A LAW prohibiting the sale of liquor to Indians, or even its transportation across the Indian country, had been practically a dead letter ever since Congress passed it. Along in the fall of 1869, however, a new United States marshal appeared in the country and arrested several traders who had liquor in their possession, confiscated their outfits, and made them all sorts of trouble. So long as this man remained in office it seemed as if the trade was doomed, and Berry wisely hit upon the plan of crossing the line into Canada and establishing a post there. True, there would be some trouble in transporting the forbidden goods from Fort Benton northward to the line, but chances had to be taken.
Miss Agnes E. Laut, author of “Lords of the North,” “Heralds of the Empire,” etc., in her “Tales of the Northwest Mounted Police” has this to say about the exodus: “It was in the early seventies that the monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company ceased and the Dominion Government took over judicial rights in all that vast territory which lies like an American Russia between the boundary and the North Pole. The ending of the monopoly was the signal for an inrush of adventurers. Gamblers, smugglers, criminals of every stripe, struck across from the Missouri into the Canadian territory at the foothills of the Rockies. Without a white population, these riff-raff adventurers could not ply their usual ‘wide-open’ traffic. The only way to wealth was by the fur trade; and the easiest way to obtain the furs was by smuggling whisky into the country in small quantities, diluting this and trading it to the natives for pelts. Chances of interference were nil, for the Canadian Government was thousands of miles distant without either telegraph or railway connection. But the game was not without its dangers. The country at the foothills was inhabited by the Confederacy of the Blackfeet—Bloods, Piegans and Blackfeet—tigers of the prairie when sober, and worse than tigers when drunk. The Missouri whisky smugglers found they must either organise for defence or pay for their fun by being exterminated. How many whites were massacred in these drinking frays will never be known; but all around Old Man’s River and Fort Macleod are gruesome landmarks known as the places where such and such parties were destroyed in the early seventies.
“The upshot was that the Missouri smugglers emulated the old fur traders and built themselves permanent forts; Robbers’ Roost, Stand Off, Freeze Out, and, most famous of all, Whoop-Her-Up, whose name for respectability’s sake has been changed to ‘Whoop-Pup,’ with an innocent suggestiveness of some poetic Indian title. Whoop-Up, as it was known to plainsmen, was palisaded and loop-holed for musketry, with bastions and cannon and an alarm bell. The fortifications of this place alone, it is said, cost $12,000, and it at once became the metropolis of the whisky smugglers. Henceforth only a few Indians were allowed inside the fort at a time, the rest being served through the loop-holes.
“But the Blackfeet, who loved a man hunt better than a buffalo hunt, were not to be balked. The trail by which the whisky smugglers came from Fort Benton zigzagged over the rolling prairie, mainly following the bottoms of the precipitous coulées and ravines for a distance of 200 miles to Whoop-Up. Heavy wagons with canvas tops and yokes of fifteen and twenty oxen drew the freight of liquor through the devious passes that connected ravine with ravine. The Blackfeet are probably the best horsemen in the world. There were places where the defiles were exceptionally narrow, where the wagons got mired, where oxen and freight had to be rafted across rain-swollen sloughs. With a yelling of incarnate fiends that would have stampeded more sober brutes than oxen drawing kegs of whisky, down swooped the Blackfeet at just these hard spots. Sometimes the raids took place at night, when tethers would be cut and the oxen stampeded with the bellowing of a frightened buffalo herd. If the smugglers made a stand there was a fight. If they drew off, the savages captured the booty.”
