Thomas Jefferson Farnham

“ In the forenoon, the trail ran over a series of mountains swelling one above another in long and gentle ascents, covered with noble forests of yellow pine, fir, and hemlock. Among these were frequent glades of rich pasture land; grass green, and numerous brooks of pure water leaping from the cliffs, or murmuring among the shrubbery. The snow-ball, the wax plant, the yellow and black currant—a species of whortleberry—the service berry—choke cherry—the elder—the shrub maple—and all the beautiful flowers that gem a mountain landscape during its short summer, clothed the ground. ”

“ Red men often acquire and love the Sciences. But with the nature which the Great Spirit has given them, what are all their truths to them? Would an Indian ever measure the height of a mountain that he could climb? No, never. The legends of his tribe tell him nothing about quadrants, and base lines and angles. Their old braves, however, have for ages watched from the cliffs, the green life in the spring, and the yellow death in the autumn, of their holy forests. ”

“ We dined at the mouth of Kelly's Creek, another stream that has its source in James' peak. Encamped at the mouth of Oakley's creek, another branch of the Arkansas. [118] It rises in the hills which lie thirty-five miles to the north. It is a clear, cool little brook, with a pebbly bottom, and banks clothed with shrub cedars and pines. We had a pleasant evening here, a cloudless sky, a cold breeze from the snow-clad mountains, a blazing cedar-wood fire, a song from our merry Joe, a dish of 'tole' and a fine couch of sand. Who wants more comforts than we enjoyed? ”

“ Its banks were low—one and a half feet above the medium stage of water, composed of an alluvium of sand and loam as hard as a public highway, and generally covered with a species of wiry grass that seldom grows to more than one and a half or two inches in height. The sun-flower of stinted growth, and a lonely bush of willow, or an ill-shaped sapless, cotton-wood tree, whose decayed trunk trembled under the weight of years, together with occasional bluffs of clay and sand-stone, formed the only alleviating features of the landscape. ”

“ We commenced our march this morning at six o'clock, travelled, as our custom usually was, till the hour of eleven, and then halted to breakfast, on the bank of the stream. The face of the country along the morning's trail was much the same as that passed over the day before; often beautiful, but oftener sublime. Vast spherical swells covered with buffalo, and wild flowering glens echoing the voices of a thousand cascades, and countless numbers of lofty peaks crowding the sky, will give perhaps a faint idea of it. ”

“ A trading establishment to be known must be seen. A solitary abode of men, seeking wealth in the teeth of danger and hardship, rearing its towers over the uncultivated wastes of nature, like an old baronial castle that has withstood the wars and desolations of centuries; Indian women tripping around its battlements in their glittering moccasins and long deer skin wrappers; their children, with most perfect forms, and the carnation of the Saxon cheek struggling through the shading of the Indian, and chattering now Indian, and now Spanish or English ”

“ Our hearts told us to make these offerings to the Great Spirit who had fostered them on the mountains; and when the moon was down, and the shadows of the White Bute were as dark as the hair of a bear, we said to the Great Spirit, 'No man can war with the arrows from the quiver of thy storms; no man's word can be heard when thy voice is among the clouds; no man's hand is strong when thy hand lets loose its winds. ”

“ Above, rise in sublime confusion, mass upon mass, shattered cliffs through which is struggling the dark foliage of stinted shrub-cedars; while below you spreads far and wide the burnt and arid desert, whose solemn silence is seldom broken by the tread of any other animal than the wolf or the starved and thirsty horse which bears the traveller across its wastes.
The principal streams that intersect the Great Prairie wilderness are the Colorado, the Brazos, Trinity, Red, Arkansas, Great Platte and the Missouri. ”

“ Instead of plateaux, baked and flinty, or hills of loose unproductive loam and sand, shorn by perpetual drought of flower, shrub, and tree, a journey of twenty miles over which would hardly cross grass enough to feed a dozen horses a single day, the slopes of a thousand spherical hills, as green as the fields of the States in May, sent forth the sweet fragrance of teeming vegetation ”

“ The small prairie wolf which had howled us to sleep every evening, and howled us awake every morning since we left Independence, was continually greeting us with an ill-natured growl, as we rode along among his hiding places. The streams that were mere rivulets twenty miles back, having received a thousand tributaries, were now heavy and deep torrents. The peaks and mountain swells were clad with hail and snow. Every thing, even ourselves, shivering in our blankets, gave evidence that we were traversing the realms of winter. ”

“ There was, however, perceptible shading on the lower edge, produced, perhaps, by great lateral swells protruding {228} from the general outline. But the mass, at least ninety miles distant, as white as milk, the home of the frosts of all ages, stretching away to the north by west full a hundred miles, unscaled by any living thing, except perhaps by the bold bird of our national arms,
"Broad, high, eternal, and sublime,
The mock of ages and the twin of time,"
is an object of amazing grandeur, unequalled probably on the face of the globe. ”

“ During the first part of the night the Indians hurrying to and fro through the village, their war speeches and war dances, and the painting their faces with red and black, in alternate stripes, and an occasional scout warily approaching the camp of the whites, indicated an appetite for a conflict that appeared to fix, with prophetic certainty, the fate of the traders. Eight hundred Indians to fifty whites, made fearful odds. The morning light streamed faintly up the east at last. The traders held their rifles with the grasp of dying men. ”

