Read Ebook: Historic Adventures: Tales from American History by Holland Rupert Sargent

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Ebook has 417 lines and 73419 words, and 9 pages

Decatur caught the Moor's arm 90

The last six hundred miles were the hardest 152

Nauvoo had handsome houses and public buildings 166

Wherever there was a stream explorers began to dig 186

The teams, exhausted, began to fail 200

Spanish boats pulled close to them 282

THE LOST CHILDREN

The valleys of Pennsylvania were dotted with log cabins in the days of the French and Indian wars. Sometimes a number of the little houses stood close together for protection, but often they were built far apart. Wherever the pioneer saw good farm land he settled. It was a new sensation for men to be able to go into the country and take whatever land attracted them. Gentle rolling fields, with wide views of distant country through the notches of the hills, shining rivers, splendid uncut forests, and rich pasturage were to be found not far from the growing village of Philadelphia, and were free to any who wished to take them. Such a land would have been a paradise, but for one shadow that hung over it. In the background always lurked the Indians, who might at any time, without rhyme or reason, steal down upon the lonely hamlet or cabin, and lay it waste. The pioneer looked across the broad acres of central Pennsylvania and found them beautiful. Only when he had built his home and planted his fields did he fully realize the constant peril that lurked in the wooded mountains.

English, French, and Spanish came to the new world, and the English proved themselves the best colonists. They settled the central part of the Atlantic Coast, but among them and mixed with them were people of other lands. The Dutch took a liking for the Island of Manhattan and the Hudson River, the Swedes for Delaware, and into the colony of William Penn came pilgrims from what was called the Palatinate, Germans, a strong race drawn partly by desire for religious freedom, partly by the reports of the great free lands across the ocean. They brought with them the tongue, the customs, and the names of the German Fatherland, and many a valley of eastern Pennsylvania heard only the German language spoken.

The Indian tribes known as the Six Nations roamed through the country watered by the Susquehanna. They hunted through all the land south of the Great Lakes. Sometimes they fought with the Delawares, sometimes with the Catawbas, and again they would smoke the calumet or pipe of peace with their neighbors, and give up the war-path for months at a time. But the settlers could never be sure of their intentions. Wily French agents might sow seeds of discord in the Indians' minds, and then the chiefs who had lately exchanged gifts with the settlers might suddenly steal upon some quiet village and leave the place in ruins. This constant peril was the price men had to pay in return for the right to take whatever land they liked.

In a little valley of eastern Pennsylvania a German settler named John Hartman had built a cabin in 1754. He had come to this place with his wife and four children because here he might earn a good living from the land. He was a hard worker, and his farm was prospering. He had horses and cattle, and his wife spun and wove the clothing for the family. The four children, George, Barbara, Regina, and Christian, looked upon the valley as their home, forgetting the German village over the sea. Not far away lived neighbors, and sometimes the children went to play with other boys and girls, and sometimes their friends spent a holiday on John Hartman's farm.

The family, like all farmers' families, rose early. Before they began the day's work the father would read to them from his big Bible, which he had brought from his native land as his most valuable possession. On a bright morning in the autumn of 1754 he gathered his family in the living-room of his cabin and read them a Bible lesson. The doors and windows stood open, and the sun flooded the little house, built of rough boards, and scrupulously clean. The farmer's dog, Wasser, lay curled up asleep just outside the front door, and a pair of horses, already harnessed, stood waiting to be driven to the field. Birds singing in the trees called to the children to hurry out-of-doors. They tried to listen to their father's voice as he read, and to pay attention. As they all knelt he prayed for their safety. Then they had breakfast, and the father and mother made plans for the day. Mrs. Hartman was to take the younger boy, Christian, to the flour-mill several miles away, and if they had time was to call at the cabin of a sick friend. The father and George went to the field to finish their sowing before the autumn rains should come, and the two little girls were told to look after the house till their mother should return. Little Christian sat upon an old horse, held on by his mother, and waved his hand to his father and George as he rode by the field on his way to the mill.

The girls, like their mother, were good housekeepers. They set the table for dinner, and at noon Barbara blew the big tin horn to call her father and brother. As they were eating dinner the dog Wasser came running into the house growling, and acting as if he were very much frightened. Mr. Hartman spoke to him, and called him to his side. But the dog stood in the doorway, and then suddenly leaped forward and sprang upon an Indian who came around the wall.

