Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West. Michael Punke
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Название: Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West
Автор: Michael Punke
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Природа и животные
isbn: 9780008189358
isbn:
The cavalrymen who accompanied the explorers provided a constant reminder that the territory they crossed remained contested—particularly an area along a North Platte tributary called Horse Creek. “This is famous hunting ground,” wrote Bill Betts, one of Grinnell’s young colleagues, “and we came upon many fresh signs of savages.” For Grinnell, though, the creek offered an enticement that he could not resist. “Notwithstanding these evidences of unfriendly neighbors,” continued Betts, “two of the party, all intent on duck-shooting, persisted in following the creek.”32
Armed only with shotguns, Grinnell and a friend named Jack Nicholson split away from the main party and headed up Horse Creek. The rest of the expedition, meanwhile, took a shortcut—away from the creek and across the open prairie. A cavalry captain named Montgomery told Grinnell and Nicholson that if they followed the creek, they would eventually reach the place where the main party would camp for the night. The plan was to meet up before sundown, hopefully with enough ducks for the entire mess. What Captain Montgomery did not know, what no one knew in this unfamiliar country, was that Horse Creek took a lengthy diversion before arriving at the place where the main party intended to camp. To reach the campsite by following the creek would have required a trek of at least fifty miles—more than twice the distance that Grinnell and Nicholson had been told to expect.
The hunting, at least, went according to plan. Ducks abounded, and if nothing else, the two men would be well fed. All day long, the hunters kept their horses along the creek until finally, with sunset nearing, they began to become concerned. Surely they’d come more than twenty miles. After taking a break to smoke and to mull over the situation, they decided to ride up a nearby butte for a better view of the country.
From the vantage of the hill, Grinnell and Nicholson learned two things, neither good. Despite being able to see for miles, they could find no sign of the Marsh expedition’s encampment. Clearly they would not reach their companions by nightfall. The second negative development came from behind them, from down the hillside at the very place where they had just talked and smoked. After lighting their pipes, one of the men (it’s not clear who) had thrown his match into the tall grass. A “roaring prairie fire” now raced up the hill toward them.33
He triumphed in the strength of another, who molded his character, shaped his aims, gave substance to his dreams, and finally, by the exercise of that self-denial which he was incapable of as a long-sustained effort, won for him the public recognition and reward of his splendid talents.
—GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL ON JOHN AND LUCY AUDUBON
Grinnell and Nicholson’s initial instinct was to spur their horses and run, but the wildfire—whipped by a vicious wind—burned up the hill “at an inconceivably rapid rate.” A backfire, they realized, was their best defense. As they had seen the soldiers do on the Loup River, they quickly set a small blaze. The backfire, as Grinnell described it, “checked the flames so that we were able to reach a gravelly knoll.” There, they held on to their horses as the wall of flames burned around them, “near enough to singe the hair on our faces and on the horses.”1
As they caught their breath and soothed their mounts in the wake of the blaze, the lost hunters felt a renewed sense of urgency about hostile Indians. The smoke from the fire, they feared, would draw the attention of anyone within a range of several miles. Armed only with shotguns, meanwhile, the two hunters would have little ability to stand off a hostile approach. They briefly considered cutting across the open plains in the hope of picking up the expedition’s trail but quickly decided against such a course. Better to backtrack, sticking close to Horse Creek—a “guide that would not fail them.” Once back to their starting point, they could easily find the tracks of Marsh, the cavalry, and the rest of their party. In the meantime, night was nearly upon them.
Marsh expedition in 1870, near Fort Bridger in what is today Wyoming. Professor Othniel Marsh is the bearded man in the center. Grinnell is third from the left in the broad-brimmed hat.
Courtesy of the Scott Meyer Family.
Fearful of attack, Grinnell and Nicholson resorted to ploy. “As the sun was setting we stopped on the borders of the stream, unsaddled our horses and built a fire, to convey the impression that we had gone into camp.” They plucked and roasted some of their ducks, filling their bellies while waiting for the full cover of darkness. Then, saddling up, they rode into the creek. For a long time they rode down the little stream, using the water to cover their tracks. Only when they’d covered a mile or more did they climb up onto the bank, there to spend a long, frigid night with no fire.
By the next morning, Professor Marsh and the cavalry accompaniment were convinced that the two missing hunters had fallen victim to the Cheyenne, the most pervasive tribe in that region. The concern seemed to find confirmation when a search party came across two lame Indian ponies. The Cheyenne, it appeared, had killed Grinnell and Nicholson, taken their two horses, then left the crippled stock behind. But by the time the search party made it back to camp, Grinnell and Nicholson had reappeared, having backtracked and then followed the expedition’s clear trail.
Grinnell was nonchalant about the entire incident, his main comments reflecting pride that their evasive tactics on Horse Creek had kept the cavalry from picking up their trail. “The devices we had practiced to mislead the Indians were so successful that on the following day the searchers lost our trail hopelessly.” Certainly his remarks reflected the young-man bravado that puffed the chests of many who traveled the wild lands of the West. But something more profound was also at play. Even as he labored each day as a member of an expedition whose findings would stun the scientific world, Grinnell’s own journey was more personal. On an expedition whose aim was discovery, Grinnell was discovering himself.
IF THERE WERE TWO MORAL POLES IN THE WORLD OF GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, Cornelius Vanderbilt stood at one of them. Vanderbilt was the most important client of the brokerage house owned by Grinnell’s father, and Grinnell had known him from an early age. Commodore Vanderbilt (the title reflected ownership of a veritable flotilla, not a military background) stood at the helm of the era that would rise in the aftermath of the Civil War—the era in which Grinnell would spend the most important years of his life. Mark Twain, in his biting 1873 satire, dubbed it the “Gilded Age.” Beginning in the boom years that followed the Civil War and extending to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, the Gilded Age was the heyday of the robber barons, a class of industrialists known as much for their plundering business style as for their towering business achievements.
A survey of Vanderbilt’s life reads like a primer for the whole ilk. He offered a glimpse of what would prove to be his modus operandi in his very first enterprise. In 1811, at the age of 17, Vanderbilt borrowed money from his mother to start a ferry in New York Harbor. With screaming Oedipal overtones, he hoped to capsize the venture of his main rival—his father.
At every juncture in his long career, Vanderbilt was in the right place at the right time with the right service—transportation. His wealth grew during the War of 1812, the 1849 gold rush, and then the Civil War. After dominating New York ferry traffic, he later came to control coastal trade between New York and New England. СКАЧАТЬ