“ Who that had seen us stirring our fires that night in the starlight of bright skies among the mountain forests; who that had seen the buffalo ribs propped up before the crackling blaze—the brisket boiling in our camp-kettles; who that had seen us with open countenances yield to these well cooked invitations to "drive dull care away," will not believe that we accepted them, and swallowed against time, and hunger, and tole? ”

“ We were in Oregon. Fort Hall lay in the plain before us. Its hospitalities would be enjoyed ere sunset. Our wardrobes were overhauled, our razors put on duty, our sunburnt frames bathed in the Portneuf; and equipped in our best, our hearts beat joyfully back the rapid clattering of our horses' hoofs on the pavements of the mountains, as we rushed to the plains. ”

“ He had been in the service of the Hudson Bay Company many years, and was consequently assiduous and dutiful. Yes, consequently so; for neither Indian nor white man is long in their service without learning his place, and becoming active and faithful in doing his duty. As soon as we entered camp, our pack-horses were stripped of their burdens, and turned loose to feed; wood was gathered, and a fire blazing under the kettles, and "all out door" immediately rendered as comfortable to us, as skies spangled with stars, and earth strewn with snowy sand could be made. ”

“ The fires of the natives blazed among the woody glens, the light canoe skimmed [Pg 370] the water near the shore, the winds groaned over the mountain tops, the cascades sang from cliff to cliff, the loon shouted and dove beneath the shining wave; it was a wild, almost unearthly scene, in the deep gorge of the Columbia. The rising of the moon changed its features. The profoundest silence reigned, save the dash of paddles that echoed faintly from the shores; our canoe sprang lightly over {185} the rippling waters, the Indian fires smouldered among the waving pines ”

“ Passed a few horses travelling industriously from one wisp of dry bunch grass to another. Every thing unnatural, dry, brown, and desolate. Climbed the heights near sunset, and had an extensive view of the country south of the river. It was a treeless, brown expanse of dearth, vast rolling swells of sand and clay, too dry to bear wormwood. No mountains seen in that direction. On the north they rose precipitously from the river, and hid from view the country beyond. The Wallawalla Indians brought us drift-wood and fresh salmon, for which they desired "shmoke," tobacco. ”

“ Our knives are quickly hauled from their sheaths—he is rolled upon his brisket—his hide is slit along the spine, and pealed down midrib; one side of it is cut off and spread upon the sand to receive the meat; the flesh on each side of the spine is pared off; the mouth is opened, and the tongue removed from his jaws; the axe is laid to his rib; the heart—the fat—the tender loins—the blood, are taken out—his legs are rifled of their generous marrow bones ”

“ Every preparation for the attack, which appeared determined upon on the part of the Indians, being {182} made, they waited for the first ray of day—a signal of dreadful havoc among all the tribes—with the determined anxiety which fills the bosom, sharpens the sight, nerves the arm, and opens the ear to the slightest rustle of a leaf, so remarkably, among the grave, self-possessed, and brave traders of the Great Prairie and Mountain Wilderness. ”

“ But if they spare each other's property and lives, they occasion great anxieties at Fort William; every hour of day and night is pregnant with danger. These untameable savages may drive beyond reach the buffalo on which the garrison subsists; may begirt the fort with their legions, and cut off supplies; may prevent them from feeding their animals upon the plains; may bring upon them starvation and the gnawing their own flesh at the door of death! All these are expectations, which as yet the ignorance alone of the Indians as to the weakness of the post, prevents from becoming realities. ”

“ I must range the hills, I must always be able to out-travel my horses, I must always be able to strip my own wardrobe from the backs of the deer and buffalo, and to feed upon their rich loins; I must always be able to punish my enemy with my own hand, or I am no longer an Indian. And if I am any thing else, I am a mere imitation of an ape."
The enthusiasm with which these sentiments were uttered impressed me with an awe I had never previously felt for the unborrowed dignity and independence of the genuine, original character {199} of the American Indians. ”

“ All around gave evidence that the agents of nature have struggled here in their mightiest wrath, not the volcano, but the floods of ages. Ravines hundreds of feet in depth; vast insular mounds of earth towering in all directions, sometimes surmounted by fragments of mountains, at others, with stratified rocks, the whole range of vision was a flowerless, bladeless desolation! Our encampment for the night was at the mouth of Wood's creek, five miles from the debouchure of the Arkansas from the mountains. ”

“ They describe a deluge when the waters spread over the whole earth, except the highest mountains, on the top of which they preserved themselves. They believe that immediately after their death they pass into another world, where they arrive at a large river, on which they embark in a stone canoe; and that a gentle current bears them on to an extensive lake, in the centre of which is a most beautiful island; and that in view of this delightful abode they receive that judgement for their conduct during life, which determines their final state and unalterable allotment. ”

“ At the time when the lights of religion and science had scarcely begun to dawn upon them—when they had scarcely discovered the clouds of ignorance that had walled every avenue to rational life—even while the dust of antiquated barbarism was {124} still hanging upon their garments—and the night of ages, of sloth, and sin held them in its cold embraces—the fires on the towers of this great temple of civil freedom arrested their slumbering faculties, and they read on all the holy battlements, written with beams of living light, "All men are, and of right ought to be, free and equal." ”