The peril that lurked in the woods had come. John Hartman jumped to the door, but two rifle bullets struck him down. George sprang up, only to fall beside his father. An Indian killed the dog with his tomahawk. Into the peaceful cabin swarmed fifteen yelling savages. Barbara ran up a ladder into the loft, and Regina fell on her knees, murmuring "Herr Jesus! Herr Jesus!" The Indians hesitated, then one of them seized her, and made a motion with his knife across her lips to bid her be silent. Another went after Barbara and brought her down from the loft, and then the Indians ordered the two girls to put on the table all the food there was in the cabin.

When the food was gone the savages plundered the house, making bundles of what they wanted and slinging them over their shoulders. They took the two little girls into the field. There another girl stood tied to the fence. When she saw Barbara and Regina she began to cry, and called in German for her mother. While the three frightened girls stood close together the Indians set fire to the cabin. Very soon the log house that had cost John Hartman so much labor was burned to the ground. When their work of destruction was completed the Indians took the three children into the woods.

At sunset Mrs. Hartman returned from the flour-mill with little Christian riding his horse, but when she came up the road it seemed as if her house had disappeared. Yet the pine trees, the fences, the plowed fields, and the orchard were still there. The little boy cried, "Where is our house, mother?" and the poor woman could not understand.

The story of what had occurred was only too plain to her a few minutes later. What had happened to many other pioneers had happened to her family. Clutching Christian in her arms she ran to the house of her nearest neighbor. There she heard that the Indians had left the same track of blood through other parts of the valley; that farmers had been slain; their crops burned; and their children carried off into the wilderness. The terrified settlers banded together for protection. For weeks new stories came of the Indians' massacres. If ever there were heartless savages these were! They did not carry all the children to their wigwams; some were killed on the way; and among them was little Barbara Hartman. Word came from time to time of some of the stolen children, but there was no word of Regina or Susan Smith, the daughter of the neighboring farmer.

Far in the forests of western New York was the camp of a great Indian tribe. The wigwams stood on the banks of a beautiful mountain stream, broken by great rocks that sent the water leaping in cascades and falls. In one of the wigwams lived the mother of a famous warrior of the tribe, and with her were two girls whom she treated as her daughters. The name of the old squaw was She-lack-la, which meant "the Dark and Rainy Cloud," a name given her because at times she grew very angry and ill-treated every one around her. Fortunately there were two girls in her wigwam, and when the old squaw was in a bad temper they had each other for protection. The older girl had been given the name of Saw-que-han-na, or "the White Lily," and the other was known as Kno-los-ka, "the Short-legged Bear." Like all the Indian girls they had to work hard, grinding corn, cooking and keeping house for the boys and men who were brought up to hunt and fight. Sawquehanna was tall and strong, spoke the language of the tribe, and looked very much like her Indian girl friends.

In the meantime many battles had been fought through the country of the pioneers, and the English colonists were beating the French and Indians, and driving the Frenchmen farther and farther north. In 1765 the long war between the two nations ended. Under a treaty of peace the English Colonel Boquet demanded that all the white children who had been captured by the Indian tribes should be surrendered to the English officers. So one day white soldiers came into the woods of western New York and found the wigwams there. The children were called out, and the soldiers took the two girls from the old squaw Shelackla. Then they went on to the other tribes, and from each they took all the white children. They carried them to Fort Duquesne. The Fort was in western Pennsylvania, and as soon as it was known that the lost white children were there, fathers and mothers all over the country hurried to find their boys and girls. Many of the children had been away so long that they hardly remembered their parents, but most of the parents knew their children, and found them again within the walls of the fortress.

Some of the children, however, were not claimed. Sawquehanna and her friend Knoloska and nearly fifty more found no one looking for them and wondered what would happen to them. After they had waited at Fort Duquesne eight days, Colonel Boquet started to march with his band of children to the town of Carlisle, in hopes that they might find friends farther east, or at least kind-hearted people who would give the children homes. He sent news of their march all through the country, and from day to day as they traveled through the mountains by way of Fort Ligonier, Raystown, and Louden, eager people arrived to search among the band of children for lost sons and daughters. When the children came to Carlisle the town was filled with settlers from the East.