Miss Laut’s informants have most grievously imposed upon her. The men who participated in the trade across the line were not “criminals of every stripe,” but honest, fearless, straightforward fellows. Very many of them are living to-day and they feel that they have been wronged by Miss Laut’s statements. Neither were they smugglers into the country, for that part of Canada was then to the Canadians an unknown land, without any laws or white residents. Away up on the Saskatchewan was the Hudson’s Bay Company selling rum to the Indians, as they had been doing for many years. In the opposition of the Americans they saw the end of their lucrative trade, and complained to the Dominion Government about it, finally getting relief with the appearance of the Northwest Mounted Police. Neither were there any drinking frays in which whites were massacred. One man named Joe Neufrain was killed for cause by the Blackfeet at Elbow, about 100 miles north of Belly River. Two men, a Frenchman named Polite, and Joseph Wey, were killed at Rocky Springs, on the trail from Fort Benton north. The Assiniboins, not the Blackfeet, shot them. The fact is that the trail did not follow precipitous coulées and ravines but ran straight over the open rolling plain, the freighters thereon were not attacked by the Blackfeet, and their cattle stampeded. Nor did they freight whisky in heavy loaded bull trains. In crossing the Indian country south of the line they had the United States marshal to elude; the whisky was transported by four-horse teams which travelled swiftly across by a route which the marshal was unlikely to know.
In the fall of 1870 Berry established Stand-Off; after that Whoop-Up and Fort Kipp were built. There were one or two other minor posts at Elbow, on High River, and Sheep Creek. In all, from 1870 until the arrival of the Mounted Police in 1874, there were fifty-six white men at these various places or camped out on the plains wolfing. They were not massacred by the Blackfeet. When the Mounted Police came they also got along peaceably with the Confederacy, because the Baker massacre had taken all the fight out of them. So much by way of explanation.
Starting north from Fort Benton with a good outfit of stores, Berry, I, and several others arrived at Belly River, at a point some twenty-five or thirty miles above its mouth, and built Stand-Off, a place of a few rude cabins. This is why we gave it the peculiar name: The marshal got on our trail and overtook us soon after we had crossed the North Fork of Milk River and were descending the slope to the St. Mary’s.
“Well, boys,” he said, smiling grimly, “I’ve caught you at last. Turn around and hit the back trail with me.”
“I don’t think we will,” said Berry. “We’re across the line. Better turn around and go back yourself.”
A warm argument ensued. The line had never been surveyed, but we knew that according to the treaty it was the 49th parallel. We were on the Arctic Slope watershed, and therefore we assumed that we were in Canada; the marshal said that we were not. Finally Berry told him that he would not turn back, that he would fight first, as he knew that he was right. The marshal was powerless to take us, as he was alone. We “stood him off,” and he sorrowfully turned back.
Another time Berry went into Fort Benton for liquor and the marshal trailed him around day and night. Nothing was to be done there, so he hitched up his four-horse team and with another man travelled up to Helena. Still the marshal followed, but Berry was a man of resource. He went to a certain firm there and got them to deliver thirty cases of alcohol to him on the banks of the Missouri a few miles below town, where he made a raft for them, got aboard, and pushed out into the current. Meanwhile the marshal was watching the four horses and wagon at the livery stable. That night Berry’s helper got them out and started on the back trail. In a little while the officer caught up with the outfit, but lo! the wagon was empty and Berry was missing. He turned back and stayed all that night in Helena, then started again and arrived in Fort Benton about the same time as did the team. There the man loaded up with straight provisions and pulled out for the north. The marshal was completely nonplussed.
Meanwhile Berry was having a hard time. A raft of alcohol, which has but little higher specific gravity than water, proved a difficult thing to handle, and in rapid water was sometimes completely submerged. Sometimes it stuck on a bar or was in danger of hitting a rocky shore and he had to jump off and push it into deeper water. For three days he played beaver, and practically fasted, for his provisions got wet, but on the third evening he reached the mouth of Sun River with the loss of but one case of alcohol, which the rocks had punctured. There a four-horse team awaited him, sent from Fort Benton by the driver of his own outfit. The two men at once loaded up the wagon and struck out over the trackless prairie, crossing the line and arriving at Stand-Off without trouble.
