Centennial (27 page)

He was a coureur de bois, one who runs in the woods, and where he came from, no one knew.

He was a small, dark Frenchman who wore the red knitted cap of Quebec, and his name was Pasquinel. No Henri or Ba’tees or Pierre. No nickname, either. Just the three full syllables Pas-qui-nel.

He was a solitary trader with Indians, none better, and in his spacious canoe he carried beads from Paris, silver from Germany, blankets from Canada and bright cloth from New Orleans. With a knife, a gun and a hatchet for saplings, he was ready for work.

He dressed like an Indian, which was why men claimed he carried Indian blood: “Hidatsa, Assiniboin, mebbe Gros Ventre. He’s got Injun blood in there somewheres.” He wore trousers made of elk skin fringed along the seams, a buffalo-hide belt, a fringed jacket decorated with porcupine quills and deerskin moccasins—all made for him by some squaw.

As to where he came from, some claimed Montreal and the Mandan villages. Others said they had seen him in New Orleans in 1789. This was confirmed by a trader who worked the Missouri River: “I seen him in Saint Louis trading beaver in 17 and 89 and I asked him where he was from, and he said, ‘New Orleans.’ ” Both sides agreed that he was a man without fear.

Early in December of 1795, in his big birch-bark canoe which he had been paddling upstream for five weeks, he appeared at the confluence of the Platte and the Missouri, determined to try his luck along the former.
(
See Map 05 – The West 1795-1830
)

The spot at which these rivers joined was one of the bleakest in North America. Mud flats deposited by the Platte reached halfway across the Missouri. Low trees obscured the shores, and swamps made it impossible for traders to erect a post. It was an ugly, forbidding place.

It was Pasquinel’s intention to paddle his canoe about five hundred miles up the Platte, reach there in midwinter, trade with whatever tribes he found, then bring the pelts down to the market in Saint Louis. It was a dangerous enterprise, one which required him to pass single-handed through Pawnee, Cheyenne and Arapaho country, going and coming. Chances for survival of a lone coureur were not great, but if he did succeed, rewards would be high, and that was the kind of gamble Pasquinel liked.

Pushing his red cap back on his head, he sang a song of his childhood as he entered the Platte:

“
Nous étions trois capitaines

Nous étions trois capitaines

De la guerre revenant,

Brave, brave,

De la guerre revenant,

Bravement.
”

He had paddled only a few miles when he realized that this river bore little resemblance to the Missouri. There progress depended solely upon strength of arm, but with the Platte he found himself often running out of water. Sandbars intruded and sometimes whole islands, which shifted when he touched them. Not only did he have to paddle; he had also to avoid being grounded on mud flats.

It’s only during the first part, he assured himself. Not enough current to scour the bottom.

But three days later the situation remained the same. He began to curse the river, setting a precedent for all who would follow. “Sale rivière,” he growled aloud in Montreal French. “Où a-t-elle passé?”

A cold spell came and what little water there was froze, and for some days he was immobilized, but this caused no fear. If he could not force his way upstream, he would look for Indians and trade for a few pelts.

Then the thaw came and he was able to proceed. To make a living trading for beaver it was necessary to be at the Indian camps in late winter, when the animals came out of hibernation, their fur sleek and thick. The same animal trapped in midsummer wasn’t worth a sou. Beaver trading was a winter job, and Pasquinel knew every trick the Canadians had developed for staying alive in freezing weather.

“Four Frenchmen can live where one Englishman would die,” they said in Detroit, and he believed it. He thought nothing of spending eight months alone in unexplored territory, if the Indians would allow him into their camps. If his canoe was destroyed, he could build another. If his stores were dumped, it didn’t matter, for he had invented a canny way of keeping his powder dry. But if Indians proved hostile, he stopped trading and got out. Only a fool would fight Indians if he didn’t have to.

Now he entered the land of the Pawnee, reputed in Saint Louis to be the most treacherous tribe. Fais attention! he warned himself, moving so stealthily that he spotted the Indian village before they saw him.