The children stood in the market-place, and the men and women pressed about them, trying to recognize little ones who had been carried away by Indians years before. Some people who lived in the Blue Mountains were in the throng, and they recognized the dark-haired Indian girl Knoloska as Susan, the daughter of Mr. Smith, the farmer who had lived near the Hartmans. Knoloska and Sawquehanna had not been separated for a long time. They had kept together ever since the white soldiers had freed them from the old squaw's wigwam. Sawquehanna could not bear to think of having her comrade leave her, and Susan clung to her adopted sister's arm and kissed her again and again. The white people were much kinder than the old squaw had been, and instead of beating the girls when they cried, and frightening them with threats, the officers told Sawquehanna that she would probably find some friends soon, and if she did not, that perhaps Susan's family would let her live in their home. But as nobody seemed to recognize her Sawquehanna felt more lonely than she had ever felt before.

Meanwhile Mrs. Hartman was living in the valley with her son Christian, who had grown to be a strong boy of fourteen. Neighbors told her that the lost children were being brought across the mountains to Carlisle, but there seemed little chance that her own Regina might be one of them. She decided, however, that she must go to the town and see. Travel was difficult in those days, but the brave woman set out over the mountains and across the rivers to Carlisle, and at last reached the town market-place. She looked anxiously among the girls, remembering her little daughter as she had been on that autumn day eleven years before; but none of the girls had the blue eyes, light yellow hair and red cheeks of Regina. Mrs. Hartman shook her head, and decided that her daughter was not among these children.

As she turned away, disconsolate, Colonel Boquet said to her, "Can't you find your daughter?"

"No," said the disappointed mother, "my daughter is not among those children."

"Are you sure?" asked the colonel. "Are there no marks by which you might know her?"

"None, sir," she answered, shaking her head.

Colonel Boquet considered the matter for a few minutes. "Did you ever sing to her?" he asked presently. "Was there no old hymn that she was fond of?"

The mother looked up quickly. "Yes, there was!" she answered. "I have often sung her to sleep in my arms with an old German hymn we all loved so well."

"Then," said the colonel, "you and I will walk along the line of girls and you shall sing that hymn. It may be that your daughter has changed so much that you wouldn't know her, but she may remember the tune."

Mrs. Hartman looked very doubtful. "There is little use in it, sir," she said, "for certainly I should have known her if she were here; and if I try your plan all these soldiers will laugh at me for a foolish old German woman."

The colonel, however, begged her at least to try his plan, and she finally consented. They walked back to the place where the children were standing, and Mrs. Hartman began to sing in a trembling voice the first words of the old hymn:

"Alone, and yet not all alone, am I In this lone wilderness."

As she went on singing every one stopped talking and turned to look at her. The woman's hands were clasped as if in prayer, and her eyes were closed. The sun shone full upon her white hair and upturned face. There was something very beautiful in the picture she made, and there was silence in the market-place as her gentle voice went on through the words of the hymn.

The mother had begun the second verse when one of the children gave a cry. It was Sawquehanna, who seemed suddenly to have remembered the voice and words. She rushed forward, and flung her arms about the mother's neck, crying, "Mother, mother!" Then, with her arms tight about her, the tall girl joined in singing the words that had lulled her to sleep in their cabin home.

"Alone, and yet not all alone, am I In this lone wilderness, I feel my Saviour always nigh; He comes the weary hours to bless. I am with Him, and He with me, E'en here alone I cannot be."

The people in the market-place moved on about their own affairs, and the mother and daughter were left together. Now Mrs. Hartman recognized the blue eyes of Regina, and knew her daughter in spite of her height and dark skin. Regina began to remember the days of her childhood, and the years she had spent among the Indians were forgotten. She was a white girl again, and happier now than she had ever thought to be.

Next day Knoloska, now Susan Smith, and Sawquehanna, or Regina Hartman, went back to their homes in the valley. Many a settler there had found his son or daughter in the crowd of lost children at Carlisle.

THE GREAT JOURNEY OF LEWIS AND CLARK

The French, however, were great adventurers by nature, and Napoleon, changing the map of Europe, could not keep his fingers from North America. He planned to win back the New France that had been given away. Spain was weak, and Napoleon traded a small province in Italy for the great tract of Louisiana. He meant to colonize and fortify this splendid empire, but before it could be done enemies gathered against his eagles at home, and to save his European throne he had to forsake his western colony.

When Thomas Jefferson became President in 1801, he found the people of the South and West disturbed at France's repossessing herself of so much territory. He sent Robert R. Livingston and James Monroe to Paris to try to buy New Orleans and the country known as the Floridas for ,000,000. Instead Napoleon offered to sell not only New Orleans, but the whole of Louisiana Territory extending as far west as the Rocky Mountains for ,000,000. Napoleon insisted on the sale, and the envoys agreed. Jefferson and the people in the eastern United States were dismayed at the price paid for what they considered almost worthless land, but the West was delighted, owning the mouth of the great Mississippi and with the country beyond it free to them to explore. In time this purchase of Louisiana, or the territory stretching to the Rocky Mountains, forming the larger part of what are now thirteen of the states of the Union, was to be considered one of the greatest pieces of good fortune in the country's history.

