in a thicket until night. For three days he wandered through the densest part of the forest, suffering tortures from travel under such conditions, often in danger of recapture, and without food until he reached, in a nearly exhausted condition, the English settlements.

      An attempt at transcontinental exploration was then looked on as foolhardy and visionary in the extreme, even to those friends of Carver who never deserted him. One of these, Dr. Lettsom, wrote in the third edition of Carver’s travels, fifteen years after the journey, as follows: “He suggested an attempt by land across the northwest parts of America, and actually drew a chart of his proposed route for effecting his project, which, however visionary it may now be deemed, affords at least a proof of the enterprising spirit of Carver.”

      Unmoved by the sneers of his critics, and undeterred by recollections of Indian cruelty and perfidy, Carver arranged the details of his journey at his private expense, and in June, 1766, he quitted Boston, and travelling by the way of Albany and Niagara reached his headquarters, Michillimackinac, now known as Mackinac. Here he made definite arrangements for his serious work of exploration. At this time English traders extended their journeys to Prairie-du-Chien for the purpose of purchasing furs from Indians rendezvousing there, and with one of these parties Carver was to travel, relying on the Governor of Mackinaw to forward supplies to St. Anthony. Leaving the Fort, September 3d, and travelling by canoe, he reached the islands of the Grand Traverse, and there spent one night. One of the chiefs, to whom a present was given, made, on Carver’s departure, the following prayer, which is worthy of reproduction as a specimen of Indian eloquence: “May the Great Spirit favor you with a prosperous voyage; may He give you an unclouded sky and smooth waters by day, and may you lay down by night on a beaver blanket to uninterrupted sleep and pleasant dreams, and may you find continual protection under the calumet of peace.”

      Carver followed the route of Joliet and Marquette through Green Bay and up Fox River to the great town of the Winnebagoes, where he found the Indians presided over by a queen instead of a sachem. Carver speaks of the extreme richness of soil and abundance of cultivated products and wild game, mentioning grapes, plums, Indian corn, beans, pumpkins, squashes, watermelons, and tobacco from cultivation; fish from the lake; wild fowl so abundant that frequently the sun would be obscured by them for some minutes together, while deer, bears, and beavers were very numerous. The usual portage was made by him from the Fox to the Wisconsin River, into which his canoes were launched on the 8th of October. Seven days carried him to Prairie-du-Chien, at the junction of the Wisconsin and Mississippi, which was at that time a town of some three hundred families and had become a great trading mart for the adjacent tribes, who assembled in great numbers annually in the latter part of May.

      At Prairie-du-Chien Carver parted with the traders, who were to winter at that point, and obtaining a Canadian as interpreter and a Mohawk Indian as a servant, he purchased a canoe, and on October 19th, proceeding up the Mississippi, he fell in with a straggling band of Indians which barely failed of plundering him. November 1st brought him to Lake Pepin, near which he discovered what appeared to be the remains of extended intrenchments, centuries old, as he thought, but which are now known to be Indian mounds, probably erected as sites for their wigwams, so as to keep them above the annual overflow and inundation.

      The coming of winter and the forming of river ice obliged him to quit his canoe opposite the mouth of the St. Peter, or Minnesota River, whence by land he reached the Falls of St. Anthony on November 17, 1766, probably the first white American to visit them.

      The noise and appearance of the Falls of St. Anthony impressed Carver very strongly, and his account of them is worthy of reproduction in view of the changes that have taken place within the past one hundred and thirty years:

      “This amazing body of waters, which are above 250 yards over, form a most pleasing cataract; they fall perpendicularly about thirty feet, and the rapids below, in the space of 300 yards more, render the descent considerably greater; so that when viewed at a distance, they appear to be much higher than they really are.

      “In the middle of the Falls stands a small island about forty feet broad and somewhat longer, on which grow a few cragged hemlock and spruce trees; and about half way between this island and the eastern shore is a rock lying at the very edge of the Fall, in an oblique position, that appears to be about five or six feet broad and thirty or forty long.”

      Leaving the falls, Carver proceeded up the Mississippi to the mouth of the St. Francis, the farthest of Hennepin in 1680, discovering on the way Rum and Goose Rivers. Warned by the severity of the cold that winter was fast coming on, Carver returned to his canoe at the mouth of the Minnesota River and decided to explore that stream, of which only the lower portion had ever been visited – by Le Sueur in 1700.

      Following the Minnesota about two hundred miles he reached, on December 7th, the winter camp of a large tribe of Indians, about one thousand in number, who were designated by Carver as the Naudowessie (Santees). Advancing boldly, with his calumet of peace fastened to the prow of his canoe, he was received in a friendly manner. After the usual smoking of the pipe of peace, during which he says the tent was nearly broken down by the crowd of savages, who, as a rule, had never seen a white man, he was treated with great respect.

      Among these Indians Carver passed the winter, filling in his five months’ stay by hunting and other Indian amusements. From the Indians he learned that the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the Bourbon (the Red River of the North) had their sources within thirty miles of each other. This led to the natural but erroneous opinion that Carver had reached the highest land of North America, when in reality he was at an elevation СКАЧАТЬ