The Bloods and Blackfeet gave us a fair trade that winter. We realised, however, that with the building of Whoop-Up we were too far west to be in the centre of the trade; so the succeeding summer we moved down some miles and built another post. The main event of the succeeding winter was the killing of Calf Shirt, the Blood chief, and a terrible man. He was absolutely ferocious and his people feared him, he having killed six or eight of them—several his own relatives. He came into the trade room one day and pointing a pistol at the man on duty there, demanded some whisky. The trader raised his pistol and fired, the bullet taking effect in the Indian’s breast. He did not drop, however, or even stagger; nor did he shoot, but turned and walked calmly out of the door toward his camp. Upon hearing the shot a number of men elsewhere in the post rushed out, saw the pistol in his hand, and thinking that he had killed someone, began firing. Shot after shot struck Calf Shirt, but he kept calmly on for many yards, and then fell over dead. He possessed extraordinary vitality. The body was thrown into the river through a hole in the ice, but it came up in an airhole below, and was found there. The chief had always told his wives that if he was killed they were to sing certain songs over his body, and he would come to life, if they kept it up for four days. The women took the corpse home and did as they had been told, and felt very badly when they found that their efforts were fruitless. All the rest of the tribe, however, rejoiced that the terror was gone.
The next winter a row broke out among the traders and the wolfers of the country, the latter demanding that no more rifles and ammunition be sold to the Indians. They formed what the traders named in derision the “Is-pit-si Cavalry” and went around trying to get signatures to an agreement, both by threats and entreaty, that the traders would comply with their request, but they met with little or no success. Miss Laut also refers to this “cavalry,” and says that they were organised by the smugglers to escort the freighters and defend the fort. The freighters needed no escort, and I would like to know how men could be called smugglers who broke no known law; who, it may be said, practically settled the country and made it possible for a little band of Mounted Police to march into it. Miss Laut says that the latter were the result of protests to the Dominion Government “from the fur company deprived of lawful trade.” They sold tobacco, tea, sugar, blankets, guns and various notions. So did we. They sold watered Jamaica rum and Scotch whisky. We sold watered American alcohol and whisky. I claim that we were just as respectable as the honourable lords and members of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Limited. The latter, at this very day, are selling liquor in nearly every town of Alberta, Assiniboia and other territory of Northwest Canada, but we long since went out of the business.
I don’t blame Miss Laut; she couldn’t have known the facts. The men who told her the story—well, they slandered some pretty good men. None of them were what might be called saints, but the kindly, generous, honourable acts I have known them to do!
Many of the traders had thousands of dollars worth of merchandise in stock when the Mounted Police drew near, and most of them were warned in time of their approach to bury, or otherwise conceal the liquor. A band of hunters brought the news. “Some men are coming,” they said, “who wear red coats, and they are drawing a cannon.”
That was sufficient for Berry and me, and we promptly cached the ten or twelve gallons of whisky we had. Only one trader, I believe, failed to get the warning; he had his whole stock confiscated because among it were found a few gallons of liquor. Of course, we were not glad to see the strangers, but we met them with courtesy and treated them well. Although they had come through a country teeming with game they were in an almost starving condition, and were very glad to buy our provisions. Their commander, Colonel Macleod, was a gentleman, and became a life-long friend with some of the “smugglers.” Many of the traders remained in that country to continue trade with the Indians and the newcomers, while others returned to Montana. We went with the latter outfits. None “slid out,” but went from time to time decorously and peaceably, and with such of their possessions as they had not sold or given away. Thus passed the trade in the north. I cannot say that we regretted it. Prices of furs had fluctuated and dropped in value 100 per cent., few had cleared anything worth mentioning. Four years later the last of the Alberta buffalo herds drifted south and never returned to that section of the country.
We again took up our quarters in Fort Benton at the little adobe house and wintered there. It was a relief to be out of the trade for a time and rest up. A few of those who had been in the North with us crossed the river and located ranches on the Shonkin and along the Highwood Mountains. Berry and I thought that we did not want any ranching in ours.