For one whole day he kept his canoe tucked inside a bank while he studied his potential foe. They seemed like those he had known in the north: buffalo hunters, a scalp here and there, low tipis, horses and probably a gun or two—everything was standard.

It was time to move. Methodically he laid out a supply of lead bullets, poured some powder, checked the oil patches required for tamping, and wiped the inside of his short-barreled fusil. His knife was in his belt and his hatchet close by. Taking a deep breath, he paddled his canoe out into the stream and was soon spotted.

Children ran down to the bank and began calling to him in a language he did not know. Grim-lipped, he nodded to them and they shouted back. Three young braves appeared, ready for trouble, and these he saluted with his paddle. Finally two dignified chiefs strode down, looking as if they intended to settle this matter. They indicated that he must pull his canoe ashore, but he kept to the middle of the river.

Angered, the two chiefs signaled a group of young men to plunge into the cold water and haul him ashore. Lithe bodies jumped in, walked easily to the middle of the river, and dragged him ashore. They tried to take his rifle, but he wrested it from them and warned in sign language that if they molested him, he would shoot the nearest chief. They drew back.

Then from the tipis came a tall, fine-looking chief with a very red complexion. Rude Water, they said his name was, and he demanded to know who Pasquinel was and what he was doing.

In sign language Pasquinel spoke for some minutes, explaining that he had come from Saint Louis, that he came in peace, that all he wanted was to trade for beaver. He concluded by saying that when he returned through Pawnee lands, he would bring Chief Rude Water many presents.

“Chief wants his present now,” a lieutenant said, so Pasquinel dug into his canoe and produced a silver bracelet for the chief and three cards of highly colored beads made in Paris and imported through Montreal. Genuflecting, he handed Rude Water the cards and indicated they were for his squaw.

“Chief has four squaws,” the lieutenant said, and Pasquinel brought out another card.

The parley continued all day, with Pasquinel explaining that the Pawnee must be friends to the great King of France, but have nothing to do with the Americans, who had no king. Rude Water embraced Pasquinel and assured him that the Pawnee, greatest of the Indian tribes, were his friends, but that he must avoid the Cheyenne and Arapaho, who were horse stealers of the worst sort, and above all, the Ute, who were barbarians.

The desultory conversation resumed during the second day, with Rude Water inquiring as to why Pasquinel would venture into the plains without his woman, to which the Frenchman replied, “I have a wife ... north, but she is not strong in paddling the canoe.” This the chief understood.

On the next day Rude Water still insisted on playing host, explaining that Pasquinel could not take his canoe up the Platte—too much mud, too little water. Pasquinel said he would like to try, but Rude Water kept inventing new obstacles. When Pasquinel finally got his canoe into the river, the entire village came down to watch him depart. Rude Water said, “When you come to where the rivers join, take the south. Many beaver.” The parting was so congenial that Pasquinel had to anticipate trouble.

He paddled upriver all day, suspecting from time to time that he was being followed. At dusk he pitched his tent ashore and ostentatiously appeared to sleep, but when darkness fell he slipped back to his canoe and lay in the bottom, waiting. As he expected, four Pawnee braves crept along the riverbank to steal his canoe. He waited till their probing hands were almost touching his.

Then, with fiendish yells and slashing knife, he rose from the bottom of the canoe, threw himself among the four, cutting and gouging and kicking. He was a one-man explosion, made doubly frightening by the dark. The four fled, and in the morning he continued upstream.

He had gone about fifty miles farther westward when he became aware that he was again being followed. Pawnee, he concluded. Same men.

So once more he laid out his bullets and honed his knife. He judged that if he could repel them one more time, they would leave him alone. He traveled carefully, avoiding mud flats and staying away from shore. He was watchful whenever he knelt to drink or stopped to relieve himself. It was an ugly, difficult game, which the Pawnee stood every chance of winning.