Scarcely anything was known of Louisiana, except the stories told by a few hunters. Jefferson decided that the region must be explored, and asked his young secretary, Meriwether Lewis, who had shown great interest in the new country, to make a path through the wilderness. Lewis chose his friend William Clark to accompany him, and picked thirty-two experienced men for their party. May 14, 1804, the expedition set out in a barge with sails and two smaller boats from a point on the Missouri River near St. Louis.

The nearer part of this country had already been well explored by hunters and trappers, and especially by that race of adventurous Frenchmen who were rovers by nature. These men could not endure the confining life of towns, and were continually pushing into the wilderness, driving their light canoes over the waters of the great rivers, and often sharing the tents of friendly Indians they met. Many had become almost more Indian than white man,--had married Indian wives and lived the wandering life of the native. Such a man Captain Lewis found at the start of his journey, and took with him to act as interpreter among the Sioux and tribes who spoke a similar language.

The party traveled rapidly at the outset of their journey, meeting small bands of Indians, and passing one or two widely-separated frontier settlements. They had to pass many difficult rapids in the river, but as they were for the most part expert boatmen they met with no mishaps. The last white town on the Missouri was a little hamlet called La Charrette, consisting of seven houses, with as many families located there to hunt and trade for skins and furs. As they went up the river they frequently met canoes loaded with furs coming down. Day by day they took careful observations, and made maps of the country through which they were traveling, and when they met Indians tried to learn the history and customs of the tribe. Captain Lewis wrote down many of their curious traditions. The Osage tribe had given their name to a river that flowed into the Missouri a little more than a hundred miles from its mouth. There were three tribes of this nation: the Great Osages, numbering about five hundred warriors; the Little Osages, who lived some six miles distant from the others, and numbered half as many men; and the Arkansas band, six hundred strong, who had left the others some time before, and settled on the Vermillion River. The Osages lived in villages and were good farmers, usually peaceful, although naturally strong and tireless. Captain Lewis found a curious tradition as to the origin of their tribe. The story was that the founder of the nation was a snail, who lived quietly on the banks of the Osage until a high flood swept him down to the Missouri, and left him exposed on the shore. The heat of the sun at length ripened him into a man, but with the change in his nature he did not forget his native haunts on the Osage, but immediately bent his way in that direction. He was, however, soon overtaken by hunger and fatigue, when happily the Great Spirit appeared, and giving him a bow and arrow showed him how to kill and cook deer, and cover himself with the skins. He then pushed on to his home, but as he neared it he was met by a beaver, who inquired haughtily who he was, and by what authority he came to disturb his possession. The Osage answered that the river was his own, for he had once lived on its borders. As they stood disputing, the daughter of the beaver came, and having by her entreaties made peace between her father and the young stranger, it was proposed that the Osage should marry the young beaver, and share the banks of the river with her family. The Osage readily consented, and from this happy marriage there came the village and the nation of the Wasbasha, or Osages, who kept a reverence for their ancestors, never hunting the beaver, because in killing that animal they would kill a brother of the Osage. The explorers found, however, that since the value of beaver skins had risen in trade with the white men, these Indians were not so particular in their reverence for their relatives.

The mouth of the Platte River was reached on July 21st, and the next day Lewis held a council with the Ottoes and Missouri Indians, and named the site Council Bluffs. At each of these meetings between Lewis and the Indians the white man would explain that this territory was now part of the United States, would urge the tribes to trade with their new neighbors, and then present them with gifts of medals, necklaces, rings, tobacco, ornaments of all sorts, and often powder and arms.

The Indians were friendly and each day taught the white men something new. Both Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clark had seen much of the red men on the frontier, but now they were in a land where they found them in their own homes. They grew accustomed to the round tepees decorated with bright-colored skins, the necklaces made of claws of grizzly bears, the head-dresses of eagle feathers, the tambourines, or small drums that furnished most of their music, the whip-rattles made of the hoofs of goats and deer, the white-dressed buffalo robes painted with pictures that told the history of the tribe, the moccasins and tobacco pouches embroidered with many colored beads. Each tribe differed in some way from its neighbors. For the first time the explorers found among the Rickarees eight-sided earth-covered lodges, and basket-shaped boats made of interwoven boughs covered with buffalo skins.