We had frequently heard from Ashton. He seemed to be a man of unrest, now somewhere in Europe, again travelling in the States, once in a while visiting his protégée in St. Louis. Diana also wrote quite frequently, and her letters were now models of chirography, correct in grammar and phrasing. In some she spoke only of her school work and the petty incidents of her daily life. These, I fancied, were the ones the good Sisters glanced over before mailing them. But the others told of her dislike of the city. “I could bear it,” she said, “if I could only see the great mountains once in a while, and the plains.” She also spoke of Ashton and told how good he was to her, how happy she was when he came to visit there. He desired her in another year to enter a seminary: she would go, of course, for what her chief wished she would do, although she so longed to see the dear land in which she was born, and to visit us, if only for a day; but she could not tell him that.
And in one letter she told Nät-ah′-ki that Diana meant Sahm′i-ah-ki (Hunter Woman), and she was one who lived in the long ago, was a Sun woman, and never married. “And I must do likewise,” she concluded pathetically, “for no one I could care for would love me, a plain, dark little Indian girl.”
“Kyai′-yo!” the Crow Woman exclaimed when I had read this out. “I guess any young man in camp would be glad to have her.”
“I think that I understand,” said Nät-ah′-ki, meditatively. “I think that I understand. The ways of her people are no longer her ways; she has become a white woman in all but colour.”
Every winter since his departure Ashton had written that he would visit us in the spring, but he never fulfilled his promise. We had concluded that he never would come again, when he surprised us by coming ashore from a steamboat one day in June. We were certainly glad to greet him, and in his quiet way he seemed to be equally pleased. We all went over to the house and when the women saw him they clapped hand to mouth in surprise and came forward to shake hands with him. “Ok′-i kut′-ai-im-i,” they said. You will remember that they had named him Never Laughs, but he did not know that.
He was the same Ashton we had known, not given to much speech, and with the sad look in his eyes, although upon his arrival he talked more than usual and joked with the women, Berry or I, of course, interpreting.
“You ought to be ashamed,” Nät-ah′-ki told him, “to come alone. Why didn’t you bring Diana?”
“Oh,” he said, “she is busy; she has her studies; she could hardly leave them. You should see into what a fine lady she has grown. She sends you all her love and some presents, which I will hand you as soon as my trunk arrives.”
Nät-ah′-ki wished me to tell him that the girl was grieving for the sight of her country, but I would not do so. “We are not to mix up in his affairs,” I said to her.
Nät-ah′-ki and I gave Ashton our room, and moved out to a tent set up beside the house. But that was not for long.
“In summer in this country one should not live in a house,” he said, one morning. “Ever since I left here I have been longing to stay in that lodge of yours once more. Many a time I’ve thought of that robe couch, the cheerful little fire, the quaint things scattered around. It was a place to rest and to dream. I’d like to try it again.”
I told him that he should. Our lodge was about worn out. So Nät-ah′-ki sent word to the Piegan camp to her mother—they were out on the Teton somewhere—to get us a good one and bring it in; and when it arrived we set it up, and there Ashton camped with us. He would sit or recline on his couch as he used to for hours at a time, smoking, smoking, and silent. And his thoughts were not happy ones, for the shadow was in his eyes. And, as before, Nät-ah′-ki and I wondered what his trouble might be. She grieved herself for him and said many times: “He is very, very poor. I pity him.”
A steamboat came in one evening, but none of us went over to see her land; they had become a common sight. We had finished supper, Nät-ah′-ki had cleared the table and lighted the lamp. Ashton had not yet returned to the lodge, but was standing by the light repairing his pipe stem. There was a sound of swishing of silk and then a tall and graceful woman crossed the threshold, raising her veil with an impatient gesture, and almost ran up to him, holding out her hands appealingly. We recognised her instantly. It was Diana.
“My chief,” she cried, “forgive me! I could not help it. I so longed to see my country before I went back to school, that I left Alice and came. Oh, don’t be angry; forgive me!”
Ashton had grasped her hands when she held them out to him, and almost drew her to him, and I had never thought to see his face brighten so. It fairly beamed with love and pride and joy, I thought.