The showdown came at dawn. He had slept in the canoe lodged against the southern shore, and was bending over to retrieve his paddle when a Pawnee arrow struck him in the middle of his back. A torturing pain coursed down his backbone as the slim arrow tip struck a nerve, and he might have fainted except for the challenge he had to meet.

Ignoring his wound, he grabbed for his fusil, raised it without panic, took aim and killed one of the braves. Ice-cool, he swabbed the barrel, poured his powder, inserted the patch, put in the ball, tamped it down, took aim and killed another. Methodically, while the blood ran down his back, he reloaded, but no third shot was required, because the Indians recognized that this tough little stranger had great magic.

That long winter’s day, with the low sun beating into his canoe, was one Pasquinel would not forget. Reaching blindly behind his back, he tugged at the arrow, but the barbed head had caught on bone and could not be dislodged.

He tried twisting the shaft, but the pain was too great. He tried pushing it in deeper, to get it past the bone, but produced a pain so excruciating that he feared losing consciousness. There was no solution but to leave the arrowhead imbedded, with the shaft protruding, and this he did.

For two days of intense pain he lay in his canoe face down, the arrow projecting upward. At intervals he would sit upright and try to paddle his canoe upstream, his back reacting in agony with each stroke but with the canoe moving ever farther from the Pawnee.

On the third day, when he was satisfied that the arrow was not poisoned and when the point was beginning to adjust to his nerve ends and muscles, he found that he could paddle with some ease, but now the river vanished. It contained no water deep enough for a canoe, and he had no alternative but to cache his spare provisions and proceed on foot.

The digging of a hiding place for the canoe called into play new muscles, and their movement caused new pain, which he alleviated by rotating the shaft until the flint accommodated itself. In one day he finished his job. Then he was ready to resume his journey afoot.

Like all coureurs, he used a stout buffalo-hide headstrap for managing his heavy burden. Passing the strap across his forehead, he allowed the two loose ends to fall down his back, where he fastened them to the load he had to carry. Normally his pack would have rested exactly where the shaft of the arrow protruded, so he had to drop the load several inches, allowing it to bounce off his rump.

In this manner he trailed along the Platte to that extraordinary. where the two branches of the river run side by side, sometimes barely separated, for many miles. There, lucky for him, he met two Cheyenne warriors and in sign language explained what had happened at the Pawnee camp. They became agitated and assured him that any man who fought the Pawnee was a friend. Placing him on his stomach, they tried to rip the arrow out by brute force, but the barbs could not be dislodged.

“Better cut it off beneath the skin,” they said.

“Go ahead,” Pasquinel said.

They handed him an arrow to bite on, then cut deep into his back, and after protracted sawing, they cut off the shaft. Within ten days Pasquinel was able to hoist his burden up from his rump and place it over the scar, where it rode not easily but well. Occasionally, as he hiked, he could feel the arrowhead adjusting itself, but each week it caused less pain.

He reached a Cheyenne village in late February 1796 and traded his bangles and blankets for more than a hundred beaver pelts, which he wadded into two compact bales. Wrapping them in moist deerskin which hardened when it dried, he produced packets like rock.

He now divested himself of every item not crucially needed, fastened the buffalo strap across his forehead and suspended the two bales from it. They weighed just under a hundred pounds each. His essential equipment, including rifle, ammunition, hatchet and trading goods, weighed another seventy pounds. Pasquinel, twenty-six years old that spring, and still suffering the ill effects of his wound, weighed somewhat less than a hundred and fifty pounds, yet he proposed to walk two hundred miles to where his canoe was cached.

Adjusting the huge load as if he were going to carry it from house to barn, he satisfied himself as to its balance and set forth. He created an extraordinary image: a small man, five-feet-four, with enormous shoulders and torso, gained from endless paddling, set upon matchstick legs. Day after day he trod eastward, keeping to the Platte and resting occasionally to drink from its muddy bed. He had to guard against wolves, lurking Indians and quicksand. Sometimes, to relieve the pressure on his temples, he squeezed a thumb beneath the buffalo band across his forehead.