Game was plentiful as they went farther up the Missouri River. At first no buffaloes were found, but bands of elk were seen, and large herds of goats crossing from their summer grazing grounds in the hilly region west of the Missouri to their winter quarters. Besides these were antelopes, beavers, bears, badgers, deer, and porcupines, and the river banks supplied them with plover, grouse, geese, turkeys, ducks, and pelicans. There were plenty of wild fruits to be had, and they lived well during the whole of the summer. They traveled rapidly until the approach of cold weather decided them to establish winter quarters on October 27th.

They pitched their camp, which they called Fort Mandan, on the eastern shore of the Missouri, near the present city of Bismarck. They built some wooden huts, which formed two sides of a triangle, and a row of pickets on the third side, to provide them with a stockade in case of attack. They found a trader of the Hudson's Bay Company near by, and during the winter a dozen other traders visited them. Although they appeared to be friendly, Captain Lewis was convinced that the traders had no desire to see this United States expedition push into the country, and would in fact do all they could to prevent its advance. The Indians in the neighborhood belonged to the tribes of the Mandans, Rickarees, and Minnetarees. The first two of these tribes went to war early in the winter, but peace was made through the efforts of Captain Lewis. After that all the Indians visited the encampment, bringing stores of corn and presents of different sorts, in exchange for which they obtained beads, rings, and cloth from the white men. Here Captain Lewis learned a curious legend of the Mandan tribe. They believed that all their nation originally lived in one large village underground near a subterranean lake, and that a grape-vine stretched its roots down to their home and gave them a view of daylight. Some of the more adventurous of the tribe climbed up the vine, and were delighted with the sight of the earth, which they found covered with buffaloes and rich with all kinds of fruits. They gathered some grapes and returned with them to their countrymen, and told them of the charms of the land they had seen. The others were very much pleased with the story and with the grapes, and men, women and children started to climb up the vine. But when only half of them had reached the top a heavy woman broke the vine by her weight, and so closed the road to the rest of the nation. Each member of this tribe was accustomed to select a particular object for his devotion, and call it his "medicine." To this they would offer sacrifices of every kind. One of the Indians said to Captain Lewis, "I was lately the owner of seventeen horses; but I have offered them all up to my 'medicine,' and am now poor." He had actually loosed all his seventeen horses on the plains, thinking that in that way he was doing honor to his god.

Almost every day hunting parties left the camp and brought back buffaloes. The weather grew very cold in December, and several times the thermometer fell to forty degrees below zero. As spring advanced, however, the weather became very mild, and as early as April 7, 1805, they were able to leave their camp at Fort Manden and start on again. The upper Missouri they found was too shallow for the large barge they had used the previous summer, so this was now sent back down the river in charge of a party of ten men who carried letters and specimens, while the others embarked in six canoes and two large open boats that they had built during the winter. So far the country through which they had passed had been explored by a few Hudson's Bay trappers, but as they now turned westward they came into a region entirely unknown, which they soon found was almost uninhabited.

The party had by this time three interpreters, one a Canadian half-breed named Drewyer, who had inherited from his mother the Indian's skill in woodcraft, and who also knew the language of the white explorers. The other two were a man named Chaboneau and his wife, a young squaw called Sacajawea, the "Bird-woman," who had originally belonged to the Snake tribe, but who had been captured in her childhood by Blackfeet Indians. This Indian girl had married Chaboneau, a French wanderer, who like many others of his kind had sunk into an almost savage state. As the squaw had not forgotten the language of her native people the two white leaders thought she would prove a valuable help to them in the wild country westward, and persuaded her and her husband to go on with them.

As the weather was fine the party traveled rapidly, and by April 26th reached the mouth of the Yellowstone. They were now very far north, near the northwest corner of what is the state of North Dakota. Game was still plentiful but the banks of the river were covered with a coating of alkali salts, which made the water of the streams bitter and unpleasant for drinking. Occasionally they came upon a deserted Indian camp, but in this northern territory they found few roving tribes. When there was a favorable wind they sailed along the Missouri, but most of the time they had to use their oars. Early in May they drew up their birch canoes for the night at the mouth of a stream where they found a large number of porcupines feeding on young willow trees. Captain Lewis christened the stream Porcupine River. Here there were quantities of game, and elk and buffalo in abundance, so that it was an easy matter to provide food for all the party.

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