“My dear! my dear!” he said, almost falteringly. “Angry? Forgive? Your desires are always mine. God knows I always wish you to be happy. Why didn’t you tell me? We could have come out together?”
But the girl was crying now, and Nät-ah′-ki, almost afraid of this tall and stately girl, dressed in a manner unknown to her, walked up and said: “My daughter—you are my daughter, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes!” she faltered, and the two embraced.
We men filed out and left them together. Ashton went to the lodge, Berry and I strolled up the trail a way.
“Good God!” Berry exclaimed, “I never thought that one of our blood could be like that. Why, she plumb knocks the spots off of any white woman I ever saw, in some way. I can’t explain the difference between her and them, but it’s there sure. What is it?”
“Well,” I said to him, “it’s a matter of education, and of association with refined people mainly, I guess; and well, some women are that way. I can’t exactly explain it myself.”
“And did you notice how she’s dressed?” Berry added. “Plain like, yet somehow you know that those clothes cost a heap of money, and were made by somebody who sure knew how. And that locket hanging down on her breast; all pearls and a big diamond in the centre. My, my!”
She was beautiful, as we imagine Diana, her namesake, must have been. But where the goddess was cold and calm and all disdainful, our Diana was gracious, and, as we had seen, she had a heart.
We went back. The tears were gone; the women, Berry’s wife, Nät-ah′-ki, old Mrs. Berry and the Crow Woman were sitting around her breathlessly listening to some of her experiences. She had not forgotten her mother’s language. She arose and shook hands with us, and said how pleased she was to meet us again; that she had never forgotten our kindness.
After a little she went over to the lodge with Nät-ah′-ki and me, daintily holding up her skirts, carefully circling the little fire and sitting down opposite Ashton, who looked well pleased that we had come in.
“Oh,” she cried, clapping her hands, “how well I remember it all, even to the coals of different fuel. You are burning cottonwood.” And so she talked on, sometimes to Ashton and me, sometimes to Nät-ah′-ki, and we passed a pleasant evening. Berry and his wife gave up their room to her, and came also to live in the lodge. Somehow we could not ask her if she would like to live in it, she seemed to be above the old life entirely, out of place in it.
I must say that the girl created a sensation in the Fort or town, as it was beginning to be called. The bull-whackers and mule-skinners and the wolfers stared at her open-mouthed when she passed. The gamblers did their best to get an introduction. The real men, to whom she was introduced, treated her with profound consideration. We daily had visitors from the Piegan camp, the women regarded her with awe, and timidly shook hands with her. The chiefs even shook her hand and talked to her; the young gallants came and stood at a little distance, posing, and watching her out of the corner of their eyes.
One morning Ashton proposed that we should pack up and go somewhere for a month or two with the Piegan camp, or, if it was safe, by ourselves out to the Belt, or the foot of the Rockies. Diana objected. “I would rather not go,” she said. “You know I must soon return to school.”
Ashton seemed to be surprised at her objection and so were we.
“My dear,” he said, “I hoped you would enjoy such a trip. There is ample time for you to make it and return east for the school opening.”
But still she made excuses, and the subject was dropped. She told Nät-ah′-ki, however, that she longed to go out on the plains and roam about once more, but that she was in duty bound to go back soon. “You can’t understand how good my chief is to me,” she said. “Always I have money, more than any of the other girls, more than I can use. And I have the finest clothes, lovely jewellery. Oh, he is so good and kind to me, and seems so pleased that I learn things. I have seen you all and my country once more, and he was not angry that I came. Now, I am going back to study hard.”
“Isn’t she good!” Nät-ah′-ki exclaimed, after she told me this. “And isn’t she beautiful! I wish she was my real daughter.”
“You simple thing!” I said. “She might be your sister; you are but little older, you know.”
“I don’t care,” she concluded, “she is my daughter in a way. Didn’t I take care of her and wipe away her tears, and do all I could when Never Laughs brought her home that bad day?”